Wild Times: Wildlife Education - TWT #102 - The Origin of Extinct or Alive

Episode Date: September 19, 2022

Forrest, Patrick & Peter keep up the wild, classic podcast vibes in this episode with some good animal news, what inspired Extinct or Alive and the beloved Extinct or Alive game!   Leave a review on iTunes Apple Podcast: https://thewildtimespodcast.com/itune...   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wildtimespod/   Official Website: https://thewildtimespodcast.com/  Info: https://thewildtimespodcast.com/info   Merch: https://thewildtimespodcast.com/merch   Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/wildtimespod  Enjoy, brosteners!  The Wild Times #102 - The Breakdown   00:00 - Intro   00:23 - Nap Talk   03:40 - Hippo Mode   13:55 - Famous Snake & Lizard Scene   16:30 - Extinct or Alive Game   31:40 - Lorde Howe Insect   35:30 - Forrest Finds New Species   41:27 - More Extinct or Alive Game   46:24 - TikTok is Crazy   49:00 - Wrapping Up  #podcast

Hello. Hello. I like how you said that. I stole that for then how I intro the podcast. Perfect. This is the Wild Times episode number 102. We're recording live from Peter's Plush couch. Yeah, baby.

Very deep couch. It is, very deep. It's a great nap couch. Do you nap here? It's a best kind of couch. Yeah, I do. I chill here. Can you take a nap?

Yeah, I can. What about? you, especially lately. Oh yeah, I can nap. Can you not? You're a non-napper? I have not napped in my memory. Really? Dude, like, hungover, you wake up in Vegas because your friends wake you up 45 minutes after you went to sleep. Yes, every time. I'm the, I'm that guy. And everyone's like, yeah, we'll go to fucking hit the pool and at 3 p.m. will come back and nap. Yeah. At 3 p.m., I don't nap. No way. I cannot nap. I'll say I haven't historically been able to nap, but since I'm basically up 24-7, all I do is nap for two hours at a time right now.

I'm the opposite. I'm like, I'm not a chronic napper, but if I can find a window to relax and fall asleep, I do it instantly. There's health benefits. I've looked into this. It's a shocking, Kyle, Google, what percentage of Americans nap daily? I actually just read, I just high. It's high. There's a real, a real hot article right now that says that people who nap during the day are more likely to have Alzheimer's. Swear to God. Interesting. So according to the Pew Research Center, 34% of all adults take a nap every day. That's wild.

One out of three people that you see at the grocery store has taken a nap that day. Yeah, but I mean, that's skewed heavily towards, like, older people. It is, but when you look at it broken down by age, which we don't need to do now, because this isn't a show about napping, it's like, it's pretty crazy. Pat's math needs to be its own podcast.

On napping? Yeah, well, any kind of, anything you want. You kind of statistics. I mean, it is outrageous. Like, one in three people decide that every day they're going to snooze. Yeah. I did it in college. I'll say that.

I'll tell you, you know what? I did take naps in college. You're naps. We got it on tape. But they weren't really naps. It was more like just like, you know, you dragged your ass to take a test. You go back and re-sleep. Yeah.

Some of my deepest sleeps ever were in college classrooms. Oh, my God. Yeah. It's all I did. Trueing on the table on the desk. I used to, like, because I would go to class freshman year, and then I was like, what are you doing? You're just going to a different place to sleep. To sleep, correct.

You absorb nothing while you're in that class. Yeah, you absorb nothing. You just go there to sit in a dark theater and sleep. And I just like, I'm never going to go again. It also makes you more tired than anything you could possibly be doing. It's like somebody reading you a fucking bedtime story is what running class is like. this monotonous professor droning on. But this is not a fucking sleep podcast.

What the hell are we talking about? I don't even think we finish the introses. We're way beyond that. Yeah, we're way beyond that. Forrest Galante, the brofologist. The professor Retep. Producer. Somebody asked the other day if I'm an actual professor.

You are. Ph.D. in podcasting, I always do. I know. That's what I answer with. By the way, if you were one of our recent subscribers, thanks for signing up to our channel. I hope you're actually watching the podcasts. I know a bunch of you are here from our shorts, but hey, check out the podcast too.

You changed. You're in pants. What are you talking about? What do you mean? Nobody knows that. That was a different podcast. That was a different day. I want to kick things off today for us.

Yeah. Bit of happy wildlife-related news. That's a change. Yeah. The Cincinnati Zoo has welcomed the brand new, the newest member of the zoo, a brand new, healthy, baby hippo.

Oh, I love it. Is there a cuter animal than a baby hippo? Which, this is, I've said this before. It's a boy. It is adorable. There's something about how the scariest, meanest animals on earth are the cutest babies. Wine cubs, tiger cubs, baby hippos.

Yeah, it's true. The scariest meanest animals on earth have the cutest babies. Wolf, pup. Have you ever seen a wolf? It'll melt your heart. Any feline or canine pup, they are amazingly cute. And they're like friendly and nice, just like a regular dog, like a domesticated dog. Until they're not.

Right. But by the way, I would venture to say that the hippo pictured here, the new one at the zoo, is as beautiful as any camel that's ever won the camel beauty contest. Wow, I'd forgotten about the camel beauty contest. Well, this is good news. It's good news. I like that there's a new hippo born at the Cincinnati Zoo. I like that CNN covered this as a major story. I think it's very significant.

What I think is hilarious is the CNN story is, let's call it, 120 words. Sure. Two authors. Yeah. Why do we need two reporters? Yeah, who's the other person and what are they contributing? Right. That'd be like what we would have to do if he wrote a blog post on the website.

