Wild Times: Wildlife Education - TWT #25 - Forrest is Back!

Episode Date: September 26, 2020

Forrest finally made it back from sea and we couldn't be happier! Join us for this week's adventure. Follow us @ https://linktr.ee/wildtimespod

All right, we're good. That's it. Yep. We're on. Yep. Sweet. Wild times. What's up, guys? Hey.

Yo. How is everybody doing? Peter, what's up? Not much, man. Doing good. How are you? Why do you seem so frustrated early? What is going on in your life?

I'm always frustrated because I have to set up the tech and I look at this camera. It's all overexposed. I look like fucking powder anyways. You look beautiful to me. So for those just joining us, if this is your first time, this is the 27th. episode of the Wild Times podcast, a terrific podcast where myself, the broologist, is joined by the brodozer and the brofessor. We bro out, we talk animals, we talk science, we tell a lot of nonsense and stories. We typically get pretty trash, to be quite honest. And I'm not going to be doing

that today because I'm going from here to a rugby training, which I'm looking forward to because it just started back up today. But yeah, guys, what's up? Hey, so I think, you know, we should address the elephant in the room, which is, what the fuck? Where were you? Where were you on Monday when we were supposed to be? I know. I missed a pod. I was at sea.

I was 190 miles offshore adrift. A little maelstrom come through and wipe you out? What happened? Good question. No, so I went out there with some buddies. We were looking at the bluefin tuna that are occurring off the coast of Southern California right now. Huge fish up to 200 pounds, up to 300 pounds. And we were diving out there and got kind of late.

And so we said, you know, we could either drive all night. It's 190 miles offshore. Or we could just power down and sleep out here at drift and drive back tomorrow. And that's what we did. We just turned the motors off and slept just drifting out at sea. Kind of no idea where we were going or where we were ending. Woke up in the morning, motored back to the tuna grounds, dove a little bit more, and then motored back home.

So did you get a little seasick? I heard you might have a little seasick. Yeah, I did. Did I mention that? Did I? Yeah. Yeah, so we were out there and got dark, and so we turned the motors off, and we didn't have a sea anchor, which is something that keeps the bow of the boat into the, directly into the wind, which helps with the rocking. And the boat turned sideways. It was rough as shit out there.

So all of a sudden, we were just kind of bumping around and crashing around. I don't typically get seasick, but for whatever reason, being on the boat, sideways to the beam, sideways to the waves, I just all of a sudden turned a little green. spent most of my night pukin. So that was fun. Nice. Sounds. Have you ever been seasick retip? No. I've got the stomach of a of an ox, dude. I don't get sick like that very often. Maybe only like when I've had the flu. What about you? You seem very, uh, just a weak stomach person. Well, I've been seasick twice ever. Once was, um, just on a boat in Australia on a fishing trip. And it was, uh, I just can't imagine a worse feeling. It's awful. You feel like you want to body, seriously.

Like if someone was like, dude, do you want me to just tell you? Like, you'd consider it. You would. Have you guys? Peter, I, sorry. I was just going to say, like, my nightmare, it used to be tinnitus, but now I have that and I'm used to it. But it's like this idea of illnesses that are inside of your head that you can't get away. So equivalent to tinnitus on the visual side would be like having vertigo.

Like, imagine having vertigo for a week and you're just trapped. in your head. If you open your eyes, you're flipping upside down. It just sounds like a nightmare. I think there's like, my mom has vertigo. I don't think it's that she sees upside down all the time. I think she just falls once a month. No, no, it gets dizzy and the world kind of tilt.

It's like having seasickness for no reason, just because of a mental deficiency. So for us, there were two things you missed on Monday in our bonus podcast. and then I just want to do quick rapid fire that I think some of the listeners will want to hear your quick opinion on. So one was we talked about the story about that scientists at John Hopkins submerged five octopus, octopi, in water that was laced with the drug MDMA. Oh, a little molypus?

Yeah, and they stopped playing with their toys and they started cuddling and rubbing each other. So two questions. First, initial thoughts. I'd like to say that that seems like animal cruelty, but maybe that just seems like animal like they're raging. Animal cruelty. Initial thoughts. I don't think that's animal cruelty.

Initial thoughts are wow followed by why. Like, you know, as scientists. Yeah, that's question two. Why? How did they get the funding for this study? It's bizarre. As a scientist, it's like you want to understand the world and, you know, especially as a biologist working with wildlife, you want to understand how animals interact, how they interact with

each other, what they're thinking, what they're doing. I don't know how giving them ecstasy really plays into that, to be quite honest. Well, because you would think, like, at first I was thinking, maybe this was to study, like, serotonin pathways, something related to humans, but you wouldn't choose an octopus as your test subject if it was about humans. My guess would be that this is like some grad student who goes to Ibiza every single. summer and he's probably, have you ever seen the guy on Instagram who's just like mollied out of his mind? He's just like humping the air. He's super sweaty European guy. It's probably that guy. Yeah, it's probably that guy who's like, hey, you know what sweet is MDMA? Let's, and I'm also a

marine biologist. So let's get, let's give some octopus some MDMA. Let's get some funding. Let's, let's call it science and see what happens. The other, the other story was that the, we had talked about, you got a phone call from a county police or county sheriff in Tennessee because they, They had a tiger on the loose. We talked about this. We filled in the listeners on Monday that it was a case of mistaken identity. It was actually just a little old bobcat. Well, was it, though?

Because that's a real convenient excuse. Oh, interesting. You know, look, I'm not, you know, I'm not the world's biggest conspiracy theorist, but if you have the spotlight on you to go and find a tiger in Nashville, Tennessee, or whatever part of Tennessee this is, and you don't find it after three weeks. Are you going to go out and be like, sorry, guys, couldn't get the job done? Are you going to be like, nah, there's just no tiger?

I mean, it's clearly a bobcat. Like, it was just tiger. Ridiculous. Well, you've seen both animals. Is it possible? Could any reasonable person mistake a bobcat for a full-grown tiger? First of all, no, absolutely not. Those two animals don't look anything alike.

I mean, people see what they want to see. There's no doubt about that. That's like the whole Black Panther dilemma. But I think that, you know, the thing that you're missing out on or the thing that we haven't touched on is not just that they would, you know, make up that they, it was a bobcat or they couldn't solve it so they're trying to cover their tracks. But rather, you're talking about one of the most cryptic animals on Earth. Like tigers are incredible at camouflage and hiding. They're absolutely, you know, bar none, some of the best hiders on the planet. That thing doesn't want to be found.

It's not going to be found, you know. And it's a big place. To be honest, I haven't spent a lot of time in Tennessee, but I'm very certain there are large tracks of wilderness. And that animal's high-tailing out there. It doesn't want to hang out in a city neighborhood. It doesn't want to hang out in Nashville and listen to the music scene. It's getting out of there, you know. So a couple people spot it, report it. That thing goes way into the woods. Maybe it lives. Maybe it doesn't. Who knows? Maybe there's enough prey to support it. Maybe the climate isn't appropriate. That I don't know. But it's very easy for a couple guys who, you know, work at wildlife control to be like,

hey, you know, we couldn't find it. Turns out it was a bobcat. Odds are nobody's ever going to see it again because it's now out in the Chattahoochee wilderness or whatever it's called. Sure. Don't the Appalachian Mountains run through most of Tennessee too? So it just could have gone up into the mountains. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's, you know, there's a lot of undeveloped, uninhabited space in the United States. And there's, I promise you there's more than one tiger running around. Like take, for instance, the damn water buffalo, Patrick, from New Orleans, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Peter, Patrick and I are, we're filming this Extincter Alive episode in Louisiana, cruising through the sawgrass, you know, on an airboat. And I don't know if this means anything to you, but wouldn't you know it? There stands like a one tonne Asiatic water buffalo out in the middle of the swamp of Louisiana. It means everything to be. But, you know, it could have been there a year. It could have been there 10 years.

