Wild Times: Wildlife Education - TWT #53 - A Very Meager Brosession

Episode Date: April 12, 2021

As Forrest prepares for a secret expedition, we eek out an episode! It may be a bit short, but it's not nearly as meager as Pat! Be sure and join our amazing Discord community of wildlife and adventure enthusiasts @ https://discord.com/invite/zzTxnrHnS8​ More about the show @ https://thewildtimespodcast.com

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Wild Times, a ridiculous podcast where we hang out, talk about wildlife and adventure, we drink a little bit, we tell jokes. I am your host, the broologist, Mr. Forrest Galante, sometimes known as the extinct animal guy, because I am part biologist, part bro. I'm joined today by the one and only PhD'd professor of finger paints at Harvard, Retep, the bro. Fessor, how are you, Retepp? Thanks for that intro man. My paintings are up for NFTs. I've been offered for Bitcoin per painting. If anybody wants to bid, just Venmo me.

It's at Retep. You look great in that shirt. I'm glad you're wearing the merch. Your arms, though, are looking as meager as pets. Oh, get out of here. I'm going to sit through this pod like this. I did. I had a thought today that I was going to just like try and imitate

Pat this whole podcast and be like Well, I'm chewing gum. I chew gum at all times. He does. We should introduce him now. All right, moving on. Moving on, we'll circle back to your NFT art. We have Papa Pee, Papa Pen Popper Chewing gum over there. He looks a little sleepy. His name is Patrick Deluca. He is the bro-ducer. What's up, Patrick? How are you doing? Why you look so sleepy?

Well, let's see here. I'm looking. Maybe Forrest, let's see if you can identify this. Okay. And I'll, this will explain it a little to you why I'm so sleepy. How's this sound to you? Oh my God. What am I hearing? Is that a recording you took?

It is. It is the sound of, it sounds like a scrub jay battling with something over something. Well, it's the sound of me not getting any sleep. Correct. My plan for my little Saturday night Sunday was to go to bed at 5 a.m. and then wake up at, you know, 11 a.m. Get my six hours, I'm good. Instead, at 515, there was this unholy sound that I have not heard in this area of an entire flock of fucking birds in the trees. And I'm talking about hundreds of them. Was it scrub jays? Was it little what looked like blue jays? Parrots Oh, it's the L.A.

Parrants. Dude. So do you know the origin story of this? Because I, of course, not, instead of sleeping, looked up this entire origin story to figure out why we have so many parrots in our trees right now.

I think we discussed it briefly on the podcast before, but give a refresher, isn't it like a... Yeah, all I know is there were... I know there escaped pets like so many problems, but tell me more. Basically, there's a part of Mexico, and I think it's called a red-headed parrot, or a red-crowned parrot, I believe it's in the show doc.

But they became super hot in the pet trade in the 1950s. In fact, so many of them were taken from that part of Mexico that they're now functionally extinct in that part of Mexico. But we have plenty in the U.S. because they were all sold as very expensive pets. Someone who lived in Bel Air, where the fresh prince is from, right? Very expensive neighborhood in L.A. There was a big fire in 1961, and they freed their pet parrots. Well, now we have 12 separate roving pandemoniums, as they're called, of parrots. That's the name of their herd.

That's such a perfect name for these loud bastards. A pandemonium of parrots. Dude, they ruined my whole neighborhood. People were outside in their bathrobes at 5.30 a.m. Everyone was looking at each other. Like, what the fuck do we do? That's crazy. There are now 3,000 parrots living in L.A.

Wow. 3,000? That's crazy. Did you get the date when they were released? How many years did it take? 1961, right? So it's a long time ago. So let's talk about that's 59, 60 years ago.

Yeah, but still. A few parrots, let's call it at most 10 that this loon had living in their house. Now we got 3,000 parrots causing chaos. That is how that goes. I take issue with this solely based on the fact that you planned to stay up to 5.30 a.m., which in and of itself is an incredibly, incredibly risky maneuver. You have no idea what's going to be happening in the morning. The sun could come out. Dude, I mean, the proof is in the pudding.

