Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Tooth & Claw Ranks the Wildlife of All 7 Continents

Episode Date: March 30, 2026

After having visited each of the 7 continents, the guys feel ready to rank them according to the wildlife they each have on offer. Which continent has the best? The worst? Find out here when they give a final vote by the end of the show! Watch here: https://youtu.be/gqxRoQ_1xwg ~~ Fabric: Join the thousands of parents who trust Fabric to help protect their family—apply today in just minutes at https://meetfabric.com/TOOTH ButcherBox: Get your choice of chicken breast or top sirloin for a year OR ground beef for life, plus $20 off your first box and free shipping when you go to https://ButcherBox.com/tooth Coast: Get up to $2,000 credit for your business when you get started at https://coastpay.com/CLAW. Terms apply. LMNT: Receive a free LMNT Sample Pack with any order when you go to https://drinklmnt.com/toothHims: To get simple, online access to personalized, affordable care for ED, Hair Loss, Weight Loss, and more, visit https://hims.com/TOOTH for your free online visit. ~~ 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

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Tooth and Claw podcast. We have our bare biologist, Wes Larson, with us. And he's not going to talk much because this episode's not exclusively for subscribers, so he doesn't care. But me and Mike care about all you other people. So I got in trouble last week. I'm Wes's brother, Jeff, and then we have Mike. Wes, what did you get in trouble for? Well, so I was doing this story of the Whaleship Essex, and when I first thought of it, I thought, oh, this would be a two-parter. And I kind of thought, I just want to end when they get rescued. And then as I was reading the book, I was like, oh, there's still like some interesting stuff after they get rescued. It kind of felt like an epilogue to me. And so I was like, you know what? I'm just going to do like an epilogue episode for our subscribers and call it part three. And, you know, I think rightfully so.

A lot of our non-paid listeners got a little upset about that and thought that I was cheating them out of a part three. And I think part of that was my fault for not explaining it well enough and kind of saying like, hey, this is how I always had this designed was a two-parter that ended at this point. And this was just extra content for our subscribers to kind of give them a special treat. But I did a bad job explaining it. And I don't blame them for being a little upset because I didn't want to do like a rugpole on anyone. I love our non-paid listeners a lot. It's like if he does, he can't stop talking about me. Caller Daddy had Jesse on to talk about her divorce and then made you subscribe to listen to her talk about Taylor Frankie Paul's Bachelor getting suspended.

Sure. Yeah. Who? I think that's exactly what it's like. Actually, let's not a get into it. Yeah. Jesse that really threw me there for a sec. I was like, wait.

I did feel bad, though, when I saw some of the comments. I thought, you know, I didn't think this through well enough. Did our subscribers go up? They did. Yeah, we got a lot of new subscribers. Nothing to apologize for. And we do. I mean, like, we want to give our subscribers like special really good content,

but I don't want it to feel like it's a trick, you know, and I do think that's what some people felt like. And I hope you guys understand my explanation that it wasn't ever intended to be that. So I'm sorry that it felt that way, truly. Yeah, I don't understand. Yeah. Okay. Are you not a subscriber?

Subscribe, you'll figure it out. It's a great episode. No, that was well said, Wes. Okay, yeah. Anyway, we won't do that again, but there will be some really nice. Okay. There will be some really nice bonuses for subscribers. But what I mean when I say we won't do it again is we'll be more clear in the, like, the start about how it's going to be laid out.

Yeah. I mean, everything. going to be crypto soon anyways maybe you know so might as well dollars don't even matter so might as well subscribe we should be buying Chinese one or whatever their money is called that's what we should be buying that's what we should make people subscribe with yeah I agree or gas you have to get us gas yeah invest in gas I'm trying to short the market on gas I'm buying all of it and storing it in little canisters in my garage No, I've heard some high-up people have been doing that, too.

Oh, really? I didn't know that was a thing. I'm a high-end person, kind of, is what that sounds like. Well, I mean, like, politicians, like the top. I'm not one of those. Top men, as they say in Indiana Jones. Top men. Well, let's get moving then.

We're going to be talking about the seven continents, because we recently just got back from Antarctica, which was all of our seventh continent. And we've been together for most all of it. Yeah. The only one I've been to without U.S. was Europe. Mm-hmm. And me and Mike got all seven in like two years, which is kind of crazy. Together.

It's impressive. Yeah. Yeah. Started with Australia and just kept going, you know. Probably started with North America, I would say. that's true I would say that was your but I don't remember

I don't remember all with Pangea friendship that's true we need to go way back do you think all those all those animals back then were like all one continents baby we did it

yeah we did it they're holding like a little flag and taking a photo yeah and then a comet hit the earth and killed everyone I don't think that's how Pangea and that's how the continents

split apart I don't know Before we get into it, we're going to be talking about our personal experiences with each of the seven continents as well as just like some general knowledge we know about them. We're ranking quite a bit of stuff. Huh? We're ranking quite a bit of stuff on the different seven continents. Before we do that, I want to use one of the things I had you guys prep for right now and just kind of talk about some of our. biggest blind spots that we have as far as like the continents go.

Yeah, sure. I wrote a whole list. Yeah. Let's just have you go for it because I think you're going to have a better wildlife blind spot radar than us. Let me do a couple that you guys have for blind spots and then I'll do some that are for all of us. The Arctic for you both is a big blind spot. Haven't been to the Arctic yet. That's the same as Antarctica.

It's definitely not. It's very different. The cloud forest of South America are a pretty big one for you guys. And then have either of you been to the Everglades, spent much time in the Everglades? Not a ton, but I've been there. Yeah. Okay. That's a big one in North America that is just like a very unique ecosystem for us.

For all of us, like mountainous east Africa is a place that's really high on all of our lists. So like Uganda, Rwanda, that area. We haven't seen gorillas. We haven't seen chimpanzees. So those are some pretty iconic animals that we're missing. Some good snakes in there. My favorite, my number one bird probably right now is there, the Shoe Bill Stork. Yeah, some amazing snakes.

There's that one hotel in Rwanda. Have you seen that? Hotel Rwanda. Yeah, that's not necessarily a place we need to visit. But maybe, I mean, it would probably be good for us to visit it. I think we should visit it, sure. Yeah, that's like the one thing I know about that place. Western Australia is a big one.

Some really cool animals out there and just cool wildlife and marine wildlife out there. The Asian steppe. So we've talked about going to like Mongolia or one of the stands. That big high central part of Asia has really cool, unique wildlife. That's a big one. There's a bunch. But those are some of the biggest that I thought of. Pretty much all the Middle East for me.

Yeah, China. Like, yeah. China. Southeast Asia. Yeah, we are. But China's like, there's so much cool wildlife in China and we're just going to get a little. Yeah. Yeah.

What are you talking about? What's that mean? The blue guys? Yeah, that's not a real place, though. Pandora. Well, the place is real. With the floating islands? Yeah.

Yeah, it's actually that all the time. Well, it's based off of a real place. Sure. Yeah, I agree with that. Sure. I mean, if you want to get little. logistical. I do.

Yeah. Yeah. So those are some hot spots. There's others, too. But those are just some I thought off the top of my... We didn't really do a Europe one. Let's throw a Europe one in there. Romania.

We haven't been to Romania. It's a good spot for theirs. Vampires are there. And Scandinavia, too. Allow that and not avatars? Yeah, I believe in vampires. I don't believe in Pandora. All right.

Well... Mike, choose a continent. Europe. Europe? All right. We'll start with Europe then. I've been thinking a lot about Vienna sausages. Okay.

I kind of split up the way that we're all going to talk about it. And I assigned West to talk about bears, snakes, and birds, the two bees. Yeah, BBS. Or not to be. Sounds like a surgical procedure. And then I'm going to be talking about, I first. forget what I'm talking about something. No.

Cats, dogs. Cats, dogs, and bugs. And not too much about bugs. Just so you guys know. That's not right. And then Mike's going to be talking about mythological, prehistoric, and oceans, which I didn't give them too specific of a thing. I told them, if you find anything interesting in there, just go heavy on that, you know?

So. We never, did we ever clap? We did clap. Yeah, we clapped. You want to restart? You want to clap? I don't know. Just to make sure.

No. Yeah, let's do it. Count us down, Jeff. On one. Three, two, one. All right. We're good. Are we good, Wes?

Yeah, I just didn't think we'd clap. Let's just clap once more. All right. All right. So I can kind of just start us off to give you guys kind of an idea of how to follow. All right. Okay. So Europe was, yeah.

It seems like they used to be more exciting with their wildlife and got rid of most of their cool stuff with cats and dogs. So I just have the Liberian links, the Eurasian links, and the European wildcat for cats. Iberian. Iberian links, not Liberian, yeah. Librarian. Well, it says Liberian in my notes. Yep, you know. It's Iberian.

And then. The Liberian links. peninsula. We've seen a Eurasian, we've seen a Eurasian links. It's cool. It is far away. We saw it in Asia. Yeah.

Pretty fluffy. Yeah, I mean, they don't really have anything too unique. European wild cats, maybe. I don't know much about it. They are low on cats. Their cat population is very small, small cats and not that many of them either. And they're pretty low on dogs, too. Yeah.

Hot spots for Eurasian. links would be in Europe would be like in Scandinavia, Estonia, and then Iberian links you're going to see in like Spain, sometimes Portugal, that's on the Iberian Peninsula. So yeah. And as far as canines go, or can't, how do you say it, Candids? Canids. Canids. Cannids. Cannids. Sorry, Canids. Yeah. Jeff threw me off. Canids. Canids. They do have gray wolves in like Scandinavia area and a little bit in like Spain and Italy. Italy has them, yeah.

And then they have Red Fox. Wolves are pretty widespread throughout Europe, actually. Yeah. But honestly, from my part, not too excited. They get a low rating from that. And bugs, I don't know, any European bugs. You've got to have one bug. Are you serious?

I just spent 16 hours, whatever, I don't even care. It doesn't, I'm over it. I'm just going to have a brief moment. moment there. I think we're going to be okay though. Okay. Oh boy. Okay, not a single bug in Europe. That actually sounds very pleasant if they don't have a single insect in the entire continent. Lots of mantises. There's there's bugs over there, but I would agree with you, Jeff. Do you see a bug that you can remember? I can't state a specific moment wherein I saw a bug. Cockroaches. When I lived in France, my apartment was overrun. Say cockroach. I'm doing bugs.

I saw and I can't remember any bugs. I didn't see a cockroach. You don't have to have seen them to say it for this thing, right? Well, that's what I'm doing for bugs. Okay. Yeah, you did. Awesome work. I will say, like, I do think Europe overall is one of the kind of least impressive wildlife continents.

So I do agree that it is going to be able to be a lot of well. Like food of cockroaches. That's a fact. Yeah, save it for Asia. So when we say Eurasian, are we talking, does that broadly cover just all of Europe and Asia? Is that what I'm supposed to believe from that, Portmanteau? It depends on the species. So like Eurasian links, yeah, I mean they're found from Scandinavia all the way to, I think, like China.