Could have been there a week. like maybe nobody else has ever seen it. How did that water buff play it? Right. Again, did escape during a hurricane, did escape from a zoo, some crazy rancher in Texas, let it go, and it made its way to Louisiana. You know, who knows? And has it ever been seen since?

Probably not. You know, maybe. Maybe some redneck shot it and made jerky. I don't know, who the hell knows? You'll never know. And that's the same thing with this tiger, right? We don't know where it came from. We don't know.

We'll probably never know where it ended up. But you, but you, but it certainly wasn't above. But your statement is, right, so you do think. it was an actual tiger because, Pat, you said that a tiger is 350 to 400 pounds. A bobcat is 12 to 14 pounds. Correct. Like, yeah, like up to like 20 pounds. It's bananas. You can never mistake that. So that's the basis for you thinking it's just a load of shit. Well, not just that, but, you know, it's one thing to see a bobcat and go, oh my God, there's a mountain line, right? Because you're expecting a mountain line. Sure, sure. You know, mistake a raccoon for an opossum or something like that.

The people that are reporting seeing a tiger, they weren't out there being like, oh, there could be a tiger around the corner, right? They're not tricking themselves mentally into thinking that they're going to see a tiger. So they had nothing to gain by going in and being like, there's a tiger out there. You know what I mean? That's not a mistake of like, I saw something and identified it wrong. Because that happens when your brain plays a trick on you because you really have been thinking about.

Sure. Yeah, you're expecting to see something. You've been thinking about cougars. Then you see a bob can. You're like, oh my God, I saw a cougar. Right, right? Because you saw a flag. That makes sense. It's another thing to be like, no, listen, I'm telling you, I saw a fucking tiger in Tennessee. Like, this doesn't belong, right? And so although, although I totally think things are reported that are wrong all the time, this one to me is just too suspicious.

That coupled with the fact that I got that phone call from from wildlife controller, whoever it was, or not phone call, but email, that was like, hey, do you have any tips? It was like, you know, too suspicious, man. I don't believe it. I don't believe it. I think there's a tiger. running around out there. Yeah, and if you're like the animal control person, you could, the upside of just lying and saying it was a bobcat is everyone calms down and no one's scared. Sure. The downside is like, if the tiger comes back, then you can just go like, oh, I, sorry,

I was wrong. Exactly. You know, like it's not that big of a risk to just lying like the government does all the time. Also, and I'm not knocking anybody that works in animal control because I've, you know, helped out with that. I've worked with people like that. these are people who like 90% of the time they're pulling a cat out of a tree or

getting a raccoon out of your dumpster right they're not equipped to handle with a tiger on the loose in Tennessee like these are not people who are like yeah oh no I got it I'll track down that tiger dart it you know cage it up and move it like they don't know how to do that these are these are people whose average day job is telling you that that a possum in your tree is not going to kill you you know it's like yeah like like they are not equipped for this so for them to be like no definitively there's no tiger is kind of like, ah, do you really have the right to say that? So about four or five years ago, I was walking to the grove in L.A.

I was just walking down Fairfax. And I saw a squirrel that had been hit by a car, but it had its back half runover. And it like needed to be euthanized. It was like struggling. I was like, fuck. And I like wasn't about to like stump on its head in that moment, which in retrospect, I should have. but um so i looked up la animal control and i started calling and literally when you call la animal control

it just rings and no one ever answers so i tried for like an hour to get a hold of them just there's there's just no one i'm not in home so then it sort of like started to become obsessed with it so for like a week i just kept calling la animal control control to see if i could get someone on the line just at no point did anyone ever answer the phone at i think i think I mean, that's just, I don't know if that, that's just an LA thing because I've called the police at least three times that I can remember. One for an accident where somebody rear-ended me when I was on my motorcycle and then just laughed in my face and walked into their house. And then one where a guy was stealing shit out of the parking garage with a giant backpack on at three in the morning. The cops never answered the one time.

The second time they came six hours later at 9.30 in the morning. and she stepped out of the car and said, don't lose faith in the LAPD. We were very busy last night. And I was just like, this is absurd. So I think, like, dude, it just, any service in L.A., probably other big cities too,

but I think L.A. is the worst offender. You're not getting a hold of anybody in the government to do anything. That's bonkers. That's bonkers. So, Forrest, what do you think of this? I'm curious to see what your thought is. Yeah.

There's a conservation park in South Africa called Rockwood. conservation part. They found two dead giraffes, or what you would call giraffes. So they're dead. Yeah, so the two dead giraffes are just lying there. Just laying there. They're like, what happened?

They were hit by lightning. Oh, wow. They died due to a lightning strike. Yeah, they're very tall. So apparently, they're now studying this to see if, exactly what Peter said, if their height could make them more susceptible to getting struck by lightning. I don't even think that is worthy of a study. It's got to be a fact, right? I mean, you're talking about a huge animal. It's full of water, which is a magnet for lightning, right?

It's, you know, it stands above the acacias, not in every sense of the word, but, you know, they're very tall, their heads stick up. I don't believe for one instant that there is another animal in the African savanna more likely to get struck during a lightning storm than a giraffe. How many, quick, quick guessing game, how many humans in the U.S. die each year die due to lightning strike? What would you guess? So fatality. Two. I'm going to go two.

50. 50, that's a huge spread. 51. Oh, bam. 501. Holy shit, it's a lot. Yeah, Ritap comes through again. Only 9 to 10, between 9 and 10 percent of those struck by lightning die from it.

So you could extrapolate that out to say there's about 500 people that are struck by lightning each year in the U.S. And 50. That's a lot. That's a lot of people getting struck by the way. What happens to the other 450? They get special powers? They just have an amazing story. No shit.

If you get struck by lightning, do you tell people? Oh, yeah, dude. Would you tell? I tell everybody. I don't know because you would because you're already a little. Oh, yeah. You're not a storyteller. You don't have any stories.

I've never heard you tell a. No, that's not what I'm talking about. The preconceived notion is if you've been struck by lightning, you're fucked up, right? So if you're going around telling people you're struck by lightning, are they like, oh, you're special now? No, but I mean, I think people make that judgment call and having a conversation with you. It's like, it's not just you got struck by lightning. You have a mental deficiency now. No, I do think it would be like a little bit like you were the guy who got out of prison from

people would be like, it's kind of cool, but like it's also like he makes me uncomfortable. Quick, last piece of trivia. So I googled it. I wanted to see what was the most amount of people that were ever killed by a single lightning strike? Because, you know, if it hits the ground, it can spread out and come up through your feet and kill you. Yep. It was in Zimbabwe. Oh, wow.

