Wild Times: Wildlife Education - Extinct Animal Lost for 6,000 Years Found in West Papua

Episode Date: April 20, 2026

This week we discuss the largest snake ever found, Thylacine in West papua, and interview Jon Hall and Dr. Charles Foley on their extinct animal rediscovery. Enjoy!Nic Nac: Get your Nic Nacs at http://nicnac.com/wildtimes and use code WILDTIMES for 20% off.Rocket Money: Cancel unwated subscriptions at http://rocketmoney.com/wildtimesGet More Wild Times Podcast Episodes:https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/sh...  / wildtimespod  Our Favorite Products:https://www.amazon.com/shop/thewildti...Music/Jingles by: www.soundcloud.com/mimmkeyThis video may contain paid promotion.#ad #sponsored #forrestgalante #extinctoralive #podcast

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And then I realized it was Peter. Scraming. All right. So, first of all, this is the Wild Times. Welcome to our studio. Welcome to our podcast. Known as the greatest podcast, not on Earth, but in the universe. It's Joe Rogan's favorite podcast.

He says it at least once a week. He texted me about it, actually. Oh, there you go. I am your host, Forrest, the broologist. We've got the producer. and the brofessor here, Peter and Patrick, respectively. Kyle, behind the scenes, doing his thing. Don't know that we've ever added him in the intro before.

He's just the bro switcher or something. I don't know. I'll have to think about that. He's a junior producer. This is going to be a good show. There's going to be a good show. Do you want to explain the very exciting thing that's coming up? We're going to have an interview in a little bit.

A guest with some guests, two guys. Two guests, actually. Who recently completed something that's in the news. We have not met them yet. They went to probably the most unexplored habitat on Earth. I would agree with that. And discovered one unknown species. Yeah.

Lost for thousands of years, only known from fossil records. Huge expedition. And we're going to ask them something that nobody's asked them. We're going to ask them if they heard any whisperings of thylacine while they were there. So that'll give you a clue as to where they went. That's coming up in about 20, 30 minutes, something like that. Yeah, let's do it. But until then, hey, Kyle, let me ask you a quick question.

Yes. What's in the news? What's in the news? Okay. Thank you for the jingles. I got a little actual mystery. Oh, okay. Hit us.

Kyle, pull up a picture of Hampshire, United Kingdom. Hempshire. Yeah, Hempshire. This is said in Hampshire United Kingdom. There go all our UK listeners. I don't need the map. I need to see what the village looks like. So look at Hempshire.

Oh my God, it looks great. It's a beautiful little town. Yeah, it's a postcard-looking British hassle there. I'm sure that you can get some crumpets there. Undeniably. That's like the Shire. That is like from the Lord of the Rings. It does look like that.

People that live in Hampshire have seen two, not one but two, mysterious creatures traveling the streets together. Oh. Walking the sidewalks, people aren't sure what they're looking at. Is it a weasel and a ward hog?

Yep. Is that a Lion King reference? Yeah, it was. The animals are about, I don't know, three feet long. Okay. Covered in some sort of hair or fur.

Mammals. People are reporting that they're, picturing it. Okay. That they're like kind of grayish or maybe brown. Okay. And two distinctly different types of animals.

No, no. They seem to be the same. same like they're traveling together. Oh, interesting. Just walking the streets and sidewalks of Hampshire, okay. England, what, I mean, what are we thinking? A three foot long? Well, there's only like 10. 15 animals total in the UK. That's correct.

Insects. Yeah. Interesting. Okay, I'll take a first crack at this. Sure. I'm going to guess just based on the fact that it's the UK and the only creature that I have seen repeatedly when I've been in the UK are foxes. I'm going to guess it's a red fox. Okay.

Now let me give you some more information here. Please. People aren't scared. Is there a reason you're zooming in on this dog's anews? This is the animal. It's not. It's not a brown dog. Yeah, they're saying that the animals are a bit skittish, not seeming to be aggressive at all.

Okay. And some people are describing them as they appear to be very cute. Yeah. I know what Peter's doing and it's making me angry. He's chat GPTing list of animals from the United Kingdom. It's actually what mammals are in the UK dog-sized. It's funnier when you just say nonsense than when you use the internet. I want to, I know animals.

I just can't think of them on the spot. By the way, I want to go to Hampshire after looking at all these pictures. It looks lovely. Three foot long. Except I know the food sucks. Yeah, of course. Dude, it's besteeve how bad the food is in the United Kingdom. People are going to be mad about that.

that. Well, they should be because their food's gross. We love you. I'm going to guess it's a stout. All right. It's not a stout. I will give you one more clue. Can I take a guess? Yeah. There's only five, literally. Five small mammals. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry. This would be a badger. It's a great guess. Thank you, Chad, GPT. But now I'm going to give you one more clue. And there's no earthly way you could possibly guess what it is.

Okay. So it escaped. It escaped from a zoo. Okay. Only one day after being introduced to the nearby zoo. And the neighborhood that it's prowling around is three miles from said zoo. I love this now. Peter, now your chat GBT is useless.

Worthless. So it doesn't help you. Take a crack. So a small mammal that escaped. From a zoo. From a zoo. It's zoo worthy. So it's probably not a dog or cat.

An otter. Oh, good guess. Really good guess. Very good guess. I'm going to guess it's a friendly pair of binturongs. Two excellent guesses, but alas. Wait, Kyle, do the sound. He doesn't know how to do it.

I mean, there's no way you could have really guessed it. Two adorable capybaras are wandering the streets of Hampshire. Wow. Good. Yeah. I support this. Yeah, I love this. England has four animals.

Let's just let the capy's go. So they brought Samba, the Capi Barra, to the zoo near Hampshire, with her, along with her sister. And lo and behold, on their first night, they somehow escaped and made it out into the city. And they're just kind of wandering the streets and people are stoked. Okay. I mean, they got them back. But it took a little while. No, one is on the loose.

Oh, oh, Samba's still on the loose. Good, yes. Good, good. So I have a couple things to say here. Yeah. I don't know what the zoo is, but I'm going to go ahead and say they're awful because it's, they're never going to invite us over. But here's why.

Do you know how hard it is to have a Capybara escape from something? Yeah. You could literally just give it three walls and it wouldn't figure out how to get it. It would just be like, I don't know, there's a wall in front of me. They're not really great climbers, right? They kind of climb, they kind of jump, they barely run fast. They're incredibly simple as an animal. The real mystery here is how did it get out?

That's what I'm saying? Like, what is this facility? Did they just decide to put it in a cardboard box for the night? And they're like, this will work. Yeah. Is there any Intel, Kyle, on how it escaped? No, no, it's a mystery. Yeah, that's, you know, when something like that happens,

it's usually a human being fucked up. Of course. Yeah, door got left unlocked or whatever. It has to be. It's the only logical explanation. But that's insane. Like, I would list a million animals before I got to Capy Barra making an escape. from a zoo. It's funny, though, because, like, think about, you know, every day you walk out of your house.

You know, you might hear some birds. Yep. Maybe, you know, you see a little cat that's a street cat. You know, whatever. You kind of, like, have this set thing of, like, what you're going to see. Like, it would be fun to just be, like, grabbing the groceries out of the car and you just see, like, two really cute capy bars just trotting by. There's a neighborhood. Is it Buenos Aires that has a neighborhood that has capy bars everywhere?

