Wild Times: Wildlife Education - Tiger King, Fruit Fly Invasion, and Grandmas on Spring Break

Episode Date: April 5, 2020

What do a crocodile with a tire around it's neck, grandmas doing Zumba, and a violent gang in Columbia have in common? AND... What does Forrest Galante think of Tiger King?  Find out in this episode of The Wild Times!

All right, here we are with the second installment of the Wild Times. What's up, guys? How you doing? Hello. Doing okay. Quarantine, mate. This is not how I was expecting podcast number two to go, but hey, we still all have our drinks. Cheers. That's important. Cheers, mates.

Wild times. I was thinking about introducing a new element to the podcast, which is like whenever someone makes a good joke, I give me one of these. Wild times. What do you got? You got a claw? I got a claw. Oh, boy. Yeah.

So Forrest has a good. a black cherry white claw. Sure do. Retep is drinking a pint glass full of warm red wine. What are you doing, sir? Are you joining us, Patrick? Do you have a drinking hand? Good old fashioned Budweiser, bud heavy.

Oh, so many cows, dude. Yeah, but it's a good beer. Yeah, he's going to be hammered. It's colder than other beers. So I'm joined today with executive producer Patrick DeLuca. Many may not know this, but he's also the Smearnoff Ice, got to think of everything guy. And Routep, the audio. geek who set all this up because we are all recording remotely because we are quarantined.

Thank you coronavirus. Yeah, thanks. So it's actually worse for you for us because you are solo quarantined. I'm in the real deal. Yeah, so I just got back from Indonesia and I flew through China, which means I am not allowed within six feet of any human contact for two weeks. So I'm high risk, but not high risk enough to get a test. So I just have to spend two weeks completely isolated.

And as you guys know, because we had to reschedule three times, for the last three days, I've had no cable or internet either. So that's been just tremendous. What have you been doing? Reading? It sounds awful. Yeah. Yeah, it's not good.

No one should read. You do have a lot of great animals, though, there. Have you just been, like, out back petting your giant oversized bunny? I have, indeed. We've been taking care of the animals, and, yeah, just doing a lot of nothing, to be quite honest. So at the same time that I was canceling, a shoot in Russia, you jumped on a plane and connected through China to go to Indonesia. What was that all about?

Yeah, so I went over to Indonesia to work on a wildlife rescue thing. And I'm not sure how much I'm supposed to say at this point, but there's a very famous crocodile over there with a tire stuck around his neck. And I was going there to try and catch him and pull the tire off his neck. Oh, no way, dude. Yeah. I've saw it. It's all over the internet.

You get picked for all the fun shit. Yeah. So I'm the guy that, so BKSDI is the governing conservation body in Indonesia. they had a checklist of Western kind of crocodile people and they started with an Australian crocodile guy he spent three weeks there, blew it. Then they called me and they're like, hey, this guy couldn't do it, can you get the job done?

And I was like, sure can and jumped on a plane to Indonesia to basically land, hang out for a day and turn around and fly right home because the whole government got shut down due to coronavirus. Damn. Oh shit. So you didn't even get to go see the crocodile.

Saw it, saw it from the riverbank and that was it. because we got shut down so quickly that, you know, I was still there for like three nights, but I wasn't allowed to engage because I had no government officials with me because the government was shut down. So Forrest and I, we've been talking about this. I don't know about you, Peter. Have you been biding your time watching Tiger King? Oh, yeah, man.

It's amazing. And I'm so happy that it was brought to my attention by Forrest. Yes, I was just blown away and burned through all seven episodes of Tiger King. But guys, I got to tell you something, I got a little surprise for you. What do you got? I'll feed you, baby birds. I'll feed you. I posted about how great I thought Tiger King was and how important it was for people to watch it on my Instagram.

And I got a message from a guy named Nico who said, hey, man, I've been following you for a while. Just so you know, I was one of the cameraman on Tiger King. And I lived at the compound with Joe Exotic for 10 months. And I've got some crazy dirt to tell you from behind the... the scenes. No way. I swear. I was so stoked I just set it up.

I was like, come on the podcast tomorrow. He's like, I'm in. Pays to be an A-list celebrity, doesn't it, Forrest? A, yep, that's me. So as soon as you're done with this, just click, listen to podcast number three. We're going to have behind-the-scenes dirt from a cameraman who has spent almost a year there living at Joe Exotic's compound. He's got all sorts of dirt and behind-the-scenes hot, sexy action.

Oh, yeah. You know, it's funny, as I was watching it, I was thinking of myself, Forrest must know some of these dudes. No, but not even crazy story. So a good buddy of mine, his name is James. He's a vet, a turtle vet. Not a tiger producer. His boss is Eric Good, the guy who you kind of see come on and off camera very, very rarely. But he's the host, basically.

So James, who I've known for many years, started working on this thing four years ago as a producer. And he was like asking me for tips and stuff. And I was like, I don't know, man. It's going to be dog shit. You don't know what you're doing. You're not a producer. This isn't going to be good. And he's like, no, man, these people are crazy.

It's going to be awesome. So I've known about it for years and been getting these little like tidbits of information. I'd never heard of any of these people. I didn't know that the Big Cat world was so Jerry Springer-esque. Like, I didn't know anything about this. Oh, my God. Nobody knew about it. It's insane.

It's like a cult. It's a cult. It's a total cult. And it's a cult on both sides. And the documentary has done so well that you don't know which side to take it first. And then you're just like, oh, I hate all these people. Oh, I hate all these people. By the way, we're giving spoilers in this conversation, right?