These fucking birds, you could have gardeners, you could have construction. Why would you choose to go to bed at 5.30 a.m.? Why are you to talk? Both of you always go to bed at like 530. No. Well, listen, I never choose. It's never a choice. It's always terrible.

And I'm like, God damn it. I hate my life. He's like, man, it's going to go a minute, 5.30, get up at 11. Like, what? Are you out of your mind? So, I don't know, just because it was fun. I was having fun. Did you drink some childa, some chill cabernet?

I had a chardonnay. I had a pinot noir. That was very nice. Forrest, what's your, like, to me, releasing a handful of parrots in a fire, now we've got 12 roving pandemoniums of ferrets numbering the 3,000 is bad. What do you think is the worst...

What do you think is the one invasive species that is like the one that will never be able to get under control? That's so far gone that it's fucked. In the world or in the U.S.? In the world? Cain toads in Australia. Oh, really? Yeah. If you go to Australia, man, especially in the northern territory, like from Cairns and North,

So cane toads are these big toads from Central and South America that were brought into Australia to eat cane beetle, which attack sugar cane, right? So what happened was Australia, the people got settled Australia and they're like, wow, this is a perfect environment to grow sugar cane. Let's start growing sugar cane. So they bring in this invasive, horrible grass called sugar cane, start growing that, and then go, oh, shit, it's getting eaten up by cane beetles that came here with the sugar cane. How are we going to combat this? Nothing in Australia eats cane beetles. Oh, let's bring in these frogs from Central America to eat the cane beetle. They're toads, not frogs, but still.

And now when they brought in these cane toads, the cane toad population completely exploded. And the reason being that they have venom glands or they're, I think they're poison. Yeah, poison glands behind their eyes, these big sacks that have poison and anything that eats them basically dies. Well, when they came over to Australia, everything was like, yum, yummy, big frog and just dropped dead after eating it. So everything that could touch cane toads basically disappeared. Not to the point of extinction, but just the numbers just dropped off like crazy. And now when you go there, if you drive down a highway at night, if there's a light sprinkle or something, I'm not talking about maybe you're going to hit 10 cane toads. The road is slick with cane toads.

I mean, you're mowing down a thousand per mile minimum cane toads. And it's just like, you look at it and you're like, this is too far gone. Nothing can come back from this. I mean, I went to a single pond that was a two days hike from anything. No human, nothing. Up in the northern territory looking for thylose and thinking like, oh, this is, this is, you know, the perfect area. Yeah, that's what the roads look like,

that picture that WT just pulled up. And this pond that was a two days hike from anything had 700, 800, 800 cane toads in this one little puddle of water just all humping together at the same time. And my night sounded like your night last night because they're super loud. But yeah, no, these guys are, I think they're just beyond the point of control. Yeah, they're estimating that there are over 200 million when there should be zero. Exactly. Right, the environment is ready to support.

Yeah. That's crazy. Yep. Well, the other thing is I remember reading stories about that, because people's dogs will try and lick them or eat them. And people's pets die from these cane toads. and, by the way, they're quite revolting. Oh, I have a story about their... Will, if you zoom in on those two humping right there

or pull up another picture, you'll see their big fat poison gland behind their eyeball. So when I was in Australia, the very first time I ever went there, I was working... I met some super cool herpetologist, and they're like, hey, you want to go out and look for snakes and blah, blah, blah.

I went out for snakes, and he hands me this big stick, like with a flat end on it. And I'm like, what is this? I don't want this. He's like, oh, it's for bashing gains, Toads. And I'm like, well, I don't really want to bash anything. And he's like, no, like, you have to. And, you know, like, I already knew the situation, but he explained it to me. And I'm like, all, fair enough. If I'm going to go, if I'm going to go out with you, I'll bash cane toads. He's like, there's two things you can do. You bash them with the sticker, you stomp them, you know, and I was, and I was, gnarly. And I was, you know, you guys, I mean, Patrick, you know me. Like, I don't want to kill anything unless it's a fish I want to eat. So I'm, like, pretty reluctant. But this guy's just like, it's not like he's doing it for sport or fun.