It is kind of like an interesting conversation to have that's not going to be part of this. episode but just like how Asia and Europe are like the only two continents that are completely connected and just kind of a made up line through it, you know? Yeah. I mean that was North and South America

too. It's just the Panama Canal splits them now. But there is kind of like an intuitive little. Yeah, but they were connected. I mean like that's how Pumas and Jaguars spread. Yeah, but you know what we're saying. When it gets all skinny and they're connected, it's like okay, that looks like... Oh, I get what you're saying. Like a There's a natural separation.

Like when you look on a map, these two are unique. Sure. Right. I think the tricky thing with North and South America is where Central America fits in. Because like some people say it's North America, but then some people say it's kind of its own thing. I don't know. It's kind of tricky. Yeah.

No, I want to kind of bring that up. It is part of North America, though. It is. Yeah. Like it's not its own continent. So we count that. But I kind of feel like we could easily have like nine. continents. If we made like the Middle East a continent and then made Central America continent

would make sense. But we don't. Sure. And we haven't. Right. Okay. So are we all doing Europe then for our categories? Yeah. Mike, do you want to go next? Yeah, I'll go and it just makes sense to me to do it right now. Just a caveat on all of my categories really, but specifically for water or marine sea life. Because like... It ties really in. It ties really in. It ties really. well into my bugs that I ended. Yes, it's like hand in hand. But I just want to say that with like ocean life, these animals are often most of the big charismatic animals.

Everyone knows aren't really confined to one specific continent. So I just tried to pick the places where you have the best opportunity to see them. And some of this is like anecdotal. Some of this I tried to do as much research as I could. I did so much, Jeff. but with Europe let's start with the water critters so um the first one that popped in my mind was the Portuguese manor you got to go with the manor war that's good Portugal in the name west yeah yeah okay that's a giant we're going so the best place to see blue sharks and this

is actually an exciting thing to me when we talked to Dan from all the sharks he said it's best off the Azores islands or even off just the coast of the UK there's some really good to get blue sharks. Weaver fish, incredibly dangerous and venomous. They got spines all up and down their back. A well's catfish. This was featured on the first season of river monsters. And Jeremy, he was just like, these probably couldn't kill an adult human, but they could easily swallow a child. These are all in Europe? Yeah, these are all European-based. Where did your Gooch story happen, Wes? That was in like the foothills of the Himalayas in India, Not Gooch.

Not the Gooch. Can I throw one in there, Mike? Please, as many as you can and want. Basking sharks, the second biggest shark in the world. Also filter feeding sharks. The best place in the world right now to find them is off the coast of Ireland. Ireland. Don't you think?

I do. And that was the one I wanted to throw in there. Basking sharks. No snakes in Ireland. Nope. They got rid of them. Chaste off. All St. Patrick.

I'm going to move on to prehistoric now. That was another one of my categories. This is an interesting thing that I found. When I looked at the fossil map of recovered megalodon teeth, the hot spots. No eels there either. Did St. Patrick get rid of those too? Well, once they got all the snakes, they're like, well, these kind of look like snakes and they kept going into the ocean.

That's where eels came from, though, because they got chased into the ocean. They just turned into eels, right? That's not true also. What were you saying about megalodon, Mike? Yeah, so most of the fossil records, I just saw like the hot spots on the map. It was Europe was kind of like the biggest concentration of recovered megaladon fossils and teeth and stuff, which I thought was interesting. So the Meg, part three, probably has got to happen over there. Yeah.

Yeah, and Paris. That river. The largest species of woolly mammoths, they existed. Wow, they were still alive. They're dead. Oh, the comet. Really? The comet got them too west, right?

It wasn't the comet. It was the comet. It wasn't a comet that killed the dinosaurs either as an asteroid. I'm going to try to be more scientific from here on now. I'm joshing. They were struck by a lot of human technology. We think, like, a lot of the megafauna, it was like human blood extinction. So like spears and, yeah, anyway, you know.

Wes, you're a diehard mammoth fan. I love mammoths, yeah. The hockey team. The critter. Not the hockey team. I don't really care about the hockey team. What if a human threw a meteorite at one of the mammoths? If they threw it hard enough and it was really sharp and attached to us like a long pole.

There you go. Then yes, I think it could kill it. Anyway, like I was saying, the largest species of woolly mammoth existed in Western Europe, which I thought was kind of interesting. I was just kind of assumed that was maybe more of a North American thing or even an Asian side of things. But Europe, you guys had big stuff. Yeah, that's where they think jaguars came from, too, is Europe, like their prehistoric remnants. Going to rattle off a few more here. The cave bear, the spear deer had these super long, awesome antlers.

They're really cool. Coastal hyenas, abitha pygmy vipers, and marsh hogs. Marsh hogs. I like how you say that. The marsh hog. Okay. And now let's delve into the mythological. This one, so I'm going to be talking about the Loch Ness Monster.

This is my, just the thing that popped out when I was doing my research. And it was a pretty cool little creation story or origin story. So legend tells us that Loch Ness, the lake itself, not the monster yet, was created in anger by the Celtic Winter Queen, the goddess Dark Beira. When her made Nessa was late to attend her duties, Bayra raged and transformed Nessa into a river. They just got to just be a river. That would suck. That sounds kind of nice. Isn't that like what Nirvana is supposed to be like?

So Nessa, this may have turned into a river. But she's still the same woman as a river? Like, she has, like, thoughts. She's still conscious, yeah, because she eventually manages to escape the confines of just being a river. And she's like, I'm going to also be a lake. So she became the lake Ness, Nessa, Lockness. Yeah. Okay, yeah.

And this is where the Loch Ness monster comes into play here. So as the myth tells it, Scotland's lakes and rivers are said to be home to Kelpies and water horses invoking some of the more famous imagery we know of the Loch Ness kind of like with it looks like a pleasiosaur like that's what most of the like most of the Loch Ness imagery is is like right and so these kelpies they're shapeshifters they're they can change into whatever form they want and basically what they do is they patrol the forests of the Loch Ness in hopes of luring you know unwitting men and women to their demise deep in the lake so like they kind of goad them in almost like a siren in Greek mythology

and they pull them down into the depths of the Loch Ness and that's, this is maybe not. I always just thought it was like a big monster. So it's still a her? It's still a her. Well, the lake is. I don't know about Nessie. That's one way to say it.

But that's just like one version of the story. Like all of these myths I'm going to be covering, there's going to be a million different versions. But that was just the one I found to be most kind of beautiful and fanciful. All right. Well, as far as bears, snakes, and birds are considered, I had, I ranked each of the continents for, for bears, snakes, and birds. Good.

For bears, I had them at number three, which is the highest Europe ever gets in any of my rankings. So they have two of the world's bear species. They have brown bears and they have polar bears in Europe. But those are two of the more iconic of the bear species, too. I do think they get some good points for that. You can find brown bears throughout Scandinavia, down through Italy, in some of the mountains in France. You can find them throughout Eastern Europe. Some hot spots are like Slovenia.

There's a lot in Croatia. I believe up into like Latvia and stuff too. Romania is a big hotspot for brown bears. So brown bears are doing fairly well in Europe. Polar bears in Europe are really only found. the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, which is where we're going to try and see them next summer. That's really the only European, well, I guess, never mind, I should rewind that. Greenland is owned by Denmark, and you can find them there too. So there are some other places owned by European countries

where you can find polar bears. Those are the two bears. So I rank them third, and you'll hear who they're behind later for bears. Snakes, Europe is second to last right before Antarctica. They really don't have a ton of good snakes in Europe There's like asps There's some other venomous snakes They don't even have eels Yeah, they do have eels Pretty famous for eels even, I think

But as far as snakes go, there's not a lot of snake diversity in Europe You're not going to see a lot of herpers Like taking trips to Europe to look for snakes I'm not going to really go through all the different species But it's not really a snake hot spot And then birds, I had Europe ranked again second to last. There's a fair amount of migrations and whatnot that go through Europe. There's some really cool birds that you'll see in other parts of the world that do show up in Europe from time to time.

There's good bird life in Europe. I don't think there's a single continent where it's like really bad for birds. But it's not for me where I like really beautiful, colorful, amazing-looking birds. These subjective rankings, Europe doesn't have as many as other places for. me. So I have them second to last for birds. Some highlights for their birds, though, are like those hoop-whoos that we really liked in, like, India and Africa, those show up in Europe. I really like, they have a lot of golden eagles in Europe, which I love. And yeah. They don't have too many birds because they don't have too many bugs.

Yeah, sure. They have a fair amount. I got to stop saying sure to your stuff. They have a fair amount of birds and a fair amount of insects, but it's not. Again, like we've talked about, Europe in a large way, it was tamed, you know, in like in the Renaissance and onward, it just kind of, a lot of the wildlife was kind of pushed away. And not that there aren't wild places in Europe, there for sure are. It's a huge continent. But a lot of the places we think of in Europe don't have a ton of wildlife diversity. Well, you can even see that from the Europe. You European influence once it migrated to the Americas, like they did tame a lot of the wildlife here as well. Like that was part of the culture for them at that time.

Yeah. And when I say tame, I don't mean like they're taming the wildlife. I mean more they're taming the land. Like they're making it agriculture. They're pushing out the native floor and fauna. But there are still really great places in Europe for wildlife. I still think it's an amazing place to go see wildlife. I can rank mine too real quick.

For cats, I have them fifth. For dogs, I have them fifth, and for bugs, I have them sixth. And then I may have done a bad job prepping you guys for how I'm going to run this episode. But I also want to do our five favorite animals each for each continent. Did you guys get that ready? Nope. I can do it. It's kind of supposed to be like representative of the continent too a bit.

So like don't like overlap animals is how. I had it. Okay. But if we want, we can just use my five and you guys can say like what you would keep and sub out or whatever. Sure. Okay. No, I can do five.

But if Mike wants to do that, I totally, Mike, I think has had to do the most work. So I think that's fair. It was shot myself in the foot. No, I'm glad because I'm laying up on a lot of these. So you can you can give them the meat. Great.

All right. So my top five for Europe was a badger, was the easiest pick for me. I also had a badger. I think that's something I'd be looking for if I'm looking for European wildlife. And then I had a squirrel because that's the only one I saw that I got most excited about in Europe. And they came from Europe, our squares. Sure. Yeah.

A lot of them. I have, I put polar bear to Europe. I know that Asia and North America have more, but I kind of think. the European polar bear is just like a cool spot and I want to give it to them. And then I put Red Fox and I put Walrus. Walrus. Okay. Huh.

Okay. Yeah. I have basking shark because I think they're really just amazing looking and just cool sharks. I have Eurasian links because I would put them in Europe and I think they're the coolest of the small cats. Badger. I think the European Badger has such a distinctive look, so I totally agree with Jeff on that one. I have reindeer because you mostly find them in Scandinavia and whatnot.

And then the last one, I picked a bird. I picked the white-tailed eagle. It's the longest wingspan of any eagle in the world. They kind of look like a cross between a bald eagle and a golden eagle, and you find them out in like central and northern and eastern Europe. So they're a really cool looking eagle that I think should be represented by Europe. Okay. Okay.