Like, dream come true. It's like a housing. development. Yeah. Yeah. And they're just, they're just all over. Yeah. They just live integrated with that town now. It was a big news story year or two ago. I'm such a fan of this. It's great. And they're, and they're native to Argentina, right? Yes. Yes. Yeah. And it was a big deal because they're like, look at that. Yeah, they just hang out like pets and they're not scared of the humans and they are nice. So I saw something, um, huge rodents. They're hilarious. I saw something interesting on my Instagram yesterday.

You know, I have like a sub, you know on Instagram you can save things. Like you can have a folder of save things. Yeah. You wouldn't know this. He knows this. No, I do. I didn't know this,

actually. I have a folder of just label tools. And every time I see a really cool jetboard or like a repelling harness or something. Oh, I thought it was going to be like some kit with a broccoli haircut. Oh.

Tools. Every time. Did it. And I save it. So I get fed on my Instagram reels a lot like unique outdoor tools. Yeah. Yesterday I got fed an ad for a Chinese net gun, except the net gun was two videos of myself using professional netguns.

Like they had found videos of me on the internet using net guns and clip them as though that was their product that they were selling for like 3999. Yeah. And I was like, oh, I know. Second one. Oh, no, no, that's a TikTok. That's I probably post that. You can try that, but that's one of the two clips they used.

Yeah. And, yeah. And then there, when... Let me see if I can find it, Kyle. I might actually have saved it because it was so funny. And then when you get the one they send you in the mail, it's literally just a picture of a net gun on a postcard. Yeah, it's just some kind of utter garbage.

Dude, I'm done buying stuff off social media, man. I've just... I've gotten burned consistently. Like, you know, I told you about the Advent calendar that showed up. It was the size of a fucking postcard. Dude, the other thing, man. So if you... Here's a little tip.

Because everyone's on Instagram, whatever. I don't know how TikTok shop works. But if you get fed an ad for something, let's say you're going to buy a shirt or something like that. Take a screenshot of the shirt and reverse image search it on Google. Yeah. Yep. Because it's come from somewhere else.

Oh, 100%. Whatever, like you're being shown this shirt on Instagram and the name of the company's, you know, dinkies. Put it in a reverse image search. you'll see a hundred other images of that shirt being sold by other companies with different names. Yeah. And they're just shipping, like, you'll order like a medium of the shirt that looks cool. Yeah.

It shows up and it's a nightgown. Right, yeah. I'm like, what the fuck is this shit? Yeah, it's crazy. Like, it's just a scam. Everything seems like it's a scam that's being sold on there. Have you guys noticed on Amazon, you'll see a lot of times that the company name will just be like, XYZ Vigavigigig like a random nonsense word like all the time like and uh what happened was that

there was so many of these like knockoff kind of brands from China or wherever just coming on and selling this garbage these counterfeit items that Amazon made it so that to be able to sell they enacted a rule that essentially said you had to own the trademark to the name of the brand. Oh interesting. So what these companies then started doing to get around. that they just like random letters with no vowels as the name of their company so there's no possible way it's ever been trademarked and then they just go quickly get a trademark for it and then now they're selling you the same generic bullshit craziness dude not a sponsor but you remember there was that company that made some of those mushroom like mushroom pouches oh the yeah yeah

yeah so you want to say their name or not yeah yeah so we were doing those right so I went to order some yeah so I was like it's I kind of liked them uh-huh they showed up and they're fucking disgusting and they were hurting my mouth and the oh really and I was like what the fuck is this and so I went online and everyone's complaining about the same thing people thought it was the company

that sent us the mushroom pouches that was flow by the way right yeah it's not I read a thing the owner of that company that was just some dudes trying to do like a nicotine pouch alternative yeah healthy some Chinese company came in took the same name

wow and just flooded the internet with ads for their shit. It's so annoying. Unbelievable. And their blend is like definitely like terrible for you. Going to kill you. Wow, dude. And I literally got an order of like 12 tins.

Put one in it like my mouth almost exploded. Yeah. I was texting you guys and I just had to throw them all out. Because literally someone was just like, cool, we're just going to do that. What is the point of starting a business in today's world? Like a like an e-commerce business. Quick money, money grab. I know, but like imagine.

So I talk to those kids at the flow pouch. They were young guys, college kids, and they're like, we're trying to do a healthy alternative. You know, we're going to do mushroom pouches with a flavor. Yeah. And then they're, you know, they probably invested their entire, like, college savings account into this. Yeah. To try and get it up off the ground. And then some Chinese company goes, oh, all right, just a good idea.

Yeah. And then that's it. It's over. That's great. Leave it in. I know what Cal's about to say. He's like, well, we kind of air that. No, no, just bleed it.

It's too late. He has gone. He does it? Does he? Yeah. He's constantly doing that when he makes fun of Bobby Lee. So it's okay now. There's nothing wrong with it.

Like that is your interpretation of what the guy at the Chinese company was. It was more the South Park guy for the Chinese South Park guy who does city food, shitty food or what? Shitty walk. Yeah, it was more that guy's voice in my head. Yeah. All right. So I want to throw one out there.

Kyle hated that. No, he's cracking up back there. Tell us. Tell us. Well, because sometimes I think something's awesome because of the headline. Yeah. And then you go, pass.

This sucks. Yeah. I'll call you an idiot. Right. All right. Well, what if I told you that in February, a new world record was set in the animal kingdom? Boom. For the longest snake, wild snake, ever recorded. Oh, yeah, I was there.

You were in Indonesia? Yeah, they took the picture when I pulled my pants down. Got it. How did you not see yourself walking into that trap? Is this a big deal? It is, and I'll explain why. So it is and it isn't. shitting on it at all. And I will shit on your parade immediately when I can. Yeah, you do it off

camera all the time. Of course. It's, it's a big deal because it's official. Yeah. There are undeniably 100% bigger snakes out there. There have been bigger snakes out there. We've seen them. This is the first time it's been documented. So I'm very familiar with the story. These guys went to Indonesia. They looked for a reticulated python. A known one that was called the baron, I think it was called. Oh, interesting. The baroness. The baroness. That's a. Yeah. So it was a known female retic and they're like, this is a really big snake. Let's go find her and measure her. And then they found her, measured her with Guinness World Records there. Like they brought Guinness with them. Yeah. And verified that it was 23 feet and 8 inches long.

Okay. Which by the way is fucking huge. It's huge. Kyle, see if you can find the picture of the guy lying down next to it. This is not a small human being by the way. Yeah, look at that. Wow. That's the same snake. That's the one. Yeah, that's baroness. Holy. Holy. cow that is a 23 feet 8 inches she's not even fully extended there either she's still curled up a bit now i mean that's essentially probably not full school bus but it's getting close it's getting close

now i'll explain why it's not groundbreaking it first of all this is important to back up for a second year by the way look at cow's messages do you see those smoke shows sliding into his dms the bottom right there that's my girlfriend and my mom okay i stand by everything i just said. Nice.

Leave that in. So, okay, everything is always over embellished by people. Right? That's correct. I've seen it time and time again. Oh my God, help me. There's a six-foot rattlesnake in my backyard, and I get there, and the rattlesnakes two and a quarter feet.