We must. We must. It's important. All right, so, Forest, as a biologist, like, what is your stance, without getting too serious, what's your stance on these types of zoos? Okay, well, let's be clear. Zoos are a good thing, in my opinion, and that's not the most popular vote in the world, but zoos have done a lot for conservation, right?

They've kept species from the extinct species list. They've bred things. AZA-acc credited zoos, American Zoological Association accredited zoos, are wonderful places where animals are typically happy and they breed animals and keep species around. These are not AZA accredited Zeus. They're like freak shows. No. It's like a freak show.

Joe Exotic with 40 cats in a child's playpen in his backyard is not a good thing. I mean, it is, it's animal abuse, first of all, but it's just mind blowing how over the top and wrong it is and the fact that this goes on in our own backyards. One of the arguments that Carol, his nemesis, the animal rights activist, the murderer. Yeah, but see, that's the whole thing that makes it insane. She may or may not have murdered her husband. So she says, you know, that the cub petting is abuse. And I was like, well, I don't get that. And then later they show them taking the cub away from the tiger mom while she's having the baby.

And I'm just like, that's clearly abuse. And not only that, but there's a bunch of allocations towards like that doc Antel guy about, you know, euthanizing adolescent tigers. So basically they're, they've got like a puppy mill except before the puppy becomes a dog, it goes night night, right? Which is disgusting. It's disgusting. It's because you can make money off of the kitten when little kids can pet it.

Right. But then if it becomes a full grown tiger, now you've got a thousand dollar a day problem. Right, right. And not to mention like, you know, once they hit adolescence, they're not controllable, right? You can manipulate a tiger cub and hand it off and play mushy face with it. But once that becomes, once that tiger cub becomes, you know, a 13-year-old in human years, just as you couldn't tell any of us what to do when we were 13, you know, you can't tell a tiger what to do except they have Wolverine claws.

Right. Yeah, and they weigh like, what, 400, 900 pounds? Yeah, I mean, at adolescence, they're not quite that big, but the point is they're getting to that uncontrollable stage and they're full of, you know, testosterone and hormones and and they're in adolescence, they're nightmares. So what are you going to do? They're, you know, what are you going to do with them? And that's, that's apparently what's been going on, and it's, God, it's awful.

Hey, Retep, real quick, who would you say would win in a fight? A full-grown lion or a full-grown tiger? Oh, my God, that's tough. I mean, I'm going to say, I go with a tiger, and my reasoning is just because it looks more, like, more like a killing machine. A lion, I feel like I see a lot of footage of them just laying around and basking in the sun. Tigers are always hunting and killing. Yeah, that's all lions are known for. Yeah. They're good sleepers. Is it weird that I agree with his logic? Like, I shouldn't because it's Rete, but it's really long. You're getting used to me now. Well, most people would say the opposite. Most people would say a lion. Forrest, do you know the story about the Indian emperor?

I don't know. This was like a couple hundred years ago who bet a guy who had been around lions in Africa. And the guy was like, oh, no, like tigers are way tougher. And the Indian emperor was like, I will bring a lion in and it will kill your tiger. And he was so confident that he gave him 13 million to one odds on the tiger. Oh, my God. And so they brought, he brought a lion. lion in from Africa, had them fight. The tiger snapped its neck in, you know, 12 seconds. And he paid

his bet. He paid the guy like a trillion rupees or whatever. Yeah. I like being that confident, though. Yeah. 13 million to one. That's a sure thing. Dude, one of the other things from that documentary, though, is that there's no regulation or there wasn't regulation until recently on owning big cats. Because, I mean, how could you just own 18 big cats? And then, like, what if they get out? And can we also talk about the fact that they cost the same as your iPhone? I heard them say in that documentary, they're like $2,000 to buy a tiger cub. You're telling me I could have a tiger right here. If I want it right now, if I grew up to over.

That's insane. Dude, that was the Siberian tiger cub was two grand. I think he said the other ones were going for like $500. Which is nuts. It's nuts. You got idiots who, just like a dog, they'll get one because they think it's cute. Then it grows up and it costs $10,000 a year to feed. and they don't know what to do with it.

So what do they do? They probably just release it or something. Release it under the street. Yeah. Yeah, it's not quite like the little turtle that you get that gets too big and you put it in your city pond park, right? You let your tiger out in the neighborhood because it's grown too big for its kennel and you might have some problems.

What did you guys think of his country music? Legit like to. Yeah, it's great. I couldn't believe how good it was. Yeah. Maybe if all of his songs were about fucking tigers, like, Wait, no, but you guys heard the one song. Dude, he made a song about his nemesis Carol feeding her husband to lions because the accusation

is that she killed her husband for money. And in the video, he's actually got an exact lookalike of her. Dude, he found an exact lookalike. When I, when that first came on the screen, I was confused because I thought they had made up and he had got her to participate in the music video. Dude, I swear to God, because I think I looked at my phone for a second. second and I looked up and I turned to my fiance and was like, oh, they're friends now. And it's the middle of the series? What's going on here? This is wild. What happened?

Let's address something that nobody talked about with regards to Tiger King. The Ligers. Did you see those massive thousand plus pound cats, which are hybrids between tigers and lions? I didn't realize that's what they were. Oh, shit. So a Liger is when you crossbreed a lion with a tiger. Liger, meaning male, lion, female tiger, versus a tigon, which is male, tiger, female lion. But the Ligers, for some reason, when you crossbreed those two species, they do not get the gene that stops growth. So basically, they are always on human growth hormone for cats. So they just grow and grow and grow until they die, and they get actual gigantism.