Forrest would send it. He'd be like, I'm in the weeds, man. Can you just finish this off? Yes. We really would, too. Here's the title. But real quickly here, so the hippo was born, adorable, weighing 29 pounds.

Right. Wow. Good size. So, a little quick, impromptu Pat's match. Uh-oh. So the baby was born at 29 pounds. It will grow and to be a full-grown hippo. Yep.

Let's say the average human baby is about eight pounds. That sounds like a safe number, right, when it's born? Sure. Yeah. Right around eight pounds. If the human. baby grew to the same scale that a hippo baby did from birth to full adult weight. Yeah, I'm following. How much would the average human adult weigh? So let's see. So we're

going from 30 pounds to 1,300 pounds. So if you're an adult, you go from 8 pounds to 700 pounds? I'm going to go 8,000 pounds. Yep, that's close. 470 pounds. 470. Yeah. That exists. There are plenty of 470 pound people. They're featured on TLC shows. Correct. My 600 pound life. I also saw that in the Cincinnati Zoo, they're looking for names. What would you name your baby hippo? Oh, wow. Jippo. Jippo?

Jippo. That's a nice name. Jippo's a good name. Jippo is a good name. Hungry, hungry. Hungry, hungry. What about you, Forrest? Man, not as good as Jippo or Hungry, hungry, what would I?

I'd call them, mpf. Yeah, and then just like put that on a sign. It's like a U with an umlot. It's just a symbol. Like thud, the hippo, formerly known as. If I had a herd of hippo, they'd all have sound names. Thud, plop, umf. I like that.

It would be cool, man. If you have some real estate for us, you have some space. Yeah, I should get a hippo. Maybe you should start a hippo adoption center. Yeah, that's going to go well instead of Barbara, California. You can adopt the ones that are out in South America. I have a fish pond about the size of this table in my backyard. I reckon I could get a little.

At least 12 hippo in there. Let me ask you this about baby hippos. Because you've seen a lot of hippos in the wild. Unfortunately. Yeah. You've been chased by them. They almost killed you and your wife. Yep.

We are all infatuated here with the just really fun behavior of hippos, spinning their tail around to flick their shit all over. Indeed. What's that called again? There is a name for it. Flick shitting? It's called. Flick shitting.

It's called stinking. Stinkinken. But, you know. Yeah, so for new listeners, when hippos shit, they swirl their tails around and spray it everywhere. How's going to play us a little video? Why do they do it for us? To mark their territory. That's like the ultimate territory mark.

Like normal animals just pee. They're like, we're going to spray our shit everywhere. We've got a video coming right here. Look at that butt. Look at that spine. You can see the spinal cord right there. You can see the spine. It's an interesting tail.

Is it, what's the word we were? Here we go. Here we go. Oh, and it's hitting the camera and everything. They get a good spray with that. It's a nice, that's a nice. Oh, yeah. So here's a question.

You've got some distance, some range on that. Have you ever seen a baby hippo do that? No, I haven't. I wonder if that's a learned behavior or it's an instinct. I imagine it's instinctual, but I don't know. Have you ever seen a hippo eat a watermelon? Yeah. That's adorable.

It's an adorable thing. Yeah, oh, really? Yeah. I like that. Dude, there's a lot of things. that are instinctual with humans that I had no idea until I had a kid. Such as? Well, I mean, like the rooting reflex where if you stroke the cheek lightly,

but dude, the fact that they just are born to suck, that's all babies do. They just want to eat and suck, and you're just like... Do you think porn stars just never grow out of that? Do you think that's why they choose that career? I don't have a single. If I did, I'd be looking right into the camera, rolling my eyes. It's possible. It is incredible and it's weird

And, you know, my daughter's 18, I don't know, 17 months or something But the fucking instinct to just climb shit Oh yeah, everything And I'm like, nobody taught you this Like we didn't watch Free Solo together But like, just like, I see that

I think I have a path to get to the top Look super dangerous, I'm going up it. That's the primate in us, man. Oh yeah, that's interesting. And the swimming shit's crazy, man. Yeah. You dunk a baby in the water Hold their breath instantly.

No problem. You hold them like this, kick, kick, kick. It's wild. What? I know. Here's a great one. If you blow on a baby's face, it will... They hold his breath.

Yeah, it takes their breath away. Is that related to the swimming one? I don't know. It's the mammalian reflex. Mammalian reflex is when you put, as any human, when you put your face into water, your heart rate slows down and babies will hold their breath instinctually. That's a mammalian reflex.

Right, because people do water births. And the baby comes out. Yeah, we did. Oh, really? You did? Yeah, yeah. Wow, no shit. Just in the turtle pond?

In the turtle pond. The one the size of the table. The future hippo pond? The future hippo pond, yeah. Yeah. Well, that's, what were we talking about? We were talking about hippos, and then we got onto sucking and what's happening in this show? We were talking about the baby hippo at the zoo, the San Diego Zoo.

That's a good bit of news. It's nice to see good news. I feel like hippos, rightfully so. People can get angry at me, rightfully so. They're villainized in the media. They're jerks. They're very scary animals, by the way. Well, they kill more humans per capita than any other animal, right? Than any other land mammal, yeah, in Africa.

But, yeah, no, I mean, I feel like all the hippo news that you see is about, like, the Colombian hippos and hippo killed somebody. It's nice to see somebody like, hey, we got an adorable new hippo. Yeah, yeah. That's cool. I mean, I wonder how much they... What do you think they feed the hippos at the zoo? A lot of hay. Oh, really? It bales a hay. Yeah, for sure. No shit.

Yeah. But are they carnivorous? No. Not at all, huh? They just kill for sport. They just kill for sport. Not seagrass, but they just eat like grasses. Uh-huh.