So I'm going to do it this way. I'm going to vote for Wes on this round. Wes wins this round. Okay. And whoever has the most votes by the end of this episode, because there's seven continents. Someone's going to win. They get, I don't know. I'll give you all.

Well, Wes is waiting, so that's great. I actually liked my I like Jeff's picks better there I'll give you guys the winner some candy is how I'll do this okay there was a lot of things that motivated me to get life insurance one of them was the pandemic a few years ago it just seemed like such a chaotic crazy time nothing felt certain and for me it just felt really important to have protection for the people that I love and every year I promised myself I would stop procrastinating on all the important stuff and life insurance was always one of those things that I avoided thinking about until I realized that it's actually really quick, really affordable, and essential. Fabric by Gerber Life makes it easy to start the year feeling like you've handled something major for your family. Fabric by Gerber Life is term life insurance you can get done today. It's made for busy parents like you, all online, on your schedule,

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I'm going to go first. My heart can't take this. I'm on the verge of dying. You need to know that. I forgot about that one. All right, hold on. I'm going to go first. All right.

So for bears, I have South America ranked fourth. They have one bear species, but it's a very iconic cool bear species. It's the Andean bear or the spectacled bear. One of the cooler bears that I've ever seen in the wild, just really unique habitat. unique bear, probably like up there with pandas being the least dangerous bear in the world. There's no really recorded attacks on people. I think there was a guy that cornered one once and it attacked his dogs and maybe attacked him, but not really a dangerous bear in any sense of the word.

But they're the only bear in South America. So that is why they're ranked fourth for bears. For snakes, I have them third for snakes. So there are a lot of really cool snakes in South America. It's hard. For me, Asia, Africa, and South America are like leaps and bounds above everyone else when it comes to snakes. So it was hard to rank those ones. But I did put them third.

They have the heaviest snake in the world, the green anaconda. They have the longest viper in the world, the Bushmaster. And then they just have lots of really iconic cool snakes. We're talking like Emerald Tree Bow. We have different types of rattlesnakes down there, like the neotropical rattlesnake, lots of cool vipers, just really cool snakes in South America. It's definitely a herper kind of hotspot. So they're ranked third for snakes. And then for birds, I also have them ranked third after African Asia.

It's hard to beat African Asia on a lot of these. But there are really amazing birds. and again, really iconic birds in South America. Toco Tocan is my favorite personal South American bird. But man, if you ever get the chance to go to Ecuador or Columbia to go birding, you are going to just be blown away by the amount of, you know what? I think I got to put them second. I'm actually putting South America second out.

Oh, wow. So just because I was thinking of Ecuador and how, I mean, when we went there, we saw over 350 species of birds in a sense. single week. We weren't even trying. Yeah. Amazing words. You weren't trying?

I was trying. I was trying really hard, actually. But, yeah. So I'm going to put them second for birds. Cool. Penguins? Penguins, yeah, but penguins, you find in a lot of other places, too. Tortoises?

Those are kind of like snakes. They're not. Well, there's reptiles, I guess. But we're not bringing them up anywhere else, so that's good call out still. I had to say. Yeah, I guess I would probably give South America tortoises because they got those Galapagos ones. We got tortoises, too, though. And, you know, there's some really similar sized tortoises and, like, the Seychelles and stuff, too, to the Galapagos ones.

So, anyway, okay. That's South America for me, for my three critter species. What a great continent? I love Salomon. Yeah, go for you. Amazing continent. So, actually, I kind of want to ask Wes. So do you know the types of cats in South America that don't live in North America?

Can you name? I think there's four. Yeah, I would say the Jagarundi, the Margay. There are some Jagarundi in Central America. Oh, yeah, I forget that Central America counts as North America. There's probably Marge in Central America, too, right? I didn't, when I looked up North American cats, it didn't, it had Jaggerundies and it didn't have my gaze. Okay.

Fishing cat? Yeah. And Pontanol cat? I didn't see it. You don't have that one. I have Andean cat, codcat. Did you know there's a Jeffroy's cat? Uh-uh.

Oh, wait, yeah, yeah, I do. Down in Patagonia, right? That's pretty cool. Do fishing cats ever catch catfish? That'd be fun, right? Probably, yeah. And a pomper's cat. Nature is so crazy.

The Pontanol cat's another one. Marge, I do think you can find in Central America, but I'm not sure. And then for dogs, the main noteworthy one is the main wolf is very unique to South America. It is. There's a South American fox, but they kind of just look like your typical fox. Just not. Bush dogs are only in South America. Bush dogs are really cool.

That's a white whale, and not many people have seen them. Oh, really? Yeah. Do they have, they're not related to Bush masters? No. Nope, not at all. Or George Bush? Also not in the Bush family.

Or just bushes? I'm pretty sure crab-eating foxes are only in South America, right? I didn't see him. Didn't see him what, when you're doing your exhaustive research? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I can look that up for your research.

real quick, Jeff. Do insects. Yeah, just in South America. Do one insect, please. Here, let me help you with a few other dogs that are just in South America. The South American Gray Fox, the Pompas Fox, the Culpayo or Andean Fox, those are also dogs that are only in South America. Those are good dogs.

I said, but they all are, aren't they? Does all dogs go to heaven? Is that like for even wild dogs? I would think so. Like all canids? Canaanians. Yeah. For bugs?

Yeah, go bugs. I'm going to do the Brazilian wandering spider. Okay. Pretty cool insect. Yeah. Are they, they're not insects. Definitely not an insect, an arachnid. Yeah.

Bugs is kind of a, you know what we mean, right? Listener. Yeah. That's why I said bugs instead of. Arthur Pods. So I could do spiders. That's a great, a great bug. We did an episode on them, and that was,

an interesting one where we learned that their venom can produce a three-day boner. Right. And for... What's four days you tell your physician, right? So you're good. Bugs I saw, I don't know if scorpions count as a bug, but I did... Seeing that scorpion. If Brazilian wandering spiders do, then scorpions do, too.

Their same family. Yeah, we saw the South American yellow scorpion in Brazil, which is one of the most potent venoms of any scorpion on the planet. And it happened to be right next to one of our guests' head in her bed. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Do you guys have any bugs that come to mind when you think of South America or trips? There's a lot of good bugs down there.

Specifically. There's lots of really cool cryptic moths in South America that look like leaves. I saw this Katie did in Ecuador that had like it looked perfectly like a leaf. And then if you kind of got close to it, it popped its wings out that had big eyes on them. And I think it's called a peacock kiddie did. And it looked like a predator. And it was just like really cool example of mimicry. We could do a whole podcast on bugs in South America.

Just so you guys know, there are so many bugs down there. Bulla dance are in South America. Ooh, that's a good one. We talked about them, you know. Yeah. There's some incredible, like, army ants. and leaf cutter ants are responsible for a huge aspect of the rainforest. So, yeah, anyway.

Leaf cutters. That spoiled my North American bug. Okay. Leaf cutters. Oh, man. My turn, right, for water in South America? Yeah. South America has some really cool, unique water creatures.

We've talked about a couple of all already, but I'll shout out a few real quick. So the Amazon River dolphins, the pink ones. West had a pretty good episode about those. They just look kind of like sausages that aren't quite done being grilled up. Piranha, I think, are only South American? Or are there others? I think you can find them in Central America as well. Okay.

But that's like South America is where you would put them, right? They're pretty uniquely, yeah, South American. Electric eels also only found in South America. Not actually eels. Technically, they're fit. Knife fish, most closely related to fish. So that's kind of a confusing little. Next time you're at a party and someone's like, hey, what about those eels?

They better watch out if it's a St. Patrick's State Party. Right. Yeah, that's true. They'll get chased into those. Jeff talked a little bit about these, the, I think you say conjuru, the ones that are purportedly folklorically said to swim up your urine stream and get you in the urethra. Yeah. The Lorina Baba episode. Yeah.

That's why, dude, women are so lucky. They don't have to deal with it. Sea lions. Conjure. So this is more anecdotal, but like seals and sea lions, when we went to the Galapagos, I'd never quite experienced anything quite like that. I think seals probably more appropriately would maybe even go to Antarctica. But I'm going to put them here, I think.

Just because it's insane how, like, every beach we went to, there's just like a billion of them rolling around. We got to give seals to Antarctica. Like, Antarctica doesn't have anything besides us. like seals. No idea. Sure. Okay.

All right. Anyway, and then hammerheads. I gave hammerheads because Ecuador is probably the prime spot in the world to see hammerheads. And that's great. It is interesting. I've been looking at diving spots lately and like every list about the best diving spots in the world. Almost every single one, Galapagos is number one on their diving spots. All right.

Let's rattle through prehistoric real quick. The Titana boa. You heard about that guy? Huge snake. It's like 50 feet long. A movie coming out about it this year. No way. So exciting.

It's going to be good. Jeff, ground sloths? Yeah, I like those. They're like... Brazilian caves that they, after a while, figured out was like a sloths home that they made. So cool. I went to one of those caves in me.

It's nice. They're supposed to be, I guess, they were the size of elephants, which is just kind of a crazy... Basically, everything prehistorically, like the signature feature of them is that they're animals, but huge. Yeah, huge ones.

There's the Titanic, a terabird. It was like a six and a half foot tall bird And for like 40 million years It was the apex predator on the continent It was crazy Just like this huge bird And it was super fast It could run like 40 miles an hour

And just had this crazy beak And it would go to town on whatever it wanted It sounded like There was overlap between humans and them too, right? Yeah, they didn't go extinct Until maybe like pretty early humans Were definitely around at the same time And then so this is maybe a controversial one

But I'm giving because otherwise I would just say like the coolest dinosaur for every continent, but the oldest living fossil records of dinosaurs actually come from South America. So I'm just giving South America dinosaurs just as like a blanket just so we're not just like saying T-Rex for the rest of these continents. But 230 million year old fossils from Argentina and Brazil, the Eoraptor and the Herreraaurus. So there you go. Okay. I'm going to do the mythological creature I found to be most compelling in South America. America. It's called the boy tata. So I just also want to shout out the, what's it called? The Encantado. We talked about that in the pink river. I was going to say, if it's not the like the dolphins that

dresses like a guy in a white suit and go and like knock up every woman. Yeah. Wear dolphins. It's so awesome. And they have to wear a hat to cover up their blowhole because that doesn't go. It's the only part that doesn't go away. It's awesome. I love that like when people got pregnant, they just said, It was the dolphins. The dolphins came in. But the one I went with, it's actually a huge snake called the Boitata. So in the Rio Grande dosoul region in Brazil, did I say that right, Wes? No, but it's okay.

Hiro-Granji-Dosul. Higranji Dosul. Region in Brazil. A legend tells of a period of endless rainy nights in the forest. An Anaconda that lived in a dark cave was awakened by the floods, and being able to see in the dark just fine decided the feast solely on its. favorite delicacy, the eyeballs of all of the other animals. After gorging on the bright eyes of the other animals, the anaconda lit up from the inside

and briefly turned fiery bright before dying, and then it was reincarnated into a great protector snake called the Boitata, who would attack those who mean to harm the trees and animals of the Amazon, causing any to cross its path to go blind, mad, or even just outright die on the spot. With eyes like two beacons and transparent and sparkling skin, it slithers in the night through the fields and along river banks protecting the forests. The best way to avoid its wrath was to remain still without breathing and keeping your eyes tightly closed.