So there's one shot where you see Cody Antel, which was Doc Antel, the crazy guy in Florida's son, standing next to this Liger. that to me, I mean, don't even wrong, the whole series was mind-blowing, but that cat was one of the most mind-blowing things I've ever seen. It was the size of a horse. I thought it was just like they way over-fed it or like jacked it up on some horse steroids or some shit. But again, animal abuse basically. I mean, you're breeding an animal that now will never stop growing until it dies. So like that can't be good for, that can't be pleasant for anybody's body. They get to 11 feet long and they will weigh twice as much as a tiger. A male tiger can reach 680 pounds.

So, you know, double that. And that's what you're getting out of a cat. The size of a mini-Cooper. So we asked a couple of Forrest's fans just to send in some questions. I really liked this one. What is the one thing that's not a necessity that you would be willing to leave the house and risk getting coronavirus for? Wow.

Reteb, you go first. I mean, it's booze. I'm going crazy here. I mean, I'm actually doing it. Sorry. Don't skewer me. You did leave the house today to go get some more Vino. But I did also get groceries, all right?

Every time you go out there, it's like a war zone. But yes, booze is mine. Literally, everyone I talk to, everyone I'm talking to is like, yeah, I'm hanging in there, but I think I might be becoming an alcoholic. And it's making me feel really good about the fact that we're, like, having a bottle of wine every night. We're doing what we normally do, but everybody else is, too. so now it's validated.

Mine is weird. It's exercise. I cannot stay cooped in the house and not get exercise. Like even just doing push-ups at home or riding the bike or whatever, no good. I need to get out to exercise. I need to go for a trail run, go to the beach, hit a gym, whatever. I have to exercise or I go fucking nuts. Yeah.

See, I've been switching like every other day doing like running outside or just like working out at home. But yeah, working out at home is, it does not feel the same. It's awful. You just don't push yourself at all. No. it's like you do one set of curls, start texting, and you're like, that's probably it. That's probably good. I will check the refrigerator between sets to see if anything has materialized in there. Well, it's like because when you're stuck in the house the entire time, then doing anything that could normally even be enjoyable.

I mean, I've literally been quarantined for over two weeks now. I've only left three times. And I'm just like, I'm just like going nuts, man. I feel sorry for all the elderly. Sorry, elderly. Like, it's brutal. Imagine being alone and having nobody and being holding. up at home. It's awful. Dude, my mom is 75, and she cares so much less about this than I do.

No way. It's really weird. She was griping to me that her Zumba class got fired or got, her Zumba class got canceled two days ago. She's been going to Zumba until two days ago? Until Tuesday of this week, they were still doing Zumba in South Carolina. Boy, oh boy. It's a real problem.

And she, I go, Mom, you're in the risk group. You're 75. She's like, yeah, but I do Zumba. so I'm more like 65. And now, and now Mama DeLuca is on our way to Daytona Beach for spring day. Yeah.

No, they're partying, boy. All right, so Forrest, I've been wanting to ask you about this. At the Chattanooga Zoo, apparently Chattanooga is in America. I'm not sure. You're not sure. Kind of see, right?

Yeah, I think so. Dude, so this female Komoto dragon, which is a fucking sweet animal, hasn't had sex. with a male and all of a sudden she's pregnant gives birth to two healthy Komodo dragon babies.

What the fuck is this? Boom. Evolution. In your face. Parthenogenesis. One of the coolest things there is. I don't believe it. What are you talking? Fake news. This is surprisingly not fake news. So there's two types of asexual reproduction, right?

One is sperm retention where two species like to take swell sharks, for instance, California, they mate and the female can retain that sperm for many, many years. Actually, our tortoise, Patrick, Fern, it's the same thing, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Was that the extinct one you guys found? It was, it was. And so those animals can mate once, they can copulate once, and the females can retain sperm within them for 15, 20 years and put out viable offspring. That's wild. Isn't that nuts? It is totally nuts. I think the lead singer from Oasis

might have had a baby that way. But the other process, at which some lizards do is called parthenogenesis. And so what parthenogenesis is is when it's a type of reproduction where the female produces offspring without any male fertilization, without any copulation. And this usually happens with species that live incredibly isolated. So Komodo dragons are, they have a very small population,

and they're spread out over these, you know, small islands throughout Indonesia, actually only in one region of Indonesia, but they're spread out over these islands. So nature has made it so that their DNA has basically male and female parts. And from the time of them being embryos to being adults, they develop basically both sexual organs, even though they're female or male by anatomy and on the outside. And then if they reach a certain point in life where they have never connected with the other sex, their body can go into a state that allows them to reproduce. without mating, and that's called parthenogenesis.

And it's basically cloning, and that's what these Komodo dragons can do. You know, what's interesting with lizards and a lot of these animals, because fish do it, certain fish do it, certain insects do it with parthenogenesis, is they don't succumb to what we call genetic bottlenecking. So genetic bottlenecking is when,

say, what happened with cheetahs, they got driven down to the point where there were like only 400 cheetahs in the world at one point, something like that. I don't know the exact number. Now cheetahs are super susceptible to diseases because their genes became so limited. There were only 400 of them to share genes.

There wasn't a lot of diversity. But these animals that have parthenogenesis or the ability to reproduce this way, they do not succumb to a lot of genetic diseases. So even though there's limited variation, they're not weak by any means, which is fascinating. And I don't frankly understand why that is,

but it's a fascinating thing nonetheless. It's like when they breed dogs, to be purebred dogs, they obviously have all sorts of problems are way more susceptible to illnesses and... Well, it's like when two cousins, you know. Yeah, yeah. You know a lot about that. By the way, have you guys notice, and, you know, not to get too, too raunchy, but have you

guys noticed that the vast majority of porn these days is stepbrothers and step sisters? Yeah. I have noticed this and I don't care for it. I do not understand when sisters and brothers and cousins became sexy. That is no good. Dude, I had three step sisters that were like within my age range, probably attractive. There was never a time, even when I was a 13 year old horny boy, where I was like, oh yeah.