He's just walking and then just, you know, like, and just keeps talking. And like, I'm like, all right. Like a job. Yeah. I'm like, all right. I'm a biologist. I've done invasive species eradication before. I'll do the deed.

So we're walking along. And my girlfriend, Jessica, calls me over and she goes, hey, there's like a big one here. I really don't want to kill it. And I'm like, all right, I'll kill it. So I walk right up to it, lift my foot up and stomp as hard as I can to do the deed. perfectly pop that poison gland behind its eyeball and squirt Jessica, swear to God, directly in the eye with it. Oh my God.

She swear to God. It was like something out of a cartoon caricature. And I was just, and she was like, ah, my eyes burning, my eyes burning. I like pull my water bottle out and like flush her eye out. You know, we're still in area of service. I googled it. It said it wasn't going to be a big deal like to watch it, blah, blah, blah. That was it.

That was my one and only cane toad that I killed. I was like, look, I was not meant to be doing this. Yeah, I mean. The odds of it happening just with a normal animal, but it was actually the poison sack right into the eye. I mean, it was some fluid. I assume it was the poison gland, but, you know, whatever it was. She was fine, her, I swelled up a little bit. These things are pretty beefy and juicy.

I could see if you stomped a cane toad easily, you could do a banana peel cartoon fall. For sure, you could. Yep, they're huge. I would for sure use the stick if I was taking these out. And what's funny is the first time I went to Central America, I remember finding my first one. And there, they're like, they're not rare, but they're not dirt common like Australia, right? It's like, oh, wow, check this out. A cane toad, super cool, this big, meaty toad, you know, that I found under a log or whatever.

And I, like, handled it and looked at it. I was like, it's so pretty. It's so interesting. Because in their natural environment, they're few and far between. Then you go to Australia and you're just like, it's like a murder spree. You're just like, let's get rid of these things as much as we can. Yeah, so that's my input on worst animal. Sure.

Worst, most invasive. I would say the parrots. We can never get these 3,000 under control. Do you know if they're doing anything? Is there any efforts to remove them? No, no. And I will say so they tend to hang out in this area. Last thing about the parrots, they tend to hang out in this area called Altadena,

which is a suburb of L.A., and there's quite a few of them there. And there's a lot of film locations out in Altadena. And if the parrots come through and land within like, you know, I'd say a couple blocks of where you're filming, you could have to shut down. I was filming once in a, like, this big Victorian-style mansion there. It was like a spooky thing. We had to shut down for like half the day because there was just parrots and it was so much noise. There was just no way to even get lines in. So you just shut the production down, told everyone to go to Starbucks, we'll call you.

That's crazy. They're fucking nuts. But Forrest, I did want to run. news story by you, because we like to talk about news instead of olds. We do. Nice. This is, I mean, it's a bummer, but it's not meant to bum you out, but there's sort of an animal mystery going on in California with the black bears. Okay.

So they've found that a bunch of one-year-old black bear in California, where they live up in the sierras and other areas, are behaving like pet dogs. dogs and that they are literally coming and the hallmarks of this mystery are that they're coming with their head tilted to the side they come up to humans they want to be pet they're frequently walking and seen walking in circles um they're very lethargic they move kind of slow but they the real the hallmark thing is that they're approaching humans with their head tilted to the side like a curious dog they're evolving right around one year old When you first started like going down the story, I was like, oh, okay, they're learning that people are like giving them food, you know, and it's basically just like a behavioral tweak to get more food. But you're saying that they're lethargic, and I'm guessing that's not just from eating junk food, and they're tilting their heads. Oh, and one more thing. They are, they're skinny. They're skinny. Yeah.

So they've got some kind of a brain disease or infection for sure. Right, altering their behavior? Yes, it is. It is some sort of mysterious brain encephalitis. They have no idea what it is, what caused it, while all the bears that have it are right around the same age. Interesting. Yeah.