Running from it is a risk best not taken since the snake might suspect you of being an arson who has set fire to the woods, which I think is really funny. It's like a snake is sitting there just pondering, you know. Like I don't think it knows the word arson. It's on fire. Yeah. There you go. Fiery, big old fiery serpent that's like, don't mess with.

It's like a will of the wisp. Don't mess with the forests. Yeah. Or else it'll get you. It'll get you. It'll get you. For South America, I have Jaguar, Tococan, giant an eater, maind wolf, and green Anaconda. That's the one, my hardest one I left off.

I have, it's going to be tough to beat. Jaguar, Spectacle Bear, Ann Eater, Mained Wolf, Cayman. I'm glad you did Spectacled Bear. That definitely should have been in my list. I think the Spectacled Bear is going to give the vote, get my vote to go to Jeff. So you're tied up. Okay. All right.

What continent's next? You know, let's keep the Americas together. So let's go North America. So, you know, I think Mike's part of this episode's the most fun, and I don't want it to be too long. So intentionally I didn't prepare very much. No, you're good job. For cats, the main ones are Canada Links, Mountain Lion, Jaguar, which belong more to South America, bobcats, oscillates, and Jagarundis, which more South America for sure.

And then dogs, we have gray wolf, red fox, Arctic fox, coyotes, and red wolves. And lots of coyotes, which, you know, put them ahead of South America for me, for dogs. But then I probably put South America above North America for cats. If you had to pick a quintessentially American canad, it would be the coyote. And then for bugs, probably the zombie ants we saw in Costa Rica are what I think of the most. Also the leaf cutter ants that we saw in Costa Rica. I really like the bullet ant that bit Wes.

A lot of Central American bugs for me, though. North America, like, I'd go classic grass opera lady bug type of bugs. Firefly? Oh, that's a pretty good bug. I love that bug. Beetle more accurately. Mike, you want to go? I'll do it.

Water. We got manatees. You got to go to Florida to see them. No other place in the world. Orcas, I think it's the best place in the world is just off the coast of Washington state in the San Juan's. You can see him and you can correct me if I'm wrong West. No no I think that's probably the best place like maybe the best place to see him from like a boat. The best

place to see him right now is in this Norway like Norwegian fjord where you can like dive with them and there's tons of pods in there. But yeah basically all of like not all of them but a lot of the big whales like blue gray and humpback whales are a north. Here's another thing. The whole Oceania part of the world is hard to like ascribe to a continent because that's like an awesome spot to see all of the sea life and I don't really know like how to divvy that up but I'm just going to give it to North America because the Baja in Mexico is like that's a premier spot to see whale sharks uh narwhal is in the Canadian Arctic that's you got to count those those are

yeah they're real it turns out they are real about a few people out there learning that right now Tiger sharks in the Bahamas that is probably the best that and the Maldives, best place to see those. Yeah, cool. I was tempted to include dolphins off the coast of California, but I don't, it just seems like they're everywhere, so I don't know. Yeah. I don't really know how to do that one.

My best dolphin experience was in the Bahamas, so dolphins, yeah. Cool. Mine was Mexico. Prehistoric, giant short-faced bear. Those dudes. Sweet bear. Yeah, 14 feet tall. Sabretooth Tiger, this is their stomping grounds, was North America.

The Dyer Wolf, the American Lion, and the Arcalon, Iskiros. There's a ruler turtle, basically twice the size of a leatherback. So that's a huge. That's a big animal. Yeah. T-Rex, North American. No, Mike gave all dinosaurs to South America. Yeah, I kind of have to say it, though. Like, that's the most famous dinosaur. Right. It's found like in Montana. I was a hard take, and I'm going to die on that hill. Okay. My mythological creature from North America, every bone in my body screamed out just to go with Bigfoot, right? That's like firmly entrenched in North American lore. But I am actually going with a First

Nations people's mythology of the Thunderbird and Horned Serpent. Nice. Because this is more of like a creation myth. And I think that's a little more like just like fundamental to the land itself. So I thought it was a little more fun to do this. So I pulled this primarily from the Algonquin mythology. But again, a lot of different tribes share similar stories. The Thunderbird in many First Nation People's mythology, it's a brightly feathered bird who helped create the universe and who represents order, light, and life. It's big and strong enough to swoop down and pick up whales and its talons, and from its perch on the upper world, he surveys the lands below, controls the weather, and protects humanity from the great horn serpent who embodies chaos, darkness, and death.

And whenever the serpent starts acting up a little bit, the thunderbird just like cast thunderbolts down at it, which is pretty, it's kind of a fun little, like, it's probably fun for both them, you know, they're having fun. But in some traditions, the Thunderbird will just show up in like a dream or a vision. And basically that marks that person to receive like bountiful gifts or maybe even go on to become the war chieftain. But yeah, it's just kind of like a cool little. And again, like it varies vastly from a tribe to tribe. Like I'm not pretending this is like the one soul creation myth that exists. But I just thought this version of it was kind of kind of cool to think that there's a protector bird just sending rain and Thunderbolts.

down to help us common folk out every once in a while, you know? I like that. Yeah, good. Cool. All right, my turn? Yeah. Okay, so for bears, I have North America ranked third. So we have three bear species.

We've got polar bears, brown bears, and American black bears. So great, great bears all around. I love that American black bears are a quintessentially North American bear. So I do really like them. So word number three, go us. You would guess second. You would have guessed wrong. You would have guessed right.

Sorry, it is second. Europe was third. Yeah. We are second. I put us second. My bad. North America is second for bears. Snakes, we are, let's see, what is that?

Fifth, I put us fifth for snakes. We got some great snakes. I think rattlesnakes are most. mostly North American, and they're kind of our coolest snake, in my opinion. I just think it's neat that they have such a cool defense mechanism. We have some other really cool snakes, though, too. We got coral snakes, indigo snakes. Lots of really great snakes in North America, to be honest.

But I put a still fifth because there's some other continents with a really amazing snake life. And then for birds, I have North America ranked, once again, fifth great birds here. but again, I think kind of similar to Europe, maybe a little bit more drab, a little bit less impressive than some of these other continents. I'm just going to throw out bald eagles and turkeys as two of our coolest birds. So we have in North America. Mike Tyson would not agree. Pigeons. He loves pigeons.

A lot of the coolest pigeons are in other places. All right. Should we do our favorite animals from North America? Yes, do it. You go first. Okay. I have grizzly bear, black bear, moose, sloth, and coyote. Give sloths to North America.

Oh, interesting. Because Central America is part of North America. That's a fact. Sure. And that's where I think, if I want to see a sloth, I think is Central America first. Yeah, right. I did Puma, or Mount Lion, I guess. We'll do the North American name.

Grizzly bear, coyote, American black, Black Bear and Heelam Monster. We'll go with Wes. Yes. Oh, the Heel Monster. Are you kidding me, Jeff? Yeah. One of two venomous lizards. Yeah, have you ever licked one?

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Terms apply. That's coastpay. dot com slash claw the coast visa commercial credit card is issued by celtic bank all card accounts subject to credit approval let's go to africa next one for wildlife it's hard to be you know i think i'm you're gonna say one of the best continents yeah for wildlife which you know applies i think it's number one for me right now i can start us off though so for whatever reason and I didn't put all that. Oh, wait, yeah, I did.

I just kind of have it mixed up here. All right. So the big most famous cats there are lion, cheetah, leopard, serval. Or those are the four that I've seen that are like the most noteworthy in Africa. We saw a serval, right? We did see a serval. Yes. Yeah.

And then the other ones that... It's also caracles. Yeah. Yeah, there's caricles that we didn't see here. Then they kind of look similar. All right. They aren't spotted. They look like kind of a lynx.

They have a really long wisp on the end of their ears. Really cool-looking cats. The main one I'd want to see, but it's also part of the Middle East is a Sam cat. I think they're really cool. Oh, the huge ears. There's African wild cats, black-footed cat, African golden cat, jungle cat. So they have a lot of cats. I've seen the wild cat, and I think I saw the black-footed cat.

Are hyenas, would they count as a dog? Because when I looked up, it wasn't. No. They're philiforms. So they're their own thing. Yeah. Their main dogs are jackals and painted dogs. I'd agree with that.

They have a lot of foxes too, like Fenwick Fox and different types of fox. For whatever reason, if you search. Let's not gloss over them. Huh? You can't gloss over fenick foxes. You know, foxes, when you search like wild dogs in Africa, they, for For whatever reason, never list fox. It's probably because wild dogs is like the name of a species of African wild

So I had to like search fox separately and I think I forgot. You can't do that. Yeah, you can't do that. Yeah, you live and you learn. Next time we do this, you'll have that. But Fenwick Fox is really cute. Yeah. They're great.

We love foxes around here. For bugs, dung beetles are so cool. We saw a few dung beetles. and they are just so good for the ecosystem too, which makes them like extra cool. So they have some really big beetles out there too, like some of the best beetles are out in African jungles, but I'm given like my most noteworthy bug goes to dung beetles for Africa.

Okay, the best. And then I'll rate cats. I'm going to rate them number one. And for dogs, I'm going to rate probably like fourth or fifth. I'll say fourth because painted dogs are just so cool. I'm going to take a quick second to poke some holes in your cat ranking, if I might. Yeah.

All three of the big cats that you like in Africa can also be found in Asia. Cheetah is pretty much not. But they can be. They're still there. In India? No, like in Iran and the Middle East, there's a cheetah. What I'm saying is if, like, you're ranking continents based on what they have for those species, there are better cats. Like, there are more species of cats in Asia than there are in Africa.

I see. Like, you have all of the African ones plus tigers, plus snow leopards, plus... I think if you're just looking at a list, you're right. I think if you're looking at a list of what each continent has, you're right. But I think if you're considering, like, accessibility to the animals, if you're considering, like, accessibility to the animals, if you're considering like the amount that each continent has and like if you're going to the continent what you're going to be able to see i think africa's number one for cats i'd still pick asia uh i think your argument's fair i don't i don't disagree with your disagreement but you

didn't change my mind either okay uh this you know it's makes sense as a big lion enthusiast too sure you know and cheated too yeah okay Africa for bears not very good they

they put them no I put them above Antarctica so they're number six for bears and the only reason I did that is because they used to have bears

in northern Africa they used to have brown bears honestly Australia should probably be lower than Africa but because of koalas even though they're not bears I'm gonna get it

yeah um But I put them at six for bears No bears currently in Africa They used to have a brown bear in northern Africa Snakes I put them number one I think there's a good argument for Asia

There's probably more species in Asia So Jeff you could argue the same thing Yeah But some of my personal favorite snakes Are only found in Africa And that's why I had the argument for the cats is they're found in both places, but Asia has more species. Africa, some of my favorite all-time snakes you can only find on the African continent.