Yeah, I want to see her in the shower. Like, so I don't know who this is for. The weirdest part is that it's made up. It's fake. So it's like they're capitalizing on just the idea of this as if somebody was like, hey, put this out there. It'll sell well. And it must because it's not like they're not looking at the analytics.

You know what I'm saying? It's the old. Only thing. There's nothing else available right now. This is why humans are doomed, man. We have no control. It doesn't make any sense yet. People are looking at it fucking day in and day out. I bet with this quarantine, I bet the like porn stats are through the wrong.

Oh, yeah. I bet porn. Oh, by the way, side note, this is valuable to the listeners as well. Porn hub, I think it was, basically made their premium channel free. So you know people are capitalizing on that shit. This is valuable to the listeners. Let's turn. Savings, beware.

I think it might be time, guys. For what? For the Battle Royale. Oh, yeah. By the way, last time I thought your animals were ludicrous and ridiculous. Mine was obviously fantastic and the winner. Okay, but here's what I want to do. I want to change Battle Royale.

Because we're stuck at home, let's do this. Let's engineer a new housepin. pet using three parts of an animal that you'd have to be in quarantine with. And the goal is what? Is to make the cutest, the best, the most cute, adorable pets? Yeah, this is your quarantine buddy, right? You're like me, you're in complete isolation. You have no friends.

Right, right. And this is it. You have to engineer three, you have to combine three animals to create your perfect stay-at-home pet. Okay, okay. Well, I'm happy to jump in first here. Let's hear it. all right so what i'm going to do is i'm going to start with the body of a six-week-old kitten come on that's a dead giveaway terrible obviously yeah so i've got i've got a six-week-old kitten it's

fuzzy it is cuddly uh they smell good uh i'm starting there smart then what i'm going to do is i'm going to give it the head of a baby hummingbird Wow. Come on. Have you seen a baby? Dude, have you seen how cute like a little baby bird's beak is? They move too fast. I can't see them.

Dude, they're fuzzy. They have feathers coming out. All right, fair enough. They're a good time, man. So I've got this tiny little head, which is very cute, on this cute kitten's body. Okay. I'm going to give it the feet. So all four feet on the kittens at the end of the kitten's legs are going to be a human baby's feet.

Oh, my God. Get out. out of here. Everyone loves little... Dude, are you kidding? Watch a bunch of women get around a newborn baby. Are you a woman? Will the women be living with this?

Or I thought this was our animals living with us? I'm trying to sell these online. Dude, if you look at a group of women around a newborn human baby, they cannot stop playing with the feet. They are touching them. They're rubbing the feet all over their faces. They're putting the feet in their mouths. This is going to be the new thing.

We got a name for it? It's called the fru. Very cute name. It's a cute name. Very weird. It's F-R and then three O-S. Strange. Frue. All right, I'll go.

I'll go. What do you got, Forrest? All right, I'm going to go Ultimate Cute. God, this is easy. All right, I'm going to go head of a slow laris. If you don't know what a slow laris is, a.k.a. Peter, you need to use Google. I'm so upset right now.

A slow laris has the biggest eyeball to head race. probably in the world. They are just adorable. But if you use their body, they will kill you because they are a venomous mammal. So we will go with the body of a red panda if you're familiar with this animal. Everybody loves a panda. Okay, there's quite a discrepancy in body size. Yeah, yeah.

We're both doing that. We're both doing that. We're both doing that. So slow large size body. So slow Lars head, red panda body. And I'm going to throw in some little hedgehog feet. Okay. They're adorable.

They're like these little Have you seen hedgehog feet? They're like these little weird, alien soft, like droopy hands. When I tried to play with your hedgehog, it bit me within two seconds. What was it like a cute nibble or did it actually like take a chomp that drew blood? No, I needed a hand. Well, I guess we're talking about cute looking. So right now I'm going to say Forrest is in the lead out of you two, especially Pat with that's brunkers.

Forrest on. Oh yeah. What's yours called for us? A slow pandog. Yeah. Ooh. Nice. Good call to slow Loris.

God damn. I should have thought of that. I'm pretty upset because, and I swear to God, that slow Loris is what I was going to pick for the eyes and face. Oh, come on. I swear to God. You didn't know what it was 15 seconds ago. No, but I will say you made me happy again by letting me know that it was venomous because I did not know that. I just looked at a picture of it and I was like, I would not want to be.

living with a venomous slow loris. So I'm glad. Peter, just go ahead and do the body, face, and feet of a blobfish. Because that's what you're going to end up doing. Yeah, that's what I look like, mate. I don't want anything that looks like me. All right. Well, I'm going to start with the ears. And I'm going to go with the ears of a fenic fox. Wow, that's powerful.

A fenic fox's ears are, I mean, aside from the animal, if it was just the ears, it would win this competition. Because the ears are huge. I don't know if you've ever seen them. They're just enormous radar dishes. It's good. Okay, so the ears of aphetic fox. And then, so now I have to audible my face.

So I'm going to go with the face of an otter pup, a sea otter pup. This is good. He's coming strong. You're making up for last week. Definitely thought he was going to say bat with a rat's tail. I thought about it for sure. All right. So, and then I think I'm going to go, so what I've got ears and I've got face, and then I'm going to go a little conventional here.