Right. And I mean, it's every alligator in Florida. There's a nine-footer, and you get there, it's a five-footer, right? So we're conditioned to think that there are 30-foot-long, 50-foot-long, 50 foot long snakes out there. Because that's the stories. That's what people talk about. Oh, I saw a 30-foot anaconda,

you know, a 30-foot Fermis, Python, in the Everglades. Like, you hear numbers like that thrown out all the time. Those are over-embellishments that have societally become accepted. We're like, oh, there's 30-foot snakes out there. There aren't, by the way. And there probably have been historically,

but right now there aren't. Are there 24-foot snakes out there? inches bigger, four inches bigger than this? Yes. Are there 25 foot snakes out there? Maybe. You know what I mean? But why this is substantial is because they officially now have the largest measured snake ever longest at 23 feet and 8 inches, which is good because maybe that, going back to my previous point, that societal nonsense, that convention of I've seen 30 foot as blah blah blah, blah can actually go away a little bit and we can be a little bit more accurate. It won't. It won't. I agree. But the other reason it's not.

as significant is reptiles all grow until the day they die. I think we've talked about that before. Humans, right? You hit 22, 21, whatever, you're done growing. Right. Snakes, lizards, crocodiles, they grow until the day they die. That growth rate slows down substantially as they get older, but they grow until the day they die.

In captivity, there are people that have bred for much larger animals than this, right? Someone that I know, I won't say his name, is accused of doing something called power feeding, which is basically just feeding them so much fucking food all the time. Well, they just eat if you do that? Pretty much, yeah, because they're... Interesting. ...have small, simple brains.

They're like, food is food. Yeah. And so this snake weighed what, Kyle, 200 pounds? 200-something. 213 pounds. Right. You could look up what the heaviest snake... Heaviest reticulated python in captivity is.

I bet you it's well over 300 pounds. Wow. You know, and if you look up the longest one, because it's been power-fed, meaning it's been fed all the time. It lives in a box. doesn't do much exercise. Yeah.

You'll see that there are probably 24, 25 foot snakes in captivity. 350 pounds. There you go. Damn. Also the longest, 25 feet, two inches. There you go. Yeah, but who gives a shit about that? Because that's human intervention.

That's the problem. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the, I agree with you, but the problem is people go, well, there's 25 foot snakes that weigh 300 pounds. Yeah. There aren't naturally. There's no nuance to what people are thinking of the ether. That's right.

And I think that the news. going back to the question is awesome because it's real and it's validated and that snake has survived through thick and thin since fucking World War II to be that size but in captivity we can manipulate something much bigger so this was in Sulawesi is that my

Sulawesi yeah have you been there? I have okay let's let's talk about Sulawesi a little bit what's that like is one of amazing one of the islands of Indonesia very very beautiful tropical you know what can I say about Are there still like people that

live off the land and stuff there? Oh yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Once you get out of the major cities, there's tribes and there's hunters and gatherers and fishermen. So, you know, it's, okay, because it's so easy. What's so fascinating to me about this now that you gave the context that they actually

brought the Guinness people there. So who were the people that spearheaded this? I don't know. Some like British researchers or something? Probably. I mean, I think the guy lying next to the snake is like a white dude. Because it just feels like something you. would do or that we would do like absolutely clearly they got a tip that there's this giant snake that's

that's really really special and they enough to get someone from guinness to accompany them on the expedition yep they went out i don't know if it was hard to find or if they just knew exactly where it was uh let's see it kind of sounds like they they knew what was up because you have to they definitely schedule the guinness people to come out with you so they knew what they're not just going to go on a wild goose chase. I'm not positive if the Guinness people went with them. Maybe it says, but I can tell you why. Did I tell you about my Guinness World Record thing?

No. Oh, this is kind of funny. We should circle back to that. Well, whatever. I'll just do it now. We'll come back to this. World's biggest beaver. So I, um, good one, Peter.

Well, no, I thought you didn't. Oh, the biggest lobster, not beaver. I'm sorry. Those are so similar. Two summers ago, I went and visited a buddy of mine, Greg Whitstock, who had the Guinness world record for underwater bench press. Kyle, didn't you film this? Wow. Yeah, Kyle filmed this. Yeah, you never told us.

And then he goes, he goes... So random. Dude, well, wait. He goes, I bet you can't fucking beat my record. I was like, fuck yeah, I can. He's like 58, right? So I jump in the pool. There it is, the second video. So I jump in his fish pond and I beat his record. But a Russian guy has since beat it.

Wow. Now, I did this with no training and no warm up. I just jumped in and hit like 54 reps or something like that. And so I left there going, well, I got to fucking do this. Like, I'm a real, you know, I lift, I lift weights a lot and I'm a really, really good of holding my breath. So long story short, I got home and contacted Guinness and they, they verified and they're like, yeah, you know, the, the record is now this number. So you sent them the video.

I didn't even send them the video. No, he was trying to get it so they would come out and he could do it. I didn't break, I didn't break the official record on this was right. But I knew I could with literally like a week or two of training. Yeah, yeah. And if any of you are watching this at home, fuck you if you rip this off, because this is awesome. So I contacted Guinness, and they got back to me pretty much right away.

And they're like, okay, these are the protocols you have to follow. This is the bench press. Has to be underwater. You have to have it filmed, blah, blah, blah. And if you do all that and send it to us, it will be a verified record. They weren't going to come out to watch me do it. Interesting. So they gave me all these protocols.

And I was like, fuck, yeah, I'm going to do it. And then I don't have a pool and I never did it. No, that's the guy. No, that's Greg. Yeah, I know back in the day, they had. to be there, but I guess now they could do it a video. Guys, I, wait, so how many, how many did he get? What did you say, Kyle, 47, 50, 52.

Okay, he got 52. And then my first attempt, I got less. And then my second attempt, I got way, way more. So if you're not watching, what I'm viewing here is you have to hold your breath. Yes. You go about two and a half feet below the surface. Yep. And then you also have to kind of kick your legs to push your body down on.

on to the bench breast. Exactly. Well, you're also benching and doing a breath hold. Yep. Yeah. I mean,

the big thing here is the breath hold. Oh, of course. You're doing a very aerobic activity while holding your breath. Did you get lightheaded

at all or anything? Sorry? Did you get lightheaded or anything while you were doing? I mean, I came up gasping for air. I didn't get lightheaded. But there was also

an alligator snapping turtle roaming around in this water too. Go to my second attempt. Is that part of Guinness's qualification that you have to have an alligator snapping turtle? So I'd never even heard of this. Then some random dude did it and got like four.

I don't know. They made a whole video out of it clearly. But go to my second attempt. Is this me, Kyle? I think this is you. That looks like you. That's Greg. That's Greg.

He's got a small leg as you. That's not me. That's the other guy. There was some third dude who hopped in. There was, you could see the number of spectators who showed up for this. This is a big deal. This is the most pointless thing.

Oh, yeah. There was Tommy. He got like four. Tommy who works with us. Here's me. Right. Is this me? I think this is you.

Yeah. So just go. Oh. see, but I feel like you're getting a big advantage now with the leg hold. That was a big, that was why we did a second round is we all did the leg hole. Everyone did it. Okay. Everyone did it.

Yeah. So we did two rounds because he was talking a big game about this, Greg, who I love, by the way, I'm just talking shit because it's an athletic competition. Of course. And then I was like, yeah, I can fucking smoke. Give me another shot. And the whole thing was everybody was kicking their legs in the air. So then when we started holding legs, like, look, I'm at 49, 59, 51, 51, 52, 53. you know, I crushed his record.