Gaboon vipers, rhinoceros vipers, black mambas, a lot of the bush vipers. You can only find in Africa. I think they're incredibly beautiful. I think some of the African cobras are the coolest-looking cobras. So I picked Africa as number one for snakes for those reasons. And then birds. This was really hard. I ended up switching this around, right?

I gave South America number one. No, number two. South America was number two. So Africa is number three. Really cool birds in Africa. The one that comes to the top of my mind is secretary birds. It's a raptor that like walks around on huge long legs and eat snakes. Just such an amazing bird.

Lilac-breasted rollers are incredible, beautiful birds. I think Africa is always an incredible surprise for. birding. Shoebill Storks. Ostriches. Ostriches. Yeah. I mean, there's incredible bird life in Africa.

For me, it was really hard to pick between Asia, Africa, and South America for birds. But Asia took top spot for me in almost everything. And I'll go into that when we rank our continents for everything. But yeah, so I'm ranking them third, but they have incredible bird life. If you are a birder, it's hard to beat Africa. Now, I love Africa. I think it's, I get why it's for a lot of people, their number one wildlife destination. But you got to check out Asia too.

Well, let's talk about some water animals then, huh? We got hippos. Yeah, come on. What more is there to be said. But I do have some more. So the sardine run, that's like the famous sardine run down off the coast of South Africa. It's pretty iconic. If you've never seen, like, pictures or videos of it, it's kind of bewildering how many, just billions and billions of sardines go on

crazy and then like all the predators swim through and catch them all we have goliath tiger fish in the the rivers of i think congos where they're most known for but they're huge like kind of the gnarliest looking fish i've ever seen i'm surprised i hadn't heard about that until last night uh just like what they look like let's move on to prehistoric i don't want to do oh the otter bear you guys heard of the otter bear 200 kilo terrestrial relative of sea otters can't beat that's combining like the otter bears like the two famous gay communities right otters and bears all combined in one animal that's cool it's kind of like you can be whichever one you want to be on any given day what hog did they have down there over there giant Ethiopian hog

Jeff's seen a few of those in his web research my trams they used to have a long-legged hippo which is fun, an African dire bear. Ooh, that's cool. Dyer bears. That does sound sweet. Rob Stark would have won the war if he had a dire bear and said a dire wolf. Just would have never shown up like his dire wolves. No, that was more John, huh?

Rob's had actually helped him. Rob's wolf was sick. Yeah, it was. Got killed. I got some, a myth for you all. Sit down while I spin you a story. This little spider named a Nancy. So forgive me if this rings more true to like Western retellings.

This is like very much an oral tradition, a lot of these stories that were passed down. And the telling of the story that I read most from was out of Ghana from the Akon religion. But it goes like this. Lived in a small village nestled deep within the verdant forest of West Africa, he was a clever little spider named Anansi. And when he wasn't engaged in some sort of trickery or other, he could be spotted beside his elders as they spun tales around glowing fires infusing their embroidered words with all manners of ghosts and spirits.

But Anansi grew frustrated that there were only so many stories to be told, and so to claim all of the world's stories as common property for all people to share, he began to spend a long thread that reached all the way to the heavens where he confronted the sky god, asking that he be given dominion over all the stories of the world. The sky god gave him three challenges, including defeating a giant snake, braving a flaming forest for precious timber, and overcoming the mermaid queen who resided deep down in the sea. overcoming each challenge with wit and bravery

the sky god proclaimed well done little and nancy no earthly creature has ever bested me so nor shown such talent for bending reality itself let all the stories of this world and others be now yours to share as you please so it's just like it's a real David and Goliath kind of thing where this little spider went out and confronted the world for the sake of telling

stories to everyone it's pretty sweet that is sweet all right this was my hardest top five just because there's so many I wanted in here. But I did elephant, giraffe, cheetah, lion, hippo. Hippo, giraffe, and cheetah as well, because I do think even though you can find cheetahs in Asia, you're right, like Africa is the best spot for them.

Both hippos and giraffes you can only find in Africa. So I do think they're very uniquely African. I picked the secretary bird. I think it's one of my all-time favorite birds. both of our African trips that was like a highlight for me was seeing those birds and then I picked the Gaboon Viper I think it's a really cool looking viper has the longest fangs of any viper an extremely high venom load so yeah I wanted to make sure we had some reptiles represented as well my favorite snake yeah and I didn't even pick it on purpose yeah I think that's an easy win for me what personally yeah but I'm to let Mike say what you think African elephant you don't think are notable. Secretary birds, you don't even have them in there?

I don't have gorillains. We got elephants in Asia too. I'm going with Jeff, actually. That's tough. Secretary birds aren't my favorite bird, but like... You also don't like to be told which way you're going to go, and I said that you're going to make me. That's true.

So I knew I was sealed it as soon as I said that. Yeah. All right, let's do Australia. Let's do it. So there's no types of native cats in Australia. in like the late 1700s early 1800s people were starting to like colonize it more and they really loved having pet cats back then more than now even i think because rodents were such disease spreaders that like having a pet cat actually kept you safe more than having a pet dog even sometimes you know because they would kill rodents.

So lots of people had pet cats. They went to Australia with pet cats. Tons of cats got loose. It's like one of the biggest issues in all of Australia, like 22 types of marsupials or something. Yeah. That sounds like the right word. Marsupials have gone extinct from the cats in Australia. And like just a bunch of, a bunch of animals are.

having trouble because invasive cats are like one of the worst. Yeah, feral cats are the worst. They are the worst invasive animal in the world. And we're not just talking Australia everywhere, that there are wild feral cats or even just house cats that are loose, kill a ton of wildlife. It says here it's estimated each year domestic and feral cats in Australia kill nearly 1.1 billion mammals

399 million birds 6909 million reptiles 93 million frogs Mike you love frogs I love those guys and 1.1 billion invertebrates Yeah it's pretty wild And like worldwide

It's just it's incalculable how many animals cats kill They're perfect little predators Makes you kind of mad at cats It doesn't. It makes me mad at irresponsible cat owners. But I will say this. We've talked about this a bit on the show before, and I haven't really thought of the right way to put it to people because I don't want people who have let their cats outside to feel guilty about it. What I do think is that if you do feel like, oh, that's a change you should make, I don't think it's fair to take a cat that's been living outside its whole life and change it. But I do think on your next cat, you should keep it indoors. I think that's a good compromise. It's like, Like, next time you get a cat, you've learned your lesson, keep it inside. That makes sense. Yeah, I'm okay with that.

I'll agree to that. Messaging. Cosign. I'd like to go harder. Unless you have wild birds in your house. Uh-huh. Yeah, that's true. Invertebrates all over the place.

Yeah, you probably do have invertebrates all over the place. Oh, my gosh. For dogs, it's just dingoes, but then... Is it just dingoes? Isn't it? There's foxes there, too. Yeah. Oh, foxes.

The fox. Oh, yeah. I forgot to get that one. Forget the fox. Yeah. What type of fox do they have? I'm not sure. I wasn't on dogs.

They definitely have red fox. Really? But, yeah. That's interesting. Star Fox. It is interesting. Let's see. Fox.

So I think it's just dingos and red foxes then. Okay. And red foxes would be the only native. They're not native. Oh, they're not native either. No, they were introduced. Yeah, it ends up happening. Like, they want to hunt them or whatever else and they release them.

So, yeah. I see. Yep. So, yeah, no native dogs, but there are. I think dingoes, I think there's a very good argument for dingoes now being considered native wildlife to Australia. Because they were introduced so long ago and they are part of the ecosystem there now that I think you can say. Like, if you see a dingo, I think it's like, it's a pretty. wild animal.

There's protections for them in Australia. I think there's a good argument for them being considered part of Australia's wildlife now. Okay. And then for bugs, I like our funnel web one that we did our story on. And they're just sweet. So I'm going with Funnel Web. Okay. Yeah.

These guys are cool. I want one. All right. I had Australia ranked fifth for bears. They definitely don't have any bears. But, you know, koalas, colloquially, people call them bears. I probably should put them last because of that. But I do think it's kind of funny.

And drop bears, the, you know, famous kind of crypted in Australia. But there are no bears in Australia. There never have been bears in Australia. So they probably should be below Africa, because Africa used to have bears at least. So I am going to switch those. Australia is six. Africa is five for bears. And then four.

There doesn't have any bears right now, though. Yeah, no, but they used to at least. And Australia doesn't have any. Australia is fourth for snakes on my list. And I think people might kind of balk at that a little bit because it is famous for having really cool snakes. I think the thing that separates Australia from the other continents, and this is important to mention, is there is so much cool endemic wildlife in Australia, where you only find it in Oceania, in Australia. And that's true for their snakes.

And so it's hard to rank them because I think if you're ranking unique wildlife, Australia might be number one. But I just don't get as into their snakes as I do Asia or Africa. But they do have incredible snakes. They have the inland Tai Pan, which most people consider to be the most potent venom of any snake. They have really cool. They have green tree pythons. They have lots of amazing.

snakes, tiger snakes, eastern brown snakes. It's a great place for snakes, but I just don't think it's quite, you don't see the diversity and the number of species that you see in places like Asia or Africa, continents like Asia or Africa. Birds, again, incredible endemics in Australia. It's really amazing. I still put it at fourth behind Asia-Africa and South America, or Asia, South American Africa. You think they're clearly ahead of North America? I do. Again, because, like, So many cool endemics, so many amazing birds. You got casuaries, you got emus, you got cockatoos, you got a lot of really amazing birds in Asia. It is hard to say, Jeff, because Central America has a ton of bird life.

But I still am going to pick Australia. Kiwis. Kiwi. Those mountain parrots in New Zealand. Yeah, Kia's. Yeah, Kiwis. You like Kia cars? I'm pretty neutral on Kia cars.

I think they're pretty affordable. That's Korean. which is nice. That's for Asia. Save it. Is it my turn? Yeah. Oh my gosh.

For Australia, are you kidding me right now? So they've got do gongs. Just like we here in the north of America have manatees. Do gongs do exist in other places, but I read that Western Australia is considered widely to be the best place to see them. And those are cool. Stonefish, I feel like maybe the most venomous fish. You got to shout that out.

And I think Australia is like a real hot spot for them. giant cuttlefish. We're all pretty big, newly converted fans a couple of us to cuddlefish, I know. They got some really cool camouflage mating type stuff going on if you're into the fish doing that kind of stuff.

I'm not. Why do you need to wear camo to mate? So it's like some people get off on exhibitionism. They want to be seen. Some people want to keep it private. And if you're wearing camo, you can do that anywhere you go.

Okay. This is controversial, Wes. Great White Sharks? Is that, are you going to give me that one? I like it. I like it for Australia. Okay. They are everywhere, but there used to be like hot spots where you could go cage dive with great white sharks.

And a number of them had been closed. Like the one in Mexico was closed because of irresponsible operators. The one in South Africa has like ceased to exist because of movement patterns for great white sharks. So really at this point, there are others like, There's one now in Canada, in New Zealand, but I think New Zealand and Australia are the kind of premier spots to see Great Whites these days. So I think that's a good pick. Cool. Let's go over some quick prehistoric animals.