Yep. They're grazers. They have found in a few instances fish bones in hippo feces. Okay. A few times. My guess would be that they're like mowing down stuff underwater and getting fish in there by accident. They're like sea cows.

Yeah, well, except manatees and sea cows and dugongs are, incredibly like docile and gentle. And like, if you see one in the water, it's like, what is a sea cow? A sea cow is a generalist term for a manatee or a deer. Oh, okay. So the manatees are sea cows. Manatees and dugongs are two different groups of animals.

Okay. That are closely related and look similar. And sea cow is like the term that describes both of them. Right. Okay. It's just interesting how everything that's really big. I mean, obviously polar, but you know, there's some huge carnivores. Yeah.

But pretty much all the giant animals are not. Yeah, yeah. They just eat grass. And always have been. Which makes a lot of stuff. Dinosaurs, everything. Yeah. Food abundance.

I mean, your average, the highest success rate in the predator kingdom, somebody's going to fact check me and tell me I'm wrong. But the average, the highest success rate for a predator is something around 30%. Right. Okay. And it takes a lot of energy. You have to expend a lot of calories. Sure, yeah.

Whereas you might, you know, you could be an elephant that eats leaves and grasses. and it has very, very little nutritional value, but you can eat it all day long. Yeah, yeah. And it takes zero effort to locate it or consuming. And then you look at like pride of lines or whatever. All they do is sleep all day and then make a kill. Sleep and hunt.

Yeah. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, that's interesting. But it really limits the size because you just are only going to eat every so often. I was just watching some footage of a bald eagle that it's like targeting this mouse. Okay. And then this golden eagle swoops in and grabs the mouse. Oh, cool.

And the bald eagle's like, fuck, like, I really wanted that mouse. Yeah. So they just, it just is this epic fucking chase. Yeah. And the great job by whoever shot it. I don't know who shot it, but incredible. And they're zigzagging around, the bald eagle's chasing this golden eagle for a while. Oh, cool.

And then at a certain point, it just gives up. And obviously it's like anthropomorphizing a bit, but it's like, you have to think there was a bit of a calculation there of just like, I'm spending. so many calories. Not worth it any longer. Yeah, to get this 200 calorie snack, I'm going to bail. What was that one epic, like, Planet Earth one where it's like all those

snakes that are chasing, what are they chasing? They're chasing an iguana in the Galapagos Island, newly hatched iguana. It's just this epic, the way that they shot it, like, slow motion, and then, like, a million of these snakes chasing

this iguana. I would say it's probably the most famous wildlife clip ever. It very well could be. I mean, it went nuts. I got some news for you, Peter. It's not just one iguana. Yeah. Well, would that be funny if they were all just chasing one of the one of

No, that's what they're implying. Oh, yeah, sure. They're implying it's the same iguana doing the same route. So here's a bit of insight for all you brosners out there, right? I promise you if you put 30 of these baby iguanas next to each other, you couldn't differentiate any of them. Sure. So in order to make this. incredible sequence, which it is. They probably filmed a hundred different iguanas making this

gauntlet run and sliced it together like it's one iguana doing this run. It's genius. It's genius. What do you think is the camera, is that a remote control camera? It's got to be. It's got to be on a slider. It's on something because it wouldn't be a drone, would it? No, too loud. I also don't know a camera guy in the world that would just be stepping over these fucking snakes. Got them. Oh, he got that one. In the one, in the famous one, he gets away. No, this is the famous one. It's the beginning of the sequence and then the next one gets away. Yeah, exactly.

But yeah, yeah, it was for a. Oh, that's the one. That's the one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But do the music, too, is like dramatic cinema music. It's so goddamn time. It's like gave me chills. I bet you when they film this, because if you think about it, and I'm sure Patrick, too, we've fallen victim to this a number of times where you're like, you're like, oh, my God.

I've never filmed a snow leopard, but you're like, oh, my God, I filmed a snow leopard. so rare it took so long to get this shot like this is so incredible like this is going to go viral everybody's going to love this and then you play and it's like yeah cool and then i bet when they were filming this they're like yeah you know we saw 40 iguanas get eaten by snakes today like no big deal and then this came out and the whole world lost it's freaking right well there's no way they're anticipating that blowing up the right there's a lot of great editing that went into that yes a lot and the and the when the i bet they came up with the idea once they saw the iguana escape that we just watched. And they're like, oh my God. Like, we got to make that, because that's like an epic

moment. The crux of the whole thing. If we're watching it with sound, like there's a big fucking cymbals. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, speaking of filming wildlife. Yes. Forrest was the star of a show that I was a producer on for those who are new, called Extincter Alive. Did a few spinoffs for Shark Week. Never heard of it. But I want to play a little game. I want to bring a little game back. Well, E.O. A game? Yeah, let's play the EOA game. Ooh, extinct or a live game.

Dun, done. All right. So here's what we do. I host this, right? Yeah. Yeah, okay. I'm going to throw out... I'm glad he checked, though.

Yeah, it's been so long. Yeah. I'm going to throw out an extinct species. Yep. Forrest, who is the extinct animal guy. True. Is going to weigh in on whether or not there's a chance that some pocket of the world could hold an extinct.

ant population or even just one. Yep. Even just one. Yep. And then Retep as the layman is going to weigh in also after forest. After hearing all the facts about this animal. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. All right. I want to start with a personal favorite of mine. You ever seen a paddlefish in the wild? Never in the wild. Always wanted to. Have you seen a paddlefish? Peter?

Yeah. I used to have one in a kitty pool that I kept in the garage. They're really cool fish. Incredible animal. Big, long, awesome animals. Could I see what one looks like? I want to talk about the Chinese paddlefish. Yep.