Yeah, because you're not expending all that energy trying to keep your... That's right. With your legs going there. Look at all those spectators. Where is this? This was in, by the way, fucking pro tip,

fucking whatever that Toyota road trip thing we did was, go to this place. It is called Pund. Aqualand. It's like an hour and a half outside of Chicago, Peter. Oh, wow. And it's fucking awesome.

Really? What is it? Kyle, find the video and scrub through it. It's this, so this guy, Greg, my buddy, he built this gigantic company around building recreational ponds for people. He's done Shaq's pond. He's done all these celebrities. It's this gigantic company.

And this is in fucking Illinois, dude. Look at this point. Did we meet this guy at the first Animal Con that we went to? Yes, we did. Was that him? Yeah. We did a pod guy. He works with him.

Oh. Yeah. But that's Greg. Anyway, went to this place. Absolutely loved it. Did all this nonsense. Place is amazing. He's got all these gigantic water.

lilies and huge fish tanks. I love to hear that because there's not that many of these type of interesting, unique places out in the Midwest. Maybe there are. I just never hear of that. Well, I thought it was amazing. And just real quick, and then we'll get back to the news story. Speaking of giant snakes, Kyle, get to where Greg just lets my kid jump in a pond with the huge snake. And my son was like four at this point in time. What kind of snake? I think it was a retick, actually. No, it wasn't. It was a carpet python. Look at this. Oh, my God. I think Kyle skipped Oh, no, here we go. I just threw my son in with this snake

and he's just like swimming around. It was super fun, man. This place is amazing. Who edited? By the way, each of these coy is worth like $25,000 in that button. Really? Yeah.

Kyle edited this. Worth more than your kid. Yeah. A little bit quick on the cuts there. Guys, so I just want, they were novice. This is for Pat's benefit. Do you guys want to know

what the World Record, Guinness Book of World Record for Cat Size is? How much do you think it would? Are we in a wait, wait? Yeah. Domestic house cat, obviously. Of course. Definitely.

And I send a picture to you, Kyle. 31.8 pounds. No, more than that. I'm going to say. More than 30? I think it's in the 40s. I think it's like 41. Wow.

Okay. Cat, you want to pull it up so we can see the picture? It's, yeah. Oh, yeah. So this has been in there since I was a kid. That's 1950. Yeah. This is since 1950.

Yeah. And he's an eight-year-old cat named Klaus from San Francisco. He was being power fed. Yes. The fattest cat, and he weighed 39.7 pounds, 18 kilograms. Oh, poor little bastard. He looks like a basketball with a head. 35.2 inches around his belly.

And he's still alive today. That is, no, he's not. He's not. He's not. That is a lie. By the way, his waist is two and a half inches larger than mine. He couldn't fit into my dumber. It really is.

There's no chance. That's funny. Poor little bastard. I'm going to give Klaus a little time in the spotlight. It's so funny, I can't get this snake expedition out of my head. So what do you think happened? Just knowing that you don't actually know. What is your guess on how do they get this call?

Who do they get the call from? Because I'm just picturing it as an episode of a TV show. I think where you measure it. And then I can picture the scene where you realize it's a record and you celebrate. Yeah. I think it probably went like this. The baron or baroness was known as this huge snake. that hung out in a certain part of the jungle.

Yeah. And these people would see it, you know, once every three or four weeks, right? It would come out of the jungle, eat a chicken, whatever. And some researcher was like, don't kill that snake. That is a special snake based on that size. We've never seen a snake that big before. Then that got out to somebody who was smart enough to go, all right, here's what we need to do.

We need to get a hold of George Barioni, director of the Wallace Correspondence Project to help. I'm just making, I'm seeing the name right there to help get Guinness involved and verify if the snake is really as big as you guys are saying. I'm guessing they measured it before all of this. Do you know what I mean? Because they're like, oh no, this is 23 and something feet.

Like now we need to make it official. Got it. Then they got other people involved, got Guinness involved, went back, found the snake, measured it, and it made it official. So it says here that there's two people from Bali. Someone named Diaz Narangha, whatever. And Radu Ferrantiu.

One is a wildlife guide and rescuer, snake handler, and the other is a natural history photographer. Cool. In Bali, they heard about the snake from the neighboring island of Sulawesi and just decided to go over there and see it for themselves. I love shit like that. It's just a snake rumor. Yeah.

You know, it's like it's fun to be in parts of the world where there are rumors of a giant ant. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, totally. Go look for it. Absolutely. Yeah. It's great.

They say that the snake, they didn't want to anesthetize it. Yeah. because I guess if you put the anesthesia in, then the snake goes fully straight. Oh, interesting. And so they're saying that it's because they didn't want to do that because of the risks of harming the snake, they had to measure it basically as straight as they could get it.

And that's what they're saying. It's probably about three feet longer. That's what they're saying? Three feet longer? Wow. They're saying that it could be up to 26 feet. Okay. So the official is actually not it fully, fully laid out.

It's probably measured as where that guy's laying next to it. It's got a couple kinks in the bottom. And currently, by the way, it's still in the wild. A local conservationist has volunteered to full-time spend his time protecting the snake to make sure no one comes in and kills it. That's awesome. That's awesome. That's awesome. It's probably that guy.

It's got to be. I'm trying to think how you would measure the snake tip to tip without anesthetizing it. Now, Sulawesi is known for having giant snakes, right? It's where all the people, the villagers, the grandmas get eaten, that sort of thing. Oh, that's where it is? Yeah, exactly. So it's very possible this snake has eaten a human being. Oh, yeah. Wow.

Yeah. I mean, I think earlier this, maybe it was last year, there were two people, not one, but two people, eaten by Ritex in a village in Sulawesi. Just recently? Yeah, like within the last six months. I remember the story coming out. Holy shit.

Little kids? I was two women. I remember that. Man, that's a shame. Well, that snake is groundbreaking, but... Maybe not as groundbreaking as... Not as groundbreaking as the two guests were about to have on the Wild Times.

I am incredibly excited to welcome John Hall, and Charles Foley, wildlife researchers, the people who literally coined the term mammal watching have traveled to over 120 countries looking for rare and unusual mammals who just went to West Papua to find not one but two animals that we didn't even know existed

from anything outside of the fossil record. So welcome John and Charles. Well, Pat, you know how I've been using nicotine pouches for quite some time now. Love them, give me boost of focus, you know. Uh, but energy too. A little bit of energy. Yeah.

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com slash wild times. Rocket money. com. Please do. It's a great app. Love it. All right. All right, here they are. Welcome, guys. Charles and John, so excited to meet you guys.

So we just introduced you on the podcast, but can you maybe introduce yourselves for our listeners? Sure, off to Charles. Thanks, John. Well, my name is Charles Foley, and I have spent most of my adult life studying elephants in northern Tanzania. and about seven years ago, I moved to the US with my family, and I now work for the Lincoln Park Zoo, which is based in Chicago, and I run their Tanzania Conservation Research Program. And basically, I'm interested in pretty much all mammals. Yeah, focused on the elephants, but interested in pretty much every single mammal type that there is.

And mammal watching is something that I've been doing, I guess since I've been about seven years old and continue doing it to this day. So yeah, my name's John Hall. I am British and I'm Australian. I'm living in New York. And I have also been interested in wildlife since a child. But my epiphany came when I went to live in Zambia for a year after university.

I have my first game drive in Huangi National Park in Zimbabwe, which I guess Forest knows. I do. And life was never the same after that. So I just became fascinated by wildlife watching and finding animals. And everyone I knew back in the UK was a bird watcher and I couldn't figure out why no one was a mammal watcher.