We have the Pallercesties. Those are the huge marsupials dwelling in trees. They're like the size of a horse is what I kept reading. Huge claws. Basically just like a, yeah, a koala, but huge. Just think about that. That's cool. Tasmanian tiger, maybe not quite prehistoric, but extinct now, sadly.

The Megalania, yeah, massive monitor lizard. I think the most exciting one to me there, though, is a horse-sized koala, right? Yeah, that it's exciting. Their chlamydia must be so big. There's huge ones. Mythological. Oh, we just got to talk about the drop bear, right? Should we tell our listeners?

Should we dispel the myth? So they're said to be vicious marsupials that inhabit the tops of trees, and they attack unsuspecting people. They'll drop out of a tree and attack. So the joke is the way to avoid these attacks because some people genuinely believe like, oh, wow, I've heard drop bear is crazy. It sounds violent and dangerous. So like the prank is you put forks in your hair and you like smear vegemite all over your body. And there's other different like little attack. You can like douse yourself in urine is another one.

Some people are like, just do that and you'll be safe, you know. And some people fall for it. And I think that's really great. So there has been like very serious documented scientific research on this phenomenon, even though it's like pretty clearly these don't really exist. But I just like that it's so much of a cultural icon that people in those spheres of science, you're just like, yeah, let's have some fun with this. Let's do some write-ups.

That was one of the biggest shocks for me is learning that cryptozoology is like something you can get your PhD. in. Like you can go out and become a serious crypto zoologist researcher, which is just like it's strange to me, but whatever. There's weirder things in the world. Like bear biologists. I don't get that. Yeah, I know you don't, pal. All right, is that it for us? Oh, we got to do our five favorites, right? Me and Jeff. Okay. I'll go first this time, I guess.

I'm going to go with koala Because they are You know incredibly cute and very unique to Australia Wombats I think wombats are amazing Animals they you know poop cubes Really cool looking Casawares

One of my all-time favorite birds New Zealand is included in Australia as a continent Yeah Oceania Yeah Frilled lizards That lizard that like has this huge frill That they've been

based a lot ofsaurus on. I just think they're one of the coolest lizards in the world. And then I also pick the platypus because platypus are the one of the two egg laying mammals. They have a venomous spur behind their leg. They are like, they seem like they're half bird, half mammal, half fish. They're just incredible animal that only Australia could produce. So those are my five.

I got koala, kangaroo, quokas. Is you smiling all the time? Cute. Cuties. Platypus and crocodile. Which species of crocodile? Saltwater crocodile. Salties.

My biggest, like, I wish it was on there is Cassowary. I was going to put salties and I picked the frilled lizard instead because salties you can find in a lot of Asia too. This is by far the hardest one I've had to choose because I love Cassowaries. But Sawwater crocodiles. I mean, come on. Let's go Jeff. Jeff's up three to two.

All right. All right. Let's save Asia for last. So let's go Antarctica. Actually, let's do Asia right now. We'll save Antarctica for that. Okay. Antarctica was our last continent.

We went two together. So Asia. I'll get us started real quick. Cats, obviously tigers, like, what you'd think of first for Asia, right? Yeah. They have leopards all throughout. Indian, a couple other spots probably.

Snow leopards. Pretty much throughout Asia. Yeah. Clouded leopards throughout Asia. Palace cat is a really good, like, Asia-specific cat that a lot of people love. Like I said, there's sand cats in the Middle East. There's, like West said, there are lions. There, I guess, is a tiny population of cheetahs.

There is. Yes. And that's pretty cool. There's a rusty spotted cat, Wes. Yeah. Fishing cat. Yeah. There's jungle cats, Borneo Bay Cat, flat-headed cats, have you seen those?

I haven't. Flat-headed cat, look that up. Okay. I'll look it up. I'm not going to do it right now. I will just say Asia has, by a good margin, the most species. of wild felines. Look up flat-haired cat.

There's 17 species in Asia and 10 in Africa. The Americas actually have more wildcat species than Africa does. There's 12 in the Americas, but Asia does have, by a good margin, the most wild cats. Yeah, the Americas are two continents. Yeah, that's true. That's a good point. Yeah, they're a cool-looking cat, flat-haired cat. And then for dogs, what's like the first dog you think of for Asia?

I think of gray wolves, but dolls are another one. Just because they're only in Asia. Yeah. You know which one is really cool is the Tibetan fox? Tibetan fox are really cool. It's so sweet. And then, yeah, gray wolf, the raccoon dogs in Japan or the Tanuki. Yeah.

We saw one for a sec. It's cool. Yeah, that's great. We saw gray wolves, and you guys saw. doles. I didn't get to see dolls. Yeah. Cool. How about bugs? Bugs. My favorite bug

I ever met was in Borneo. It was a cicada and we shook hands. Yeah. I remember that. That was a good bug. You got your first rhinoceros beetles in Asia, too. The ones I remember were in Costa Rica. Indonesia, the one that you saw them in Costa Rica. Oh, wait. No, you're right. I'm thinking of

Indonesia. Yeah. It was in Komoto. Yeah. And Camoda. Yeah, great rhinoceros, beetles. Okay. So for my, or do you want to go first, Mike? You go first. I'll go back.

Yeah, sure. Where would you rank them for dogs? Or what would you put first for dogs? I would honestly probably put Asia first. Yeah. For dogs? Uh-huh. I think I'd have them third.

I think I'd have North America first just because I think coyotes have taken it over so well. And we have gray wolves. Yeah. And then we have fox, and like Arctic fox. But then like painted dogs just bring Africa up so high for me because I just think they're so like, I think of all wild dogs.

Yeah, you might be right. Dogs are hard. And then main wolves are so cool too. And then like Australia, it's like you're not going to give us dogs. What do we get even then? Yeah. Right. Nothing.

That's like one of the main ones we have. marsup eels. All right, Mike, why don't you do Asia? Yeah, so for water, this one, a bit of an abstract listing, but so spanning Indonesia, Malaysia, like all over that kind of micronisia, all over the place. It's the global epicenter of marine life. It hosts 70% of all-known coral species and over 2,000 reef fish. And you know me, that's what I'm all about.

And we're diving. The coral triangle, right? The coral triangle. Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, so they got a little bit of everything. down there. Well, not quite everything, but like a huge amount of everything there is to see. You can see it in Asia in that little stretch. Best place to see blue whales. Mantor rays, giving them octopi, and jellyfish. Millions, billions, maybe even trillions. Probably not, right? No. Harmless jellyfish.

There's a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Palau where you're just like surrounded by really cool, beautiful jellyfish kind of thing. So there you go. Cool. Any other water, I'm forgetting some, I'm sure. There's so many. I mean, I agree with you. It's really hard to quantify. But I do think when it comes to reef ecosystems, like Asia is pretty hard to beat. You have like the coral triangle there and it's really cool, like, big stuff too.

Yeah. I talked about the turtles in Vietnam a little bit. Yeah. The soft shell turtles. Yeah. That's a good one. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. Let's go prehistoric.

So woolly rhinos, they're like rhinos, but shaggy. They got that big. Kind of like a yak fur almost, but their horns are huge. They're like four and a half feet, I think, is what I saw listed. Like as big as a big trumpet. Yeah, it's big as a big trumpet. That's how I would describe that. Speaking of big, we got the giant ape.

The Alk Titan hippopotamopus. It's not a hippopotamus. It's a hippopotamus. So don't get that wrong. found in Kazakhstan, a Kazakhstan, pretty cool animals. Columbia has hippos west. Yeah, but not native. So, yeah.

And that's a very recent introduction. So I wouldn't even come close to saying they're native there. All right. And for mythological, I'm going to go with the Yeti. I think the Yeti is kind of like the one everyone probably knows and would think about just off the top of their head. There are many, you know, Chinese dragons or even the Japanese, the Kappa, et cetera, et cetera. They kind of get dragons. Yeah.

But I wanted to do the yet. because I learned a couple of interesting things about them. So the belief and these sightings are so old and storied that even by the time Alexander the Great was storming through that Indian subcontinent part of the world, he reportedly he demanded to see one. He was like, he was so excited to see a Yeti when he was just like, you know, raising the land. And the locals, like, no. Like, well, it was kind of funny because their retort was like, well, they actually

don't really do well at low altitudes. so we can't bring one to show you. So he was like, well, shoot. I guess he just left, disappointed. Just raised. But throughout the centuries, the accounts continued until pretty distinct variations of the Yeti story started permeating through Buddhist mythology. And they were just like, they look a little different depending on where you're from. They could either be huge and white or small and strong and red.

But always skewing more malevolent in the Western perception of. what they are, but actually for people that live in those lands, they see them more as like a benevolent force of nature, like a protector spirit of the mountains. So I just thought that that was kind of a cool. I just did never heard that. I always thought that like the abominable snowman is going to rip your arm off and eat it kind of thing. That's what they did in Deaute deatlov Pass. They killed those guys. Yeah. That's right. We got it. When you cover in that story. We'll do it at some point. All right. So Asia for me, pretty squarely, I think, the best continent when it comes to wildlife. And I would argue that to my dying day. I think it's really hard to be because you have essentially every ecosystem in Asia. You have these massive deserts. You have steps. You have mountains. You have Arctic. You have rainforest. You have Savannah. Everything is there. It has incredible wildlife. When it comes to bears, it is hands down the best.

Six of the world's eight bear species are all found in Asia. And there's a few that are only found there, including giant pandas, sun bears, Asiatic black bears, and sloth bears. So half of the world's bear species you can only find in Asia, which... Oh, that's pretty good. Yeah, it's a good stat. It's going to be really hard for me to pick a top five from Asia. For snakes, I'm going to give it to Asia.

Or no, sorry, I gave it to Africa. I'm going to give second to Asia. Some of my favorite snakes are there. You've got king cobras. You got Indian cobras or spectacled cobras. You've got the blue and Solaris viper that we saw in Komodo. Tons of variation of snakes. Really cool crates there.

Just like incredible snake life throughout Asia, especially some hot spots that are like Indonesia, India, China has like Mengshan vipers, which are really cool looking. So, yeah. Birds, it's number one for me. Got to be Asia. There are an incredible number of birds in Asia, again, because there are so many ecosystems there. So I could just talk about birds in Asia all day, but they have like pittas, they have the Himalian monel. They have bearded vultures.

There's just like, my head's exploding, just thinking about all the birds in Asia, you know? Oh, no. That's crazy. Yeah. Put it back. together like that one egg take a break i just think i think just because of the vast size of the continent the fact that it includes the indian subcontinent which has incredible wildlife that it includes indonesia and like all these different islands like it's impossible to beat asia for wildlife

it just has the coolest wildlife it just does so that's that's where i'm coming from with my argument for asia um and yeah those are my three categories should we do our top five So wait, you got them ranked first for bears, first for birds, first, or second for snakes. Second for snakes. And that's a personal preference for African snakes. But I think if you were looking at like number of species and diversity, you probably have to give it to Asia too. Yeah. Yeah.