So we'll have to stay tuned for the news. But any thoughts on what's something like, could it be like a reaction to an encephalitis is a bacteria, right? Yeah. Well, I don't know, actually. I know what in, I know encephalitis, like, I've had my Japanese encephalitis shot, and it's a brain something or other. But what would be causing? It's an interesting question. I mean, typically, you know, when you see something plague and animal population like that, it goes back to what we were talking about a second ago. It's like they're

overpopulated, right? So Mother Nature is kind of intervening and something breaks out to try and bring their numbers down. Now, I certainly don't think that's the case for the California black bear. while there are plenty of them, I don't think they're anywhere near the word overpopulated. I don't know. Encephalitis is just a generic term for inflammation of the brain. It can be caused by virus, bacteria, fungus, parasites, or an allergic response to something in the environment. I would be surprised if they sprayed some fucking weird new fertilizer or some shit. Totally. That's the thing is like who knows what, you know, this could be something that one bear picked up.

This could be something that came from, like you said, a fertilizer or something like that, and they're all reacting to it. Who knows? I have no idea. I have no idea. It's a short answer. Sounds awful, though. I'm sure they're not enjoying themselves.

No, they're struggling to survive in the wild and as they're cozying up to humans with their heads cutely tilted. But the good news is, you're right, actually. The bear population is really high. So it was down to 10,000 in 1982. It's up to 40,000 now. So the various wildlife authorities are saying they're keeping their eye on it, but they're not particularly worried because the population is thriving in general. Yeah.

You know, I've been seeing a lot of bees who are doing this shit just crawling around on the ground. And the rare honeybees that I see these days, I feel like they got the same shit going on. They're always just like fucking walking around on the ground. I never see them flying. Is this, I mean, are they just getting poisoned by fertilizers? I read that we're in dire straits with the bee situation here in the U.S. We're certainly in a bad way with the bee situation. I don't know.

I mean, springtime, there's always a lot of bees out because there's a lot of flowers. If I go for a run on the beach this time of year, I almost am guaranteed to get stung on my feet. Because the bees, the bees, as I was run along the tide line, and the bees get washed up for fall in the ocean. And I almost always get stung at least once a week this time of year. your poor feet yeah that's a real problem they've been talking about it for a while

I just never see bees anymore I mean I guess maybe it's because I'm in L.A I see a lot of fucking just giant legit huge like hornets and wasps way more than I see bees and I'm always like the fuck why why are these

why are there so many wasps and so few useful bees are wasps useful I know bees like they pollinate wasps don't pollinate just pollinate just pollinators as well. It depends on the species. It depends on if they're flowers. Same, you know, same with butterflies. But yeah, no, bees, bees are definitely in a bad way. Their population is down something like 90% overall across the U.S., which, you know, the funny, it's funny that there isn't like a C-spiracy type

Netflix documentary on this, I suppose, because it's bees and people don't care or like them. But the truth is, like, if we lose the bees, we will all die, basically. And I don't think everybody realizes that. If it wasn't for bees, we wouldn't have agriculture and the food that we eat. Like, they help pollinate the plants that produce oxygen. Like, if the bee population completely crashes, declines to zero, our likelihood of survival is pretty slim as a species, human beings, which is pretty crazy to think, and we don't really talk about it ever. Yeah, I mean, it's wild. Speaking of Seasperacy, have you seen it, Forrest and Pat? Yeah. A lot of people have been asking. I watched it. What did you think? A lot of people have been asking what your opinion is in the discord and whatnot.