So I started telling people, I want to be a mammal watcher. This birding is like this old news. And I've been done that for 30 years. And I started a website 21 years ago, thinking I was the only mammal watcher in the world. And a whole community has grown up around that with other people who get that this is a really fun hobby.

And it's doing great stuff for conservation now as well. Awesome. So spoiler alert for my co-examiner. co-hosts and anybody listening, you guys went on a very special expedition to Western Papua. And how about you paint us a picture? I honestly don't know this. Like, why Western Papua? What was the goal of the expedition?

Was it mammal watching? Were you looking for echidnas? Like, tell us about what made you go on this trip. And then obviously we'll get into this big discovery that you had. Sure. Well, you know, as anyone who's interested in mammals knows, Papua, the island of New Guinea, Papua, New Guinea, Western Papua. A Nirvana have lost incredible species and all the sort of stuff that's semi-Australian is there.

But ever since I got interested in this, everyone who's been there has told me you won't see any mammals. I know professional bird guides who've been there 30 times and have maybe seen one or two mammals each trip. Wow. So it was a bit of a lost cause. God, I'd love to see the stuff there, but no one ever sees anything. A friend of mine who's a professional bird guide was out there, got stuck in Indonesia during COVID. He had no clients, and he got interested in mammals, and he got one of these thermal scopes that we all use now.

And during COVID, he started going out looking for things on his own and started finding all these incredible mammals that I just thought were impossible. And he was saying, you know, as soon as COVID finishes, John, we've got to get a group together, we'll come out here, we'll see tree kangaroos, we'll see all this stuff that people think can't be found. It's going to be fantastic. And we eventually got there in 2023. We had two weeks.

We went up in the mountains for a week. We saw two species of tree kangaroos, which that's exceptional on its own to see those. And then we ended up in the lowlands looking for this western Long Beach, Tikina that his buddies in Western Papua had discovered, you know, they went around on a motorbike from village to village asking about this animal that hadn't been seen by scientists since the late 1980s. And they said there's this place called Clalik in the lowlands. And they tell us they're seeing this animal often in the forest when they're out hunting. so we should try here and see what we can find. And that's how we ended up in Clarke for just for one night.

Wow. So Forest, I've known Forrest for, you know, 15 years at this point. We've done expeditions all over the world together. And he's always had this obsession with trying to get to Western Poplar. Oh, absolutely. And then... For the very reasons you just mentioned, John. Yeah.

And, you know, some other explorers we know in wildlife enthusiasts. also it seems like a place that so many people want to go. I now have painted this picture in my own head of this just unbelievably wild, somewhat unexplored place. You've been there, you know, just paint a picture for us of what it's like. How do you get there? And what are you seeing as you sort of get off the plane, get off the boat, get out of the car, and start heading into the bush?

Charles, you said this wrong? Yeah, well, you know, Westpapa used to be called Irian Jaya, and just the name itself is just so invocative. And for many years, Westerners could not get into the place. And it's, so Irian Jaya, Westpapa, it's the western half of the island of New Guinea. So the eastern half is Papua New Guinea. And I remember talking to some researchers who were working in, Papua New Guinea. And they said, look, that place is so wild that if there's any place on the planet that

you are going to find something like a thylacine, that's where it would be. Questions are coming, you boys. Yeah. And the thing is, as John mentioned, people would just not see mammals in that area because these guys are hunters, right? So the communities, they get the protein from hunting. And so the animals are running. And Charles, correct me if I'm wrong, I don't interrupt you, but they'll kill and

eat anything they can get, right? It's jungle survival out there, whether it's a tree kangaroo or an echidna or a little bird or a turtle. If they see it, they're killing and eating it. So it's twofold, right? One is the ecology of the area is not conducive to seeing mammals, right? They're few and far between high diversity, low abundance, right? and that's always what happens, the higher your diversity,

the lower your abundance. So there's tons of species that are really hard to see, and then you have hunters that are like, if I see it, I'm killing and eating it, right? So your likelihood of seeing stuff is just going down. Is that accurate, would you say? Absolutely right. Exactly.

But that's what we thought, right? So we get to this island. So you fly into Jakarta, Indonesia, and then you take another flight, and then another flight, and then another flight. And eventually you end up this place called Manaquari. And there we took a vehicle into a mountainous area, the Arfac Mountains, and then we walked eight hours up the mountain.

And we go out on our very first night. This is thick forest, thick jungle. And we step out. We've just had dinner. Step out of dinner. And within a minute, John already has. a mammal in his thermal imager. What was it, John?

It was a puffwind glider. Oh, cool. Like a sugar glider. Cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really cool. Right. Yeah.

And it just carried on from there. Right. This was Nirvana. So we were seeing incredible mammal diversity. And the reason we were seeing it is because we were going out at night and we were using these thermal images. And so we're picking them up. good tip john you went in 2023 you said then obviously you guys charles you're talking about having gone

what two three months ago is that when you guys were there no no no it's the same trip oh sorry it's the one sorry okay i didn't realize so this whole this discovery that's just published is from 23 is that correct exactly gotcha i didn't realize that apology so that's and also worth pointing out that that's a lot of the times how this goes in the sciences right it's not like okay, we're going to post about on Instagram tomorrow. It's like, you know, it's a bit of a process. But, okay, so you're there. You're on the ground.

As Patrick said, unbelievably wild. The expectation is high, diversity, low abundance, likelihood of spotting mammals is a couple in a week, right? And instead, you're seeing them every 10 minutes, right? I'm obviously exaggerating, but you're seeing tons of animals. Yeah, that's about right. Yeah, it was extraordinary. So the takeaway here for our listeners, and the majority of our listeners are incredibly animal-motivated, right? That's why they listen to this podcast, is using these tools and

technologies. And what you guys did is you took an existing technology, which is thermal imaging, and took it to a place where we thought you couldn't find things and you put those together and you had incredible results. Take us through. Take Patrick Peter and I and our listeners through how long was your expedition in 2023? How was this mammal checklist, this nirvana of wildlife spotting going? And then, most importantly, tell me, about these big discoveries that just published? I'll talk about the first week and then Charles maybe gets on to the second. Okay.

So the first week, we're up in this mountain called Gunung Muppi. There, like Charles said, we had two species of tree kangaroos out there. We have this enormous cuscus called a ground cuscus, which must be the biggest cus, all sorts of beautiful possums and other things every night. We were going out with the locals from the village. It used to be a settlement. And all the local people have moved back to the, to the, the coast because it's just more convenient.

And it's a bit too far away to go hunting. You're not going to walk nine hours of upper mountain to catch a tree kangaroo. Right. So the animals that were quite a thick on the ground or thick in the trees up there, they love being back up there because they're all hunters and they're all, you know, they all love looking for mammals. They're probably licking their lips the whole time. Exactly.

So it was a lot of fun up there. It was pretty tough, I have to say. The food was not the reason to go there. But a great adventure. After a week up there, we sort of can get back. back to the city and collapse, exhausted, muddy, everything else. We had a night in a hotel to recover. And then we headed off to this place called Clarlick Village in search of the

echidna, which, you know, that was going to be the major prize for me, at least, coming from Australia. The short beak to Kidna is what weighs about three kilos, 10 pounds or six pounds. This one weighs up to 16 kilos, 30 pounds. Hadn't been sinned by scientists since the 1980s. In my view, one of the best animals on the planet. and just the thought maybe seeing this was enough to really get us going. And so we get to this place called Clalick.