I, there's one that I'm kind of like, I think I could maybe choose something else, but I'll save it for last. So I have tiger easily, right? Okay. Yeah. Then we have orangutan, snow leopard, giant panda. So there's four. And then my fifth one, I put red pandas. And I think I could be talked out of red pandas, but I like having them in there because I think of them when I think of Asia.

Yeah. We have very similar lists. So I also had tiger, giant panda, snow leopard, and red panda. Those are all the same. I dropped orangutans for King Cobra. because it is the longest venomous snake on the planet. I think they're incredible snakes, and I wanted reptiles to be included in a top five of Asia.

West gets it. The cobra is just, I mean, you've got to have a cobra in there. Yeah. For birds, they don't really have, like, any huge birds, right? Oh, huge birds? Yeah. Like, I mean, they have, like, they don't have... Australia.

I mean, Africa has... ostrich and then like Australia the bird family you're talking about are the ratites so um Asia does have cassowaries and they belong in that family they do they do yeah the heck so there's a there's a northern cassowary and you can find them in like raja um pot um some of the indonesian islands have cassoiries are they cool are they just as cool they're really cool yeah they're even more brightly colored than the southern caswari so well dude what in the world. Yeah.

What are you talking about Australia? This is what I'm saying, guys. Asia, like, almost every animal that we're talking about when it comes to, like, Africa and Australian stuff, there's a variant of it in Asia. It's just really hard to beat Asia, unless you're, like, a huge fan of South American wildlife. Because even a lot of our North American wildlife, like our most iconic North American wildlife, most of those animals you can also find in Asia. What country would you say has the best primates?

There's three main ones. Country? South America, or sorry, continent. Continent? South America, Africa, or Asia? I'd say Asia. Gorillas and chimpanzees in Africa. I know.

It would be, Africa would be my next pick. But with the orangutans, gibbons, those Chinese snub-nosed monkeys, all the different, like, yeah, I think I have to give it to Asia. But that's just me. Yeah. Stay hydrated without the sugar, food dye, and other dodgy ingredients found in popular electrolyte and sports drinks. I recently went to the doctor. They're like, hey, we're not saying you have a problem yet, but we're getting there. And I was like, I got to find a good way to stay hydrated with something healthy and ideally something that'll get rid of those hunger pings. And it was right there in front

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So we're tied up on our top five. I can start. It's 3.3. Or no, Wes, you start. Or Mike, you start. I'll start. We got penguins. You got to go penguins, Antarctica.

It's like, yeah, the one thing. you can just with a bullet say they've got. Hourglass dolphins are apparently, this is really kind of the only part of the world you can find them. Colossal squid. The most massive, meaning heaviest cephalopod,

that's down in Antarctica. They're longer ones, but they're none that get heavier. These things are just like a chunk, a thousand pounds plus, and that's really cool. And I think you're probably right. We give seals to Antarctica.

I'm going to do a little bit of a tie thing. I'm going to cheat here. Like, they're just a huge, A huge variety of different species of seals down there, and they're all amazing and beautiful in their own way. Except for elephant seals. You didn't like elephant seals? I don't think I did.

It may be really uncomfortable to be close to them. Okay. They smelled really bad, and they don't look comfortable. They slept like they all had sleep apnea. It was really stressing me out. They're making weird sounds and, like, rolling around and crawling on top of each other. It was, like, a weird scene, so I had to move on pretty quick. Anyway, any other sea life do you think we should attribute to...

I mean, like, it's a huge place for whales, you know? Of course. Like, if you're a whale fan, Antarctica is definitely a destination. You should check out. Yeah, so humpback whales, blue whales, minky whales, say whales. There's, yeah, a lot of really cool whale species there and just the quantity. Yeah. Orcas, dolphins.

Not really dolphins. I mean, there are. But, like, I thought the dolphins that are there are really cool. Like, I thought those hourglass dolphins are really cool. They don't go to Antarctica. Like, they don't go that, like, you know, they kind of stop halfway through the Drake passage. But what we learned was, like, halfway through the Drake is when you're actually considered to be in, like, the territory of Antarctica. So I do think they're considered Antarctica wildlife.

I just think it's noteworthy. They kind of stop, and that's the most southern dolphin. Well, orca's a dolphins. Yeah. Prehistoric animals, I think, are really fun to shout out. So there's something kind of recently identified called an elasmosaur. And just think of the Pokemon Lappris, just like a huge, kind of a locknest monster type of thing. Long neck, pleasiosaur, I guess is the more scientific comp we can make.

The Colossus penguin, just penguins, but huge. Like twice as big as emperor penguins is so freaking sweet to me. An ancient duck. Okay. You got that? 69 million-year-old fossil, a duck skull. So you got that. And the mythological creature, I want to shout out.

So this is kind of an interesting one because there's no, people haven't really traditionally ever lived on Antarctica. So there aren't like, you know, myths per se, and it's much more heavily skewed towards the cryptid side of things. And there are a couple of genuine cryptid stories that have been developing over the recent 100 or so. years. The thing, I mean, honestly, that's about as famous cryptid as you can get from Antarctica. These are all just stories we're all telling anyway. So I think the thing kind of counts. But I want to

shout out Antarctic Godzilla. So in 1958, there was a crew, a Japanese ship called the Soya, and they were all relaxing on the bridge when a huge black object appeared on the surface of the sea 300 meters away. At first, some thought it might be an oil drum abandoned by a vessel ahead of them, but they soon realized that an oil drum couldn't possibly stand perpendicular to the sea surface in a wind speed of 7 to 8 meters. As everyone looked on, the now more visibly hairy object turned towards the soya, and as they approached, what they now realized was some sort of creature with a long neck and large head that resembled a monkeys, had dorsal spikes lining its back, and a body roughly shaped like a cow.

So an engineer, he took off, he ran to grab his camera, but by the time he got back, of course, it had disappeared. But the story has been perpetuated with more recent sightings and other, just like not confirmation, but people seeing similar things around Antarctica as they've voyaged down there. And I just think it's kind of fun that like, you know, a continent that's more recently been discovered and explored is now developing a mythology of its own. And I just think that's a fun idea. I like that. We're kind of seeing it happen in real time because there was no like indigenous people there. Exactly.

It was fun being there and having them show us places that were named by explorers and not having to kind of feel a sense of guilt when they were talking about it. All right. You want me to go, Jeff? I can go next. So for dogs, I want to talk a little bit about the race to the South Pole. Okay. Oh, yeah, let's do it. So there's a Norwegian team led by...

rolled Amerson? Amundson. Amundson. Amundson. Amundsen. Yeah. Then there was at the same time a British expedition led by Captain Robert Falcon Scott, right? Right.

So he was very opposed to using dogs to, like, transport all of their materials and stuff. He thought that that was cheating and that it wasn't like a noble English endeavor to get to the South Pole using dogs. The Norwegian led by, the Norwegian party led by Amerson, they were using dogs.

And it was interesting because Scott brought dogs with him and he brought electric sleds. So it's not like, I don't know, it's not like he was going just like the show alone or something. You know,

he still had stuff, but it's like, we have to push the sleds ourselves to like say we really made it there. And lo and behold, the dogs got the Norwegian party there a lot faster. They chose a better route. And once the British group arrived,

they had already, like, seen the Norwegian flag and seen that it had already been discovered. They were like a drat when you saw that. So that's what I got for Antarctic dogs. Okay. And then for cats. Plus that movie with Paul Walker, eight below. That's not for that.

Is that Antarctica? Yeah. Cats, there's like British research teams that were set up in Antarctica, and they'd always have a pet cat. And one cat, like, fell off of the equipment, like this big tower it used to perch on, and then something fell on and it died. And then they got another cat. And for like 20 years, there's a cat at their research station,

and it was just killing so many baby birds, like all the time. It would just hunt birds. Good. Yeah. So one of the researchers eventually is like, we're researching birds as part of our research. Like, we can't just have a cat killing all these birds. It's crazy that took eventually for that time. Yeah.

Yeah. So that's tubby the cat. Shout out. Shout out, tubby. And then for bugs, there's no bugs. Nah, Peter's yelling at me right now. The Antarctic Nat. So what the gnat is to huh?

There's the midge too. The midge was the one Peterly one. Oh yeah, the midge. I always mix midge with gnat. So there's the Antarctic. There is a nat too. Midge, which is the only land animal considered to be a land animal in Antarctica because it just like stays there. It doesn't go to the ocean.

So it's actually the only Antarctic. Terrestrial. Terrestrial animal is the Antarctic midge. Sorry, I said, Nat. And we didn't see any, so we got to go back. Yeah, go back to those images. But, yeah, very exciting stuff, these midges. Peter really wanted to see one, and we had to give him his money back, I think.

We gave him his money back because you didn't see any midges. All right. For bears, there are no bears in Antarctica, and as far as I know, know they have never existed in Antarctica. There are no snakes in Antarctica. And there probably used to be back when it was like Gondwana land back before Pangia split up. But now there are no snakes. And then birds, there are birds in Antarctica, but I did still rank at seventh. I think there are people that really want to go birding in Antarctica and it's a big draw for birders, but it's because you're only going to see certain birds there. But there's really not a high

diversity of bird life. I remember looking at the list when I was down there and it was like less than 100 species total that you can see down there. Less than 50, I believe. There are some cool notable standouts though, penguins being like the biggest of those. Like if you want to see good penguins, it's hard to beat Antarctica in like South Georgia. And they are- They didn't disappoint. They just had such a joyful time watching them. I never was that into penguins and Antarctica converted me. I think they're so cool. And watching them. On land be all like dopey and goofy and then in the water being incredibly streamlined and beautiful. They're just amazing animals.

They're kind of like the primates of birds. Just like an animal you could watch all day because they're kind of silly. And then like, but then when they want to be, they can be really graceful. Yeah. There's also like the wandering albatross is found in Antarctica. It has the largest wingspan of any bird on the planet. and when you see them next to people, you get a real feel for just how big they are. Lots of other great birds.

Sheathbills, which are kind of this weird mix between like a vulture and a seabird. So there are some really cool birds in Antarctica, but I still rank them seventh overall. All right. Okay. Should we do our top fives? Yeah. Oh, it all comes down to this. So I have the midge.

I have emperor penguins. I have elephant seals. I have leopard seals and I have albatrosses. Okay. I can do you wondering. What's the ones we saw? We saw Southern Royal and Black Browd. Black Browd Albatross is mine.

Okay. I picked King Penguins over Emperor Penguins because they're about the same size but I think their orange coloring is like a lot prettier. Wow. I picked leopard seals. I think they're amazing. I picked the B-2 orcas.

They're found in Antarctica, and they're the ones that have learned to do the waves to push seals off of ice flows, which I think is really neat, and they have those cool colorings, like that cape that you only get in the Antarctic orcas. I picked the wandering albatross specifically because it does have the largest wingspan

of any bird on the planet. And then I also picked humpback whales because there's one named after me, and because it's a lot of, It's just such a cool place to see him down there. I mean, I think they're like an amazing, incredible whale. So I picked humpbacks for Antarctica. So actually that is, yeah.