Got anything else? Conventional here. Yeah, I really want the listeners to visualize this. I'm going with a body of a really, really soft, white bunny. Why is that laughable? Why is that laughable? I know. You just tanked at the end.

You have giant bunnies. You clearly like obese bunnies. It's true. I do. And then to finish it off. No, that's three. That's all you get. Does it always have to be three? Is that the rule?

Yes, that's the self-imposed rule that's being made now. Even if I'm going to give it a rat's tail needlepoint sharp. All right. All right. What's your name? What's it called? A fenic otter. Oh, boy, that's original.

God, that's lame. Sorry. All right, whatever. You got a case of bad brain. You know what, guys, let's make it interesting. So for all the listeners out there, if you're enjoying our battle royale, We're going to go ahead and vote for our animals. It can either be the throop from Mr. DeLuca.

Throop. You've got to roll the R. It's a lot of R's. Thank you. The slow pan dog created by yourself, myself, Forrest Galante, or the Fenic Ophanee from Peter. Let's see, everybody vote, and someone will be picked at random to win a brand new piece of hex technology. The hex suit. Nice.

Yeah, and we can talk about what the hex suit is. It's one of my main tools in the field. one of Patrick's main tools in the field, something we use all the time. And we will pick someone at random to win a hex suit. So leave us a comment, leave us a review. Tell us if you like the Thrupe, the Slope and Dog or the Fennick Otter Bunny. Can I vote? And win yourself some hex.

So what is a hex suit? So the hex suit, it's a piece of technology that Patrick, myself, and the rest of our team used in the field a lot. It is a garment that has technology built in it that has the same tech as what's in the door of your microwave oven. So it blocks the bodies naturally occurring electrical, magnetic energy so that animals that pick up on EMR or EME, electrical magnetic energy, cannot sense you. So things like, you know, birds that use it for migration, sea turtles that use it for

navigation, and a whole lot of other species we're learning use this as their sixth sense. And it's also really cool, really light and really comfortable. Dude, that's crazy. In addition to being an awesome piece of gear, that's like nuts. Leave us a comment on iTunes. Let us know whose animal is the You have an animal that you want to comment, I'd love to see that too. What's your cutest? That's a real challenge. Can anyone, that's a real challenge? Can anyone top any of these three? That's the real question here. Well, I think millions of people can.

They can definitely top. They can definitely top Peters. A hummingbird face, dude. Nobody's even seen a hummingbird's face. You're out of your gourd. You just saw one out your window, dude. You just saw one. Listeners didn't hear that part. I'm so annoyed, though, Forrest. I got some really.

Really bad news. Ooh, lay it on me. Scientists have discovered that jellyfish can release these big blobs of mucus, and they float in the ocean, and they can sting you. Is this new? I haven't heard of this. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Wow. The jellyfish turned themselves upside down on the floor of the ocean. Cassiopeas. Yeah, they release these mucus blobs, and if you walk into one, it does you in. Interesting. You might remember, Patrick, when we were shooting in the Bahamas for Extincter Alive, I found upside-down jellyfish, Cassiopeia. And those are the kind that go upside down. And it's funny because you can scoop them up and they're, they seem harmless as long as you touch the outside. But I did not know that they could release gelatinous globs of their tentacles. This is

amazing. Yeah, it says that in, uh, they first discovered this in 1908, but they thought that it was just, They were emitting just clusters of parasites that had infected them. Okay. But it's actually the stinging nematicus cells. Why the fuck are they doing it? Like, you're just being a jerk. Yeah. There's no reason to do that.

I mean, it's got to be for like hunting food and getting an animal to get paralyzed so then they can go dissolve it with their weird gelatinous mouths. But they have no way. Yeah, they couldn't. That's lunacy because how would they know where to go? Electromagnetic wave fields, man. They're really good at reading the currents. No, this is just a dick move.

A total dick move. They're literally calling it stinging snot. Can we give those Cassiopeas the Dick of the Week Award? Yes. I thought you had a sound effect for the Dick of the Week award. I do. There it is. Dig of the week.

So, Forrest, I've seen all these stories, first of all that I think are bullshit about all these animals that are now coming out because humans are inside. But this one piqued my interest because I saw you. had posted about a spotted Malibar Civic. Tell me about this. Let's break this down into two parts. First of all, you're right, Ritap. People are sharing a bunch of feel good news that is bullshit. Oh, really? Yeah. So like, look, are there positive repercussions to people being quarantined globally? Of course. Like, the water in the canals in Venice is way clearer because there's no boat traffic, right? Apparently pollution is way down in L.A., something like the least smog since the 80s. That's fantastic.

But these stories of dolphins in the canals of Venice, those were pictures taken in Sardinia that someone just bullshitted because they wanted to go viral. The swans that were showing up there, those swans are there every day of the year. Dude, that person knew they were full of shit too, which makes it even worse. Going for internet points. And I think my favorite one for the internet points is someone posted that elephants in Wuhan, China, of course, Wuhan being the center of coronavirus. have been enjoying themselves so much that they're breaking into tea plantations and getting drunk on fermented tea and passing out. And those pictures are just completely fake. Like nobody's been able to figure out where they're from.

But they're definitely not from Wuhan, which is in a state of complete calamity. You can never deny the creativity of humans looking at a couple of passed out elephants and being like, they broke into a tea house and got drunk. Obviously. And then people believe it. For us, don't elephants get drunk in Zimbabwe where you're from? They do. On Marula fruit.