Did you watch it, Patrick? I haven't yet now. I'm planning to. Yeah. So look, I try and look at a film like that. Have you seen it, Ritap? I have not seen it. I refuse to watch things that will make me cry. Don't think it'll make you cry, but you never know. Well, that's what Neil told me about the Cove, and I still haven't recovered 10 years later. That's true. Cove's brutes. What do I think? What do I think? Well, I try and when I watch a film, film like, so the premise of C-Spiracy, for anybody that is listening to this, if you haven't seen it yet, this won't be a complete spoiler alert. But the premise of C-spiracy is basically that the ocean is dying and the biggest problem is the commercial fishing industry. And actually, I wouldn't even say commercial, just the fishing industry in general. And not microplastics, not pollution, but fishing. And fishing directly contributes to those other things, but overfishing is a big contributor. and the guy who made the documentary goes on this journey to speak to all of these world-leading ocean conservation organizations

and basically says that they're choosing to sweep the message of don't eat fish under the rug. And that's how he presents the information. Now, when I watched it, it's awesome. It's a really good, informative, interesting documentary. But there's a lot of, where you can tell, three or four-hour information. interviews with world leading ocean conservation organizations where they take the one 10 or 15 second bite where they go, oh, I don't know, or I don't agree with that. Or, you know, someone says that one thing and they choose to take that piece of it and kind of have a poignant

sort of message built around the way that person responds and go, oh, see, they said they didn't want to talk about it or why isn't this on your website? And it's like, you know, if you're dealing with a company, and I'm not going to name any names, who all they do is dolphin safe tuna. And he goes, well, why don't you ever talk about ocean plastics? And the guy's like, well, because we're not about ocean plastics. We're about dolphin safe tuna. And then, you know, and then they make him out to be a bit of a villain when it's like,

at the end of the day, this guy's just here because he's doing his thing, which is still good conservation, which is trying to, you know, make dolphin safe tuna. Or if your company is into microplastics and he's like, well, why aren't you talking about overfishing? And they're like, that's not what we do. We're talking about microplastics. And they're like, oh, you're sweeping it under the rug, you know. And so the information is presented in a way that, you know, you kind of, I think it's a great documentary and I'm not trying to knock it. I know I'll leave a guy who made it.

Not very well, but I know who he is. And it's like, it's a good documentary. It's really well done. The message at the end of the film is we shouldn't be eating any fish. Like, don't take fish out the ocean, right? That's the message at the end of the film. I am an avid, free diver and spear fisherman because it is the most. sustainable form of getting protein, right? I kill all my own fish, clean them all myself.

You guys know all this, blah, blah, blah, spear them, shoot them zero by catch because I use a spear gun. I'm very selective. Now, obviously, if you live in Chicago, you shouldn't be, you know, if I'm like, oh, the only way you should get fish is if you go and catch it yourself, well, you're not getting a lot of, you know, fresh ahituna if you live in Chicago, if that's the case. But my point is just, I don't think it's quite as black and white as none of us should ever eat fish again. Because I think what it is is the commercial industry is horrific. It's not regulated enough. It's barbaric.

There's tons of drift nets and problems and plastic from that. The recreational industry and the managed small fisheries are really good. And the other thing that this documentary says is basically like there's no such thing as sustainability. He's like any fish taking out of the ocean is like, It basically leads to a, you know, net negative. And I don't agree with that. I think there are, you know, right here in California, like literally out my window, the Pacific Ocean, had a population of white sea bass that when they were gill netting and drift netting crashed to nearly zero.

You know, now, now every 14-year-old kid who picks up a spear gun goes out there and gets a white sea bass his first year. Not every one, but it's like, you know, good for you. And the populations are skyrocketed. That is a sustainable fishery. We removed gill netting. We allowed white sea bass populations to regrow. We've opened up more and more of the commercial and recreational fishery for it, but taking away that really negative method of catching them.