Five? That's five. King penguins, leopard seals, orcas, wandering albatross, and humpback whales. Yeah, Wes wins that one pretty handily. Good try, Jeff. But the king, there's something about king penguins. It's always done it for me. And it's probably what Wes is saying.

There's something, they're kind of overlaught. looked and I always like that the underdog you know and you don't like elephant seals so I get some candy some yeah all right so real quick before we get to categories let's just say as far as wildlife goes and just our travels let's each rank all seven continents okay I've got them ranked here for me I'll go top to bottom Asia's number one it's a pretty easy win for me then Africa, then South America, then Australia, North America, Europe, and Antarctica. Okay. I'm going to go...

Actually, you know, I'm going to switch Antarctica and Europe. I'm going to go Antarctica Europe. Europe's last for me. And then it's really hard for me to put Antarctica only six because it's so cool. It's so incredible. Everywhere you look, there's wildlife. But there's just not enough diversity. You're right.

So I think, oh, it's just hard. The quantity, it's incredible, but diversity, it's not. Go with your heart, man. I'm going to put Antarctica 6, Australia 5th, then North America, 4th, South America, 3rd, Asia, second, Africa first. Okay. Mike, I'm curious about yours. I'm pretty biased. You guys know where my heart really lies.

It's in the water. So I think I'm actually going to go, I mean, my favorite scuba diving is still in Mexico, but I'm not putting North. I'm going to go Asia, South America, North America, Australia, Africa, Antarctica, Europe. Okay. All right. So. I think Asia on average wins, right? Yeah.

Let's end. Europe on average is completely. Yeah. All right. So let's go to our category. So, what's, like, your most memorable food from each continent? I'll start. So I did, or a favorite, I did, like, personal experience, and I didn't want to do, like,

where I live. So I chose corn tortillas in Guatemala. In South America, I liked my Galapagos lobster that I had a lot, where it's, like, the first day of lobster season at that one restaurant. restaurant. And then, and it felt like sustainable, which made it nice to eat a lobster. Asia, I'm going to go that soup dumpling thing we had in Singapore recently. Yeah, I'm good. But a close second for Kobe beef in Japan.

Australia was my hardest one. I just put ice cream because I remember eating some ice cream. Europe, a sandwich we had in Rome that was just. just so good. And then Africa, I had some lamb chops in Kenya that were just delicious. And Antarctica, I went with the banana smoothies that our boat made. Yeah. Great. I, North America, I picked Berea tacos or tacos alpasteur. Definitely Mexican food for me in North America is my favorite. South America, I picked Phajewada, which is like a Brazilian black bean soup that you put on rice, that I think is incredibly delicious. Europe, I pick yoki,

usually with like a vodka sauce or like a red sauce is probably my favorite thing to eat in Europe. But I love Italian food especially, so that's a hard one to pick. In Africa, South Africa does like a brie, which is a type of barbecue. It's just really a fun, like, good barbecue system, and they often do them like at sundown,

which is really fun. So an African brie, a South African brie. In Asia, I picked the miso ramen that I had in Tokyo. In Australia, I picked Tim Tams, the little chocolate. Oh, they're so good. That's such a good pick. Oh, man. And Antarctica, I picked krill for all the animals that are eating all the krill.

You did that, too? I did krill as well. Okay, so we'll double up on that one. North America, I did probably a bad job, but I did New York-style pizza. I know it's just so good. That's a good pick. It's hard to beat a good, a good, a good, a good, classic. Yeah.

South America, I just put a Brazilian barbecue. Yeah, sure. I mean, that's like a million different things kind of. Shihon Shihon. Shoohastco is like, yeah. Europe, Racklet, it's like a really melty cheese kind of dish. You do your little dishes and you pour out your cheese over potatoes and meats and stuff is really great. Asia, I'm going pad Thai, which is a real upset.

But it was all I could think about when I thought about food from Asia. Australia, I put violet crumble. Oh, yeah. So freaking good. Yeah. And then Antarctica, I'll go with the, that one, potato we ate. Oh. That made me sick for like three days.

Oh, my gosh. It tasted like eating a big old tonsil stone. It's the worst. I can finally talk about it. All right. Favorite movie in each continent, I did it like some of mine are American movies that were just filmed in different continents, but I'm excited to, I hope you guys, I left it open-ended. Yeah, I did not do that, but, yeah.

Okay. I really want to pick Apocalyptic for North America, but I just didn't know for sure where it was even set. So I ended up just saying King of New York, which I feel like it's not an idea. Apocalypse would have counted, but yeah. Okay. I'll do Apocalyptic then. And then South America, I kind of cheated too, because I said,

Narcos, which is a show, but I just love that show so much about Columbia. And it made me want to go there, like, more than any movie or show. And then next, I have the raid from Indonesia, like, one of my top five movies of all time. And then I have Mad Max Fury Road for Australia. I have Inglorious Bastards for Europe. I have Ghost in the Darkness for Australia. I mean for Africa and the thing for Antarctica. Okay.

I picked Jurassic Park for North America. I picked City of God for South America. Oh. Brazilian production. Paddington 2 for Europe. Nice. That's a good call. I picked the Battle of Algiers for Africa.

I watched it a long time ago, but I haven't watched it since. And I actually really want to because I know it was a big inspiration for one battle. after another and they talk about it a lot. But I will admit when I first watched it, a lot of it went over my head, but I do like want to try and rewatch it. I had a hard time with Africa, picking one. And then... Lion would be a good one.

Asia. Ooh, yeah. I am going to go with the handmaiden. It was between that or parasite. But I think the handmaiden is one that I kind of like going back to more and not in a horny way in just like. it's a really good movie. So,

um, Australia, I picked Lord of the Rings. It was made in New Zealand, uh, New Zealand production company. So I think it counts. And Antarctica,

I also picked the thing because there really isn't like, there isn't movies that are non-American movies. Frankenstein. I don't think. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Although it was in the Arctic.

It was, it was in Antarctica. It was the Arctic. Yeah. Uh, Antarctica I'm going to give it to at the Mountain of Madness, the long-storied production hell fiasco that Guillermo was close to maybe sort of almost getting into producing, just so I don't have to pick the thing like everyone else.

But it would be the thing. For Australia, I'm going razor back. Jaws on Trotters. A movie kicks. Oh, my gosh. You guys didn't like it. And that breaks my heart. Jeff liked it.

I was mediocre on it. Asia, I'm going to go in the mood for love. Or Yee. I can't pick, but Tony Lung and Maggie Chung and in The Mood for Love are like the two most attractive people that maybe have ever lived. So let's just go with that one. Africa District 9. I think it was a New Zealand production technically, but it took place in Johannesburg. I think it was filmed in South Africa.

So I'll go with that one. Europe, the conformist. It's incredible, beautiful, terrifying, very prescient movie, still relevant to this day. four days in September for South America. It would be City of God, but I knew West was going to go with that one. And anything with Alan Arkin in it, it's going to do it for me. In the North America, I'm going The Matrix. It's my favorite movie.

All right. Let's get some listener questions and then close this thing out. So Jeremy Rabinnelld says, if aliens had, you talk the most by far. I was quick. He also had the most assignments. If you've made this so long, Mike. If aliens had to land on one of the seven continents, which would you pick first for contact? One of the seven continents, which I would pick first, I'd pick Australia.

I think Australians are like of everyone that I've met, like, the biggest, the highest batting average for just being like really friendly and happy people. And I want them to meet someone that's friendly and happy. I think the Independence Day aliens did it the right way. They just showed up everywhere all at once and just blasted everybody. Just took care of all the monuments and buildings and stuff. So that's what I would recommend they do. Just clean house.

I'm going to say Antarctica just so like they think there's no life here. Yeah, they're like, well, it's just birds. Like, let's go. This place is cold. This place sucks. I want them to get out of here. They would be like this is the most beautiful place in the world, but it's also cold and there's just birds. Yeah.

They take all the ice with them. and then we wouldn't have to worry about it melting. It would be good, then we wouldn't flood. Yeah, it's a good point. It would not be good. Yeah. Live likes frogs says, which continent has seen your worst poop?

North America. Yeah, it's Thailand, so Asia for me. Yours is Mexico, right? Yeah, yeah. Yours is Thailand, Mike? Yeah. I got, I had to get like... You got to tell that story sometimes.

I had to get comforted into Guatemala airport. Someone was like, you'll be all right, man. TXN. Peach says, where's the coolest place you've pooped? I mean, watching a snow leopard in the Himalayas is pretty hard for me to be. Like, I made eye contact with that snow leopard while that's pooping. So, yeah, it's probably that one for me. Yeah. For me, it's Mexico.

watching the whales while I pooped. Yeah, it's a tough one for me. I guess close to the Great Wall of China. It wasn't on the ground. It was a toilet, but it was still pretty close to. Asia has the best toilets, but they're normally in like a little room with no view, you know? Right.

So that's what I was in a room with no view, but that wall was close. So that's cool. All right. We didn't really go over this completely. So Elise Chaville, ween ask which continent has the most venomous animals slash insects do you think Australia kind of gets the most they get the fame for it I would honestly it might be Australia if we are

if we're expanding insects to like all arthropods yeah so like including arachnids it might be Australia um they got the most spider yeah and z ask what continents the most bio diverse? Asia. And then is there an animal that can be found on all seven continents? Like a single species? No. Yeah. Red fox is close.

Antarctica, that was the big one that removes it. Midge? There's animals that can be found on six. Midge? But yeah, not in Antarctica. You know, the biodiversity thing, I should rewind because the Amazon might make South America more biodiverse. but as far as like

I would still think it's Asia and as far as like animals that we are aware that we know of like not little insects and stuff that are like in the human collective consciousness it's Asia and then last one Lisa's Lions wants to know if you're excited for Easter candy season

West I have been way too excited for it I put on I'm like getting a little soft because I've been eating so much Easter candy so I have not I had the restraint I've had in past years. What's your main go-to? I really, this is going to sound gross to a lot of people.

I really like Cadbury cream eggs, like the full-sized ones. Yeah, I just got some because I was thinking of you. They're good. I like the mini ones, though. The big ones have too much stuff. I like them. I like Robin eggs. I like the little Cadbury chocolate eggs.

I like, man, I like so much Easter candy. Starburst, jelly beans. peeps. There's so many good things out there. All right. That's it for the episode. Thank you everyone for listening. And thank you for all of our travelers who have helped us get to all seven of these continents. Yeah. We do, for those of you who haven't been able to join us yet, we have some really fun trips lined up for next year. We're trying to do budgets to kind of fit a lot of different income levels and everything just so people can make it if you want to. We know they're really competitive

We can only do so many So hopefully if you want to go on one You can get on one And we definitely like we want to keep going to places That we really want to go to So that we're equally as excited for these trips So we are going to continue going places That are sometimes a little hard to get to

But we're really excited for them All right, thank you everyone Yeah, love you We'll see you guys Love see ya Bye Bye