Yeah, they will go and eat fermented marula fruit. And it's the only time of the year where you can see elephants napping next to lions and impala and everything. Because everything comes and eats this marula, this fermented marula fruit and gets absolutely tanked. So animals do get drunk. Let's be clear. Dude, have you had, Retep, have you had Amarula? No, I don't think so. How would you describe it for us?

It's like a... It's like a bailey's like liqueur from the marula fruit. So it's good. It's tasty. Oh, my God. Does it get you as hammer the glass? In fact, I got a funny story about Marilla Fruit. Think of this thick, chunky Bailey's-like liqueure.

On our season two premiere night. Of Extincter Alive? Of Extincter Alive. Yeah, we had a party in Santa Barbara, and Patrick and I gave some toast and some speeches, and I handed out some gifts, some leathermans that we had made for the crew. And I gave a bottle of this Amarula, which is, it's not cheap stuff. you know, it's good high quality liqueur to our editor Jesse.

And I was like, here, you know, thanks so much for all your hard work, man. You've been cutting the show. You know, you've been so great to work with. And Jesse's about five foot five. I was going to say 4.11. Yeah, it's real generous. You know, he, what I'm getting at is he probably couldn't hang with the amount of alcohol consumption that was taking place at the party.

Right. So he just decided to crack his, you know, a couple hundred dollar bottle of Amarula from Africa and start sharing it with the entire party and smash the entire creamy heavy liqueur bottle by taking handle pull. Is that why he didn't show up to breakfast the next day? That would be why. So he got real shit face on the Madula line. Yeah, you was a mess.

When you want to get drunk, you also want to ingest a full bottle of cream. Yeah. That's my rule. That's good. Yeah. So that said, Forrest, what about this, you know, I mean, you guys do extinct or alive. they're claiming that an animal they thought was extinct or very near extinction has been seen basically just walking around. I think it came out of India.

The video they showed, it's crossing the street. Yeah, it's like out in, yeah. It's in town and town's abandoned. You see no people in the video. Aside from all the fake wildlife news, this was a genuine image of a civet walking through a town in India and abandoned town in India. And the idea is that because, you know, nobody's out running around, here comes this critically endangered spotted Malabar Sivit. posted this and said somebody helped me understand this because I can't find any credible sources and as a scientist like I'm not just going to be like check this out it's real right right so there's a

whole lot of discussion going on as to whether or not this is a malabar civet or if it's an indian small civet which is a similar much smaller animal that has almost identical markings and unfortunately the photo doesn't give us any scale so it's next to impossible to tell okay so I mean it's out there it's kind of like a controversy going on right now. Nobody knows yet. It could be. Let's look at the positive here, right? The positive is you've got an incredible creature, whether it's the Malabar large-spotted civet or the Indian small civet, walking around the streets of a busy city when humans disappear. And I think the positive here, what we're looking at is look at what happens when we just give the world a minute to take a break. You know, animals start to come out. Yeah, from humans.

Yeah. Animals start to come out of hiding. They start to go, you know, into the streets. and look around and, you know, this is true, whether, whether, you know, fake reports of dolphins in the canals are there or not. Yeah, this is real. And I think it's pretty amazing, you know, not to get too heavy, but it's pretty amazing to see what just a week or two of break from human activity will do to the planet. Absolutely. Do you guys, obviously everyone's stocked up to some extent, don't hoard shit. I am using napkins as toilet paper. But we bought a bunch of grocery. You do that Normally, don't lie. It's not bothering me at all, quite frankly.

Are you guys, so we got a bunch of fruit, right? So we got some bananas and apples and stuff. I'm just naming fruits. Things with rinds, hopefully, that you can take off. Do you guys enjoy when you come down to your fruit basket and it's covered in fruit flies? Does that make you happy? Dude, I love it. Fruit flies are a nuisance only second to mosquitoes in my opinion.

There are so many fruit flies on my fucking bananas today that I live. literally was like, fantasizing about blowing up a fruit fly to be the size of me so that I could disarm it limb from limb and stab it. It was so angry. That should have been your cute animal.

Just a giant fruit fly? Yeah. A giant attack fruit fly. Well, I was surprised to learn as I started Googling about why there's so many goddamn fruit flies that the city of Los Angeles where we live

is releasing millions of fruit flies into the air via airplane. Why the fuck would they do that? These psychopaths? This is a real thing? We have an invasive Mediterranean fruit fly. That's an invasive species that's I guess killing crops in California or whatever the fuck.

And so to combat that, they're flying in planes and releasing 125,000 regular fruit flies. This is a nightmare. That are sterile. Stereal fruit flies. Okay. $125,000 fruit flies per square mile. Holy shit.

Over the, over the skies of Los Angeles. So we're literally putting millions of sterile fruit flies into the air to mate with these shitty Mediterranean fruit flies to kill them off. So it's like a nuisance now, but it's going to eventually eradicate these invasive pests. Yeah. But I don't care about the invasive Mediterranean fruit fly. I care about the millions of fruit flies they're putting in.

to the sky above my house. Eating your fucking bananas made. You know why they have to do that? Because these fruit flies, they only live about 40 days. It's too much. Way too long. Let's get that down to 30. Three.