And the population's healthy and stable. So, you know, my opinion is it's a great film. Everyone should watch it. Don't pick and choose what information to believe. Gather all the information and make your own decision. So the Guardian UK put out an article where they had a bunch of

they had interviewed a bunch of people that were interviewed for the series it's getting trashed by a lot of not only for not only for taking interview clips out of context but actually to rearranging words to make new sentences Oh interesting

Were they frankenbitt it? Frankenbite as we call it Frankenbited it Not to mention people are saying that many of the statistics Presented or just seem they think they're made out they're like I don't know where they could have found this statistic It's nowhere

So it is getting it's getting fact-checked a little bit I haven't seen I think I think the message is Reasonably good for the most part I'll tell you my favorite thing about it It has been it was in the top 10 Netflix films in almost every country in the world and it's bringing awareness to ocean conservation and overfishing Right that's it you know mission accomplished like don't get me wrong. I don't think there should be falsifying information or frank and biting anything. I don't know how much of that happened. I just thought that there was quite a lot of leading

the interviewee and, you know, sort of picking and choosing what information to disseminate. But I still think at the end of the day it's an awesome film and it was well done. And it's, the fact that people are debating it and it's blowing up online means people are talking about it, which is a good thing. Yeah. I mean, I think with the documentaries that are coming out, we've gotten used to the Netflix-style documentary. I don't know if this is on Netflix or not, but the documentaries that Netflix has been doing the past couple years are very like,

they're usually not one-sided. They actually make you agree with the opposing side first, and then they, like, tell you why, you know, they, like, pull one over on you, and they start going into the other side of things. Whereas I remember watching documentaries when YouTube was first out and documentaries back,

in the day, like early 2000s, and they typically were like this where it would be very just like one-sided and it was all about just getting people to, you know, talk about it, whether it's controversial or not. But it never had, a lot of them didn't have nuance to be like, you know, like what you just said. I mean, of course when humans figure out a way to make something more efficient, they just, like we saw that video of the, of the ships going around in that cove, blocking the whale in, in that bay there and shit. It's just, we do everything to excess. It's like you said, it's not to say like fishing, you should never eat fish, but I mean, a lot of the fish that were probably eating from the stores and shit if you're not catching it probably is,

is part of the problem, you know? For sure it is. And there's one thing that I should say to anybody listening that values my opinion at all in this stuff when it comes to fisheries. And fisheries is something I'm very, very passionate about. It's why I got into spear fishing. It's why I love it so much because of the zero bycatch and sustainability of it. Just because something is legal doesn't mean it's ethical. And I think people tend to blur the lines like of that a lot, right? Like they're, it's perfectly legal to go to a fancy sushi restaurant and have bluefin tuna, right? That's, it's inethical. The bluefin tuna population is, down to four or five percent, unethical, I'm sorry, down to four or five percent worldwide. So choose

not to have it. Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's ethical, right? And big part of that comes with education and it's hard to, hard to garner all that information, but it's something that people definitely need to look at. Well, I think it's, it's hard, man, because we're so, everybody's so inundated with shit today, with information. I mean, we're just constantly bombarded with, it's so hard to pick and choose and what to believe, especially what to believe now. Like, because there's so much misinformation

about things going on. Everybody has an agenda. I almost feel like you get tired and you're like, I'm just fucking hungry. So you don't, so you're like, you just do it, you know? And it's like hard. Speaking of being inundated with shit.

I thought you're going to say speaking of being hard because he left off with it's hard. Yeah. It's just hard, man. Hard. But speaking of you being in a date of this shit, now you've ruined my awesome segue. Sorry. So the next news story?

No, it's perfect. Hey, so what state do a lot of people in the U.S. retire to? Florida. It's God's waiting room. So picture, Retep, you know, you and your lady, you've just struck it rich because of the Wild Times, got its 3,000th subscriber on YouTube. I'm retired at 38. Yeah, you bought your nice house down there. and someone comes and you're just excited,

you're cracking your first beer on your first day of retirement out on your sun porch. I like where this is going. I'm very curious where this is going. A guy in a, let's just say a polo shirt knocks on your door. Knock, knock, knock. Hey, what's up, man? What can I do for you?

You've got to leave, like, we're evacuating. You got to get out of your house. Huh? What do you mean? Why? Why? I just moved here. There's a 20-foot wall of water that looks like a tidal wave, but it's not water.

It's poop, and it's coming towards your house. Dude, get the, are you high? What are you talking? What are you? Manitou, get out of here. Get the fuck out of it. In Manatee County, Florida, there is a, but they're evacuating the surrounding area around a fertilizer plant that is now defunct. Oh, Christ.