So we, by the way, so to be clear, we have a North American paddlefish native here. Right. I've seen pictures. Relatively common, actually, not even that uncommon in the Midwest. Incredible fish, filter feeder. They're now farming them for caviar, so on and so forth. The Chinese paddlefish was just declared extinct in 2022. Officially, correct.

Really? So what is this? It's a subspecies of paddlefish? It's its own species. Okay. You know, convergent evolution. It's its own species of paddlefish, much larger than our North American. Yeah, it's this huge, awesome animal, up to 23 feet long.

Yep. Just declared extinct in the last, like, month. How big is a, the North American paddlefish? Six foot, maybe. These get up to 20 plus feet. Yeah, yeah. No, they're massive. Wow.

Old, super old species around for 200 million years. Yep. Okay. It was found in the Yangtzee River Basin. in China. Yep. Was once plentiful. They survived,

whatever, extincted the dinosaurs. Yep. But really? They were that old? Yeah. 200 million years. Yeah.

No match for overpopulation of humans. Nope. Forests. What do you think? Should we go look for this thing? So you'll remember this, Patrick. When we were doing Extincter Alive, I always wanted to do a hybrid episode.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, where we went to the Yanksy River. We even put in permits for it and got a hilarious response. Yes. And we went to the Yanksy River and looked at the same time for Chinese paddlefish and the Baji, the Yanksy River Dolphin, which lived in the same river basin, the yellow river basin, and onto the Yanksy River. And I was like, look, if we're looking for one, look for two. Absolutely. Right.

We're there. Either way, we're surveying for a giant aquatic creature. I just made up a phrase for this. Oh, yeah? See if it catches on. That's called killing two birds with one stone. Oh, wow. Yeah.

And killing because of the extinct thing. That's smart. That's genius. It's really good. Anyway, all that is to be said. The Yanksy River is home to Beijing, I believe. It's a long river. Yes, but one of the major cities, I think Beijing, if I'm not mistaken, is on the Yanksi River.

It's been damned a whole bunch. That's one of the things that led to the demise of the Baji, as well as the Chinese paddlefish. To bring water into the cities and towns and shit along the river? Yeah, that I think for a hydranti... Not hydroelectric. Yeah, hydroelectric. Hydroelectric power. I'm not even sure, to be honest.

But more so than the damning, rampant pollution, so much so that when I told this story on a podcast forever ago, we got pretty far in this with the Exincter Alive. We were like going to go to China, and the network was like good with it. And then we sent in our letter of declaration of what we were going to do to the Chinese government because, you know, their communists, you have to like approve everything. They run everything. Of course.

And in that letter, like I always write these very nice letters on nice letterhead, and I'd be like, we're coming here, and our plan is to find this animal, we want to show how beautiful it is, and, you know, do our best to investigate it. And, you know, unfortunately, somewhere in the letter I wrote, due to pollution, they've gone extinct. And they, like, sent back this curt email that was like, no pollution here, everything, fine. And I was like, oh, okay. So we got denied to go there. You have told that story on the podcast, but never with the, I.

I don't think the Chinese petalfish hybrid was included in that. I just remember looking for the giant or the ripper on the same zone. But anyway, short answer, I think the Baji is more likely to be extant. They're very smart. They're more capable of migration. I think the Chinese paddlefish is sadly extinct. Bummer. What do you think, Lehman?

Yeah. I mean, you know, I'm sad about this because there could be more. Caviar in the world, bigger caviar, if these were still extant. I will say, though, they're a very large fish. You will say that. I'm pretty lay, so I'm going to say that these are definitely extinct because they would be seen and they would be around. But you're like a big conspiracy theorist.

You don't think the Chinese government has a farm of Chinese paddlefish hidden under tarps. Next to a missile site or something where the aliens are? You have to connect it to a reason why, though. I see. All right. They produce the world's caveat. So the judge and jury have spoken. Yep.

Extinct. Sad. Bummer. Because that's cool. A 23-foot-long paddlefish? Very cool. Swimming in a river? Very cool.

Good God. All right. Next one's up. I'm going to bring up an amphibian. Okay. The Golden Toad. Indeed. Okay.

So this was last scene. verified in 1989. Yep. So we're going back to when that was the Christmas I got my

Nintendo. Of course. I still remember it. I literally almost like I started seeing lights. Like you nearly blacked out.

I melted. Yeah. And then my mom made me go to church and I couldn't even play with them. And you couldn't play it. Explains a lot. It was a fucking night.

I'm sure I was a nightmare in the church. So, found in Costa Rica. Yep. The highlands. They believe that a Chiterd

myocosis. Kittred fungus. There you go. If you want to speak in layman's terms, is responsible for the Golden Todes extinction, an amphibious disease, I suppose, this fungus? Kittred fungus, so frogs, this is actually pretty interesting.

Sorry, we're diverging from the game, but it's part of the podcast. This is the best part of the podcast. African clawed frogs were brought over from Southern Africa, from Zimbabwe, where I'm from, to essentially, let women pee on them to figure out whether or not they were pregnant. Oh, okay.

They used these frogs in pregnancy tests, okay, because the certain hormone would, they'd have a certain response if women were pregnant. Wow. In doing so, they brought these frogs from Africa and mass produced them in unhygienic conditions in labs in North America. Of course. Which led to chitrid fungus, because anytime you have a gazillion of something in one place, you know, some bad conditions, so on and so forth, they brought this fungus over.

And it was created in a lab. And it got out of that lab, as the frogs did, as everything does when you bring it somewhere. Yeah. And spread the world over and has had detrimental effects on amphibians globally. This fungus? This fungus. Yeah. And the first, and this was really where we first sort of learned about it.