They'd never seen Westerners before. Wow. They didn't know what to make of us just as much as we didn't know what was going to happen. You know what's funny? You know what's funny, John? I'm going to interrupt you for one second. I have literally identified Clolic as one of the villages to go into search for Thylacine if we were going to do that.

So I believe it or not, as crazy as this sounds, I don't think I could name a single other town or township or village. in western Papua, but I know on a map where Klolek is. Fantastic. So what is, so many people can say that. I know. It's so weird. When you said that, I was like, holy shit.

But yeah. So what is you, as you're going in there and sort of realizing that the people there don't know what to make of you and that they probably hadn't seen someone who looks like you before? What is the vibe? Like, what is the energy? Like, are you worried that it might not go well? No.

The people were lovely. I mean, everyone's smiling and happy, and they had this welcoming ceremony. They put flowers around our necks. They were kind of lined up. They were just really excited by this whole idea that these crazy pale people have come over to look for the animals that they live alongside. I think they couldn't, didn't know what to make of us, but there's just a lot of goodwill. There's no time at all to we feel unsafe.

Oh, great. Very cool. We just didn't know what that night would hold and we didn't know what the food was going to be like or where we'd sleep. And that all, you know, we just have to cross those bridges when you come to them. But yeah, it was pretty exciting that night when we set out. Wasn't it, Charles? Yeah, that was. So, Akidna, they're nocturnal.

So we wait until the sun goes down. And then we leave. We walk out of the village. And we get into this enclosure in, or open area in the forest. And all of the adult man and all the kids in the village are standing there. and they've all got torches, flashlights. And when they see us, they all just go herring off into the forest. They were determined to find us in Akhah.

So we're just podding along slowly behind. And we're just looking for animals. We're seeing what we can find. And we're using the thermal images. So what you do is you walk along and you're scanning with the imager. And then if you come across an animal, it glows red or white in your imager. And so you know you've got something. What were you guys using, Charles?

Were you using ATNs or Fleers or what tech were you guys using? I think at that time, both of us were using pulsars. And these are really old pulsars. The pulsar 30s. They don't make them. I don't think they've made them now for about five years. But they're basically pulsar monoculars is what we were using. Yeah.

I know them well. Okay. sorry, please continue, just curious. Yeah, so walking long. And all of a sudden, one of the villages walks up to us, he's got an animal in his hand. And he says, guys, I have a squirrel. No, you don't actually get squirrels.

Exactly. So you're like, no, you don't. So it's unlikely to be a squirrel, but, you know, this is great. And so he hands it over. to our guide, Carlos Vokos. And we look at this thing. And it's about squirrel's size. And it's a beautiful black and white color, big fluffy tail.

But the most amazing thing about this animal is that on its front hands, the four fingers on its front hands were incredibly long. Oh, cool. Yeah. Super long. Like eye-eye finger long. Exactly. Yeah.

100% I-I-I things. And so we take one look at this thing and think. Amazing. This is a long-fingered triac. So it's an animal that we've been looking for in the Aarfax mountains, but we didn't see. So we find it. We take pictures of it. And these fingers are amazing.

And basically, you mentioned the I-I. And it's exactly like that. They use their fingers for the same. purpose, it's to dig their fingers into roots or under bark to get the grubs out. And typically, and these are areas where you don't get woodpeckers. So typically the woodpeckers would be doing that. But in these areas, you've got either the pro semen's, either the I-I or over here, you've got these possums doing it.

Yeah. So super cool, wonderful animal. And we let it go and it crawled up a tree and disobeyed. yet. What happened was that we had misdiagnosed it. We thought it was a long-fingered triac. Long-fled possible. But then what happened was when we get back to Cam, we open up the field guide, and we look and we say, you know, this is really weird because the long-fingered triac is only found at high elevations. And we were pretty much at sea level over here. Right. So that's when we started thinking there is something really unusual about this animal, about this sighting.

And it wasn't until we got back to the US that John and Carlos, they started interacting with a couple of people from the Natural History Museum in Australia. and they wrote back and said, guys, this is not the long finger triog. This is an animal that was discovered. It was known from an archaeology site and from an archaeological dig from a fossil that was 6,000 years old. And this instead is the pygmy possum, pigmy longfinger possum. So, okay, so all right, this is really interesting. And just to, when I've gone on and looked for lost species before, which I don't know if you guys know this or not, but I've done that quite a lot, and it's been some of the greatest times my entire life, I've always had a target.

And I found, you know, found or not found that target sometimes along the way, like, for instance, in Peru, we found a lost worm snake species that I didn't, that I never knew of, but I keyed it out. And right then and there, I was like, oh, this is unusual. this is something different. Found out that that was a lost species that I didn't even know was lost and never heard of until we keyed it out. But you went months without knowing what that mammal was.

So did you think it was a new species? Did you know you had something special? Did you have any inkling that you were going to get this data that this animal had been lost from the fossil record 6,000 years ago? Or how did that news come when you found it? Well, I mean, West Park, was a place where you just don't know what to expect, I guess. So when we've been in the mountains, we'd seen this weird little bouncing mouse that was really

distinctive. And that, we thought that's probably a new species as well. It's a massive range extension. Turns out that probably is a new species, but someone needs to go up there and do it properly. So it was already, like, weird stuff was happening. But no one's been to these places. So it's exciting, but perhaps not that unexpected. And I'd say in the last three years, Charles and I probably found about 20 species that either

been lost for 100 years or haven't been photographed before or seem to be brand new to science. And all we can do really is alert scientists. Right. So this thing was more like, well, it's probably a huge extension of range of this animal. And I guess they live at sea level. Yeah. This mountain triarch. So when we discovered it was this one that was lost for 6,000 years.

So that was a massive piece of news. And that was a few months later. Yeah, very exciting. But we wanted to not tell anyone until the scientist had published their research because it was kind of their news as well to share. I've always said that, you know, I just between us and I've told Patrick knows about this, but I've, I've pitched going into that region, like I mentioned, a number of times, in TV networks and things. And they're always like, well, you know, you're not going to, what if you don't find the thylacine? And I've always said, I'm probably not going to find the thylacine,

but I'll come out of there with so many new discoveries. And that, you know, the scale and level that I'm talking about doing, you guys are much more experience than I am, but I'd go in there with 200 trail cameras and a team of scientists and all these things and set up this camp and be there for months and months. And I've always said to, and maybe I'm taking the wrong approach, but I've always said to Nat Geo and Discovery and all these various places I've spoken to, we'll come out of there with hundreds of new discoveries, new species, new range extensions, all kinds of stuff. And I think you guys are literally confirming that any time you go into areas like this, that's exactly what happens.

Yeah, no, I think you're right. You're going to find stuff. You're going to have great stories to tell. And there is so much left to be discovered in so many places as we're finding now, as the world is opening up and we're getting into these areas. Okay, so this long-fingered opossum discovery is absolutely incredible, right? Six thousand years, and you must have been shocked. But, John, you're the echidna guy, right?

And I remember when that news came out. So tell me about that. How was that discovery and when that went down? Charles, do you want to do this one as well? I thought I'd been talking too much. No, you haven't. You guys are both great. This is all you.