But they have to continue, and they can lay hundreds and hundreds of eggs each, which hatch within 24 hours. So they're crazy. They're horrible creatures. But they have to continue, I didn't know any of this, by the way, but they have to continually release them. Otherwise, you know, the sterile fruit flies will just continue to reprimed. produce at an alarming rate. So it's a biohack to fight an invasive species, which frankly is

amazing, but it is really not very pleasant when you get down to your fruit basket in the morning and it's black with fruit. Well, couldn't there be like some wild repercussions to that? What if it got out of control? They released a batch that wasn't sterile or something. We'd be doomed. So Forrest, we both, have you been in New Zealand, Peter? I have not. Would love to go. You guys should take it. Okay. Let's do it. After the virus. After the plague. Podcast 11 coming at you from New Zealand. Noted schedule. For people that haven't driven around New Zealand,

like, I think we both did this where we rented a car at the top of the North Island and drove all the way to the bottom of the South Island. There is just roadkill everywhere. Millions and millions and millions of what look like ferrets. And they're called a stote. Yep. And the New Zealand government brought this stote in to combat an invasive species. I can't remember if it was a mouse or a rat.

The possum, I believe. Okay. So they brought these sort of ferret-like creatures in called a stote, and their population exploded beyond belief. And it was a huge backfire. Like, it's a disaster. That's what I was saying about the fruit flies. I mean, who knows what's going to happen when humans intervene?

And this is a story. Actually, I believe the stouts were brought into combat rabbits, if I remember correctly. I think they're really good rabbit hunters. But this is a story as old as time. We did this in Hawaii, and you're not wrong, Patrick. The amount of roadkill in New Zealand is insane. And we often do this where we think, because we understand an animal and its ecology and its behavior, that we will bring it to a new environment and it will control something.

A perfect example of that, Hawaii complete mess. We brought rats into Hawaii. The rats started to eat the bird eggs. And we're like, oh, crap, this is terrible. We're losing an alarming rate of bird species in Hawaii. let's bring mong geese in to hunt the rats now there's mong geese all over hawaii which are diurnal by the way and nobody thought of this

and rats all over hawai at night still eating the birds and neither of these two animals are killing each other and now they're both there in nightmare and this is this goes on and on and on cane toads in Australia I mean the roads are they run red with the blood of cantoes which are invasive species that you just mow over in your car and they're so big ugh Big, disgusting venom-glanted toads that were brought in to eat cane beetle.

One of the things that was in Tiger King that I did like that I appreciated was the fact that they do feed all the roadkill. Like if somebody hits a deer or something out there, they basically bring it to Exotic Joe to feed to the tigers at least. So all that. And the Walmart meat. Well, yeah, the Walmart meat, which also his employees get to pick through first. I also like how they had frozen pizzas from the Walmart. Yeah. Yeah, Tiger just likes a nice, a nice de jorno.

By the way, it does. Don't knock a de jrano. Any animal will eat that. Oh, my God, dude. Getting a little tipsy here. This is fantastic. You just guzzled a pint of red wine, sir. I've been so deprived of human contact for two weeks that this is the best part of my week, by far.

Is that why your pants are off and your hands have not come above the table once during this video conference? Oh, my God. It's been an hour. already and that's true. So did you guys see what's going on in Florida right now with the whole coronavirus thing? Yeah, apparently the state of Florida is not taking this seriously. Yeah, that's what I heard. It's more the people that are going there for spring break who aren't taking it seriously,

though, right? Well, dude, my fiance's cousin lives in like a nice part of Clearwater Beach and she texted us last night that her neighbors were allowing their college kids to have a huge keg party. They were all doing keg stands, and there was like 60 college-age kids doing kegstands in the yard next to hers. See? This is my point. This is why I'm ragging on Daytona. They're having fun, and I'm sitting here in isolation.

Humans are, man, just sometimes the worst. I saw in India that the cops are going around, and if anybody's not obeying, like, the curfew or the quarantine or whatever, they literally just have these basically whips. And they're just whipping people on the back and the ass as they go down the street on their mopeds. I'm not thinking. There's videos all over. Dude, one up from that, there's gangs, I want to say in Colombia, that are, they said, because the government is failing to enforce the curfew law, the gangs themselves are going to teach you a lesson if you're out past 8 p.m. I'm all about it. I'm all about it. Yeah, there is gang violence taking place to keep the curfew up.

It's insane. I'm down with it. I'm having the fact that like the gangs were like, hey, we should step up and enforce. Like, let's be the good guy. guys here. Right. It's amazing. In South America, the government was like, okay, you're not allowed to lay anybody off and will pay their salary. And then people are just like, with what, like 10 trillion Venezuelan dollars? Because it's so inflated already. It's just not helping out there. So I think the gangs, I mean, they realize this shit. And they're like, hey, well, we're going to fix this, the old fashioned way with violence. So what I'm hearing is that we have to get a gang from Brazil and take them to Florida.

That's what I'm hearing. Is this correct? Zero question. Okay. Man, when you're in college, you are so cocky, or I'm speaking for the three of us. Yes. You're the cockiest you've ever been in your life when you're in college. Like I could totally imagine myself at age 20 being like, dude, it's going to be like a cold if I get it. Fuck it.

Totally. Zero question. Totally. Zero question. There's a girl who might want to give me a kiss if I go to the beach. The IQ points in collective settings just drop so quickly. Oh my God, dude. And then throw in a bit of booze.

I miss those days. It's how I lost my tooth. Well, did you see that? So I get most of my news from CNBC because they're pretty bipartisan. Like it's just how is this going to apply to the markets? And so you kind of, it's like a filter. But one of the pieces of financial news that I came across, across yesterday was that divorce attorneys all over America are already seeing a massive spike

in calls that they're getting for divorces. Oh, a spike. I thought you were going to go the other way. I thought couples were like getting along because they were stuck together and forced to speak. Are you nuts? Quite the opposite, sir. Quite the opposite.

This is causing couples to call divorce attorneys at an alarming rate. Can you imagine? And you're quarantined with said counterpart. So she's sitting in the living room and you're hiding in the bedroom, calling a divorce attorney to get a quote. Honey, I'm going to go to the grocery store. Flushing the toilet. Honey, I'm going to go to the grocery store. You just go sit in the car and call your lawyer.