Oh, interesting. Two days before Christmas, 1975, 21 people killed by one lightning strike. Damn. They were hiding inside a mud brick hut because there's a horrible rainstorm, and the lightning hit the hut and killed 21. Damn, that's nuts. That's a lot of electricity. That's a lot of electricity. I might have told this story before on the pot.

I can't remember. So we used to, as backed up by that story that you just told or that statistic, we used to get crazy lightning storms in Zimbabwe. I mean, like crazy gnarly, huge downpours, thunder and lightning. like to the point that the whole house would rattle, etc. And one time when I was a kid, I was sitting in the bath like splashing around. I remember I must have been six, seven years old, something like that. And I was, I was playing with my little schmechle.

And my mom comes running in and she goes, get out of the tub, get out of the tub, because, you know, this lightning storm was coming in the thunder and you could hear it and everything else. And I got, I was kind of like, you know, whatever, kept splashing. My mom was like, get out. And I was like, got out of the tub, put the towel on, walked like six feet and all of a sudden the loudest sound I've ever heard.

It was like when you've seen a movie where everything goes like quiet with that ringing, it's like Peter's Tonitis all the time. It's just that like whing-hmm sound followed after an explosion. And I turned back around. My mom was like holding my hand or standing right next to me. I can't really remember. But we turned back around and lightning had come in through the window and hit the bathtub and cracked it in like six places and charmed.

everything on one side of the tub black. And it was within 15 seconds of me getting out of the tub that it exploded our bathtub another. Maybe it should be nicer to your mom. I've heard that before and I should be. Another near-death experience from Forest. But that wasn't like a good one. Like I didn't do anything.

I was sitting in a bathtub, you know? You're just wanking in a bubble bath. Speaking of death, there's an update on an animal mystery that we had in a previous episode. I definitely thought you were going to say speaking of wanking in a bubble bath and then give us a story. I mean, I guess this could be considered that too. So you remember all those elephants that mysteriously died in Botswana? In Botswana. Of course. It has been solved. I forget, do you remember what the what we came up with was the cause of this at the end of the day on the last podcast? Well, I was, I was, you know, hypothesizing that it had things to do with drought

and the fact that there could be overpopulation. But I haven't seen the news that they have solved this because it was a big mystery. So it has been solved and it is a bacterial poisoning that ended up being the thing that killed these hundreds of elephants in Botswana. And it's from toxins that were produced by a cyanobacteria in the water. Ah, well, you know, I wasn't wrong. cyanobacteria is a blue-green algae that comes about from stagnant water sitting for too long and basically radiating in the sun. So during times of drought, when you have the stagnant water and things aren't moving enough,

you can get these blooms, this blue-green algae bloom, which the blue-green algae creates the cyanobacteria. So that wasn't right, but I also wasn't wrong. Have you ever heard of anything like this happening in the past? Or is this like a common thing? Not. But it's common that things can die from cyanobacteria, that's for sure. It's, you know, you get a stomach infection.

It's a, it's a poison. It's a bacterial poisoning. And it poisons the blood and it, you know, it can be really bad. I've never heard of three, I think it was over 300 in the end, 340 something animals that went down. I've never heard of that many. And the other thing that's interesting is that it's elephants. Now, elephants, you know, their, their condition for drought living in sub-Saharan Africa. So they drink a lot of stagnant water. They wallow in the mud. They get water out of

anything they can, basically. So it's interesting. This must have been a very, very highly toxic or high concentration of cyanobacteria in order for it to kill this many animals. And you have to wonder, you know, not to be the evergreen eco-warier, but why? You know, is there something that humans have done? Is it like, you know, when we mix agricultural chemicals with water and you get these big algae blooms that can kill people. Is there something that's happened that humans have influenced the environment to create the sand vector? Or maybe not. Maybe it's just a natural die-off, which is pretty good. Well, isn't the blue-green algae? Doesn't that come about when the water, like, gets warmer? I mean, they've said that we've had all these blooms that are killing off stuff. I've heard about

in the regular oceans, there'll be these huge die-offs of fish. There'll just be a bunch of dead fish. And it's from that because I guess, you know, they always attributed it to global warming. because blue-green algae, which you just mentioned, is the quantity of its rising in the water. So is it possible that this is what it happened here? I think so. I mean, I don't really know. I'm not super detailed on that.

But I do know that blue-green algae comes about through sunlight, right? They photosynthesize. They use sunlight to make their own food. The more radiation, the more solar radiation that occurs, the more blue-green algae you're going to get. That leads to die-offs when it gets to a point of concentration. that things can't process it any longer. So is there an indirect case to be made for global warming

and us being the devil and where the creatures that killed those elephants, even though nobody ever did? Always. There's always that case. Is that a terrible, shitty case that nobody should preach? Yes, because all that does is perpetuate ecophobia that nobody likes and it's stupid. And I, although, you know, I very much so believe global warming is a thing. I hate the whole like, we're fucking up the whole world.

I mean, we are, but how about how we're fixing it? That's interesting, yeah. Yeah. that's cool. I'm glad they solved it, though. I remember very proudly, speaking of Zimbabwe a lot here, my home country was the first one. They were the first guys to want to figure it. Yeah, I remember that. Saying that they had it, they had it kind of figured out, but they were waiting for a couple other people to give their results. So that's cool. At the end of the day, it wasn't that controversial. So, you know, it's... Right. Right. When, Forrest, when you, when you've been to Australia, have you ever been to Kakadu National Park? It's up in the northern part. I feel like,

that's in the northern territory yeah i feel like that's up kind of where we were looking uh looking for the tasmanian tiger um sounds familiar i have to i have to look and see if i've been up there yeah oh no cacadu is very famous it's got the big rock spires and i've always wanted to go there i think you have to access that from darwin which is a part of australia i've never been to that that northwestern side um so no never been always wanted to go yeah so cool place yeah very beautiful obviously if you if you check out like Google images looks, looks amazing. But they've got crock-infested rivers there. I mean, it's a great place to go look for crocodiles, right?

Oh, yeah. There's rivers running through the park. Huge crocs. In 2018, they found three new species of, maybe it was two. I'm just remembering this off the top of my head because I was so fascinating. They found two or three new species of sea snake right offshore from cacadoo. Because they're just like, oh, there's only 14 species of sea snake. Turns out they're 17.

We just found three more, which is, like, incredible to just find three types of sea snakes. How do you find three? Were they at, like, a part, like, were they at a gathering? I couldn't tell you. I actually, I need to read it again. It's been a minute. But I was just, like, flabbergasted. Sea snakes to me are, you know, combines two of my favorite things, the ocean and snakes. Sure. And I was like, I was blown away by that. But anyway, I did. Yes, you've got this, this park that's got these rivers. It's known for having massive, you know, 15 to 18 foot crocodiles. And right now, there's three humpback whales just hanging out in one of the rivers 12 miles upstream from the ocean. No way.

Three humpback whales are 12. They're just in a river. Actually, sorry, there's an update. So two have recently just returned to the ocean, but the third one is still hanging out in a crocodile infested river. That's bizarre. I mean, it's not the first time. I'm stoked are those crocodiles. I'm curious.

I know. Talk about a delicious swimming meal. It would literally be like if you just were like voracious of someone who was always starving and then you just like woke up and there was just a pizza the size of a house. Right. Just sitting there. And nothing to keep you from just taking a nibble. Right. Totally.