And it became a big thing was when the golden toad got wiped out due to chitrid fungus. Because before that it was like, yeah, whatever, it's like a frog fungus. Who cares? Yeah. And then all of a sudden, these striking little toads in Costa Rica disappeared. So, yeah, these are like famous toads. They're very beautiful. They're a poster child of extinction for sure.

Very small, yeah, a little guy like this. Now, Costa Rica obviously gets lots of tourism. There's beaches. There's jungle tourism. But there are pretty large areas of jungle that are still pristine. And these are cloud forest animals that live way up where there isn't a lot of development. People do occasionally report that they've seen them. Quite regularly.

Okay. So there's, you know, this feels like an extinct or alive episode. I feel like I could get behind this as the producer, not as the expert. It does. Now, I'm going to shit on our parade here. Okay. Because it's such an iconic extinct creature, because it's in Costa Rica where every, probably literally everybody that listens to this podcast that's into reptiles has gone to catch snakes.

Myself, it's like what you do. Like, if you're like a herb nerd, like when you get to like 18, because it's safe, it's Costa Rica, you know, If you're a herpetology nerd, you go to Costa Rica and there's great diversity and you catch a ton of snakes and frogs. So all that to be said is, I'm going to say it's extinct because there's been a zillion different people that have gone looking for them. There's a ton of different surveys that have been done. Proper scientific institutions have put out pretty large blanket surveys. There's really good herpetologists in Costa Rica. Nobody's turned one up.

So I, unless you found a really, really remote isolated pocket where the fungus is, hadn't occupied where the toads were not previously known to be for some reason. I'm going to say extinct. I'm going to say extant. There's no way that fungus outnumbers any toad that exists. They produce like rabbits. They're everywhere. And these exist high up in the clouds, like you said.

Yep. That sounds much more. So let's just say this news story comes across. your desk. Next week we're doing what's in the news. Yep. And this is an actual news item that happened. Yep. There was a rainstorm. There's a system coming in from South America. It's going to, it's going to cause really torrential rains here in California. Yep. We need it. We need the rain.

Sure do. Good, good, good, good. Yeah. Down comes the rain, along with it, 400 golden toads that were just living in the cloud. Yeah. Would that be, how big would that news story get? Like not to Hurp nerds. In the mainstream. Yeah. Peter's mom. She'd know about it. I think the whole world would.

I think so. Yeah, I think that's big time. I mean, what would you do? What would you do? Probably hang up my hat. I'd just be like, nope, that was wrong. Like, I had it all wrong. You retire.

Literally these things are living in the clouds. Like, not on the ground. I had it all wrong. Training frogs. There's amazing when Forrest and I put the deck together. for to pitch Extincter Alive back when we were calling. Oh, I thought you guys put an actual deck together like in his backyard. We don't know how to do that.

God no. Between the two of us, we can't hammer a nail. So when you pitch a show, usually you make a little three-minute tape. Yep. And then you put together what's called a deck and it says, here's how the show's going to work. Here's what the first 10 episodes would be. Yeah.

What Forrest didn't know when I approached him about doing Extincter Alive was that I'd never pitched a show before. I didn't know that. No. Didn't even put it together the tape, which would never fly now. Correct. Just pitched it with a crummy deck. It was called Hunting Lazarus, but we had a story,

because I knew what we were going to come up against was he's not going to ever find an extinct animal. Right. This will never work, yeah. But there was a story in there, and I don't remember what it was. I hope you remember the name of the animal. There was an extinct lizard that was deemed extinct that when Hurricane Andrew came in over the Caribbean, after Hurricane Andrew, there was a shitload of these lizards in the trees in the Florida Keys.

And correct me if I may have some details wrong. No, you're right. I'm trying to remember what it was, but it was some type of small iguanid that when it rained, they all came out basically. There you go. And they were all up in the trees. But I think one of the theories was that, like, they got caught up in like some wind. I don't even know what the fuck it was because they weren't endemic to the Florida Keys.

Right. They were endemic to somewhere in the Caribbean. Yep. where this hurricane had just passed over, and suddenly this extinct lizard is in the Florida Keys hanging out of trees. That's fucking wild. I do remember that story. I'm trying to remember what it was.

I can't remember. Kyle's going to work on it while we talked about it. What's with the name hunting Lazarus? What did that mean? Well, Lazarus tag. Lazarus from the Bible means something coming back from the dead. Okay. And a Lazarus taxon in science is what we call.

By the way, and I want to point this out, when Patrick came up with this idea, and this was Patrick's idea, we worked on it. together, but it was all Patrick's idea. But you, this wasn't a field of study, like, at all at that time. And now it's like a common field of study. Like, we created this field, which I, people get uppity when I say that, but it's totally true. It was like, oh, it's extinct. It's gone. Like, why would there be a field of study? And then we went out there and, you know, one or two had turned up before. But then, like, we went out there and found eight. And it was like, holy shit. Now there's, like, whole groups of

scientists that this is all they do. This is exactly what we talked about in the last podcast. One person did it or one team did it. it and now everybody's like, oh, you can do this. This is a thing now. Legit. But regardless, anyway, Lazarus Taxon, which was just the sort of like waffly term at the time, was the name for an animal that had been declared extinct, but then come back because it had like risen from the dead like Lazarus from the Bible.

So hunting Lazarus, to this day, I swear it was the better name. Do you remember how pissed we were when they changed the name? It's too smart. That's what they said. Yeah. And they were right, by the way. They were right. It is too smart.