All right. So, I mean, the echidna, that was part of the reason the tree didn't prompt more kind of interest as soon as we saw it, other than this is weird. We'll look at it later was we were very much fixed on finding this Western Long Beach, Echidna. Right. Which, as I say, like, the last scientific record of that was in 1989 and just seemed impossible. And we're walking to the forest, you know, we've been out there four or five hours, and it was after midnight. we were, I guess, you know, hopes we're getting to fall a bit that night. Sure.

And we sat down by this little creek just after midnight, and all of a sudden we had this wailing and this yodeling coming from up the hillside. And that could only mean one thing, you know, someone had found this ekebner. So we sprint through the forest, sort of tripping over tree routes, and we get up to this little creek on the side of the hill. And there is this echidna just sitting there,

sticking its beak in the soil right in front of us, sort of oblivious. Literally foraging right in front of you. It day wasn't even startled. It was just foraging and minding its business. This is the problem. They're defenseless and they don't seem to have any idea of their own mortality. So that's why they're so rare, I guess.

It's so easy to catch. Right. And it was, yeah, just extraordinary. This thing was snuffling around us, moving between us. We were following it, trying to get pictures and keep out of its way. And yeah, absolutely, you know, you don't get feelings like that much in your life. That was definitely one of the best moments of, I guess, I think I speak for Charles here, both of our lives. It was just absolutely such a thrill.

to see this thing shaking with excitement, couldn't believe what we've seen. This was one of the holy grails. There's maybe 10 people in the world you could talk to that understand that feeling around like a nondescript animal as well as I do. Do you know what I mean? And that feeling when I picked up that tortoise and the glob goes, that same thing. It's like your whole body's shaking. I've said this to my wife and she hates me for it, John and Charles.

It's the best moment of my life way better than when either of my kids were born. You know what I mean? I said that to my kids too. Yeah. So it's not just me. They don't like it much, I think. it's about third or fourth on my list, but yeah. Just to take you back to the echidna finding.

So when we get up to this echidna, and as John said, we were sprinting up there because we've no idea what, do akirnas, do they run? Do they borrow, et cetera? And we get there and we see this big thing, the size of a small dog. And the weird thing was that we couldn't actually tell what's the front and what's the back end of it.

Yes. What echidnas do is that when they get, nervous. Bless their souls. They just stick their beak in the soil. They'll puff themselves up and they kind of hope the world goes away. And the world picks him up, sticks them in a big pot and eats them, which is why they're so darn

rare to start with. Right. But again, as soon as it relaxed, takes his beak out of the soil, it was walking over our feet, stumbling long. Absolutely incredible animal. Wild.

What was the, I mean, you just explained it that best feeling of your life. But what was the, you didn't collect the animal, obviously. You just photographed it, documented it. You know, I'm sure you recorded everything where you were, the time of day, the blah, blah, blah, blah. What was that feeling for that 30 minute walk back to your accommodations that night? Shaking with excitement. It's just the best, for me, it's the best feeling in the world. It's just so happy that we've seen it. So kind of shocked that we actually achieved what we were trying to do, but also getting excited about telling the rest of the world

about this. Not so much for our own kind of publicity, but because we knew other people are going to start coming to that village to look for this. And what it can mean for these people who've been so kind and taking us out. Right. And that's exactly what happened. You know, within, I put that video on my own little Instagram channel and I had like thousands of views and people started getting in touch straight away with Carlos going, how can we get out here and see this? And now three years later, you know, hundreds or many, many people have been to that village. They've renamed themselves the Akina Park. I saw that.

They've been in a guest house. They stopped all hunting. So it's this great story for the community. It's a great story for conservation. They've actually stopped all hunting. Like, they're not just saying that. Like, nobody is hunting in the area any longer. I believe so.

They're selling T-shirts with the Akina on. They're so proud of this, you know, they're so proud of this, these animals they live alongside and the fact people want to come and pay quite a lot of money now to see them. it's changed everything in that community for the scientific conservation. How often are they getting a spotting? Like if a random, I know these are pretty targeted tourists, but if one of these mammal watching tourists goes,

are they getting a spotting? You know, now that, because my guess would be historically, they're like, if we see a big echidna, we bop it on the head, throw it on the pot and eat it. So we're not really observationally studying its behavior. We're just eating the first one we can get our hands on. Now there's a guy, I imagine, correct me if I'm wrong, who goes out every night and he looks for it,

he understands its movement patterns and where it's foraging and why it's there and probably where its borough is and all these things. Have they advanced their echidna park to the point of being like, yeah, we'll find them tonight. You know, it's like a nightly thing. In fact, we know where there's six of them. Or is it still a total dice or all? Like, how has that changed sort of the understanding of the animal? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, so a friend of mine was actually there two nights ago. He got sick. He thought he wasn't going to make it. He dragged himself out of his bed and actually went just for one night, uh, feeling like he was going to die because he was so ill, but he actually saw one in a night.

Nice. Wow. So it's, but it's not guaranteed, you know, some people go for three or four nights and miss them. Yeah. If it was guaranteed, it wouldn't be fun. Of course. Of course. But I think you've got a pretty good shot if you go there for four or five nights, a really good

shot. And you'll see this big Mitriok as well. Charles, you, um, when we all first signed on, you brought up the thylacine. Obviously, uh, you know, Forests. has, you know, put quite a bit of time searching mainland Australia and Tasmania. But, you know, I know that he and some other friends of ours that are really interested in this believe that this could be the place that it may still have a chance. What's your, why did you bring up thylacine?

What's your thought? So the guy I was speaking to, and he had spent seven or eight years working in Papua, he said that he had, through the grapevine, heard that there was a place close to the border with Papua New Guinea, so just on the other side of West Papua, where there was an animal that had slight stripes on it,

fairly big, and it was high up in this mountain range, and that, who knows, it might be a thyridicine. And that's all he knew. And he said, if there's any place on the planet where it still occurs, that's where it'll be. Because no one goes in there. It's obviously going to be occurring at low densities.

And if no one's looking, and if no one's looking in the right places and no one's looking at the right time of day, et cetera, you're not going to find it. So that's that kind of all I know. But it's that simple, Charles. It's that fucking simple. Excuse the profanity. But like, there's all this like, it's not, you know, your long-finger. Prasem is a perfect example. 6,000 years, right?

We had thylosine we know on mainland Australia 4,000 years ago, right? In Tasmania up until 100 years ago. And so it's, people are not looking in the right way and the right place for an animal that was always cryptic. You know, it's, it's honestly that simple. So, John, when is the expedition for the thylosine? Yeah, that's a good question. I think I'll leave that for you guys. Why?

I think we should team up. I think we should team up to you guys. Absolutely. Yeah, let's do it. I don't care how many people point at me and go tinfoil hat. I don't give a shit. Like I think if you guys had said, Charles and John, correct me if I'm wrong, if you had said, we are going to find the long-fingered opossum and we're going to Western Papua. Everybody would have laughed at you.

They would have said you're tinfoil hat people that's been gone for 6,000 years. We know it from a single fossil record 2,000 miles away and you're a bunch of fucking idiots. That's what people would have said. And then you came back with it. what I mean? And no offense, because I obviously don't think you're idiots, but you know what I mean? That would have been the tonality. I think we should team up. I think we should go look for the stylusine up there. I said there's a right way to do this, which is to take a bunch of photos of different animals from New Guinea, Western New Guinea, and show it to the local people and say,

point to the ones that you know we've got. And you can be, you know, you can show things like a giant ant eater in South America and they'll be like, no, no, we definitely don't have that. and then you can show things like a tree kangaroo. They'll be like, we definitely have that. And then you can show things like a picture of a thylacine, and you'll get your answer. You know, they'll say, yes, we have that or no, we don't. And it's just an accumulation of that data, right?

You show that photo set to the right number of people, and they go, well, we don't have that striped dog, but I know they do over there on the border with PNG, you know, and if you go over there and then you start showing those same photos, like you're going to narrow in on it. And something I've been wanting to do, Charles and John, you guys have taken a very different approach. But I want to do a big, like I was mentioning earlier in this conversation,

a big survey, like 200 cameras, a team of scientists, you know, three months on the ground, like really give it a full shot as opposed to me going until I run out of money kind of thing, which would be a few weeks, you know what I mean? And that's the way I've always wanted to do it. So my question to you in stating that is, is that the right way to do it or should I go the way you guys are doing and just head in to the village, spend a couple weeks, try and get the intel and just go back and forth until we figure it out. I mean, if it was me, I think local knowledge is always the best possible source of information you can have,

especially somewhere this where they know the mammals and they're out in the forest and they're all hunters essentially. Yeah. So I would be talking to someone like Carlos and asking him to mobilize his network of friends, which is pretty extensive, saying, what can you find out about this piece? And these guys will go around on motorbikes and they'll start asking questions. Yeah. And you'll get some leads. So that's what we did with the echidina or what he did.

Sure. And it worked. Sure. And then you go in with the camera traps and the scientists maybe. Or just go in with a few friends and some thermals and walk around for a couple of weeks in the right place. And you never know. What a finding that would be.

Well, look, this is for those watching, and a lot of people know that I have an obsession with this animal, the thylasein in particular. This is real time getting one step closer. You know, talking to you guys, understanding that. We're obviously in touch now. I may ask you for Carlos's contact detail. if you're willing to share. And this is something that I think we could...

I don't want to take away from your discovery because that's the main point of this. But all your discovery, just like you with the Long Beach, DeKidna, John, what this does for me is further validate my tinfoil hatness, further validate the idea that it's very unlikely

that we'll find it, but it could still be there. The area, Charles, that was Carlos, that mentioned to you, you know, I heard about this area over, by the border. Someone else.

Yeah. Oh, someone else. That area, did you look at it? Like, is it, is there a huge barrier to entry to just,

to just get there? Yeah, what, from what you, from where you were to there, how difficult was it to get there? Yeah. So,

I mean, back at the time when he was telling me about this, this was probably about 15 years ago. I mean, Irian Jaya was closed. I mean, Westerners could not get in at all. Oh,

and there are still large areas of the, the island where, you just can't get in. It's either too dangerous or, you know, it's like, how do you get there? There's no roads, et cetera. And so this was several hundred miles away from the area where we were. But I, you know, I'd have to go back and check with him and say, okay, where was the place that you had heard that it might be? But one of the things that I will say is this method of going out at night using thermal images,

is incredibly powerful. And I use camera traps a lot. I've been using them for 15, 20 years or so. In camera traps, actually fantastic because it'll take a picture of anything that walks past them. But some animals don't follow paths. And camera traps, they typically, they're not very good for catching things

that maybe is like higher up in trees or in certain habitat types. But if you marry camera traps with a team of people who really know how to use thermal images, man, you just, you just sweep up. It's incredible. That is good intel. Yeah. I mean, I, we did a trip to, I did a trip to Gabon a few years ago.

We saw all sorts of really cool stuff in two weeks, including two giant panglins and all these amazing things. And I sent the report I wrote to a friend of a friend who's a well-known scientist who was at the Smithsonian and spent three years working in Gabon. I wanted to check some of my IDs of some of the smaller stuff. And she went back and said, that's a really great report. I saw just about everything you saw when you were in Cabomb, but it took me three years. And that was using traps and all the other methods. And just the thermal images, a couple of people with cameras who kind of can use them. It's really, really powerful, as Charles said.

That's good intel. I have several of them, too. I have the Fleer cameras, the monoculars, the ATN ones, the hunting ones that are really high-powered. I love them. I've used them in Tasmania, but just not in this, you know, it wouldn't have been, I would have packed it, of course, but it wouldn't have been my first thought to use those where you guys were going, which further complements your great ability to identify how to find these things. It's amazing. If I said, hey, guys, I've got, you know, here's three million bucks to fund your next, you know, big adventure.

What's what's the next thing you want to, you guys want to go find or go see or go endeavor to find? So many places. Well, you can only pick one. There's so much of Central Africa. There's Papua New Guinea. There's more in West Papua. There's the Philippines. And all these things are we're planning to get to the next few years if we can.

Nice. You got to pick one though. For the purposes of our game, for our listeners, John and Charles, you got to pick that holy grail. I'm about to take the money and throw it into the fireplace unless you pick one. That's right. I, Saola, I think, the Saola, they're Asian unicorn. We did a whole show on Salah. We know it very well.

It may still be there. We may still be there. I think so. I don't know if you know Bill Robeshot, who's a friend of Patrick is in mind. But, you know, we all share that sentiment, John. Yeah. Yeah. What about you, for me?

You know, I'm sorry, but it's my Holy Grail always has been the old copy. And I know there are plenty of people who've seen it And we know it's still there, et cetera, But it's this incredible animal related to the giraffe With a velvet skin, It's got a purple sheen on it And you just cannot get into that area. It's just too dangerous.

And so there's a whole generation of Mammal Watchers Who Wants to see in her carpe. And so as soon as that area opens up, that's where we will be. That's awesome. You guys, congratulations on your amazing discovery. I'm really glad that BTG connected us and that we're connected now and that we can go back and forth. We'll definitely keep in touch.

Thank you for jumping on the Wild Times podcast and sharing your absolutely phenomenal, not one, but two discoveries. So cool. I know that feeling and you described it so well of finding that thing, that holy grail of rarity, that gemstone of, you know, the mammalian kingdom. So congratulations to you both. I'm really glad we're connected. Maybe we'll get to go to Western Poppao together and look for something at some point in time. And, you know, congrats again and thank you for jumping on the pod. Thank you so much.

And I do look forward to seeing a thylacine with you. Standing next to us, that would be very excited. Let's do it, John. That'll be a whole other. You're going to have to carry me out if we find that. I swear to God. Yeah. Thanks, guys.

Wonderful thing on the podcast. Well, that was absolutely inspiring. You know, it, to me, those guys, first of all, they inspire me. I've got goosebumps right now because I got so excited about their discovery. It's like what I said to them about, you know, if you had told people you were going to find the long-fingered possum, they would have said you're an idiot and laughed you out of the room. And then they came back with it. And that, to me, is more rare and more unlikely than a thylosine.

Yeah, and it's real, dude. Those are real guys fucking out there. You're right. Fucking sending it too. Those guys just fucking going into Western Pawpua. They're just out there doing it. the work. Going, dude. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome guys.

Super cool. Hey, I hope you guys enjoy this podcast. I'm all revved up. I'm going to go do push-ups now in the parking lot. Hell yeah. Peter, do the things. Hey, real quick. Can I do something? Yeah. Hey, we do four podcasts a month that aren't on YouTube. They aren't on Spotify.

That's right. But you can get them. Just join. Do it. How do they join? How do they get the extra four? Uh, wild times dot club forward slash info for for all that information. They actually are on Spotify, but you just got to join our club. Club.

Join the club. Yeah. Let's go. Where are you going? He's going to raise you to wrap. There you go. All right. Good deal.

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