Because there's about to be a catastrophic, three hundred and four. 40 million gallon breach. No. Of basically a phosphate tank that is all the byproduct of fertilizer. So they're saying a 20 foot wall

of basically shit sludge is going to wipe out the surrounding area. Florida seems to make some poor decisions on where they build things. They built a whole city on essentially a marsh where like the houses sink and they built a fucking fertilizer plant or I don't know what came first this the town that's next to it or the fertilizer plant but then just didn't discard like the old fucking shit that's in a tank somewhere now they're going to have a tsunami of shit to take over the town so I pulled this up because I thought you were full of shit pun intended

the Florida National Guard is air dropping pumps that will fit over the plant stacks to speed up the pumping process so that they can get water out of there quickly. But can you imagine the National Guard flying overhead dropping pumps because they're just like, yeah, I'm not going down there. Like they could still just drive in, but that's not how they're doing it. Right. No, that's true. That means that they're worried that it's going to be a breach any moment.

316 homes are going to be buried in shit sludge. That's ducky. Do you think any insurance covers this? I can't imagine it'll be great for the wildlife. But also the governor, DeSantis of Florida, said, we're going to hold the company responsible for this available. The company responsible is called R-H-H-R-K Holdings. I'm sure they aren't just actively, like,

misappropriating the money to bankrupt themselves right now. Yeah, of course. I'm sure everyone will get paid out. It'll be good. We'll be good. A shell company owning a shit warehouse. That's quite something. You know, in less poopy news, I saw something that I got pretty excited about.

The country of Togo, which is a very odd West African country, never been, always been quite interested by it, has some very rare wildlife. Now, it's kind of well been known that in Togo, you know, populations of animals have just been hammered. It's kind of been run rampant over there. We don't know much about what is left. So a recent camera trap survey took place in Otagli's Nature Reserve, and it turned up the first ever images of a super cool antelope called the Walters Dyka, which is just this petite little beautiful antelope. I had a blue Dyka growing up, which is a different kind of of Dyka, but just super cool because it's an animal that we didn't know much about. We didn't really know if they existed or not. It adds a new mammal to the 32 known mammal species in Togo.

Oh, cool. Yeah, I don't know. Just super cool. Happy news. Anytime you get a cool trail camera picture, I love it. So it's real. It's an interesting color there. It looks almost like great.

What's unique about this guy? Is he just a meat sack for other animals to eat? Or does he do something special? What can I say? I mean, Dika are a small antelope. They're very cryptic by nature. They're very graceful. So they hide.

They're very hard to find just typically. Yeah, typically. You know, the problem is that they've been hammered for the Bushmeet trade. Like I was saying, in Togo, that's like a well-known thing over there. So we knew they were around. We knew that people had hunted them, but there was no video or images of them in the wild period until this. So I don't know. I thought it was pretty rad.

I was just looking at Togo wildlife and what the different species of mammal that they have in Togo. they have some really cool species. You know, they've got the leopard, they've got the hippo, the hyena, a lot of our classic African honey badger. And then there were two that I really thought were really fascinating. One is just cat. It's just a common house cat. But they also have a species, this is on the Togo's Wildlife Commission's website.

They have one species called a mongrel. It just appears to just be a very short. shaggy, not well taken care of dog. And it's listed as sort of their official wildlife is the mongrel. Nice. That sounds like African science to me. Cancel.

Dogs, maybe. I'd like to go to Togo, man. They got a bunch of cool shit. Is it very overpopulated, Togo? Is it kind of like Zanzibar in that sense where it's people everywhere? Definitely. Yeah, that whole region of Africa, it's funny because I have an Africa map up of my wall. So I was just looking at all the Dica species.

I'll show everybody that wants to see it. It's got all the different antelope species on the map in Africa. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Wow. It's neat. A real nerd. Yeah.