We're like, what's the show about? Is the animal extinct or is it alive? That's it. That's the name. I'll say this too, dude. Like the number one search term that people find us, aside from like For Scolante or like knowing the podcast is about extinct animals. There's a huge, if you look up Google trends for extinct animals just recently over the past couple years, it's gone way up.

I believe it. People are searching, man. They want to know fucking. Well, because it's like in your. face sort of thing of like what humans have done. Yeah. And it's sad. You see drawings of dodo birds as a kid and you're like, it sucks that I'll never

see one of those things. Yeah. And it's in your face, you know, and we're, we're, it's great though because it's making more awareness for people to like get inspired to go out and do something about it. And I know that this is a public podcast. Just wait. It's going to be like a year, six months, a year, two years from now. We're going to get a call.

And the network's going to be like, we're bringing it back. Like, is a trending thing. Well, we'll make way more money if we do it ourselves. I still, very much so true. I still remember the first Lazarus Taxon News that came out that like I had this like, holy shit moment. Like, oh my God, something can go from extinct to not extinct.

Like it didn't make, it's like going from, it's like saying there's aliens, but like there's proof of it now. Do you know what I mean? It's like, no, no, they're here. Like here's one in my hand. Here's an alien. Oh my God, I just came. Well, that's what I mean, we have one.

You can't hold it, but you've seen it. What's that? The alien. The alien fellow that they discovered in the Atacama Desert. Oh, yes. True. True. Dude.

But regardless, hold on. I know. I know. He's about to knock me way off the rails. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, just calm down for one second. It's okay. No, I want to show you something to make you more excited by this topic.

Okay. Underpants. Yeah. Kyle, pull up the Lord Howie stick in. sect or Howe. Lord Howe. But I always say howie because of how it's spelled.

It's so like such a powerful name. Lord Howe. Lord Howe Island is where? So it's off the coast of Tasmania. And it's actually real quick, Kyle, type in Lord Howe Island. And there are these two spires

off the island that are just these crazy. It's those two little. I don't know if you can't see. So try Lord Howe Island like spire. Try that. And there are these two crazy rocky. There they are.

That's it right there. So this island, okay, off the coast. So the Lord House Stick Island, insect, this giant bug. By the way, if not for this story, we would have never made Extincter Alive. Never. This story was so key to selling the show. It's always interesting hearing shit like that. And it was just so, I remember when this news came out.

And literally, I'm getting goosebumps right now thinking about it because it was so impactful to me. This giant sort of gross stick insect had been eradicated from. Lord Howe Island. I don't remember how something was introduced, cats or birds or something, and it was gone. And there's the spire that Kyle just pulled up. By the way, if you're listening, you can see all this on YouTube. Just come over, check out the YouTube channel. And there's these spires off the coast of Lord Howe. And a guy was like, I'm going to go climb these suckers. Like, these look like fantastic climbing. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. And so he gets up there and he goes and he sets his

ropes and he's climbing up this island and one of these things crawls out of a crevice onto his arm. Well, he's calling up the thing. And the guy didn't, I don't remember if the climber knew what it was or just knew that it was unusual or whatever. But he like snagged a photo of it and took it back and was like, check out this big bug that crawled on me. And they're like, this is one of the biggest discoveries of the century. That's crazy. The bug that crawled on you while you were climbing with your girlfriend. Like that's the biggest discovery.

I guarantee just took a picture because it's weird. Because it was cool. Yeah. Like I would do that. I'd be like, look, this crazy thing. Totally. But anyway, I just remember when this news came out. out. And it just sort of rocked my world to think that this was even a thing. And now they're

actually relatively common. You can buy them in the pet trade and everything. Really? But yeah, they went from gone to like around. Well, so they kind of, so were they like all just hanging out on that spire rock where nobody ever goes? Yes. It was just whatever eradicated them wasn't there because it's the spire sticking up out of the ocean. Wow. That is insane to think about it. And I remember when the story came out, I thought that was Lord Howe Island, just that spire. I did too. I didn't think There was another island. And I'm like, well, of course, how would they know if it was extinct? Like, nobody's hanging out there.

I'm like, this is stupid. Nothing could live there. Yeah. And then I actually figured out it was a huge island with these little rocks offshore. But what? So after you found that out, this was kind of like the, the starter for thinking about getting you into extinct animals and trying to discover them. Is that what you're saying? Well, this was years before I met Patrick.

I just remember that news. And I was always very, very interested in, like, not just extinct. Like, my thing was like, I had just found two new species that had never before been named. I was like 14 when I did this. Well, wait, wait. What's that? I never heard this story. Oh, man.

Well, hold on. Let me give you the whole picture. Okay. We can dig into each piece of this. I don't know how much people want to hear about this. They want to hear it. Trust me. When I was 13 or 14, I don't remember, we described two new species of catfish.

that had never been described before. And when that happened, I was working under a Rhodes Scholar named Brian Gratwick. I wasn't working. I was catching fish for a guy who was in diversity. Doing like grunt work kind of. Not even. I wasn't even working.

He just knew that I was this kid who was obsessed with fish and fishing. And where he was doing his work was where my family ran their safari business on the Zambizi River. So while everybody was off on safari, he was taking water samples and looking in pools for fish and stuff. and me being who I was, I brought him 30. Southern Africa is one of the highest diversity of freshwater fish in the world. So I'd bring him like 30 different fish a day and be like, what's this?

What's this? What's this? And he'd be like, God damn it, Forrest, that's an elephant-nose fish. Like, fuck off. He's a stupid kid. And then in doing that over and over and over, I remember the very first time I brought him this little catlet. It was about this big. Kyle, Google catlet fish. It's about this big.