I got to ask you though. So, you know, why two of them safely returned. The third one's still there. It doesn't appear that they've been attacked or killed by crocodiles. I'm surprised they weren't just immutable. immediately attacked. What do you think's going on there? Well, first of all, humpback whales do get lost.

We've seen that before with strandings and them getting stuck in bays and things like that. I definitely think that's what's going on here because I don't think humpback whales want to be up rivers. Right. Why they haven't been attacked, my best guess would be it's so large that it's just way too overwhelming for the crocodile. Right. So it's like, as opposed to it being, you know, as opposed, exactly to use your analogy, Patrick, It's like if you were starving and you woke up and there was a pizza the size of the house, you'd be like, who put this in my mouth?

Yeah, this is mighty suspicious. And I think, you know, I think there's an essence of truth to it. It's like the same reason you can, you know, you can't swim in a river filled with crocodiles, but you can take a big boat, you know, over one and nothing happens. It's just the size of the prey, even though it's a perfect meal, would, you know, it would intimidate the crocodiles far too much, even though. though if the crocodiles realize that it would just, you know, there's nothing that

the whales could do to stop them. They could literally just gobble it right up. Yeah, I mean, they've never seen this creature before, and it's huge. They might just be like, give me the fuck away from that. Wasn't that too? That's, totally. I'm that thing's food. Yeah, no, totally. I think they're probably terrified of it. Well, that's pretty typical in nature. I mean,

the bigger animals, most predators try and get away from them, no matter what it is, really. Isn't that like the rule of thumb? I mean, there's a lot to that. You know, lions will attack elephants and obviously one of those is bigger than the other. But it's just a matter. You know, I think like Patrick just said, it's a matter of it's so far into them.

Yeah. It's not just that it's too big. I bet you and, you know, I don't want to get into a long talk about evolution, but I bet you if you saw whales returning year after year into the river, one, five, 10, 50 years from now, one would get taken down by a crook, right? And it would just happen. It would be an accident or maybe it'd get stranded and die and the crocs would start feasting on it. Then all of a sudden, whale would be on the menu.

Crocs would start figuring it out. Like, oh, this is, even though this thing's so big, it's actually on the menu. But right now, it's just like terrifying. You know, it's like, it's like, imagine if a baby belt teeth were rolling down the freeway at you that, you know, the size of a house like Patrick's analogy, you wouldn't be like, oh, yummy. You'd be like, fuck this. Dude, what is this an alien fucking going to continue?

You know, turn and high tail it. Yeah. And I think that's probably. It's such a good analogy. The thing about Baby Belt cheese is even just a normal-sized baby-bell cheese, right? The wrapping is so appealing, right? That's sexy red rubber. You know, it's going to be fun to kind of dig your thumb in there and pull back and unveil this perfect little log of cheese.

And I love cheese. It's my favorite food. Yet, Baby Belt cheese is a fucking cocktie. It's disgusting. It's not a good cheese. It's really not a good cheese. It's like dinner and a meal. It's like a happy meal.

Happy meal, right? Because you're like, oh, I'm getting a toy out of this because I get to play with the wax. And then you bite into the cheese and you're like, oh, I'm so disappointed. You're like, now it's my whole mouth feels like wax. You might as well eat butter. It's like, it's closer to butter than it is cheese. If you want a real treat, same aesthetic, same way to open it. Just get yourself a bottle of makers mark, gents. Never disappoints. Oh, love that. Yeah. That's a good, that's a good point you bring up there, Peter. So a friend of mine, and I say friend very, very, very loosely. Talking about me again? Person that I know.

Yeah, it must be. Yeah. But she recently posted on her Instagram that it was her birthday. And, you know, hey, if you want to send me a birthday gift, here's my Amazon. No. Wow. On Instagram. God.

So I was like, this is crazy. Like adults. Right, right. Okay. So I click on it. One of, it just reminded me that the wax, one of the things was a $200 wax kit so you could seal letters

with like a stamp. Fucking Thomas Jefferson, what's she doing? This whole thing is disconcerting. Just entirely. It's got to be a joke. Sartire. It's not. How self-entitled is this friend

that she's sending out, links to her Amazon birthday wish list. I mean, honestly, I wouldn't have even seen it. It was just people, everyone who saw it was screenshoting it and talking shit. Oh, God. texting. Like, what the fuck? Everything on there's like 200 bucks.

Send it my way. There's a whole subreddit for this type of shit. Let's out this bitch. No. That is wild. Peter, do you have your fax ready? Should we play the game? Forrest, you weren't here for the bonus episode last week.

Uh, yeah, will actually propose this game in the last show doc, and it's real fun. It's basically, so it's basically just, um, factor fiction where we have a collection. I select a collection of, uh, random animal facts that may or may not be true. And then I, I tell you guys what the factor fiction is. And you guess whether or not, uh, it's factor fiction. I went through, you know, no, no. You were two and one, buddy boy. Very close to three.

I just remember getting one right. Let's give it a world. Sounds fun. Fact or fiction. So, our first one, don't snap it me, mother fucker. God damn it. Jesus Christ. Okay.

Sorry. Our first one, because Cat, or I mean, Pat is obsessed with cats. You and I both hate them. Cats only purr when they're pleased. Fiction. I'm going to go with Fiction. Pat, you're wrong.

Forrest, you are correct with fiction. I know. I'm just kidding. Can we both say fiction? Wait, but when else do they purr? Because I've never heard my cat purr when she's unhappy. It is. It is.

They do, in fact, vocalize that way when they are happy, but they also purr when they're hungry, distressed, or when they're mending from an injury. So, oh, yeah, I heard that. That's the one I knew. That was the only reason I stumbled on it because I've seen cats purring while they're, like, cleaning themselves, cleaning a wound. And I'm like, this isn't a happy cat. You know, he's not purring because of enjoyment.

He's purring because there's something else going on. And I'm not a cat expert by any means, but that was the only reason I picked the fiction. So this is interesting. I just, because I wanted to find out why they do it. The purring is a self-soothing mechanism that actually release. is endorphins and thus removing stress hormones from the lowering blood pressure and removing stress hormones. So it actually helps them physically heal faster by getting rid of the stress hormones that are keeping them from healing. So really cool. Next time you're hurt or sick. Yeah. Get just just drink

booze. Suck your own dick. Orphins for days. Yeah. Yeah. A very kind of cool new age scientist went up on this thing once and uh that I was watching this symposium and he compared, he compared purring to singing in the shower as a means to feel, like to feel good about yourself. He's like, yeah, and it was pretty cool. I kind of remember the way he laid it out exactly, but he was talking about how like when you sing in the shower, you get out of the shower, you're feeling good, you know, you've released some endorphins, you've self-sued, you think you sound good. And he was comparing, he was comparing purring to that.

And I thought it was a really clever analogy. Do you guys sing in the shower regularly? I don't think. So is that a real thing? because I don't do it either. Is that just like a movie trope? Do people really do that? Probably do.

Yeah, I feel like it's like, it's always like McCauley Coulton's dad in a movie is too. But like, I've never sung in the shower because I'll just sing all day long. I don't need to go hide in the shower and mask the sound of my singing with the water. See, the difference there is, Patrick, you have a silky, smooth, scratchy, like deep voice.