What of it? That's a very awkward thing to do with a desktop computer. Yeah, right? For those only listening, Forrest just knocked his computer off the desk and then pick the picture. Basically, yeah. No, Togo, I don't know much about it, to be quite honest. That whole part of Africa has been pretty war-torn. There's been a lot of bushmeat problems.

there's been a lot of overhunting, there's been a lot of overpopulation, there's been a lot of disease, guerrilla warfare. That said, it seems like that whole region is very fascinating. It's very biodiverse. It's also the region in which slavery took place. So that whole area, that's where they used to send the slave ships from, right? Is that kind of, I figure what they call that coast, the ivory coast. And it's, you know, because of that, it's like fucked up. and it's always been kind of fucked up, like the infrastructure there.

And, you know, it just got all messed up when they started that whole industry. We'll pull up some images of Togo's voodoo market. Have you heard of this for us? I have. Yep. The world's largest voodoo market. And the photos are truly shocking. Yeah, I'm trying to remember the name of it.

This. Yes. No, I know about the Togo voodoo market that. It's called Ecodesawa Fetish Market. Fetish Market. That's what I was trying to think of. Yes. are barbaric, you know, you can get everything there, elephant feet, dried, dried lion heads,

monk baboon skulls, you name it, they can get it at the fetish market. And it's grown and grown and grown and grown and become a huge thing. Yeah, it's kind of all I know about it. The photos were crazy. I was hoping Will could get a couple up because they're like, it's like a giant market and it's just piles of dried heads of every animal you can possibly imagine, apparently superstition is like a big thing there, like magic and, you know. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That's like the, you know, that is the religion over there. That's a lot of the reasons that, isn't that where when they, when Westerners come in and try and like give vaccines and stuff, they basically try, they're not, they're super against

that and not into it because they believe in, in the opposite, this shit, voodoo and kind of magic stuff. so they'll like kill the people that are trying to give them vaccines and shit? Not exactly, but you're not far off. Yes. No, I mean, I know exactly what you're talking about because like, you know, growing up in Zimbabwe, witchcraft ran rampant. And, you know, that's still, tribal lore is still the most common religion where I grew up, or at least it was.

But it's just like it's choosing that, so people would choose what they want to believe. So you could either believe that, you know, if you had an infection, you could go and get antibiotics, or you could go visit the witch doctor and he'd rub bones over your head, and that would cure you. And it's up to you. And at the end of the day,

most people that know this, if you have a mild infection, it's going to go away either way, right? So some people choose to believe the voodoo and some people choose to believe Western medicine. And a lot of people do a hybrid, right, where they'll go and visit the witch doctor who's cursed someone or done something,

but then they'll also seek medical attention from Western science. So it's a big mix. Yeah, it's a big mix. Yeah. I would say for anyone listening, if you're interested, just spend a minute Googling about this voodoo market in Togo. I think it's worth it. I've never seen. The photos are legitimately mind-blowing.

We definitely don't have time to pull all of them up here, but good God. On that. Literally, here's a table with. Everything. 200 baboon heads on it? Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

On that vice show that I did the stand-up hosting for, on one of the episodes, they went to the voodoo market. And there was this local guy, and he walked through there and he identified all the different species. If you look on the right, those are all dogs heads, just normal dogs. Right. Yeah. Maybe those are mongrels. Those are mongrels, indeed. But, yeah, no, I've seen some of the imagery out of there.

It's absolutely nuts. And it's rampant for disease, too, because, you know, you're mixing all those different dead animals. in one place. It doesn't smell good either. It can't be like a very nice olfactory experience. Well, this isn't, I mean, it's not like a, it's not like a wet market though, right? Like a wet market is living animals? Is that right?

Correct. Typically, a wet market means, you know, killed, fresh, dead, et cetera. Gotcha. Okay. But, you know, sometimes there's a lot of live animals because they keep them live until people order them. Interesting. Yeah. Well, guys, Forrest, I know you got to pack for an expedition.

You're going away for a little while. Indeed. That's some exciting stuff. Yep. Should we do the thing that everybody loves and waits for and wants us to? Oh, yeah. All right, so I got one. