Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Wolverine Attack - Blood in the Snow

Episode Date: January 15, 2024

Wes gives a rundown on an extremely rare encounter that one man claims to have had with a wolverine, and details why it may or may not have even happened at all. He then invents a new word for wolverine, and it goes over pretty well with Jeff and Mike. ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! ~~ Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to an extensive library of exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts. For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social:  Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast Twitter: @ToothandClawPod Wes: @GrizKid Jeff: @jefe_larson Mike: @mikey3ds Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And because you're a listener, you get 20% off your first order. Just head to mood.com. That's M-O-O-D.com to get started. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Tooth and Claw Podcast. I'm your main host, Jeff Larson, and we got my two-side. kicks with me, Wes Larson, my little brother, and Mike Smith. How you guys doing today? Not great. That was a bad way to start this episode. I'm like that. I'm okay with it. Whatever. I know you are. I'm your big brother, Jeff, and don't you ever forget it.

If I see you soon, I'm going to give you the biggest wedgy. Oh, yeah. Like Brad and the Challenge? Like Brad and the Challenge? I had to show Jesse that clip the other day because it was so funny there's a mike there's just like really quick there's this part in the challenge where this guy gets an atomic wedgy and he's just having he's super drunk and he's having the best time it's an old season and then all a sudden he's just like flips and he's the maddest that anyone could ever be and and just like so mad that anyone touched his underwear anyway it's a great it's the real world people so wait a minute so atomic wedgy is when you're get the underwear and pull it up over the head, right?

That's what happened. No way. It happens. That's awesome. I mean, it just rips your underwear. But like, it's a pretty cool thing to do to someone. Like, I feel like if a bully does that in like grade school, you could really smash some nuts, given someone an atomic wedgy.

Yeah, stunt some development. Yeah. Some prime development years. Hey, all you bullies listen to our podcast, don't do atomic wedgies. Just settle for normal. But if you do send it to me. Send us a photo. Send me the video, yeah.

I wonder what... I wonder what percentage of our listeners fall under the prepubescent bully slice, you know, like the pie chart. It's like 38% on the Discord. Is there like a little chat room that's like for all the bullies? Oh, I should make one.

Yeah. So you guys were waiting on me. I'm driving back from Austin. Texas with my dad and his childhood best friend and like his best friend his whole life. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're namesake.

My name's sake. You're his namesake. He's my namesake, right? Yeah. You're his. Oh, okay. Yeah. I think you're his, but I always trust Mike.

So I was like, hey, I just need to be in a place about 9 p.m. mountain standard time. And that's like no problem, you know? Right. To record. And, yeah. And then come to find, well, they're just using a paper atlas for everything. And like, old school. Don't care about my phone, really, and what's fastest.

So we just went through like, I don't know, just like West Texas and then just like oil fields forever with huge semis and you could only go 20 miles an hour. And it was so slow. And I was just like driving in traffic. and I was so annoyed because, like, there's highways, you know. Right. But then I'm in Roswell, so maybe if I don't, if I'm done, I probably, you know. They both said they got abducted by aliens. Dad's experience seemed a lot more sexual than Wes's.

Yeah, that does surprise me. We also went golfing today, and I, I want, I. I'm terrible at video editing, but I need to do it with this one. First of all, we pull up in some dude with zero front teeth at all, like the dude from Joe Dirt, who's like, home is where the heart is guy. But anyways, this guy's just like, you guys want a cart, takes us like to some warehouse, and there's just a ton of dusty carts, and we just had to find ones that worked and clean them off and take them. And then every hit was just on to like dirt. And, but it's really funny because they're like, dad's pretty good golfer and he'd hit like a straight four foot put

and it just turned 90 degrees because the grass is like all puffy. So is it, it was an experience. I've been to Roswell. Roswell's kind of a weird little place. There's lots of like, it's a lot trashier than I picture hit pee. It's gotten nicer, I think.

Okay. Well, and our podcast guest, Payne Lindsay, it's like I looked up Roswell and Apple Maps and he popped up. So that's kind of cool. But you remember we just went to a normal Mexican restaurant and I was just being like, can I have your alien enchiladas please? When we went? Yeah. I was just being so annoying everywhere I went.

I'd be like, can I have this alien Coke, please? It's just like a normal Coke. I'm sure they love that I'm sure yes we're like great yes anyway I'm glad you made it Jeff I just drove home from California

drove through multiple snowstorms so you any cars tipped over yeah lots of the cars off the road lots there's like a point where I just couldn't see the road all I could see was a wall of snow pretty scary I've I drove in the Arctic for seven years I've done a lot of driving

this was one of my worst storms I've ever been in. Wow. Definitely top three. You couldn't see anything. Ice Road truckers. I've driven those ice roads, man. I've been on those roads.

The thing about the ice roads is they have little orange signals so that you like little flags. So you never, you always know where the road is, even if it's like a crazy squall. But you don't get that on the highway. No. I bet you what happened is they're probably patrons of tooth and claw. and they listened to our top 10 cats episode, and when they heard that you didn't rank cheetahs in your top 10, they just swerved off the road.

They couldn't believe it. Who did that? The cars you saw that were off the road. That's quite a poll. That's quite a poll. I guess. Yeah, they're new patrons. We got a big back catalog.

That's true. Yeah, you're right. I'll tell you why those people are swerving off the road, Jeff. It's because God sent us snowstorm because of all the massive. Bata you've been doing. That's why they're swirving off the road. All right. So I picked a weird animal today. I, to be honest, like I was in California. I just didn't really know what to do. Wanted to do a bear episode because I just always want to do a bear episode. But then I just kind of felt like we've done a few recently. And I ended up picking a weird animal. And I'm not going to

tell you guys what it is just yet. Look, it's called Danger Stocks the Land by Larry knew it. We've done a book by Larry before. I think it's called Killer Bears or something. I don't remember, but his name's come up before. I do think this is the first time on the podcast where I got to do a pretty interesting disclaimer where I think this story has to be taken with a grain of salt. I don't know if the story actually happened, and I'm going to explain to you why that is, but I do think this is the first time that our listeners need to listen to this and maybe question whether or not this ever even happened at all. So maybe that's happened before.

You have any validity as a wildlife biologist? No, no, no. That's not what I'm saying. Okay. So Larry, the guy who wrote this book, he heard the story from his friend, and his friend heard it from the victim while on the plane ride. And Larry tried to track down the victim, but he could never get in touch with him. His friend wasn't even sure about the guy's name, but the friend swears that the story is

true and that he repeated it verbatim from how he heard it like he heard on the plane he called larry and told him the story or they were together something he told him the story okay so this friend that was on the plane his name is wade nolan and he was on a flight from nome to anchorage and when he sat down this big grizzled trapper with a massive beard and like a big parka sits down next to him and this is like 1980 so it's not like they immediately put their headphones in and started watching a movie. There really wasn't much to do on planes. So they're both just kind of pulling their magazines out from the back of the seats, reading them. And I think back then people probably talked a lot more on planes because it was just kind of like what you did, you know? Yeah. So they start chatting

and Wade notices that there's scars all over this guy's hands. And the scars were healed, but he described it as saying it looked like this guy had stuck his hands in a bag of razor their blades and like messed around in there. They were just like totally scarred up. And then he also noticed he had some pretty good scars on his face too. And he just decided, you know, I'm going to ask this dude what these scars are from. And the guy starts to tell his tail. And he says his name was Jack.

And then he's a trapper. And he worked a trap line way up in the middle of the Kigluiac Mountains northeast of Nome. So do you guys, do you guys understand what a trap line is? Jeff, we laid trap lines. when we did bear trapping. Yeah, yeah. What is a trap line?

I don't understand. Okay. Is it like a rope between two trees that a bear will trip over? No. That might be what people say. That would be a trap line. No, it's like a line of traps that you check every day. Exactly.

Or every so often. Like for us it was every day, but for some of these trappers, they'll put out a trap line. It's often like in a big circle. and it's just... By a water source or something. Yeah, or, you know, like in this case, they were over miles and miles and miles. Like, his trap line was massive. And he would go out and he would check his trap line.

And essentially, on his trap line, he had a number of small cabins that served as little warming huts or he could spend the night in them or cook some food in them. And then he had one big cabin that was kind of like a home base that he had a lot more stuff in. And he would go out and he checked this trapline. and throughout the journey he would maybe stay in one of these little cabins. This was his life. This guy lives up in the middle of nowhere Alaska. He made his own cabins probably in them.

Yeah, and just traps mostly Mink and Martin. Like that's his deal, you know? Yeah, Mink and Martin. Yeah. Okay. So he would work the trap line over winter. And one winter is he was nearing the end of his line. He's between one of these small crude cabins and his larger base cabin.

It's really cold outside. and he's snowshoeing in his parka, dense winter clothing, and he's cussing to himself. And the reason he's cussing to himself is because every single animal that he had trapped had been eaten by something. And there was just remains in each of these traps. And so something had gotten to his traps before him, and he figured it was probably what they call the pirate of the north, the Wolverine. And sure enough, as he surveys this site, he sees large circular prints of a big Wolverine.

which they're the biggest terrestrial member of the Mustilid family or the weasel family. So these guys are the biggest weasels. Oh, very interesting. Yeah. And they're the pirates of the north, huh? Pirates of the north, because they rob trappins. Right. Yeah.

They're really smart critters. Wolverines are really smart. Yeah, the smallest pirates. Besides pirates. Besides pirates and monkeys. Largest weasel. Yeah. Third, probably third smallest pirates.

Or maybe like a young little person pirate. Like a cabin boy. Yeah. They do normally have like one little person. They do. Pirates love to have a little person on their shape. They love it. All right.

I love it. Yeah. So he's pissed and he's throwing these animal remains in the woods and it's been a long day and he just wants to get to his cabin. So he starts hiking toward the main cabin and he's dreaming of a hot meal, a warm fireplace. And this hot meal is about to get a lot better because along as a route, he noticed is a small group of pigeon-sized tarmigan. So tarmigan are kind of like a grouse.

They're a little game bird. In the winter, they turn white. And he sees a little flock of them. So he managed to shoot three of these tarmigan with his 22 rifle, scoops them up in his mittens, takes them down the trail into these dark Alaskan winter woods. And as he's looking out, he sees that a blizzard is kicking up. And he's like, I hope I can beat this blizzard, but I don't think I'm going to be able to.

It's so crazy. people live lives like that. Yeah. And there's still people that live like this too. They probably have a little bit more technology now than he had. But I mean, there's still a lot of trappers in the last year. Well, if Jeff's dad and his best friend are using a paper atlas to navigate the country, then I'm not ruling anything out. Some of these people are just straight up Luddites.

I drove from Utah to Key West using nothing but a paper Atlas. And it was really fun. I don't even know how you do that. I'm stupid when it comes to directions. You make a lot of mistakes. I just need to tell myself to chill out a lot of the time and just be like, whatever. I haven't ever seen this part of boring ass wherever I am.

So like I'll just be happy. I did, when I did it to, we did it straight. So we drove for 40 hours straight. Oh, yeah, you guys had a crazy one. It was insane. All right. You remember when we did our rock. Roswell trip, West.

Yeah. And I was just begging for it. But we all wanted to, but there's like a five-hour detour to a little tiny town in New Mexico called Pi-Town. And we like read facts about it. And it's like, no, yeah, we named it Pie Town because we love pies. We got to go. We got to go there. Any Pie-Town listeners out there, send us a pie, please.

We need to place it. All right. So as Jack is walking, he's walking faster, he's trying to get to this cabin before the blizzard hits. He fails to notice that blood is dripping from these birds in his hand. And that blood's dripping down onto this bright white snow, creating a small trail behind him, one that's all too easy for an opportunistic predator to follow. So he picks up his pace, but the storm's closing in, and pretty soon it becomes apparent to Jack that he's not going to make it to his cabin before this blizzard hits.

And the last thing he wants to do is be caught up. out in the middle of this blizzard, maybe get turned around, maybe get lost. So he decides to find some makeshift shelter. And he noticed a large overhanging ledge in a rock outcropping, and he decides to wait out the storm under this ledge. Figures it'll be less cold. It's less than ideal, but at least he's going to be out of the snow. So Jack gets under the ledge. There's just enough room for him to sit down and curl his knees up to his chin, and he lays his backpack down on the snow in front of him. And he puts these three small tarmigan on top of his backpack. So, Jack had just laid these three small tarmigan on top of his backpack. And the carnivore that had been stepping softly and carefully sniffing

each of the blood spots in the snow was much less concerned about the storm. In fact, it hardly even noticed it. Thick, dark, oily hair repelled the snow around this predator, and as it worked its way noiselessly up into the rocks by this blood trail, whatever it was following was obviously hurt, and as it followed its nose out onto an edge of a ledge it looked down. and it saw three plump tarmigans laid out below it, so it jumped down without making a sound. Jack had his face in his knees, but he picked up a dark blur of motion in front of him, and was more than startled by a large brown shape in front of him now tearing into his backpack and the tarmigans in front. Instinctively he cries out and he picks up his hands, and the hungry wolverine spins around and turns on him.

So Jack reaches out with his mittens to push this wolverine away, but it's swiping with its paws and it's lunging with its teeth and when he would succeed in pushing it away it would lunge back in and bite and clot him again and up until this point jack's mittens had taken the brunt of the damage but they get ripped off in the fight to try and keep the wolverine away it's now just shredding his hands so he's doing his best to get away but the wolverine had a clock catch in one of the holes of his parka zipper pole so just like in the little metal part of your zipper it's clock in one of those holes and and

And it got really aggravated. It's like Luke shooting the thing in the death star. That's one in a million. Yeah. It used the force to get its cloth stuck in there. It got even more aggravated trying to free itself. And he claimed to only be able to see whirling teeth and claws at that point. He just said it was essentially like the like Taz from Looney Tunes.

It's just like a Wolverine that's just spinning with claws and teeth. Is that a Wolverine? What's Tats? No, he's a Tasmanian devil. Come on, Jeff. Oh, yeah. All right. Finally, Jack's able to get enough space to grab the Wolverine and push it out a few feet away from his tiny shelter. And when the animal hits the snow, it writes itself, takes a quick look at the trapper, his shredded hands, his bleeding face. And then it grabs one of the tarmigan and just casually trots off into the woods, never to be seen again. So Jack looks down. He surveys his wounds, but he had so much blood in his eyes that he couldn't see. And then he wipes the blood away and he sees large open gashes in his hands. cutting through the flesh, through the muscle, through the tendons, all the way down to the bone.

He's got those on his wrist. He's got him on his forearms, and he can feel him on his face as well. He's just like, like someone took a razor and just sliced him up with it, essentially. Yeah. The storm's still raging, but Jack's legitimately worried about bleeding to death at this point. So he ventures out in the snow. He's just like, I got to get to this cabin. So after some time fighting this blizzard, he makes it to the cabin.

his dense outer layers were almost completely matted in blood when he gets there. He has a really hard time lighting a fire because his hands are almost useless, but after some time he managed to get a fire lit. And then he gets a lantern, he props a mirror next to it, and he's like, I got to do something with these wounds. They're really deep. He's far from help. He knows that he's going to have to fix himself or he could bleed to death.

So he takes a needle, a sewing kit, a needle, and some thread and just start stitching him up, pulling him through his skin, pulling him with his mouth, and getting these stitches closed. And while he's doing this, he's passing out from the pain and then coming back to and start stitching again,

and then we'll pass out again, and then coming to. So this takes hours for him to stitch up these lacerations. That's so crazy. So finally he finishes, and Jack crawls into his bunk, and he prays that somehow help will come because he's far too weak,

far too beat up to do the long hike out. And no one's expecting this dude either. He's like, he's got some friends and stuff, but it's not like he's got a wife and kids at home. He's just out there in the middle of nowhere. He's a solo dude. Sorry, I'm losing my voice a little bit, but bear with me here. Wolverine with me here.

That doesn't make sense. All right. Oh, less. I'm clipping that. I'm posting that everywhere. Jack gets lucky. A few days later, a friend of his that was a bush pilot flies over this cabin. and he knew that Jack was supposed to be outworking his trap line,

and he doesn't see any smoke coming from the cabin. So he just wonders, he's kind of curious, if something might be wrong. So he lands his plane and decides to check on Jack. And he finds him, he loads him into his plane, they fly him to the hospital and noam. And he spends about a week in the hospital while they're tending to his injuries, and then apparently makes a full recovery.

Holy cow. Okay. So you guys might be one. wondering why I would pick this story when it's unverifiable. And, you know, it's our first episode about Wolverine. So why would I pick this story if we can't verify it? What I was actually wondering is how he is like so alone and doesn't masturbate. How do you know he doesn't?

God did answer. God answered his prayer. Yeah, but he also sent a snowstorm. He also sent a Wolverine to slash his hands up. Yeah. Now he, now, I don't know. He may not have ever masturbated ever since. Probably because his hands hurt so bad he stopped and then he answered it.

Where did this Wolverine attack him? Where did this Wolverine attack him? That's all I want to say. All right. Why would I pick this story? Well, there's a really good reason for it. It's because there aren't any verified stories of Wolverines attacking human beings. This isn't an animal that attacks us.

Wow. And you might say, well, it's because we never. come in contact with them, but we do. There are Wolverines that come in contact with people. People that live in Alaska that spend a lot of time out in these places see Wolverines and they're around Wolverines. In Russia, in different parts of the world, there's lots of Wolverines. So here's my question with that is like, how would you verify it?

Because, like, he went to a hospital and they saw his wounds, right? Yeah, I mean, I think what I mean by like this not being verified is that whoever is reported on it. In this case, Larry Canew it, he wasn't able to track this guy down and get the story in like medical records or anything. So there's no paper trail that shows that this actually happened. We're just taking someone completely on their word that they were attacked by a Wolverine, you know? And the hospital is too. For all we know, this guy got caught in one of his own traps or something, you know, or his dog bit him. Yeah. It's hard. You just can't know unless there's like some sort of proof.

And that's the thing is like there, there just isn't any proof. There's no one else there to see it. It's unverifiable. We don't even know this dude's name. So that's why I want everyone to take this with a grain of salt because this could have happened, but it's not likely, you know, I mean, sorry, I shouldn't say it that way. I think it's likely that this did happen. But this isn't a thing that happens hardly ever.

Yeah. On record, it never has. So. Yeah. And that's pretty crazy. You know, that's something that you wouldn't expect from what we think of Wolverines. Yeah, I mean, what, there's a few billion people on the earth. So it's almost like a one in the billion chance.

Yeah. But then also he's like a one in the billion type of lifestyle. You know what I mean? Like there's not very many people just out in their cabins they built in Alaska and snowstorms hiding under rocks. Right. And with like birds and blood trails. You know what I mean? Yeah.

He put himself in a situation that not most of us do. But there's probably a few thousand of those people, you know? And like in Russia, there's those people too. There's people that come into contact with lots of Wolverines throughout their year, and they don't get attacked by him. As we know of. Anyway, I scoured. I had remembered reading in some outdoor magazine.

It might actually be outdoor magazine. A story of someone that was, like, confronted by a wolverine somewhere. couldn't find it. I just couldn't find anything that says that they've attacked people. And I read a lot of articles that backed that up that said, Wolverines don't attack people. It's never happened. Why are they thought of so crazy and aggressive?

That's what we're going to get into. First, we're going to do a little bit just on general biology of Wolverines. So the Wolverine, its Latin name is Gulo Gulo, which is a great Latin name. Hey, that's cool. They're sometimes called devil bear, skunk bear. carcajoo, quick hatch, or devil beast. They're the largest landwelling member of the Mustilid family. So that's the same family that has weasels, badgers, otters, and Martins. If you're looking at the largest overall, it'd be the sea otter, and then giant river otters

are also larger than Wolverines. Males average about 30 pounds, but they can be as big as 60 pounds. Females are about 40% smaller. Pretty much they grow to the size of like a medium dog. They have short legs that keep them close to the ground. They have thick, oily, hydrophobic fur that's essentially frost-proof and allows them to stay warm and dry throughout extremely cold winters. Winter is really when these guys thrive.

And they are one of, like, Wolverine fur is highly prized by trappers because of how hydrophobic it is. It just repels water. All right. They have specialized a really cool thing about them. A lot of weasels have this. They have specialized molars. Imagine turning one of your molars 90 degrees, so it's pointing inside of your mouth on each side, on your upper side. You turn them,

so they're pointing inside your mouth 90 degrees. Wolverines have molars like that. And the reason is it helps them grip frozen meat and rip it off of the bone. And then it also helps them crush bones so they can eat the marrow out. So these guys are really good at eating just about everything. When it comes to mating and reproduction, this is another really fascinating thing about Wolverines. They have kind of an interesting mating ritual. well, like more kind of child-rearing ritual. So males form relationships with several females. Often they have overlapping territories.

They'll visit them during mating season to mate. And then females, like bears, have delayed implantation. So do you guys remember what delayed implantation is, more or less? Yeah. It's one of my favorite things about bears. Yeah, yeah. Where they can kind of defer. You go for it, Jeff.

No, you're, Mike, you started. You had it. I think I'm going to be wrong, though. It's like they can kind of defer their pregnancy to, a later date. They can, like, I guess that's really the extent of my guess. Yeah, what happens is that fertilized blastocyst, the fertilized egg, it just kind of hangs out. It doesn't implant until their body sends them a signal that says, hey, you are healthy

enough to actually bring this baby to term. And if they don't get enough food, it won't happen, right? Right. They'll just abort that fertilized egg. So that is delayed implantation. I think you had some issues with the word choice there, but that's actually the word you would use. It was great.

I was just like wondering, I was just thinking of like edging and the whole tantric angle to sexual encounters, how like if inside it's like deferring for so long, and then it finally gets to, you know, do its thing? Yeah. Then that baby's better because of the. Yeah.

Do you think the baby? Yeah, right. Probably. It's awesome. So a really, the interesting part of all this, though, is that the, female will have her young in like a den in a burrow. The young when they're born, they're almost

completely white. They have fur, but they're white, and then they slowly grow and they turn into what we see as a Wolverine. They actually grow pretty quick. How cute are they? They're very cute, very cute, actually. I watched a lot of Wolverine videos and I really fell in love with them. They're super playful. Wolverines are cool. We'll get into that. But the cool part is that the dad will actually like come back and make visits to bring the female food. And then sometimes he'll help actually with some of the child rearing. And then sometimes Wolverine kits will just decide to like hang out with their dad. They'll just pick their dad instead of their mom.

And their dad will teach them how to be a Wolverine instead of their mom. So there's kind of like the shared parenting between them. And it's not so much they're doing it together. But the kits sometimes will like pick one or other parent and decide to. It's kind of like Nick Camp. where he has like a bunch of families dirty kids uh yeah does does the gender maybe have something to do with which kit would pick which parent or is it no that's interesting that's really cool but i'm not sure about that yeah but it's kind of like a divorce family you know where kids are like i'm

gonna go live with dad all right so they are pretty widespread throughout northern boreal forest and in the sub-arctic and arctra so i set up polar bear cameras in the arctic tundra on polar Reden sites for a project that I did. And we picked up a Wolverine on one of those cameras. Way out on the sea ice. Oh, cool. Yeah, they can go pretty far north. And there's a guy that I worked with that saw one kill an Arctic Fox in the little

seaside village that we worked out of. Yeah. So they're, what are they looking for out on the Arctic ice? They're probably looking for Lemmings, Fox, just whatever they can find, dead whale. Yeah. I don't know why it was way out in the sea ice, though. That's too, it was weird. Yeah.

So in North America. breeding populations can be found in the northern Rockies with the biggest population in the lower 48 in Montana. And then they're also found, yeah. They're also found through parts of Canada, essentially all of Alaska. And then outside of North America, they can be found in Russia, Scandinavia, some Baltic countries, northern China and Mongolia. Mike, Montana is better than Colorado. It is, without a doubt. I mean, Canada.

Canada is, too, in northern China. I guess, in Mongolia. Right? Is that how we're anywhere with... No, because you've got to have grizzly bears, too. Yeah, that's true. Every once in a while Wolverine does make it way into Colorado, which was what I was about to get into.

Water at our house that you drink. That's right. That doesn't exist in northern China. Yeah, or Mongolia. So, Wolverines were once recorded as being present in Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, the Midwest, like Indiana, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, a lot of different states, even New England. But nowadays, really the states that they have breeding populations are in are Montana, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Wyoming.

But they are sometimes found in California, sometimes found in Colorado. And then Utah actually had a Wolverine in 2022 that was out by Annalope Island, like in the desert. So, and then it showed up in like a latent suburb too. Pretty crazy. Yeah. And they actually have huge home ranges. So it's kind of, that makes sense that one could live in Idaho and make its way down into Utah or somewhere else. Okay.

The Latin name Gulo Gulo Gulo is a reference to their gluttonous nature. The English name Wolverine is thought to essentially just mean Little Wolf. In my opinion, I think Little Bear would have been much better. But Little Wolf is what you name. A little bear? So bear. It's not called little wolf. Oh yeah.

Bearverein. All right. Now it works. Yeah. Linguistically, I think it all checks out. All right, yeah. I could get used to it. Lots of places can expose you to identity theft.

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When you guys hear about Wolverines and their behavior, what are some of the first things that come to mind? Football. Crazy. Like, yeah, let's say even before you guys knew that they had. hadn't attacked people. Like if someone says, describe a wolverine. What, yeah, what would you say? Vicious, wild, crazy.

The X-Men with the claws. The X-Men with the claws. Stout. I would say, I would say if it was in the fellowship, it would be Gimley. Yeah, short. That's real, real tough and can move if it needs to. And have you heard any things about, like, what Wolverines are capable of? Or is that more just something you hear in wildlife circles?

Yeah. Not a thing that's come up for me. A lot of people that spend a lot of time in the outdoors, you'll hear tales about Wolverines. And some of the things you hear are things like a Wolverine can push a grizzly bear off a kill. A Wolverine can take down a moose. Or a wolverine is the toughest, meanest, most vicious animal out there. Like, Wolverines have a reputation as being the toughest animal in the world, to be honest. It's kind of like the honey badger, when that honey badger video came out and everyone was like, nothing's tougher than a honey badger.

Wolverines have that same kind of reputation. But do they deserve it? So let's get into a little myth busting here. Blue whale first Wolverine. Who wins? We're going to do a cage match later and that's going to be an interesting one. But I did do... Yeah, I'm excited for that.

I did do a deep dive on Wolverines. I read a lot of scientific papers. I read a lot of really well-researched information to really learn as much as I could about Wolverines. And I learned a lot. So I'm going to get into some of these myths. First of all, one place where Wolverines really earn that reputation is in the way that they travel. Some of the papers I read show Wolverine movement patterns, and it's really crazy because they pretty much just move in straight lines.

Even when there's huge mountain peaks or ridges or whatever, they just go straight. They go over ice fields, deep snow, glaciers. They just don't care. Like that guy in Dungeons and Dragons? You remember that scene? And he just walks right over the rock and Chris Bines like that. Yeah. Straight over it.

Yeah, it's like as the crow flies, West. Exactly. As the Wolverine runs. Or dung beetles. Yeah. In one of the documentaries I watched, the researchers are just gobsmacked because they're looking at these points from a wolverine that they had collared. And it just went straight up Mount Cleveland, which is the highest mountain in Glacier National Park. And it did it in the end of January.

And they said that it covered 4,900 versions. vertical feet in less than 30 minutes, which is crazy when you think about it. They said this is territory and terrain that even mountain goats wouldn't mess with, and this Wolverine just went up and over. Like it just did it. It's like a mile. Yeah. Jeez.

It's wild. Another Wolverine researcher that I watched an interview with. He talked about how Wolverines would run up steep, rocky, icy terrain, like it wasn't even there. He said it was stuff that he wouldn't even hike and that a person would need climbing gear to to even try. And he said, it's like Wolverines view the world in two dimensions.

And they can actually cover 40 miles in a day, which is pretty crazy. These guys can move. And a big part of that is because of the way their locomotion is, they run,

they do both paws in the front and both paws in the back at the same time. So it's kind of a loping movement. Like they're kind of like loping as they run. Yeah. And the back paws will go

in front of the front paws as they're running. So they kind of just do like this. And that's, they pretty much travel at a consistent four miles per hour. They're always moving fast. They're not walking. They can run a lot faster than that too.

But when they're traveling, they're always going at this consistent four miles per hour, just loping. It's really cool to watch them move. So they just always look like they're running. Yeah. That's really, I've always heard that humans are kind of singular

in the way that we are endurance. athletes, but it sounds kind of like Wolverines might have us beat at that, too. Wolverines have us beat at that. Yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah, I would say that, you know, humans have that endurance when it comes to chasing down prey animals and everything.

But I would give the edge to the Marines. But what Mike's saying, I think, Mike, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but humans are like the best endurance animals on the planet if you get like our best endurance runners. Yeah, but I think a Wolverine could be our best endurance runner is what I'm saying. Yeah, but I'm just, I'm throwing that out there. You're the, you're the expert guy. All right. They have some pretty crazy secretions that they use for marking.

They have anal glands, belly button gland, and then glands in their feet. So as they're moving, they're actually scent marking. And that makes it so other Wolverines that they might want to mate with can find them. And it also helps them kind of mark their territory. to tell other other Wolverines that, like, hey, this is my space. And that's also part of the reason they're called skunk bear, because it smells, these secretions smell really bad. All right.

Another thing you'll hear about Wolverines that I talked about earlier is that they're just about able to kill anything and that they can run just about anything off of a kill. So let's look at that briefly. First of all, they're primarily scavengers. They have a really honed sense of smell, and they can pick up the scent of a carcass barrier, in 20 feet of snow.

So some Wolverines, one of their main strategies is actually to investigate where avalanches have happened and look for animals that are buried in avalanches to dig them up and eat their carcasses. They can literally smell them under 20 feet of avalanche snow. Interesting. Do you think they cause avalanches on purpose sometimes? They drop little sticks of dynamite and blow them up.

Yeah. In one of the documentaries, it was pretty interesting, the researchers were talking about how they just eat everything when they find it too and he pulls out just like an upper jawbone he's like huh i'm surprised it didn't eat this he says usually they eat the teeth they eat the horns they just eat everything they like truly can just process at all and they say that when you catch a wolverine and cholera it sometimes their stomachs just feel like they're full of gravel from all the crushed bone that they've eaten they mostly scavenge but they can hunt down prey and usually

It's going to be small rodents, rabbits. But just about everything is potentially on the menu. They have been documented killing prey as large as moose, although those moose were often young or starving and almost always in deep snow. So because Wolverines are so spread out and have such big paws, they stay essentially on the top of the snow, but they would catch a moose in deep snow and then kill it while it's in the deep snow. Wow. Interesting.

So they're more like Legolas. Yeah, exactly. Do you think if an orc died in front of them, they would be saying in their own Wolverine language that meets on the menu? Meets back on the menu. Probably. Yeah. Do you think they would eat an orc? I think so. They'll eat just about anything from what I understand.

All right. So they can kill large prey if they have to, but they are very opportunistic and their baseline is to scavenge. So how about them chasing grizzly bears off of kills? Because that's a myth that often goes around. Now, I think it's possible that an aggressive Wolverine could convince a grizzly bear that it's just not worth the fight to defend a carcass. But if the bear wanted to stay, it's going to stay. Like a wolverine is not going to chase a persistent grizzly bear off of a carcass. It may convince a bear like, hey, I don't really feel like messing with this weird massive weasel that's coming at me.

But if that bear just decides, now I'm going to hang out and stay on this carcass, the Wolverine is in a fight for it. Like it's a lot more likely that the bear would chase a wolverine off a carcass. Exactly. And that's what I was actually going to say is one of these Wolverine researchers said, no, Wolverines avoid bears. They avoid wolves. They avoid mountain lions because those are natural predators for them.

So these aren't animals that they like to tango with. But there are instances where wolverines have pushed larger animals off of carcasses. just because of how aggressive they can be. But it's not like a strategy for them. What if the Wolverine just took like really tiny bites out of the bear, so small that the bear like didn't even notice it and just ate the whole bear? Yeah, I like that. And just ate the whole bear and then took the kill.

You think that ever happens? I don't think that ever happens. But I think that's, it's great thought. That's what separates animals from humans. We're like we're elevated and thought. a little bit. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. I would get into a little bit more about this, but we're going to pin it for the cage match category. I think it's going to be an interesting one. One last little tidbit that I thought was really interesting about Wolverines. There's this guy, and I read this in Outside Magazine, who's been pushing a campaign to make Wolverines the animal that we use for avalanche search and rescue.

He says that because of their natural, yeah, he says because of their natural behavior, to look for carcasses under avalanches, trained wolverines could be used to find skiers or whoever else might be unlucky enough to find themselves trapped in an avalanche. And this dude is just like, this is going to work. He believes in this so strongly that he's launched this huge campaign to make it happen. The article I read was in 2016, so I don't know if he's made it much headway since then. I don't think so because I haven't seen any trained wolverines looking for people. but the guy says in one of these articles,

he says anything you can train a dog to do, you can train a wolverine to do five times faster, which might be true, but there are a lot of problems because dogs are domesticated animals. Yeah, I do think so. I watched, there's this guy in Alaska who was raised, don't teach him to shake, they'll scratch your hand up.

Then you won't be able to masturbate. There's this guy in Alaska who's raised a lot of wolverines and they are really playful and fun animals when they're raised in captivity. Like they do really well when they're trained. He took them on the Johnny Carson show. He's taking them on other shows. They're like, it's pretty fun watching this guy play with his trained Wolverines.

And this dude's life is Wolverines. He goes out and plays with them every single day out in the Alaskan wilderness. So people do raise them. But I do want to just quickly remind our listeners, there's a really big difference between domestication and training. Training a wild animal is teaching it pretty much like to do a behavior for a reward. Domestication is generations and generations and generations of selecting for specific characteristics to essentially create a new animal.

Training, like all of those natural behaviors are still in there and they can come out at any time. So one is much more dangerous than the other, just so you know. Our typical category that we start with is pop culture. So I asked you guys to think of your favorite pop culture Wolverine, which turns out isn't that easy. So I'm going to go first. Mine's a little bit vague.

And I'm going to go with Napoleon Dynamite. There's a scene in Napoleon Dynamite where he's kind of being harassed by some cool kids at school. And they're asking him what he did over summer. And he said he went to Alaska and was hunting Wolverines with his own. uncle or something and says that he killed like 50 wolverines with the 12 gauge. Anyway, I like, maybe we'll have this place in the audio. What did you do last summer again? I told you.

I spent it with my uncle in Alaska hunting wolverines. Did you shoot any? Yes, like 50 of them. They kept trying to attack my cousins. What the heck would you do in a situation like that? What kind of gun did you use? A freaking 12 gauge. What do you think?

Napoleon Dynamite was one of those movies. She got really old when it came out because everyone was quoting it. But I think if you go back and revisit it now, it's a pretty fun movie again, because I revisited it not long ago and really enjoyed rewatching it. So that's my pick. Sure. Well, it was funny. I mean, just the line you said. Yeah.

Yeah. I can't stop laughing. We literally have to take a break to stop laughing. Yeah, I feel like I should be able to think of a better one. But when we can't use the X-Men. No, we're going to get in that. Bearerine. Bearverine.

Is that Jimmy? So I'll just go with the movie, the old school one for sure, Red Dawn, which... It's a crazy premise for a movie. Just that Russia invades and just high school kids take them down pretty much. And they love their school. mascot. Yeah, those kids aren't very creative. What should we call ourselves?

I don't know. Wolverines. Bearverines. Mine, I'm picking Dernard Robinson, the old Michigan quarterback, Michigan Wolverines, their college football team. I haven't really ever been super into college football, but that guy is like 10 years ago.

I watched every single Michigan game. Yeah, he was just the most amazing offensive player I've seen in college ever. Dragon Dernard's. over your face. Oh, Mike. No. No, I mean, mine's actually for sure got to be Tom Brady.

I was thinking him, but like I didn't really even know who he was. Was Tom Brady or Wolverine? Yeah, he played at Michigan. Yeah, all right. I don't care for him. Okay. Oh, what? Yeah.

All right. So the obvious choice for this is Wolverine, the character for Mexmen. So a kind of follow-up question for you guys. I want you to give me your favorite iteration of the comic book character, Wolverine, from X-Men, from the Greater Marvel Universe. So, you know, I'll go ahead and go first. My knee-jerk was to pick Logan, but I decided to go with the Wolverine from the 90s X-Men cartoon, because that's really what kick-started my love of X-Men was Saturday morning

cartoons watching the X-Men cartoon, and Wolverine was my first. favorite. So, like, I think he was a lot of people's. I just loved the costume. I loved how arrogant, or not arrogant, like surly and mean he was, but then also really just so loyal to the people that he loved. So Wolverine was always my favorite X-Men, and it's due to that cartoon. You like how furry his shoulders are? That's like a key component to me. Yeah, for Wolverine. I love that. So mine is, it's another old 90s callback, but the two-d, the side-scrolling beat him up arcade game. Do you guys ever play that game?

Yeah. It was like my favorite game at the arcade and I'd always pick Wolverine. He had like the gut jab move and then you'd throw him over his shoulder backwards. Oh yeah. That's the one where it's just constantly moving right and like people can join in at any time. Yeah. That's a great

game. Oh, I love it. They don't make them like they used to. They do make some pretty good games, Wes. They do. Sure, whatever. It's not like they used to as we live in a virtual world and play me off with each other. Yeah. Yeah. And space.

You know, I almost picked Logan as well because I think it's the best one, but my favorite's probably the original X-Men, especially because the comic book movies, I think maybe we had like one Toby McGuire Spider-Man at that point. But like there wasn't many superhero movies of my lifetime, and that was just a huge movie. movie and I loved Hallie Berry and she's hot. This is the one that came out in 2000. This was our introduction to Hugh Jackman is Wolverine. Which, you know, one of the most best fits of any character ever. He is Wolverine. I always like the line Halle Berry says.

Mike, maybe you can play the clip. You know what happens to a toad when it struck by lightning? The same thing that happens to everything else. Where she's like, what happens when you hit a toad with lightning? Yeah. And then she's like the same thing that happens to everything else. I was dying. I literally was like, that's funny.

I didn't think she, I thought she'd have a joke and she didn't. You didn't care who you were. That was funny right there. That was in the second, I think that was the second movie. I was listening to Larry, the cable guy, Stan. at that same time too, so I probably did think that exact thought, Mike. All right. I'm not going to try to do it.

Let's do another sound clip of him saying. Okay. I don't care who you are. That's funny right there. A lot of sound clips happening today. We're going to do now what would Mike and Jeff do. So you're Jack, this guy, you're under your ledge, and suddenly you're just, you're fighting a wolverine off. What are you guys doing to get rid of this wolverine?

I just, was it the pants zipper that the claw got stuck in? I'd just take my pants off. His parker. His coat. Take the park off. Let them have it. It might be kind of hard done zip with him attached to the zipper. How fast can they run? They can run really fast, faster than us. From what I understand. Yeah, I'd probably run away. Okay. Jeff's tired. Just going to throw a snowball, start a snowball fight. Yeah. Because it was snowing pretty hard. Yeah, dude, get whitewashed that Wolverine.

No one likes to get whitewashed. He'll run away. Give them a wedgey. Whitewashing is really mean when you think about it. For those of you who don't know what whitewashing is, you just grab the person's face and stuff it in some snow. Anyway. I thought it's more you'd grab a snowball and stuff it in their face.

Either way. It doesn't matter. It's like a pie smash. Yeah. As long as you're putting snow on their face, it's whitewashing. So what you actually should do, Well, these guys don't attack people. So if you're out in the woods and you see a Wolverine,

and I have this in caps in my notes, take pictures, get your camera out. You're probably never going to see a Wolverine again. Get some photos of it. Enjoy the experience because it's not going to mess with you. I think the only way, and I don't, I'm not saying I don't believe this story, but I really think the only way that a Wolverine is messing with a human

is if we provoke it. If we've got food right there that I might want. Like this Wolverine didn't even know he was there. And then all of a sudden it was like in a fight, you know, for this resource. Or if like you trapped a Wolverine and you're trying to release it or something, I just don't think they really want to mess with us. So if you see one out in the wild, get some photos, enjoy it. This is a once in a lifetime. I was thinking you were saying that because then like some jerk biologist wouldn't be like, well, actually all those scars on your face and hands.

that like can't be a wolverine because they've never attacked anyone. I didn't say it can't. I just said we just need to be a great myself. I didn't see you. I get what you're saying. Yeah. You're right. Okay.

So quickly, we're going to, or not quickly, actually, we're going to do a cage match. Very slow to do it. And I am going, yeah, before we do it, I'm going to read you guys a story that I found about Wolverines. This is from the Department of Biological Sciences. sciences in the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Alaska. And this is from Amos Lane, a native Inuit Hunter, who is one of the most experienced,

widely ranged, and I'm reading this verbatim, and reliable of guides in Alaska. And he reports the details of an encounter between a Wolverine and a polar bear, about five kilometers west of Point Hope in the early spring of 1944. And pretty much what he says is that the Wolverine was out-scabble. avenging well offshore on some sea ice as proceeding south when it met a polar bear. The bear initiated the attack, but as it charged the wolverine, it leapt and seized the bear's throat and clung so closely to its chest that the bear was unable to brush it off and only attempted to deliver a hug, which it quickly abandoned. The wolverine appears to have clung to the bear's

windpipe without attempting any other kind of damage until the bear choked to death. Mr. Lane dispatched the victor before any further behavior could be observed. Holy cow. So that's a story from an Inuit hunter in 1944 that apparently a Wolverine killed a polar bear. Personally, I don't believe it. I mean, I think it's physically possible. I have a hard time believing this. Sure.

I can see why, but I don't think it's impossible, you know, what he described. Right. Okay, but to get a little bit more in the weeds here, from reading about these interactions between Wolverines and other animals, there's another paper that came out, I believe in 2003, they talked about a black bear killing a wolverine in Yellowstone when they tussled over an elk carcass. And a lot of these researchers said one wolf versus a wolverine would probably be a pretty good fight. Two wolves can easily kill a wolverine. And they're actually their main predator, wolves, when Wolverines are killed by predators, it's most often wolves, so much so that

Wolverines will avoid places where there's wolves. And then second most is mountain lions. Mountain lions can kill them as well. So really, that means that grizzly bears, black bears, polar bears, wolves, mountain lions can all kill the same. Yeah, I'm taking back my polar bear thing. I don't think it's even possible. Yeah, I have a real hard time.

The bear would have got it off. Yeah. Yeah. I would also say our chimpanzee is. probably killing the Wolverine, but I think that's a really good fight. Can I ask you the one I'm most curious about? Yes. Coyote, because they both are whiling.

Coyote. I'm picking the Wolverine in the coyote fight. Yeah, I think that's a really good one, though. That's a good fight. They're both scrappers. I actually don't think it's that good. I think the Wolverine kills the coyote pretty easily. I think, or not easily, but I think it's a fight,

but I would put my money confidently on the Wolverine in that one. I think the one that I would have a hard time saying which way it's going to go is like a wolf, a single wolf and a wolverine. But, you know, let me take a step back. I think if we're looking at our biggest wolf versus our biggest wolverine, then the wolf wins not too hard.

So I don't know. I mean, it is a small wolf is its name. Yeah. So some animals that I think it beats, I think it beats a jellyfish. I think it beats our spiders. I think it beats our dingo, our coyote. I think it beats a kangaroo.

I think there's a number of animals that we've talked about that it can beat. I think a healthy moose is no match. I think a wolverine is no match for a healthy moose. What about like a full-sized deer in a cage? They can kill a deer. Really? Yeah. So they and they have like there's places where deer are prey like that they kill every so often.

Moose I think they have to get pretty lucky and it has to be like a small moose or injured. moose or something. Drounding in snow or something. Yeah. All right. But I think that should help to answer some of these myths around Wolverines. This is a very tough animal. This is an animal that can travel great distances with little effort. They are very well-built animals. But this is not a crazy aggressive top dog kind of animal.

It is essentially kind of like a coyote, Jeff. I think they kind of occupy the same niche. So, all right. Right. Listener questions. Mike, do you have any listener questions for us? I do. I got three from patrons. First one is from Night Fury, 91. They asked, are there places in the world where it is possible for a wild wolf, bear, and tiger to have a standoff? Yes. There are. Okay. Follow up. Well, you can expound on that, and then we'll do the follow-up. Russia is one of those places. Russia has all three. India has all three.

wolves I don't know why that's that occurs to me as weird that a wolf would be in India Nepal would be another country that has all three of those animals and that might not be it

there might be others too that have all three but those are definitely three places where that could happen okay so here's the follow-up between the three of you who's the wolf who's the bear and who's the tiger hmm

what do you guys think Jeff one of us Let me and Jeff have to be the bear since we're beefy. Since you're beefy. But I love it. We're a little beefy. Wes is a bear, though.

He does love honey more than us, too. That's a, yeah, that's a giveaway. Mike, I would say that you're the lone wolf. I'm kind of a lone wolf type. Or a lone tiger, though. And you love tigers. I do love tigers. I want the tiger.

I call it. Yeah. Okay, Jeff's the tiger. You're the wolf. I'm the bear. Jeff's a better tired of me. I'm not a grizzly bear. I'm too small to be a grizzly bear.

I'm like a sunbear or a black bear. Okay. Great. Next question. It needs to be small grizzly bear. Sure. This is from Sam. If you were to die and be taxidermied, what position would you be in?

I'm not sure if this is asking what position you'd like to be in or what position you'd most likely be in. But I guess you can take it however you want. I'd want to have my feet up over my head. and like to be peeking through. And might be a big goofy smile on my face. Yeah. I'm hoping me and Mike both die at the same time in our bonds and then we can get taxidermied with me suplex in them, like through a table.

I want to die then too, though. I don't leave me. So maybe I can be taxidermine like. Could you be the ref? You could be the ref. You could be the ref tagging me out. Sure. Can you be the ref?

Give it a three count. Yeah. Yeah, I like that. I'll accept that. I'll be suplexed. If anyone out there's thinking about killing us, kill us all three at the same time. Yeah, I didn't want to leave you out,

but you already chose what you want to be taxidermy to ask, you know? Yeah. Okay, well, just taxing me. Taxidermine is the ref, but I'm doing that move looking through my legs. Or we could be like tag team in it. Oh, yeah. Sure, that's getting a little weird, Jeff.

Tag team in it? I pick that one. Well, that's a wrestling term. Don't worry. All right. Or like Zorro when he's getting waxed, he holds his sword up and he's really cool. Okay, this is from Campbell.

If every animal species could speak but have the same level of intelligence slash same thoughts, which animal would be the best therapist. So they can speak human. But yeah. I think like just something, I'd want like a really soft,

beautiful animal that I can just like hug. too, like a big old panda bear that just like gives me like a really nice. You snuggle with your therapists? No, but if it was a panda bear I'd want to. That's a breach of ethics, I think. I think like a big hug for my panda bear therapist would do more good to me than any therapy they could ever say. Yeah, like that. No, I like that.

No, I'm, I'm a big proponent of therapy, but I'm just saying nothing could be as good as that. Okay. Yeah. I think everyone just talk to a therapist. Everyone. I'd probably, it's what animal would make the best therapist. Yeah. I'd probably say a horse.

What? You serious? Yeah, there's all sorts of people who get all, like, mental problems and then see a horse and get happy. What are we taught? What? Really? Dogs, too, though. Like, Mr. Ed?

That's only people that with dogs. That's true. Yeah. I'm going with whale. I feel like they have, like, a really soothing. nice let's do like that. I'll take years. Okay, there we go.

I'll take yours then. I'll go with horse. That's it. We have run out of patron questions for the episode. That's not true, but it ran out for this one. Okay. Right. We got more.

I got a couple Instagram ones if you want to. Sure, yeah. Just like two or three. Yeah, let's do them. Just dean the beans? You know who that is? Yeah. That did some art for us.

So what's your favorite non-conventional movie theater snack slash food? So like stuff you need to bring in. Yeah. Hmm. For me it'd be like a baked dessert, like a slice of cake or something. Just like some delicious. You've never brought that into a movie theater? Yes, I have.

A piece of cake? Uh-huh. That's great. Yeah. For sure I have. I would need ice cream with it. I brought a whole pie into a movie once. And that's not an exaggeration.

I just think that's great. It just feels like you're having a little picnic. So I think the bigger and more elaborate, the better. The one I do the most is just those little tiny mini peppermint candy canes, yeah. Yeah, that's a good one. Or some Scooby snacks. Ruby snacks? Yeah.

My brother taught me a nice little trick. And this might disturb some of you listeners. One might. Cut a hole in the bottom of the popcorn thing. You know it so you can hide a drink in there so they don't confiscate it. No, but you bring in like a baggie full of chocolate chips and kind of sprinkle them over the popcorn. Also, and I think this is really good. Don't do the same thing.

It's all gross. Halipenos. Your hands get gross in butter popcorn anyway. It's going to get gross. Chocolates are a lot worse. I'm going to do a counterpoint to that. I kind of, I like to separate my sweet and stuff. salty when I'm at the movie theater.

Like, I want to have my sweet treat, but then I want a salty treat too. Sure. I don't want their, like, I want to eat my sweets and then be like, oh, now I want a salty thing. So I'm going to eat some popcorn. Right. And I don't want candy in my popcorn. That's just me. Well, that's like kettle corn.

That's why I'm the wolf of this trio here. Yeah, you're right. Is that what we settled on? Yeah, I want to try that. I've never tried it. I'll try it. Mike. Give me some.

