Wild Times: Wildlife Education - Alien Octopus, Extinct Lion Blood, and an Obese Owl

Episode Date: April 5, 2020

What do an unsuspecting animal duo, a fat owl, and an alien octopus have in common? Find out on this week's episode of The Wild Times Podcast!

Beed-be-be-be-be-skitty-boop-boop. This is the Wild Times podcast. What is it called? The Wild Times. Wild Times. So I say, Patrick, give me your shirt. So Patrick, in a flash, rips off his shirt. Looks great.

What do you feed your dog besides your own deck? Wild Times. What is the Wild Times to you, Forrest-Galante? Guys, this is the Wild Times podcast. It is a podcast for people that like the outdoors, adventure, wildlife, and a good among bros. Love all of those things. Yeah.

Will we touch on such things as current events, science, stuff like that, or we're going to ignore all that shit? Funny you should ask, Patrick, because those are the exact topics we will in fact be discussing. Want to listen to it, weird that it doesn't exist. Sounds like a great podcast. I think we should do it. Let's do it right now. Welcome to the Wild Time.

Yeah. We've got a couple of my buddies together here. I've got Retep. What's up Retep? Hey, how are you guys doing? We're great, sir. Yeah. And that other sexy voice that you're hearing is my longtime buddy,

executive producer of Extincter Alive, my travel friend, Mr. Patrick DeLuca. Yep, pretty excited. Going to talk a lot of Wild Times type stuff. Anyway, yeah, I'm Patrick. Who the fuck are you, man? That's a good point. I hear Am Forrest Galante,

adventurer, wildlife biologist, and bros as well with Patrick and Princess. Thanks for saying that. Hey, we're in our studio, Forest's garage. Indeed. Pretty awesome. It's a good office.

It's more of an office. Yeah, an office. It is. Your wife fucking did this whole thing. The garage is, it's funny. It's on the same property as your house. Yep. And your fucking farm that has donkeys, pigs,

a full, huge pen of Flemish rabbits? Flemish giant rabbits. They, and they are huge. We have the worst animals. We have the worst animals. We have giant rabbits and tiny chickens. It makes no sense. I need to reverse my animals.

Those pigs, though. Perfectly sized pigs, if I do say so. Those pigs, man. So Forrest and I, obviously, Retep is not qualified or physically able to, but Forrest and I go on a lot of adventures, Forrest Show, Extinct or Alive. And we have a lot of time on long drives and long talks to talk shit, and we talk about animals in biology because we're nerds. Do you remember Lion Man?

Lion Man. Lion Man. So we were on a chase for the Cape Lion in Zimbabwe, and we had a lead on a massive Black Main Lion that we believed had Cape Lion DNA. Now, for those that don't know, the Cape Lion is an animal that went extinct because it was trophy hunted

because it was such a big, massive Black Main Lion that used to hunt and kill elephants. Bigger than current lions. Yes, way bigger. One third, larger and more powerful than regular lions. Huge paws, huge black mane, just a massive creature. So the most terrifying animal, period. In existence.

Patrick DeLuca asked me if we managed to find a Cape Lion and tranquilize it and pull blood from it and we didn't have the permits in time. How would I get the blood back to the United States to get analyzed? And I said, well, we'll have the permits in time, Patrick. Relax. What if we don't?

I said, well, naturally, I will keister the lion blood. What is your understanding of tekeester something? I mean, I think you're saying that you would stick like a vial of blood up your anus. right? Spot on. You were going to legitimately though you were serious

you were going to put a vial of extinct lion blood up your anews. These are trying times to luca. He wanted to do it. He was ready to do it. Let's digress into what you imagined would happen if said vial were to shatter

it's what would have happened. Sorry. You would have planted your fat ass on the plane seat. Indeed. Said vial of lion blood would have shattered and you're your anus would have absorbed the Cape Lion blood and you would have turned into Lion Man. Right. And Lion Man is naturally... He's a superhero who has the powers of a lion but the charming good looks of a man.

You're already kind of that. I feel like Forrest has that going for him already. Yeah. And I haven't even keistered anything since yesterday. That brings me to our next segment. Battle Royale, I think this is going to be a fun segment. We're going to try to do this every week. We'll see. I like it. right now, the idea is this.

We all did this as kids. You take three animals. Yep. You build your ultimate fucking warrior. Yep. Pin them against each other. So it's the body of this, the head of this, the legs of this, the tail of this. Right.

For us, talk about what's going to happen here. So here's what we're going to ask you to do. Leave us a review. And in the comments, you're going to say whose animal would win and why. We are randomly going to pick one winner. And they're going to win a $100 gift certificate to Cool. That's K-U-H-L-C-C-C-L-C-C-E-L-E. make the world's best outdoor gear.

You're not going to want to miss it. And you're going to want to vote for me because I'm the guy who gives away the gift cards. No, they will be randomly picked. Randomly picked. But yeah, do us a favor on iTunes, leave us a review, and say whose animal,

whose creature would win. And Forrest is going to hook you up with a $100 gift certificate to get some awesome shit from KUHL. Cool. Riteb, let's get your animal. Let's hear it. Well, so I think that my animal

is definitely going to be venomous. So I wanted to have like the head of a, a very venomous viper snake, right? So it's going to what? No, I like it. It's very specific. Yeah, it's going to, so imagine my animal has the head of a viper snake, right? Okay, so its head is two inches long. And I want it to be able to fly, right? My animal has to be able to fly, but it needs to be able to fly silently. And the only bird that can fly silently is an owl.

So it has the head of a viper, very poisonous, small head. Venomous, if you will. Also small body, because it's an owl. Obese body. But silent, silent predator. And what's the third characteristic? Well, that would, I guess, be like... Of this tiny

adorable animal. All right. It's got a tiny viper head. A small, obese... Overall, right now, this is a puntable six inch tall animal. It's a football. But it can fly. You won't hear it coming. Dude, it'll just bite you right on the and fly away silently. So he's made a bat.

Hold on, no. Let's continue. Come on. Come on. You made a bat. You better put this thing on a fucking elephant's body. You guys, the third characteristic is what's going to truly differentiate

this from a bat. It's got a nuke attached to the back of it. That's not an animal. Just kidding. Calm down. Calm down. I wanted to see if it would fly.

All right? All right. It's got a tail, a rat-sized tail. But. It's needlepoint sharp. This is the worst animal I've ever. Well, that's my animal deal with it.

If you vote for me, I'll give you an extra $100 in cash. So Retepp made. It's an owl's body and wings and a fly. It has a one and a half inch long viper's head. Very venomous fangs. And it has a pin sharp rat tail. Yes. It's a very sharp tail the size of a rat's tail.

I didn't know that we could. But it flies silently. You keep forgetting to add that. It's a silent. predator. That's going to have a tough time with mine. Nah, it's going to destroy yours. So what a hefty gust of wind would destroy your? Nah, this is going to be an obese sow.

A tennis racket would destroy yours. So your your little two foot long 18 pound animal is going to have a tough time with mine. And I'm going against a buffoon and a biologist and I'm confident mine's going to win. Let's start with an elephant's body. Smart. It's big. Strong. Strong. Definitely capable of killing an Owl viper.

Yeah. Not if it's flying from above, dude. Okay. Elephants are afraid of mice. Come on. By the way, Forrest. One's got a rat tail, needle sharp. Hang on, quick question.

Forrest, could a viper kill a full-grown bull elephant? It probably couldn't even penetrate the skin. Thank you. Okay. Okay, great. So I've already beat you. A rat's needle tail could. Okay.

Okay. So I've got an elephants, a bull elephant's body, an African bull elephant. It will stomp on you. It is huge. It is stocky. Unless you're flying, but yeah. Guess what's going on up top? a giraffe's neck

if you haven't seen a giraffe swing its neck at someone or something it is terrifying it extends the body up another eight to ten feet it's not even a match so far carry on attached to the neck is the head and face of a great white shark

wow this is a terrifying animal how are you gonna contend with that forest obviously Retepp's animal is ludicrous and buffoonish your animals will be fight and each other, might as still going to be flying around. You created a bat with a rat's tail.

Carry on. We'll see who wins in the end. Who will be victorious. Remember, extra 100. You might get the sympathy vote. All right. Forest, who does not decide, you will be randomly chosen for the gift card, provided by Forrest.

What's your biologically awesome animal scientist guy? Okay, so here's what I'm going to go for. It's not a bat with a slightly sharpened tail. It's not a, it's not a, It's not an elephant with a head so heavy that it couldn't lift it off of the ground. Okay, fair. It is. Good point.

I'm going gorilla body. Nice. Smart. Very strong, large, aggressive. I'm going to put a rhinoceros's head on that. Oh, boy. Yep. Very protected.

Armour. Yeah, armored head. It's got a facial horn. I'm not sure if you're familiar with this. It's got a nice dick grown out of his nose. And I'm going to put this on giraffe legs. Wait, why? My giraffe legs, they're not that tall.

What? All right, go on, are they? Why would you say that? That's the only thing they're known for. Their necks are tall. They have long necks. Their legs are not tall. There's as tall as any other animals.

Are you picturing a bulldog? Listen, your great white shark on a giraffe's neck, it can't even lift its head up. You know the difference between a tortoise and a giraffe. My silent owl bat is going to be poking the shit out of your... concerned that the rhino head and the the gorilla body are going to crumble those little stick legs. This is a valid point. But so is so is great white shark head on a giraffe neck. My bat owl is getting angry for us.

He is. Do you see it? Do you see his teeth starting to connect? It's going to spit poison at both of your horrific. Why are you speaking through your teeth right now? Yeah, you look like a staff Richard Terrier, sir. So have you guys seen this, the coyote and the badger? San Francisco.

Do you know what I'm talking about? First of all, I didn't know that badgers, there are badgers in San Francisco? There are. And they're not just hairy gay guys on Polk Street. It's a real thing.

So let me dig into this for a second. This went viral this week. It is this incredible video footage. It's from a trail camera, one of my favorite tools. Yep. Of a North American

badger and a coyote. And it shows that they are working in unison. But it's not just that they're working in unison. The coyote is showing this incredible piece of playful body language where it's almost like a Disney film he's looking over his shoulder and saying come on bud this way come through this tunnel yeah and then he coaxes this badger this north american badger who kind of grumpily and slowly catches up to the coyote

and enters into this dark tunnel with this cute little button in the air i mean it's unbelievably adorable watching the video they're undeniably best friends they're best friends forever it's like the the new version of Timoan and Pumba right there. Dude, this is like a Disney, this is like an Ice Age type Disney movie of two animals of completely different species playing together in a sewage tunnel. So now watching the video,

the coyote is pretty young. So is it just because he's young? Like, would a grown coyote ever do that? Or am I nuts? How do you know it's young, dummy? It just looks small. So I think you're mistaking a small coyote for a big badger.

That's not necessarily a, young coyote. It's a full-grown adult coyote. So what the thing that I find fascinating here is the introspecies relationship. Right. So there is a reason these animals are doing this. This isn't just for pure joy. It isn't for fun. It isn't because they're

trying to star in their own Pixar movie. It's because these animals are sympathetic. And what that means is they will work together for a greater good. Now, what the understanding is, and I'd have to double check all of this because this is all new science, which is fantastic.

Yeah, yeah. But the understanding is that the coyote, the badgers will go down into holes and root around and scare stuff out. And then the coyote will pounce on it and kill it. And then they'll share the meal. Do you think they share evenly? I think it's kind of a gobble fest. It's like whoever gets down the most, the quickest. They work symbiotically until the food is actually in front of them.

Right. They're like us at Thanksgiving when the meal first comes out. It's like two frat guys with a bag of Taco Bell late at night. Yeah. Dude, it is super cool because coyotes are so fucking smart. You know there's a pack of coyotes living in Skid Row. Really? No, what?

I did not know this. Downtown? Yeah, they're living in Skid Row in downtown L.A. They're eating a diet mostly comprised of fruit that they're getting from a grocery store dumpster. Wow. And they've learned to cross the streets by listening to the noise. So in L.A., there's a noise that comes that tells you it's okay to cross for people that are blind. this pack of coyotes will cross the street together.

They wait at red lights and cross when it's safe. Unbelievable. Now, do you think that the coyotes are working with the homeless people to get food? What? What the fuck are you talking about? All right. Edit. I'm sorry for us.

No, that's staying in. That is not getting added. They're working symbiotically to kill and eat food with the badger. I mean, how did that go over both of your heads? I mean, all right. I'm not the funny ones. Or the interesting one. But you're here.

Exactly. I'm the one that's here. So here's what's amazing about coyotes going back to what we just said a second ago. They're eating a diet of mostly fruit. These are animals that are scrutinized across the country, right? Hunters shoot them for fun. We've been targeting. We've poisoned them, everything. And one thing that we've seen in their population is they always bounce back to a sustainable level.

They can live in downtown cities. They live in Chicago. They live in Los Angeles. They live in San Francisco. They can eat fruit. They can eat rodents. They can eat cattle. I mean, they're amazing adaptable animals.

And no matter what we've done to try and eradicate them, their population has somehow sustained healthy levels, which is incredible. They've been able to just fill the biological niche no matter what that niche is. That's interesting, but they're very cute, right? Coyotes are very cute. And they're adaptable and smart. I'm actually really surprised, like, why can't they be domesticated? It's a good question.

They're kind of a superior wolf in a way. The wolf's bigger and stronger. They're more social. But the coyote is solitary. And I think that leads to why they can't be domesticated. Right? So most dogs are derivatives of wolves, right? Wolves are pack animals.

So when you bring an animal, a dog in, it is looking for an apex. It's looking for an alpha. It's looking for a beta. It's going to be the beta or the omega. And it will follow your lead. A solitary animal brought in. into that environment is not used to those social dynamics. It doesn't know to respect the alpha.

It doesn't know to work as an omega. It doesn't know that it belongs as a beta. So instead it challenges, it coweres in fear. If you discipline it the way an alpha would discipline a beta, it doesn't know why it's being disciplined. It just thinks it's being abused. So an animal with that kind of solitary social structure does not make for a good pet. That's interesting.

which sort of, you know, it's a big part of the difference between cats and dogs, right? That's why everyone loves dogs and most people despise cats more than anything. I love cats. But cats are the same thing, right? That's why they're so independent and we'll just stick their ass in the air and walk away from you. Right. Thinking twice about it. Right.

They don't need you. Coyote doesn't need you either. Right. So frustrating because they're so cute. I want them to need me more than anything. The thing I love about cats is that they will come up to you purring, just budding their little head into your hand and then you look at the TV and they will bite you as hard as they can for no reason whatsoever. And I love that about my cat. So let's talk about cat behavior for a second

here. And all cats, here's a statement that's going to get people upset. Yes it is. All cats are the same animal. And here's why. This is from, this is personal anecdotal evidence. You remember the meat tree and Zanzibar? I sure do. How could you forget it? We built a whole tree of 30 foot tall tree of meat. A kitty cat's playground, if you will. So check this out, Reteb. When Patrick and I were in Zanzibar, the first ever extinct animal that we ever tracked down, this was concocted by Patrick and I at about one in the morning on our probably eighth night of trying everything humanly possible to try and find this leopard that I don't think either of us even actually thought existed at that point in time.

It's an extinct leopard. Right, right. Yeah. And so we came up. We had a few white claws. We had many, many drinks. And we came up with this idea based on Patrick's cat to create a giant kitty cat play toy filled with dangling toys that were also edible. Yeah, yeah.

So we decided to buy 300 pounds of goat and cow meat at the meat market and find a broken down tree and dangle all these bits from it. Dude, we were in the hotel room. We were talking, you know, we started talking about it. We had been drinking because I think maybe the next day was supposed to be our cruise off day. Right. We come up with this idea for the meat tree. We're howling laughing. Yeah.

And how fucking stupid it is. We're like, this is insane. Are we really going to do it? Yeah, we're going to do it. I mean, it does sound like,

as you're explaining it, it sounds completely nuts. Like, did you have to justify that to the production? Just put the word, well, we are production. We are.

Okay. But also, what we did was we walked around. We were this night because the next day was the off day, we'd got in a hotel. Right. And so we were forced and I walked around the hotel room, knocked on every person on the cruise doors and said, tomorrow's not an off day now. Yeah.

We're building a meat tree. And just put the words meat tree in your pocket for a second. This is what we kept saying. We didn't explain it to anybody. We just had this idea and we said tomorrow's meat tree. Yeah. Meat tree tomorrow. Meet us sometime.

And it worked. I was going to say, I mean, like it worked. It worked. worked. Well, the funny thing is, I guess it didn't actually work the way we quite anticipated it to. No, it didn't. Wait, wait, wait. So now what happened? So we built this meat tree. It took us all night. Like, I think we started like four in the afternoon. We were done around, like, what was it, like, midnight by the time we were done. It took half the night. We were hanging pound after pound of meat from all these strings. It was the most graphic cryptic thing. I mean, it was nuts. Yeah. And we peppered the air with trail cameras.

And we were like, all right, if anything's going to have, you know, look, there was real science behind us. We're like, you know, we're going to put the air. Yeah, white claw. Right. We're going to put the meat off the ground so that the scent can travel further. You know, we're going to dangle it so that it's visually attractive. But who knows what the hell is going to happen? Well, turned out we ended up catching an image of this leopard on one of our trail cameras that was pointed in the complete opposite direction nowhere near the meat tree.

Nice. But it smelled the meat, clearly. I mean, that's the only reason it came over. Let's be real. So the camera that caught it was sort of a joke camera. Like we just put it up to get some shots of your hands putting up a trail camera essentially. And it was pretty close to the parking area. It was.

So the meat tree was like two or three miles of like bushwhacking hike into the middle of this fucking jungle. Right. And we catch an extinct Zanzibar leopard on camera. Wow. I believe with a bag of Cheetos in its mouth that had taken out of the dumpster diving. Are you kidding me? It really had Cheetos in its mouth? No.

It was close to an area where a lot of humans. had traveled and it was fucking bonkers because you know I was talking to Mitch or a forest camera guy and we were like dude like I've spent like five nights just like walking through this jungle by myself there was a fucking leopard in this jungle I don't know if you know much about leopards but they are one of the they're one of the only animals that will actively hunt humans right it will kill you absolutely right yeah but like there are leopards in India that are famous that have names that killed over a hundred humans. There's only a handful of species that have ever been declared true man-eaters,

and that means they have, you know, they have developed a taste for human flesh, and leopards are one of them. Like you said, there was one notable one I'm blanking on his name right now that it killed over a hundred people out of a village in India. It would sneak into their huts at night and drag people from their beds. Take them up a tree and eat them. Dude, we recently got back from a trip. We met these local guys, and they were going to take a...

us to see what they claimed was this area where this animal called the Saola lived. The Salo. Saola. How do you say it? Saula. Salah. So they were going to take us to this area, these local hunters, deep into the jungle, to see this area where they said there were Saola.

And we were, you know, kind of trying to be friends with them. And they were, it was a little touch and go. And they said, we'll come out with us tonight. Right. And then we'll go into the jungle. So we thought, sure. Yeah, obviously. Why not?

Yeah. We didn't know that two hours later, we were going to be at a karaoke bar where there were doing nitrous balloons. And high on nitrous, they were asking us to try and climb across the water pipes at the top of the ceiling to get from the stage where you do karaoke to the door. The floor is lava, but cranked up to level 1,000. So essentially you guys thought that you were going on like a wild jungle nighttime exotic adventure. And you basically ended up at the equivalent of your hometown bar when you were 21.

No, we had to do this. We had to do this so that they would take us into the jungle. Yeah. This was the test? It seemed that way. Okay. All right. You got me now.

Now I'm curious. Now, I don't know if you've ever taken a face full of nitrous balloon and tried to hang from the water. pipe, rafters. Never hung from rafters, but absolutely taking balloons. It's quite something. So it's like 13 feet out. So it's like if you fall, you're probably going to hurt your ankle real bad. Right, right.

They were like insistent that all of us took these massive nitrous balloons and then tried this quest to get from the stage to the door 13 feet high by monkey barring across the water pipes. But here's the thing about the nitrous balloons, right? When you huff one, you have to inhale this entire balloon, right? this huge freaking balloon. So it's like a novelty size balloon. It's like a Macy's float. Okay.

But halfway through inhaling this balloon, you black out. You have to have a spotter. Patrick was my spotter to catch you. Literally. Because you just black out halfway through and your head drops. And then one second later, you just pop back to. Well, yeah, because I mean, you're basically cutting off the oxygen to your brain. Right.

That's what's happening. Essentially. Okay. So you guys are basically holding. like cutting off the oxygen to your brain and then swinging across monkey bars. That's where we're at right now. Keep in mind that we think the next day

these guys are going to take us to this hidden place where they've seen this the rarest animal essentially on earth. Right. They don't speak English. We don't speak Vietnamese. So we're just kind of smiling at each other and they're directing us to,

they're pointing at the woman who's filling this nitrous balloons. Wow. And so we're like, crazy already. You know, myself and Mitch and the rest of the crew are like, yeah, I don't think we really want to do a lot of nitrous tonight.

But you guys had no idea that this is what would be happening when you went with these guys initially. You were just like, okay. No, not even close. Okay. So I look at Forest. I go, have you ever done nitrous before?

He goes, no, of course not. Like, all right, so. I'm not a car from Fast and Furious, so no, no, I haven't had NOS. We just start ripping these balloons And then one at a time Start trying to crawl across these Hot water pipes

That are literally, if you keep your hand on it for too long Your hand starts to burn Yeah, this is insane And so then one at a time just falling Everyone's hurting their feet It's so far twisting their ankles Oh my God This resulted in nothing by the way

The moral of the story is this didn't help us on our quote It did not It's essentially like a challenge in a Zelda game I mean, you know, but like a ridiculous Zelda game where you guys had to unlock the palace or whatever and then they were just fucking with you at the end of it No, they took us. They took us out in the jungle.

Everyone got several hundred leeches on their bodies and we just went to an area Yeah, just went to an area where there was No animals whatsoever because they'd hunted them all Right. Plus leeches. Yeah. What happened with the cobra?

So we find this little island. We go to this island to see these monkeys, and Forest is like pointing at the monkeys. We're looking at them. We're filming them. And they're making a ton of noise, right? Like they're making alert calls, so we know something weird is going on. And I'm telling, tell him Patrick, I'm telling the camera for them. Like, something's up.

Like, these monkeys shouldn't be. The monkeys are suspicious of something. Well, they shouldn't be screaming like this if there wasn't something going on. Right. There's nothing else around there. It's this little remote island. And all of a sudden our assistant camera guy, Johnny, just starts screaming behind me. I think he cried.

Yeah, he's yelling. It's snake. I turn around to see him fall down in this pile of leaves. Forest takes off, runs past me. And there is a cobra. A fucking cobra. We ran in. I grabbed this cobra.

It reared up. It was striking. It was huge. It was like a nine foot long monocled cobra. That's huge. It's fucking huge. It's gigantic. Nine feet is huge.

It was a big snake. And it's striking and hissing and it's even spitting venom and doing all the stuff. So in order to not get venom spat in my eyes or be injected by it, I asked Patrick for his t-shirt so I could cover its head. And I didn't want to pull off my shirt, had a microphone on it. This is very important. I'm a host. I'm number one here. Sure.

Can't mess up the shot. That's right. So I say, Patrick, give me your shirt. So Patrick in a flash rips off his shirt. Looks great. I don't know how he was. a oiled by my. It throws me a shirt and I throw the shirt over the cobra's face. Now of course in doing this the cobra just goes wild, starts striking, hissing,

biting Patrick's shirt over and over again. The short of the story is we move the cobra, we let him go, always fine, and I picked up Patrick's shirt to hand it back to him and it's dripping in cobra venom. Sorry. What'd you deal with that? That's a fucking lie, sir. literally we finish the cobra's you know disappears we film it we can't see it anymore he just picks my shirt up off the ground and essentially spikes it into my face

he's like there's a shirt bud an interesting thing you told me before don't they make like a type of liquor in Vietnam that has cobra venom in it snake wine snake wine is that with cobra venom it is and here's why because venom can be broken down by our stomach acids so if you eat venom it does nothing to you

But if it enters into your, no, no. Well, the wine does. The venom does nothing. What's the point of having it in there? It fucks you up, dude. We drank it. You guys had it? Wait, so what did it feel like?

Like drink an absent or something like that? I'm not someone who falls prey to the, I think it, so I feel it. Right, right. You don't fall for the pseudoscience. Not a big placebo effect. No, I'm not a placebo guy. That's what it's called scientist. Sorry.

I mean, the think it feel it method? Yeah, please continue. I thought it was called Thinky-Feeley. So Christina and I were in after this trip where you tried to kill me with the cobra. We went on a, we went on a little like tourist vacation on this boat trip and how long. How long, right? Yeah, it was great. So we ride down in this little village and there's this little pagoda and they're selling snake wine.

Okay. It's noon, but whatever. You're in Vietnam. You just fought off a cobra and crocodiles. Man up. Have some snake wine. Yeah, so we get the snake wine. I'm telling you two shots of the stuff, and it felt weird. It felt like a cross between alcohol and weed.

Interesting. Yeah, it felt very strange. Was it good or bad? Would you do it again? It just tasted like moonshine, you know? So it tasted horrible, but did it make you feel good? Oh, really good. Happy smiley.

Did you see the snake in the bottle? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that is pretty dangerous. So you fought a crocodile, fought a cobra snake, And then you basically ate while you drank its baby. You said the baby was in the bottle. So yeah, it was a baby cobra.

Are they venomous or now? Very much so. To be clear, cobras in Vietnam are farmed for that. So first of all, don't get me wrong. So I'm not promoting anybody just eating cobras or drinking them for that matter. But this is sort of a sustainable way to do it. So before anybody judges, too hard, just know that they're farmed for this in Vietnam. Forrest, what was the very first life or death situation you were in?

And how old were you? Oh, man. Good question. The youngest one that I can recall was when I was probably about 12 years old. It's a good age. It's a good age. Yeah. And it's right at that age where you're just cocky enough to do stupid things, but young enough to not realize the gravity of what you're doing.

Sure. Yeah. Real stupid. Still real dumb. Right. Yeah, and I've clearly grown out of that. Anyway, so I had a little pee-we-50 motorcycle, and I lived on a farm in Zimbabwee at this point in my life. And I was down at the dam being a typical biology nerd and catching snakes and frogs and lizards and everything else.

And I caught the snake called a rhombic knight adder. Now, the rhombic knight-adder is a mildly venomous knight-adder, but to a 12-year-old boy, it can be quite lethal. Okay, so if that snake, let's say, bit a dog, the dog's dead. Dog would die. Okay. If it bit an adult man, he would be incredibly ill and possibly die. Right, but it bites an 80-pound child bad stuff. It's not good.

Okay, so you start handling it. So, of course, yeah, I pick up this rhombic night adder. I'm free handling it. It bites me on the wrist. It took all of about 15 seconds. Okay. Fortunately, like a true nerd, I had my little field book with me. I circled where the bite was and I wrote down the name of the

snake on my on my wrist with my pen jumped on my motorcycle and started driving back towards our farmhouse now all i can remember was as i was driving all of a sudden there were black rings in my vision and it just started to tunnel and get more and more narrow and then the motorcycle at going as fast as i could possibly go so what is that is that the blood vessels in your eyes restricting what makes the vision tunnel out like i actually don't know i think it was basically just the toxicity just overall, just overcoming all my senses. Your body's shutting down. Slowly dying.

As you're going 70 miles an hour on the bike. As fast as I could go on my bike. At 12, by the way, 12 years old. And that's the last thing I remember is just my vision tunneling. And apparently I wrecked the motorcycle right by the compound where all of the farm workers lived. And they saw that, grabbed me, ran me up over their shoulders up to the house to my mom. Where I had this snake's name written on my arm and she took me to the hospital and I was in a coma for two days. Woke up two days later, completely confused, but still very much so alive.

Did it turn out that writing the name of the snake allowed them to get you like the anti-venin? Anti-venin? Is that a word? That is what it's called. No, it's not venom. No, it's anti-venin. Wow, I'm an idiot. All right, carry on.

Leave that in. I'm absolutely leaving. I'm not cutting anything out. This is unedited. Did writing the name of the snake actually help you survive? Not in the sense that they gave me anti-venom for the snake, but I think had I not done that, they wouldn't have known what the cause was because the bite was so small.

It was just two little tiny puncture holes, and it could have been from anything. When I crashed the motorcycle, I lost a bunch of skin, you know, just like road rash. Oh, fuck. There was no way of knowing what it was from. They could have thought it was just me banging my head. So fortunately, because I wrote the name of the snake on my arm,

they put me on an IV and I don't know what else to be honest because I was 12 but they didn't give me anti-venom and I did make a full recovery so was this well mostly I mean you're still not you know all there clearly brain damage well no just a little bit all right so some news that really caught my attention did you hear about this obese owl the obese owl I heard about it because you texted me about it incessantly for about four days. It makes no sense to me. Okay, explain this to me.

So what's the story here? My understanding of it is there was an explosion of field mice in the UK. And therefore... So fat. I'm looking at them. He's gross. She. She's sorry.

All right. So you've got mice. And these owls just engorge themselves to the point of being two-thirds heavier than any other owl of their same species. But this owl, that they caught was stuck in a ditch in a puddle. It's grotesque. Imagine going to In-N-Out burger and eating 300 in-and-out burgers

and then not being able to get out of the gutter beside In-N-Out burger. But see, the thing I don't understand about this is this is natural behavior. This is human behavior in an owl. I mean, it's definitely natural behavior. You know, there's a term called Henhouse Syndrome where an animal gets into the hen house and has as much prey as it wants and in this case decided to just eat it all instead of just kill it all and got so heavy that it literally couldn't fly stuck in a ditch which then theoretically would have made the owl susceptible to predators 100% yeah why would it do that shouldn't it know not to do

that through like well i mean they're not all smart like there's got he's probably just a really stupid owl just like there's dumb humans i mean the term bird brain comes to mind straight away we have so much time to talk bullshit when we're, you know, we've had so many long car rides and stuff like that. We always talk, you know, and all the guys who work on the show are huge animal nerds as well, which is part of what makes it so fun. We talk a lot about what's your favorite animal and shit like that always comes back to the octopus. The octopus, the alien octopus. Let's get into it.

They're from out of space. What do you think? Reteb, let me lay this on you for a minute. Have you ever seen an octopus? Not in real life, no. You've never been to an aquarium guy? You're useless at that. That is terrible.

I mean, I have to be here to basically be the opposite of you two who are out there adventuring in the jungle and shit. Are you familiar with the animal known as an octopus? I've never heard of it. No, I'm just kidding. Of course. Yes. It's got eight legs, octo. They have eight legs.

They're tentacles. They have the ability to change the color of their skin, the texture of their skin. They have the same tasting abilities in each sucker. of which they have hundreds per arm on their legs. Where did this creature? They're not related to anything. Where did this creature come from? They have nine brains.

So it's one central in the head, and each tentacle has its own brain. Plus three hearts. Fuck off, Octopus. Yeah. Well, not from the earth, clearly. So here's the theory. Let me lay the theory on you and you tell me what you think. The theory is that on an asteroid, on a meteor that hit the ocean came the,

this not necessarily single-celled but the simple-celled organism that crashed into the ocean and the heat and power from that crash created the ancient version of an octopus it's not been able to mate with anything

it's not been able to change it's just been its own linear evolutionary creature that's created our modern day octopus the idea being that a meteor is comprised of frozen water right it froze because it's a simple or single-celled organism, it can survive in the vacuum of space and frozen water,

crashes into the ocean. Obviously, there's massive heat as it's coming through the atmosphere. Kickstarts it. A lot of different conditions. The idea is that its DNA sequence isn't related or traceable to any other animal on earth. Right. It's a complete outlier. It can look like a rock. It can completely camouflage itself. So Forrest, have you heard about this experiment they did? So they, I'm not sure was octopus or cuddlefish. Okay. Are all cephalopods related or no? From far enough back they are.

So cephalopod is an order of different animals, which is very, very far back. Amazing animal. Are they cuddly? Sorry. We'll put a link in the show notes. You're using D's where there are T's. That's what I'm here for. Cuddlefish. But so they did an experiment where they took cuddlfish,

which are a distant relative of the octopus, which color and texture. Correct. They match their color and texture to whatever is behind them. Right. Right. So it's always been a little bit of a mystery because they can't see it.

Their eyes are facing forward and yet they're changing to what's in the background. So they put Cuddlefish in front of this fake false background in a complete vacuum of light. So it's completely pitch black. There is zero light seepage. Changed out the background, turned on the lights. and the cuttlefish had already changed to the background in a vacuum of light. Amazing. They have no idea how the fuck do colors.

They think actually colors might have vibrations to them. I think I know. It's obviously an alien. It's got to be. I don't know that that necessarily explains the biological phenomenon, but I like where your head's at. Thanks. As an actual scientist, we're buffoons. As an actual scientist, do you believe?

leave the alien theory? So what you're describing is a thing called intelligent chromatophore. Geez, I've had a lot of white clad. Yeah, yeah. I'm cooling it. I'm cooling it myself. What you're describing in the cuttlefish and the octopus in their skin is something called intelligent chromatophores.

Okay. What that means is the skin itself is intelligent. It's able to pick up the color and change. Now, that doesn't explain how it's able to do that without light. Whoa. But the fact that this creature has been able to evolve, whether it came as a single-celled organism from out of space or elsewhere. The fact that it's been able to evolve skin that can change color on its own without thought

is unbelievable. So the skin is not communicating with the brain. It doesn't need to. It could, just like the same if you pinch our skin, it hurts. Right. But it doesn't need to. It can just put its arm down on something and change to that color without its brain even being aware of it.

I mean, it's got to be one of the craziest things in science. It's the craziest thing I've ever heard. Yeah, right? Forget science. Is there any other animal that has intelligent chromatophores? So, chameleons are notorious for changing color. Right. They have a similar system, but it's not necessarily an intelligent chromatophores.

So they need to visually see the color in order to change for it. Gotcha. So the cephalopods. Yeah, so they're communicating with their brain. Correct. They're using their brain to match the color. They're fucking stupid compared to these guys. Compared to cephalopods, they're dunces.

It's a garbage animal. Yeah. When you look at a cephalopod and it changes colors, you're like, holy shit, when you look at a chameleon do it, you're like, that ain't shit. That's nothing. Oh, God. I don't want you, Retep, to get a pet chameleon. Why not?

You'll be popping it on the fucking television screen to see what it does. I wasn't thinking about it, but now I think I'm going to do it on the way back, on the way home. What happens if you put a chameleon on a TV screen? I don't think it could keep up. Why are humans so just vanilla? We can't do much except for think. Well, that's why. We've contributed all of our biological energy to our brains.

Right. We have large brains and useless bodies. Not me, bro. I've been working out. Have you ever seen a human baby? They can't do anything but grow their brain. That's it. Dude, I have a 15-week-old German Shepherd.

It knows almost as much as I do. Patrick and I, along with the rest of our crew, spent two weeks trekking into the world's largest cave. Han Songdong. Han Songdong. Now that sounds like I was being funny, but that's actually what it's called. No, you're just being racist. Yeah, very racist.

Yeah, that's good point. Yeah, fair enough. So one of our guides was the guy who found it, the local hunter from the village, who found it in, I think, 97 or 98, and then it took him 11 years to find it again. That's right. Wow, that's crazy. So we went in to look for. for an extinct animal because there's a rainforest growing in the middle of the cave. It's that big of a cave.

It has its own entire weather system and ecosystems. Forest almost drowned. I did almost drown. Going down into the cave. We're filming the show. And forests wanted to bring his bag across this ice cold cave lake. Under one ground river. I mean, this lake is so fucking cold that you can't, you know, your bones.

don't work. It's water that's never seen sunlight. So I'm like, I go to Han Forest a life jacket and he looks at me and he says, if you don't take that life jacket back, I'm never going to talk to you again. Exact words. So I had my backpack filled with heavy batteries, flashlights, everything else you need in a cave. So I decided to tread water across the lake with my backpack. Everything you need except for the life vest. Exactly. Sands life vest. And I decided to tread water with my backpack over my head across the lake, which worked for approximately eight feet of the 300 foot lake crossing. It's like literally 52 degrees.

It's so cold. I don't think people really understand how cold 52 degree water is. That's freezing. Yeah. As Patrick said, I nearly drowned. I started sinking. It was so cold. I couldn't hold the way to my backpack up any longer.

And I looked at Patrick. We made eye contact. And I could tell you there was a moment where we understood each other perfectly. Oh, yeah. Just by the eye contact. by the eye contact. Because Patrick could tell I was about to die, but he could also tell that if he had told anyone to help me,

I would have been livid. The camera guys all started looking at me. Like, is it time to put the camera down and help? And I was just shaking my head like, no, no. This is great. This is good. Keep it rolling. Yeah.

And so he, at least document. That's your job. Right. And so Forrest makes it across after his near death experience. And he gets up onto the rocks. Plays it off walks out of the frame We've got the shot That's all that really matters

Soking wet goes over Start setting up his tent Strips his freezing cold clothes off And I went over to talk to him about something And he's just sour And I was like, oh, he's pissed Because he almost just fucking died But he would have been more pissed

Had you come to the rescue I was like should I have sent someone in? He's like, I would have quit the show If you sent someone And we are wrapping up our show the wild times. It has indeed been a wild So wild.

If you've enjoyed listening to it, go to iTunes, leave us a review. Everybody that leaves us a review, leave us a comment. And if you give us a comment, we will pick a random winner from all those that comment, and that winner will get a $100 gift card to Cool.

That's K-U-H-L-Cool. They make outdoor clothing. The best shit. It's the best. It's hands-down, the best outdoor gear. There is. And you're going to want to want to wear it so that you look like your hero Patrick Deluca.

Yeah, for sure. That's a good idea. And if you feel like it, vote for my animal, which would clearly win, the owl with the viper head and the rat tails. Just say bat. Yeah, you just a bat with a rat tail. You fuck. All right. Good night, guys.

Good night. Beed-de-bap-bap-bap-di-de-de-d-d-d-d-d-pap-d-d-d-wildtimes.