And I was like, Brian, what's this one? And he goes, look at his field guys. I have no idea. Wow. I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, I've never, I don't know what this fish is, a whole new species of catlet, never before described. And I was, I was 13 or 14, C-A-T-L-E-T-C-L-E-T-C-L-E-T, catlet. So you found, how did you catch that fish?

That's like a carp. I don't know what's coming up here. How did you catch it? Oh, in a net, just in a little dip net, just in different areas of the river. I was still a big dork, so yeah, there you go. You got it there. Yeah, just like that one. Actually, go the very first photo.

It looked very, very much like that one. Tiny little butter. Yeah, beautiful little thing. Catlett from the Zambezi River. And it was the size of my fingernails, tiny little fish. Yeah, it's like a tadpole, even smaller. Yeah, tiny little fish. But, you know, even as a young kid, I was a big dork, and I was always like, oh, well,

different fish are going to be in the sand and different fish in the weeds and different fish by the rapids. Yeah. And I was a catfish? It's a catfish. That's nuts. Micro catfish. Yeah, tiny catfish. Wow.

And yeah, and anyway, so there's quite a lot of species of catlets in the Zambezi River, and this was an all new one. We actually, in that very same trip, we found two. I caught one in my net and showed it to Brian, and then we went to that zone where I caught it, and he found another one independent, different species as well. Yeah. And so that was when I was like 14. Just real quick. Yeah. Did you get any residuals for discovering the catlet that was featured January 2012 on the catfish of the month calendar?

Because I just saw that. Big money. You got to hit him up. That's hilarious. You should be getting 16 cents every decade. And that, I remember that being young. That was like one of the biggest, for me, that was like the coolest thing ever. Like discovering something that nobody had discovered?

That was so much more impactful to me than like, and I remember this vividly. About two days prior, we had a leopard that made a kill right outside camp and dragged Nepal into the tree. And seeing a leopard in monopools where my family's camp was was very rare. maybe once or twice a year. And I was like, oh, beautiful leopard. Like, this is cool. But then when I found this one inch fish that nobody had ever seen before, I was like, oh, my God.

Like, holy shit. Like, I was freaking out. Like, I do it. It meant so much more to me than seeing this rare side of a leopard. Why is that? Do you think? I think because it was the first or it was unknown. Yeah.

I don't even know. But it's interesting, though. That was like my origin story. That was my dawn was finding that catlet with Brian Gratwick in the Zambizee River. Yeah. Wow. I mean, I remember when you found that snail in the cave in Vietnam that, I mean, I don't know how extensively you looked after, but you're pretty sure that it hadn't been described at that point. I still haven't found anybody that has known what it is or has described it.

But even just being there for it, and it was dead. Yeah. So it's a show you found. But it was just like, you're like almost starstruck. Yeah. You know, it's like you're pumping gas next to Beyonce. Yeah. Because no one's ever seen this thing before.

Yeah. I mean, you could see it in, in the. videos. Like, it's genuine, and it's always nice to see that when you're watching any type of reality situation TV. That's what made Steve Irwin great. Yes. Was that everyone who was watching knew that it was real. Yeah. And then he freaked out about everything. Right. It wasn't just like, I'm very selective in my freaks out. He would just be like, oh, look at this house spider. And you'd be like, yeah, there's one over there too. I get that. Like, sometimes I'll see a cool insect, because I like to take pictures of insects.

and there's a lot recently that I've... Should do a calendar as well. Yeah. Sorry, continue. I want royalties. But, and I'll see one and I'll be like, whoa. I like want to shoot it with a macro, like every angle. Because insects are so cool when you shoot them up close, man.

And spiders, dude, like, I'm just, like, they're all, they have, like, some of them have, like, eight legs, their pairs or, like, they have, like, fangs. And then when you look at it up close, you, you know, you look at it up close, you You're just like, holy shit. This thing is like a whole new world of things that you've never seen. If you haven't watched it, Reteb, you should watch BTG's one-season animal planet show Little Giants. Oh, yeah, you should. It's all about these insects.

And then if you blow them up the size of like an elephant or something. If he's watching, I think I told him that I watched it in one of our pods. He's almost certainly not. He's not watching a lot. Yeah. Wow, dude. That's a good story. I never heard that one.

Yeah. So let's do one more. Can we do one more? Yeah, absolutely. Because, you know, we've got to mix it up, right? Why wouldn't we? This is fun. Yeah.

All right. Third animal for the Extincter Alive game. I'm going to start with a question. Okay. You guys like Italian food? I do. It's top three. Top one.

It's top one for you, that's for sure, yeah. They sort of break it into like Northern Italian, which is the stuff we know of, right? And then you have like the Sicilian, the Southern Italian. Which is like mostly seafood? It's a lot of seafood, not the red sauce. Which one of those two do? you like more? I like general known Italian,

norther Italian, I suppose. Yeah, like chef boyardy style. Yeah, that's Italian, right? Dominoes. When I think of Sicily, when I think of Sicily, I don't think of big mammal predators. Do you?

I think of the mob. Sure. I can't think of any. Okay. They did have a wolf, the Sicilian wolf. Was it also tiny? It was small.

It was a small statured wolf. Yeah. that lived, it was endemic to the island of Sicily. Makes sense. It was deemed extinct in 1924, but had unconfirmed reports up until 1960. Oh, that's recent. So we have a small wolf that was, what do you call that one? An island.