Right. Well, the other thing is, you know, there's around the U.S., there's tens of thousands of, like, destination weddings and weddings that have had to been postponed. I feel like 50% of those people aren't even going to go through with it. Right. Yeah. Probably for the better. All the hype, all the buildup, all the excitement. Hold on to your horses because it's not happening.

You're now forced to be in close quarters and not leave the house. And what if this goes on, say, till like September? I mean, people are just going to be so fed up with each other. The wedding is off, people. Get out of there. Well, for us, like, we're supposed to go out and do a couple international adventures. Yep. You know, as soon as we can.

Right. I mean, like, what if this does extend three months? Like what, do you think mentally you can handle it? I can handle being quarantined for three months, yes. I mean, I'm not going to like it. But I live in an area in Santa Barbara where I can go to the mountains. I can go to the beach. I can get outside.

If I were in a New York City apartment, I would go nuts. I would lose my mind. I need to go outside every single day, even if it's just in my own garden. But if I were stuck, you know, in downtown New York, I don't know what I'd do. Which is the scariest possible place to be right now in the U.S. So let's play this game. Coronavirus is going to go on. for the foreseeable future. This will happen. The cause will get worse. People are going to panic and

die. All these fun things. Where are you going? Why are you going there? Where's your Eden? You know, where are you going? You know, you got to think about resources, food, water, you know, where are you going and why are you staying there? I got mine. Retap, take it away. So I think, you know, the food and resources, I just go to the grocery store and pack up my car. And then there's actually like a lot of places, not to shit on your point, but there's a lot of places where you can just go into the mountains and camp completely by yourself. There's nobody around you. It's off-grid camping. And I've been there before and I loved it even when there wasn't a plague going around. So I think that's where I'd go. And it's not very far from here. You're talking about an hour away from even

L.A. So I think, you know, I could get there quick. You're thinking real short term. You're thinking like, I'm going to go on a weekend camping trip. Like, what are you going to eat? What is like I said like I said do you are you talking like if the apocalypse happens and Society of elapsed dude. All right. That's that's a different story. I would just die. I'd kill myself. Okay. I can't survive in that. I agree with your sentiment. I think that's what you would do. I'd come and hitch my wagon to your star dude. Be like hey, forest take me with you. I'm surprised you picked going and sleeping in a tent in the mud an hour outside of L.A. Well, that's how you see it. You're an idiot, but okay. When when I've been with you. I've been with you. you to the place where I'm going to go, which is I'm going to the north shore of Kauai.

Oh, very nice. Yeah. There is a wonderful Costco right by the airport. How are you going to get there? You're going to take a paddle boat? Society has collapsed me. I'm going to rent an SUV. And drive over the ocean. Oh, shit. You're poking holes in my story now. Yeah, that's right. Just like my story was poked. So I've got to be able to drive for us because it's a total breakdown. No, so societal collapse is coming, but you can travel somewhere. So you got to get there and get set up. Norsehore of Kauai. Costco, it's fantastic. It's beautiful.

It's a beautiful place to be. Have you been to Kauai? I have, yeah. Only once and I was about 17, but loved it. I mean, it's stunning. It's unbelievable. Yeah. If Kauai wasn't a five-hour flight,

we would talk about it the way that we talk about, like, Bali. Right. It's fucking incredible. It's like the best place in the world. They filmed Jurassic Park there, didn't they? Sure did. Yeah. So I would go and I encourage.

encourage everybody to look this place up. Innocence Island in the Bahamas. It's the largest private island in the Bahamas. I believe it's for sale for like $150 million for any of our listeners that just feel like a weekend getaway. Let's do a go fun game. Got some rich listeners. Yeah. It's a 600 acre private island flush with a with a freshwater lake, tons of palm trees, full of coconuts, coral reefs all around it, white sand beaches, and it's in the Bahamas. Just sounds like heaven. Well, I mean, it's a great idea, except now that you've told our millions of listeners that are all obviously going to be going there first, so you're really fucked up there.

Yeah, price went up. Price just went up. By the way, so it was listed for $55 million, didn't sell, it went to auction, and someone got it for $17 million. Oh, come on. Are you serious? Yeah. That's my dream home.

Dude, there's like a full resort on the island that was included. We could just, like, form a gang and go take it over. We should. Let's do that. Absolutely. Yeah. It has a private runway. Does it really? It does, yeah. And an international airport code, so you don't even have to clear customs. You can just land. Sweet. We could bring all the...

If you're listening and you want to form a gang with the three of us and go take over this island, leave a comment on the iTunes. All right, guys, that just spike the audio. Yeah. This has been the most social interaction I've had in a while. Retep still doesn't have pants on. I can see it over the Zoom meeting. You assholes. Just finished his second pint of red wine. What a guy.

This is the wrap-up on the second Wild Times podcast. I hope everybody enjoyed listening to it. Because we're all stuck in quarantine and isolation, we'll be doing another one tomorrow. And tomorrow, you guys should have received your cases a wild tonic today. Alcoholic kombucha. Do you guys get that? Sure did.

Very excited. Peter, how many of you had so far? I am on my, well, third pint glass full, but that's besides the point. What a lunatic. But we'll be, guys, let's just get drunk on some wild tonic tomorrow night and tell some stories. Hell yeah. I think we shall.

I think we must. Yeah, this is good. All right. Good night. Good night, good chance. Good night. Good night. Both for my animal.

Good night. Good night. Wild times.