If you ever listen, I got kicked out of the choir at age 13. True story, not making that up. Legit got asked to leave the choir at age 13. routine. I have a terrible voice. Oh, yeah. It is, it's atrocious. I can tell just by your talking voice that you have, I mean, it would be ear splitting to hear your singing voice. It's awful. It's got awful. Have you ever, you know, when you listen to someone singing with like headphones in and they're singing along and you kind of hear it, so you

just hear their tone deafness and their terrible delivery. My, yeah, I once had a recording played back for me of me singing along with my pods in and was like never again i'll never sing out loud ever again it's never again in my love dude i'm a funny story sixth grade myself and my my my best friend at the time andy ballard uh who is a good singer and i actually am a fairly decent singer you are a good singer i've heard you do yeah we've talked about that but so yeah so we were in chorus and we just were very poorly behaved. We were just, we were jerks and take our chorus. Yeah.

So we were bad and we would get in trouble a lot. And so she decided to make, she couldn't, I guess she couldn't kick us out. I don't know if she talked to the principal, but all of a sudden there was now something called select chorus. Literally, it got created like two months into the year. And it was a group of like the really good. singers. It was her select chorus. And so the new thing was going to be that chorus only performed

one song and then the select chorus did the rest of the show. And I swear to God, the select chorus was the entire chorus except me and Andy Brown. So we go to the thing. We do the first concert. We're in for the first song. And then literally she's like, now the select chorus will perform. There's a hundred kids on bleachers. And just the two of us just walk up. across the stage and go and sit in the audience with our parents in the crowd and then they perform like 12 more songs. Oh my God. That's cruel and unusual punishment, mate.

It's pretty funny. All right. What else you got, Peter? What else is Factor Fiction? We're both one for one. So, Pat, you answer first on this one, please. Factor Fiction, the fingerprints of a koala are so indistinguishable from humans that they've on occasion been confused at crime scenes.

Fiction. That's a fact. I'm familiar with this one. Oh, I'm so sorry, producer. Forest is correct. Again, that would make it 2 to 0 forest. Go ahead. Do you have another

fact about this before I poke holes in this? Okay, go ahead. Yeah, so koalas, obviously chimps and gorillas also have fingerprints, but the remarkable thing about koala prints is that they evolved independently. So it's not, you know, it's just a weird fucking unique happenstance thing. Convergent evolution is the term.

Oh, go on for us. I don't even want to hear the producer. It's going to be nonsense. No, I was just telling you when you're explaining it. It's called convergent evolution. It's like the reason two turtles on the opposite side of the planet look both like turtles is because they evolved convergently. They didn't split off.

and, you know, they don't both come from a common ancestor like us and the Great Apes. They just evolved independently, convergently. Their two habitats were perfect. So same thing with koalus fingerprints, right? Like, it's just, it's coincidence, but it's convergent. They evolved these incredible patterns and fingerprints that are very much like human beings convergently with human beings, not for common ancestor. Here's why I said fiction.

It was the bit about crime scenes because that means either one of two things happened. Either one, someone got, you know, someone robbed a. convenience store and the clerk got murdered. And then a bunch of koalas went in and rated it for the eucalyptus tea. And they were like, man, there was 10 people in here. And they're like, ah, nope, check the tape. It was koalas. That's one.

I don't think that happened. Number two is that somebody got killed and they were like, God damn it, it was a koala that did it. And then later they were like, oh, no, it was her husband. There's no way that a koala fingerprint got confused in a crime scene. A hundred percent it has. Where was the crime scene in the zoo? Maybe it, just think about it for a second.

Maybe it was a newish detective. You know, they didn't give him that piece of the training. I'm looking at a picture of these fingerprints. And, I mean, you can see the difference. But if you were a, like if it was you or I, we wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Okay. Quasas have never been at a crime scene. Next.

Okay. A slug has four noses. No, no, no, no. This always has to be you going first because he's an actual biologist. Oh, okay. A slug has four noses. False. Forrest, what do you say?

Oddly specific, and I don't know the answer, but I'm going to go false because I think you've just changed the number of notes. No, I am not that. Slugs indeed do have four noses. If you can believe that, they have a pair of noses that gather information about the inner in the environment that's located on the top of the head. and then underneath on the lower part of the head, they have another pair that pick up chemical smells and are sensitive to touch. Oh, interesting. To find...

I mean, they're so ugly to begin with. Just give them 10 noses. It doesn't matter. That's just so oddly specific. Both of those last two were, where I should just be like fact because you're not smart enough to make you die. You know, I've prepared for this...

Well, these roving bands of koalas that are going around killing people and robbing drugstores, you know, it's a big deal. It's not... They're the hell's angels of the koala. It's not so much about the fact or the fiction. It's about the story and the banter that evolves from these factor fiction.

Last one, this is just to lock in your win for us because there's no way Pat can win. Factor fiction, bulls do in fact charge when they see the color red. Fact. Broologist. He's texting. It's okay. I was texting. I'm going to go fiction.

I don't think it's the color that has anything to do with it. It's how it's displayed. Forrest, you are correct. It is in fact a myth that they charge when they see the color red. The reality is that they charge it every single color, and it is the motion of the towel moving that causes them to get aggravated, not the color, and they are also colorblind to red and green, so it wouldn't matter anyways.

Boom. They've done studies with humans that show that the color red does make you stay awake longer. I'm hungry. Have you ever seen that? Uh-uh. Yeah, so I read this thing not too long ago. Pay attention when you guys are watching TV tonight. Every food commercial, I think Arby's Burger King doesn't matter.

We'll have red slates and red backgrounds. And the reason being, they've shown that the color red actually increases appetite when you see it subconsciously. And so when they put that color. with their garbage product, then it makes you think that it's delicious because you get hungry when you see it. Yeah, I mean, shit, you're right. Dobbinos, Pizza Hut,

McDonald's, Carls, everything has red in it. It's all got red. You don't see like a nice blue green because that, nope, it doesn't even think, I don't even think of food. Nope, nope, it's all red. One more, one. Pat can't answer because we talked about it last week, but Forrest, Fact or Fiction,

there was recently a party, a sex party that was busted by cops that would involve emus, wild boar with ball gags, and little people, with a fountain of sperm that had 71 gallons of sperm. 41 gallons, 41 gallons of sperm. Well, based on the fact that you both know this, I'm going to go fact that this was definitely a real headline. I don't know that I believe that it sounds like non-zone.

You nailed it. Is that correct? Real headlines. Yeah, exactly right. Yeah. That's pretty fun. It's fake news that came out. Yeah, I initially fell for it and then it was debunked.

I should have known when it was 41 gallons of sperm because, again, it wasn't the number. It was who measured it and why. And why? Yeah. That's yours of sperm collection. That's not like, you know, where? Years. Yeah.

Oh, boy. That's funny. Well, last one, and then I think we'll get to the Battle Royale, gents. I've got some. I've got some real. Yeah, go for it. But if we got some more, if we got some more factor fiction or whatever, I'm all for it. No, let's get into it.

Let's get into your story. We're about 45 minutes. Let's try and get a little more content in for the bristners. The brosners? Okay. Well, I have this awesome researcher that works for me named Haley, and she sent me this thing that I took a little bit of a deep dive into. There's this area in Australia where wild dolphins have been fed by tourists for Europe, right? And in exchange, the dolphins bring gifts.

They bring a shell or a piece of stick out of the ocean or a bit of seaweed, and they do this exchange. Well, COVID hit, closed down this tourist attraction, not to be not that surprising, but the part that I loved about this is the dolphins started stockpiling gifts, just started bringing more and more gifts and dumping them on the beach, being like, hey, we're hungry. These poor guys. Fuck, man. Now, what kind of gifts were they bringing? Shells and. It's like shells, seaweed, sticks, you know, kind of anything they could find in the ocean that was interesting.

But I just thought it was such an interesting account of, you know, so there's a lot of misconceptions about marine mammal intelligence. They're definitely very intelligent. The most widely accepted intelligence level of a dolphin is that it's on par with a pig, right? They're like, that's a good way to look at dolphins. They're not like these sentient beings that are more intelligent than humans and blah, blah, blah. on, you know, the most widely accepted thing is that dolphins are about as intelligent as a pig, which is pretty intelligent. You know, pigs are known to have pretty good intelligence levels.

But I think what's just fascinating about this story is these dolphins have a learned behavior and they realize that there is a direct correlation between, you know, an action and a consequence. And they're like, if I do this thing, I'm going to get more. If I bring more gifts, I'll get more food or at least I'll attempt that. And that's pretty cool. That shows a lot of not just like intelligence, but problem solving and understanding, you know, to bring more and more gifts and be like, maybe this will spark that food again. I don't know. I thought it was really interesting. It is interesting.

I mean, you know, my dog knows, like she thinks that she thinks that when we tug the rope, right? When you, you know, got the rope with the handle on it, she thinks that when we play that game that it's for me, right? I know that she, because she never brings Christina the rope. She only brings me the rope. and she thinks it's like my thing that I like to do and she'll just come and bring it like it's a little gift and just drop it in my lap and then just kind of stare.

It's just for you. Yeah. And then you know what she gets? She gets to play. That's her treat. Yeah. There you go. You know, you see that same behavior.

I love dogs. God damn it. My dogs at a, we took her to a little training thing. It's a four-week program where like they train like police, German shepherds and stuff like that. And we were like, yeah, let's just like get her like next level training. So we drop her off Monday morning. We don't pick her up until Friday night. We're so sad, dude,

it's just brutal. Oh, wow. She's still there? Brue. Dude, but you get. So she's there all day long, like, like five, six hours? She's there and sleeps there. So we don't see her again until Friday. We pick her up on the, we have her for the weekend, but this is week too. And it's just like, dude, coming down in the morning and thinking you're about to see the dog and then she's not there. I'm just like, it's horrible. I don't know why we're doing this. How is your house feel? Like that's, that's the thing, you know, I think, I don't think I ever talked about this on the podcast, but you guys know, I lost my dog earlier this year. And we have a puppy now, and he's wonderful. But the dog of seven years, we lost earlier this year very unexpectedly to cancer, and it was devastating. And the thing that,

I think, you know, the thing that I would like break down about emotionally, not to get too sad, but it's like you'd wake up in the morning expecting or come home expecting that you get this greeting and this excitement for seeing your dog. And the space just felt empty. It was like a something was missing. Yeah, totally. Yeah, it really does. It's just like a bummer. I'm like, we might as well just light this place on fire.

So we got my dog here. He's nine and a half and he, when he walks around on wood floors, you hear this, it's a constant pitter patter. I mean, just constantly. So I moved in recently, you know, with my girlfriend.

And now that the dog is here, it's like whenever I take the dog, she's so used to that noise. She's like, it's so weird in here without the dog constantly like making that pitter-patter noise all over the house yeah yeah wait pat i do i do i do have a question has your uh because you have a shepherd they're they're notoriously very very smart animals but sometimes hard to rain in you've had you've had her there for two weeks now or she'll be back yeah this is the second week so we'll pick her up

does you get her back for last weekend and yeah so did you notice a difference Yeah, so what you do is you go in and you spend 90 minutes and they get you up to speed on everything they've been doing that week, right? So week one is like general like leash training. Yeah, they have to train you too, isn't that right? Pretty much. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So they, in one week seamlessly taught her to heal. Wow.

So she literally just walks on our left. If we stop, she stops and sits down. It's insane, though. How much they did that way. It's like a dream. Wow. She heals flawlessly. Open the door now.

She waits for permission to go out. I'm like, oh, my God. That's amazing. It's fucking crazy, dude. That's good shit. So this week is place. So after this, when we pick her up tomorrow, she'll have her mat. And if we say go to your place, she'll go sit on the place.

Oh, God. It's like magic. I should have done this. I would pay $10,000 to have them train my nine-year-old dog to do this now. It's only, it's only, it's only, it's only, it's only, it's only, I have to train you. What are you talking about? I'm very well trained.

I don't know what you're talking about. That'll be nice to have her back in the house, Patrick. It's a big, it's a big empty feeling when they're not there. So before we move on, I would like to bring back something that we did a few times. And then I think we got sidetracked. Let's play. Bizarre animal of a week. Woo!

All right. So let me lay this on you guys. All right. we've got this creature okay I'll even give you a little I'll just give you a little red crumb birdies I'll give you a little breadcrum yeah

it's in India okay Peter we're talking about the Indian animal All right that narrows it down that narrows it down He's seeking to me mate Okay I don't know both of you but I was just You know come on All right so this creature

Has the nose of a mole And the body Similar to a blobfish with leg Spirit animal Yep. It sounds like someone just did a face swap between me and Peter. Oh, zing. Okay.

Let's continue. So just start visualizing. So, so, nose of a mole. Body of a blobfish. Nose of a mole body of a blobfish. Right. Okay. No neck, right?

The color of this creature, purple. So very blobfish is. Fischist. You know, blob this fish-ish. So we've got a purple, round creature, nose of a mole, body of a blobfish with some legs, no neck, purple skin. All right? I like it.

Now, you're thinking fish. I know you're both thinking. Well, you did say blobfish, though. It was in my mind. I'm picturing sort of like a nuke, like a salamander type animal. It's a good thought. This is good thought process. So to add to this bizarre creature, this animal only comes out of the ground for two weeks

per year to slam. This comes out, maids, goes back home. All right. And it lives in the soil, like underground? Correct. Correct. It lives underground. Okay.

In the top soil layer. And then once a year for two weeks comes out, does its, lays pipe, goes back home. Okay. Okay. So I don't know what kind of animal you're picturing anymore. But in case it wasn't weird enough, the call of this animal sounds just like, Bork, Bork, Bik, Bik, Bik. Like a chicken.

Sounds like a chicken. It sounds like a chicken. Forrest, you may not have a good singing voice, but you have a beautiful animal mating call voice. A good chicken voice. Okay, what else we got? I've only got a little bit more before I'm going to give you each a stab at what kind of animal this is and then I'll explain it.

This animal with this weird, mullish nose, uses the end of its nose, which is very pig-like. to slurp up ants and termites. Oh, I know what this is, but I don't remember what it's called. Okay. Oh, I'm not going to look it up. I'm going to make it. All right, you want to take any stabs?

I got one more little clues for you. Give us the one more. Give us one more. Okay. When they are out of the ground, when this round blobfish purple creature with the mole-like nose that slurps it up comes out of the ground for the two weeks, weeks a year and they're walking around and going, and they do get into that, that hump city,

get into their mating time. The male rides the female up through the dirt to the surface where they will slam, and then she will lay up to 3,800 eggs. This is, this is, see, really throwing you a curvefall. You are not expecting the old eggs. Well, I know what this is. It's no question I've encountered. one of these in the wild on several occasions.

This is clearly one of those ante-eaters that came from out of space. Clearly. That's my guess. I think it's going to be some sort of, I think it's called the Indian purple salamander. You think it is or you're Googling it, but did you actually find it or did you just like, because I do think it's interesting even Googling it. He's wrong, so he didn't. But I think he did Google it.

just isn't a good enough Googler to get it with your description. You're pretty close, though. You're pretty close. It is an amphibian. It's the Indian purple frog, also known as the donut frog. And we're going to post an image of it on our social media. Oh, my goodness. You guys want to pull this up.

Will, you're going to want to pull this up. I mean, talk about a bizarre looking. Oh, my God. Indian, it's called the Indian, also called the Indian pig nose frog. I've never seen anything like this. This is very strange looking. Well, that's officially the weirdest animal. You and I have a friend who looks strikingly similar to this animal.

I won't name names, but he doesn't know what you're talking about. Oh, my God. If you're listening to this, go to our Instagram at the Wild Times pod. Weird purple frog. We will have a photo of this. This is truly, I think, one of the weirdest animals I've ever seen. I'm not just saying that to be entertained. I love how this is bonkers.

I love how just the face is the face though, but with the no neck on just the just, it's just a blob of fat body with these. Have you ever seen an animal with less neck? Like it's all it's like there's so little. Only big head from 90 day fiancee has less neck than that. It's a good one. The Indian purple frog, the donut frog, the pig nose frog, all the same creature. future. That is our bizarre animal. Love it. It is gross.

That's a good one. Great. Great fellows. By the way, I did have the Spirit Animals, blobfish merch will be out soon. That's ready to go. I'm going to be up. Oh, that's cool. I like that. Can't wait to get that. I'm going to rock that a lot.

I'm going to wear it every podcast. Well, I mean, you can't wear the blobfish one because that's my spirit animal. What was your spirit animal again? A, like a bull. I don't care. Anyways. All right, boys. Enough of that silliness.

It's time. The time that everyone's been waiting for all week, while Forrest was gallivanting around on a boat. It's time. Better Royal. All right. I like this one. Producer Will came up with it.

It's a snake draft. We're going to create. Dude, you guys fuck it up just as much as old reteptos. He has no clue. What is this fucking worm draft? You are. you're the commander of an army, but it's an army made up entirely of insects.

Wow. Which three species would you pick in your attempt to defeat the other two and take a good. Oh, God, there's zero question. I'm going to win this. Okay. Who wants to go first? All right, well, if you're that confident, no, you're really confident.

Why don't you go first? Okay. Yeah, there you go. My pick. No delay. These creatures are impossible to get rid of. They're invasive. I had an experience that almost broke up a long-term, years-long relationship I was in,

and so these animals not only are violent and aggressive and dangerous, they spread disease, they have the ability to ruin human relationships. My friends, I will have, my infantrymen will be the bedbugs. Millions of bedbugs. You will never get rid of them. They will be everywhere, and you will die. I think that's a great pick. I got bedbugs in Mexico once, and it's one of the worst.

Like, I'd rather break a leg. Same. Same. Same. Yeah. It's so bad. Let me give you a little story about bedbugs. So I told you, when I was just after college, I was living with a girl, we got bedbugs.

And they only go after one host in the bed. And they went after her. And she would wake up every single fucking morning with literally no joke. 30 to 50 welts all over her legs, her body everywhere. And so, you know, we tried, we had the exterminators. We, like, everything we could do. And then until finally, literally just basically threw everything out. Entire wardrobes, mattress, fucking couch, all the furniture, everything.

We just threw it all out. And fucking, that was it. That was how we eventually. And then had the exterminator came and left for three days. And ever since then, dude, like, forced 100% out. would take a broken leg over having bad bugs again. It ruins your life. They're, they're heinous, man. They're so bad. That's that's revolting that anyone's dating you. Um, what's, Forrest, why don't you go next? What's your, what's your first pick? Okay. My first pick, um,

my first pick is, uh, the dog just got a little excited. My first pick is the assassin boat. You guys ever heard of this? No, but I like their name. Don't know. It's like it was made for war. Yeah, they're. Oh, they are. They are. They're super gnarly. Anyway, so the assassin bug is a super cool bug. I've been into them since I was a little kid. And they have this straw-like mouth. And they use that to actually inject prey with a toxin that fully liquefies their inside. So they can then use that injector to suck all of its insides back out. So they just, they literally shove acid into you, melt you from the inside, and then slurp it back out. So first guy on my list is just a billion assassin bugs just coming around, rejecting you with melting. That is horrific. Does that bug have the power of the power of flight?

No, they're like a beetle. They just cruise around. I believe. I'm not, yeah, no, they cruise around. They don't fly. I'm going to go, I have two picks. My first pick. So I recently did a documentary about Vlad the Impaler, right? He was a Romanian emperor who fought against the Ottomans. and Vlad had a really small army, right? But he had a brilliant tactic. He impaled men on wooden spears. What a great tactic. An entire forest of men, 20,000 men on spears. He didn't have the biggest army, but everyone was the most scared of him because fear is the ultimate force multiplier.

So I'm going to start out with the bot fly. Okay. Forrest, you might know something about the bot fly. Yeah, just a little bit. So the bot fly actually on its, if you just look at it, it looks like a really cute, fuzzy little bumblebee. But what it does is it lands on human skin. Skin.

And then it lays eggs underneath the skin. And it causes just horrific deform. I mean, what does it do? Can it kill you? No, it lays its eggs under your skin. Right. Larva hatches out. And the larvae have these recurved balls.

that go down into your skin so that if you try and pull, it just doesn't, sorry. So imagine the barbs are like this. And if you try and pull it just goes like that and it's stuck. And it makes this massive, and I know because I've had them and they're fucking disgusting. It makes this massive like boil, welt thing that's pulsating with this rub living underneath your skin. Disgusting. So my enemy's armies know that I have bot flies that are coming to get them. So they're just going to be scared.

They're going to avoid, avoid, avoid, avoid. And then I'm going in a similar direction. I'm going to go with the mosquito. Have fun with malaria. I mean, they're bad. Well, all right. Wait, so just to be clear here, our insect armies are fighting against human foe and not each other? I was planning on sending my insect army to kill the two of you.

Okay. Okay. Right. That's kind of how I read. Right. All right. Well, I think Since you didn't

I'll just avoid the bed that your bedbugs live in. Bedbugs don't just live in bed. You have another pick, Patrick. So I went mosquito and botfly. Oh, sorry, you did. I'm sorry. Oh, the mosquitoes. Who doesn't know how a snake draft works now, bitch?

Apparently, it's just me. My turn? Okay. I have one. No, it's forest turn. No. Jesus Christ. You can call me Peter.

All right. So my second pick is, you know, it's going to go along the long. lines of Patrick's in the sense of instilling terror. But it also, and I'm, we might digress to a story about this creature at some point, it's also just going to leave you as miserable as you can humanly be. It's the bullet ant. Now for those that don't know, yeah, it's a good one. The bullet ant gets its name because the bite of a bullet ant is said to be so painful that it ranks on whatever that weird pain meter that people like Coyote Peterson used as worse than getting show.

It is supposed to be one of the most excruciating pains on earth. Jesus. And so with my assassin bugs to melt you like acid, mixed in with them, are these crippling bullet ants. So that bullet ants rush in. You're brought to your knees in pain. Income the assassin bugs. Just a little and you're melting.

That's it. You're donezo. Good pick. Good pick. I was going to take that one. What do you got? What do you got, Retepe? If you're up for two more picks.

Two more picks. Thank you for clarifying that. So I get two more picks. My, I mean, I definitely, I really want to see you dead, Pat. And a very good way, you know, to accomplish this is, you know, I'll have the bedbugs. They'll be all over your entire house. Anywhere you ever go for the rest of your life, all of these bedbugs will be following you. But I want to actually, I want you to die.

Like, I want you to be killed and I don't want you living anymore. Sure. So what's the bug? Go ahead. So I will first be sending an army. No idea. I will be sending an army of killer bees, properly called Africanized honey bees, swarms and swarms of them to just, you know, buzz around you. While my, you know, my bees that I have that will be singing show tunes buzzing around me, these Africanized honeybees will be killing.

you and then if you're not dead yet i will be sending in my army of just a common flee that are infected with plague every one of them is infected with the plague they will be biting everything near around you and uh i will destroy everything and take over the earth okay yours is definitely the most annoying army yeah you've got bedbugs fleas and bees like that's just in a very annoying but the bees can kill you and so can the fleas Right. Yeah, I mean, so in other words, if you shower and wear long... You can't shower.

These are infesting your life. They will be growing inside your body, inside your house, inside your pets, your animals, your babies, everything. For us, what do you got? So far, you have a bullet ant. Yep. And what else? The assassin bug. Oh, the assassin bug.

Yeah. And then my final one, very topical lately, got to have an aerial assault. Yes, you do. in my opinion, the two best bees and mosquitoes taken out, both awful. So I'm going to go with a flock, will you? A flight of murder hornets. Ooh, there you go. Yeah.

Murder hornets. It's topical. It's all people are talking about it. It can kill you with a single sting. Doesn't typically, but it can. They're super aggressive, which is obviously significant. They come out from under the ground where they borrow, fly around, zap you. They are terrible.

They're just pretty much. They also, like, I do appreciate Forrest that all of your army, they have very dangerous sounding names. Yeah, they're, yeah, yeah, the assassin bug, the bullet ant, the murder hornet. Like that is, that's a trio of badasses if you ever. Absolutely. Yeah, that's a pretty scary army. Now, my problem with your army, though, for us is that only one of your bugs has the power

of flight. I know. So it's going to be tough. if we're like, you know, if we're on a Navy ship just off the coast, how are you going to come get us? If you're literally standing in a puddle, I'm in trouble. So, yeah. So my third and final pick here to go along with my mosquitoes and my bot flies and my reign of terror is the kissing bug. Have you heard of this?

I know. Very intimidating. It's a creepy, it's a creepy looking bug that looks like an ornate cockroach. It's like a decorated cockroach. What are you the size of... Stop turning your head. What would you say? How big is it?

It's probably about the size of a thumb, like a small thumb. No, they're, yeah, two inches maybe. They're pretty small. But here's why they're called the kissing bug. Mostly, they're mostly found in Africa. They attack sleeping humans, and they very most often bite you on the face, but most often it's on the lip. Ooh. And you go to sleep.

you think nothing bad's going to happen you wake up and you've got a golf ball literal golf ball sized well growing out of your lip and then it and then it can kill you it kills 12,000 people a year in Africa died from the kissing bug what is it chaga chaga something like that there's a weird disease that's a chongas chungus that's a yeah okay 12,000 people a year and if you Google it uh there's a picture of a woman who got bit in the eyelid by a kissing bug, and it is horrific. I mean, you do not want these guys coming after. Eh, that's fine. My army would win.

Forrest, a quick question. We were talking about just dangerous, irritating, flying insects. What have you? I mean, it sounds like you've had encounters with either mosquitoes or bees that have really just sullied you on these motherfuckers. Have you? I have. Let's let you know, I have.

Well, I'm not allergic to bees or anything. I mean, I grew up, you know, African killer bees are just called bees. Sure. Yeah. So where I grew up, we had these super aggressive swarms of bees. And a couple different times, we lost our dogs. Oh, man. So, yeah, yeah.

Well, they were farm dogs. They weren't like the dogs. They're off my roster. They're off my roster. I don't accept that. No, but they're gnarly. So we had a couple different times where it would just be this swarm of bees would just go nuts. And you'd have like, it's pandemonium.

Everybody's running around shutting all the windows, shutting all the doors, shoving towels under the cracks of the door so that the bees can't get in. And the bees are just in this like kind of frenzied, swarming state. And yeah, I guess not a couple times. One time our dog got very sick, one of our dogs. And then the second time it happened, it's kind of a weird story. But we lit a fire and we hadn't had a fire all year because it's Africa and it's pretty hot. And we lit a fire in the tree. chimney and turns out the bees had made a hive in the chimney.

So they freaked out from the smoke, filled the house. We had to run out of the house. And then one of the dogs, one of the dogs got stung, I don't know, 100, 200 times and died. I'm sorry, I asked. God damn it. No, but it's interesting. They are gnarly. And that's how I always thought bees were until I moved to America, by the way.

I thought bees were just super aggressive. And then you're like, Americans are fucking. Do you think we have like some real bitch-ass bees? And then, yeah, as far as, you know, experiences with mosquitoes, I mean, we've all had them. They're just, they're fucking terrible. Like, they're just super. Did you? Yeah, they're awful. I fucking hate it.

All right, guys. I mean, I think. Yeah, let's wrap it on. Hold on, hold on. So if you liked, if we got to ask you. Absolutely. Yeah, sorry. Because you were about to move on.

No, no. I was just, I was going to wrap it up. All right. So, if you like the Battle Royale, go on to iTunes, leave us a review. let us know who won. Was it the broducers, bought flies, mosquitoes, and kissing bugs,

which is, you know, it's a good, yeah, it's a good squad. It's a good squad. Was it, was it the brofessor's irritating team

of bedbugs, bees, and, no, what was the third one? Flee's. Bugs. Bleg infected fleas. Please.

I know everything, mate. Keep the mouth shut. Beads and fleas. Or was it the badass squad, squad of the broologist assassin bug, the bullet ant, and the murder hornet. You know that's the

one you want to vote for. Go on to iTunes. Leave us a five-star review while you're there, please. That's all we ask in return. Tell us who won. And if you're watching on YouTube, give us a little thumbs up. That is, comment. Tell us who won. Forrest gives away prizes from his various

sponsors. Real quick. And we pick based on the comments. Don't forget to follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, at Wild TimesPod. Our channel on YouTube is at the Wild Times podcast or search us on Google. This is posted with video so you can see how ugly the producer is. Good night, everybody.

Good night. Good night.