Yeah. It's not super melty. Popcorn's not hot enough. Fatty Patty Patty asks what movie deserves a sequel. Interesting. Dune. And Scott. I'm just kidding.

That's a dumb joke. Most of the best movies have a sequel. You're right. Speed race. That's a good question. No. Speed race. Oh, you know what mine is?

Is Battalina? Or what is it? Adelaidellangel? Battle Angel Alita. Yeah. Yeah, I like that movie. I love that movie. I want to like that movie.

And I thought there was some meat on the bones still. Totally. Edward Norton standing up there brooding on the edge of the city. Only figuratively, though. I don't think there's any meat on her bone as like a robot. Yeah. She's full robot. Yep.

Right? You like that one, Mike? Yeah, I actually, I really like that movie a lot. It's my favorite movie. No, it's not. Speed racers, you pick? Oh, man. There's talk about meat left on the bone.

Literally and figuratively. Yeah, right. I would have to think about this a little bit more. This is kind of hard. What about that other horror movie you really liked? Barbarian. Barbarian, yeah. Yeah, I'll say that.

Barbarian. Okay. I'd almost want a prequel on that, though. See how all that shit happened. All right. This one, I'm realizing these were questions for me and Mike on our road trip that I never answered because the volume wasn't working. So, sorry, dude, that I'm putting this on the mainstream. Elliot Duke wants to know best pop culture boobs.

Airplane. Oh, yeah. Just like a joke. Yeah. Yeah, I'll go desperado. Nothing if not consistent, Jeff. Since this was a question for you too, I'll just like you to answer that one. Sure, that's fair.

All right. Last one here. If you could give Montana a state slogan, what would you make it? Not that great. Don't move here. I'd say, uh, the tapwire tastes good. Not actually the state yellowstone is. in is what I would say.

Mine makes me sound crotchety. I shouldn't say that. I, like, I would probably just say the wilderness state or... I think Alaska has that, right? Yeah, maybe. Yeah, that's another one I would have needed to think about a little bit more. Fine. Yeah.

When you're less tired, we'll circle back around to you. Yeah. The Larson home. Montana. There you go. Perfect. All right. What about Bear World?

Bear World. Oh, that's good. Montana. You like bears? We got two kinds of them. All right. Okay. All right.

That's good. Quick conservation corner. Oh, quick correction corner, too. I was saying carotid. I was saying carotid artery in a really weird way in our last, our last episode. For whatever reason, my brain just clicked in, yeah, clicked into a strange, weird way of saying that. but sorry that I said that wrong guys. Okay.

Now our conservation corner. Status for Wolverines is pretty unknown. So for IUCN, it's least concern. Just because they're so widespread and there seems to be some really healthy populations in places like Russia, Canada, and Alaska. So they've just decided to say least concern because they really don't know. So like if you go to Alaska, are there places where you could like more than likely than not see a wolverine?

I don't know, just because they do tend to live in such wild, rough terrain. But there are places where they're definitely easier to see. In the lower 48, the best place to see him has to be Glacier National Park, but still not at all likely that you see one. Yeah, I've been there a lot and I have never seen one. But I have. All right. In the continental U.S., they're definitely a risk as a direct result of habitat loss through human expansion and habitat. and resource loss as a direct result of climate change.

Oh, not that thing again. Are you serious with the climate? And for these guys, because they're so into snow, it can really affect, losing snow can affect the way that they den, the way that they look for food. It's a big loss for them. They probably hate the sun too, because it melts all the snow. They might.

And I heard from this Inuit guy that they eat polar bears too, and if the polar bears die, that's a big food source for them. Wow, exactly. You heard that from an Inuit guy. Yeah, I heard it personally. Since the 1990s, conservation groups have been lobbying to have the Wolverine placed on the endangered species list. And in November 2023 last year, those groups were given a big win when the federal government finally placed Wolverines on the list. They're under the threatened designation.

There's currently thought to be about 300 Wolverines in the lower world. 48, mostly in the northern Rockies and Cascades. And then one little mountain range in Oregon. So they are now on the endangered species list. They are now able to access some of those protections through that list. Okay, that is it for our conservation corner, and we're going to go into our final category, which is how much do we like this animal? I'm not going to surprise anyone here.

I'm curious. I'm going to say 10 claws. Oh, wow. I really like Wolverines. They're kind of like a small, like fast-moving bear. I just really, really like them. And I've really fallen in love with them doing research for this and watching a lot of videos about them.

And I love how it's like, for me, that's the unicorn, especially in Montana. That's like the animal that if I see, I'm going to think about it for so long because it's just so hard to see. So I'm giving them 10. It's a 10-clay animal. Yeah, it's hard for me to separate them from the X-Man, honestly, and I'm giving them a nine,

because if they're cool enough to inspire the greatest comic book hero or character, I don't know, call them a hero, then they're pretty sweet in my book. Yeah, that's a good argument, I think. I'm going to go with an eight. I really like them, but I think my favorite of things close to them is the American Badger. just because I watched one by like Rock Creek. And the way it ran and it's just so cute even though as an adult. And I just love animals that are always cute, you know.

And I wouldn't say Wolverine's cute. I think they're really cool. You got to watch more Wolverine videos. They're cute. They use badgers, though. And then I'd probably say I like a honey badger more. I don't know. Okay.

And then Wolverine. I need to see one. Okay, watch some videos. Watch them on YouTube. Mike, what did you give them again? I've seen them online. Nine. Nine.

So eight, nine, ten. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it's like that joke. Oh, and 96. Okay. All right. Well, thank you, everyone.

This was a bit of an unconventional episode because there really aren't that many attack stories about this animal. But it is a really cool animal. hope you enjoyed it. We just barely on our Patreon. Jeff just did a really fun episode about the Chinese zodiac and some of the different animals associated with that. And then we had another episode not long ago where I talked about people that have been killed taking selfies. Mike, what was your last subscriber episode? I can't even remember.

It's been a minute. Probably some animal. It was a good one. No, it was a really good one. Oh, bears committing crimes. Bears committing crimes. Yeah. Anyway, we have a lot of fun on our subscription channels.

So if you're looking for more content from us, check us out on Patreon. Just go to search in Google Patreon Tooth and Claw podcast. It'll pop right up. It's amazing how Google and the internet works, you know? It just does that. I don't know. I just like the paper maps of everything, you know? Yeah.

Yeah. I just need an outlet. Jeff gets his subscriptions on paper in a cyclopedia. We email them our newsletter. Yeah. And then also, if you listen in Apple and you'd rather just get those episodes right in your Apple feed, you can also get it on the Apple Grizz Club. All right. Well, I think that's about it.

So thank you everyone. I'm subscribed on there. All right. Thanks. Yeah. Jeff's in there. Mike needed me. Mike needed me to check an Apple episode and he couldn't.

So I subscribed. I never unsubscribed. And now you got to split that money three ways. doing that. Yeah. What? Yeah. Oh, yeah.

I get that $10. I get a little bit of it back. Yeah. So you should be happy. Apple gets a sum of it. Yeah, you got the discount. We need to look into this discount that Jeff's getting on this subscription. I don't know how I feel about that.

All right. Thanks, everyone. See you next time. We will talk to you soon. Love you. Bye.