Insular. Insular. Insular dwarfism. This little wolf that was roaming Sicily until the 20s, maybe even 1960. What do we think? No more info? Okay. Well, I mean, I'll say this. There's no wolves there of any type. And now all of a sudden we, you know, like, no, it would be noticed. Like, I think somebody would know what it is, unless it was mistaken for a dog at some point. But I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say. Go one shot on me direct down the barrel of the camera. I'm going to do my best acting here. It's 100% still out there. Animal Planet Patrick and I need to go to Sicily. For no. less than three months

to prove the existence of the Sicilian wolf. This one's going to take a while. Yeah, I've changed. Yeah, I've changed my... Now you're on board? Yeah, because I've got to go with. Peter's got to come. So yeah, it's there.

And Brosner's slash Animal Planet who definitely doesn't watch this. If you're listening, we need to go and find it now. Agreed. You're like Uncle Sam. We need you. We need you. Give us $150,000.

So now that we've stopped recording, what's the real take? Yeah, it's gone for sure. Yeah. unfortunately. So Cicely is just really super populated. Yeah, it's very developed. Any time, I mean, it's like

the Falkland Island wolf, right? And that's the Falkland Island, which are these tiny islands, they're not that small, but relatively small islands in Antarctica. You can eliminate anything from an island. You know what I mean? It's like, and that's one of the problems.

Now, the word island is vague, right? Like the Javan Tiger, I believe is still extant, and that's a big island, you know? Humongous. It's like the size of Australia. Totally. and all covered in jungle and whatnot. But like in Sicily, which is, you know, literally people have been there as long as we've known about people.

Right. And, you know, it's very developed. And a small wolf just doesn't stand a chance. There's no way. Yeah. You know, it's an interesting fact you brought up just like there's an island that's just completely covered in jungle, you know, unexplored. And I could see, yeah. Java is wildly populated also.

It is. But millions and millions of people. Sections of it. Okay. And so it's like Papua New Guinea in the sense of it's just so like you stand on the beach and you look and these mountains just go up into the clouds. Yeah. And you're like, well, of course there's nobody up there. Like, how are you going to get there?

They're like this steep, pure jungle. Where all the frogs live up in. Right, right. No, but I could see the draw to want, like, I can understand better like the draw to wanting to go to these kind of unexplored places and try. even like for me, like even if I wasn't discovering extinct animals, I was doing something else. Like I could see the draw going and exploring. Yeah, exactly. This is a great episode of the show that we want to do, which is you go look for an extinct animal.

Well, Peter and I sample the local cuisine. Listen, I suggested to Forrest the other day. I texted him. I said, we should just go on a overnighter in the area here somewhere where there's like a lot of cool animals, just us three and Kyle, of course. and see what happens. Because, you know, I, it's not, it's so out of my comfort zone, and you're so meager and nervous. And, like, you're always in the background of the camera.

Your director, you're doing all the producing and stuff. Forrest is always out there in front of the camera. I think the dynamic could get real silly and ridiculous. I'll put a rattlesnake in a sleeping bag. I know. That's what I'm saying. That shit will probably happen too. I know exactly what's going to.

I'll have a rattlesnake. in my face within the first six minutes. Dude, it'll get 10 billion views on TikTok, and then China will control her minds with it. I saw Rogan ranting about the TikTok terms of

service. You sent me something yesterday on it. Yeah, I said it to pet too. I'm not going to get too much into it. There's a YouTube video. I'm going to put it in the description of this video about how China has used AI

to create TikTok. I'm doing the China thing. Has used the AI to create TikTok basically to dumb down all of the youth of the entire world. Meanwhile, they're requiring that the students in their classrooms read the art of war and

learn how to be very disciplined and all this. And then using it to dumb us down, dude. And there's much more to the conspiracy. It is very mind-numbing. Do you have TikTok? No. Kyle, I deleted it off my phone. I refuse.

It's, it's, I would rather look at TikTok than watch TV. Absolutely. Right? You'll sit on your, it's so, you sit on your couch, you're like, I'll just throw on a TikTok. And then like 45 minutes have gone by and you watch like 130 videos. Well, dude, it is. So if you have TikTok on your phone, delete it.

What you have given them the right to do is, one, not all the shit that we know, all the apps do. Yeah, like that starts there. Right. They are able to log your keystrokes. So anytime you've typed in Pornhub.com. But only on the app. That is incorrect, sir.

They are able to log all of your keystrokes, not only on your phone, but on other devices as well. How? It's in their terms of service, maids. Wow. Well, by the way, you remember that I think Trump, back when he was in the presidency,

it's one of the things I agreed with him on, wanted to ban TikTok from the United States. It was smart. So it's not just, you know, what weird shit are you searching for. Yeah. And it's not just on your phone, of course. You've given them the right to log your keystrokes on your laptop. So they also have the text of every email you've sent.

Wow. It's unbelievable. Written your wife a love letter. They have it. Nope. Can't do it. I deleted it. I'm not ever-eatered it.

I'm not ever covered. I don't do anything. I wonder if it's too late. Well, for you it is. You still have it on your phone. You can't tell. I'm on it right now. You can't tell.

But on that? On that sour note, fellas, I... Follow our TikTok page. Not for real. We have one. I only use it on the web, though. I got to, you know, hit the toilet. Do the thing. Do the thing. We haven't done the thing. Oh, my God. Follow us. Find us at Wild Times Pod on TikTok and the Wild Timespodcast.com forward slash info. For all the links to everything at Wild TimesPod on everything, patreon.com forward

slash Wild Times Pod. We love you. So far, we've only had a few brocesters sent in blob fishing videos. Oh, yeah, come on. Hashtag blob fishing and tag us on Instagram. We're going to monitor it.

We've got a contest going, win a shirt. Pretty good for us. Some merch. Make yourself look like a blobfish. See you later. Forrest's whole, he hasn't breathed. He's not breathing. That was a good blog.

Good night, everybody. Good night. Good night.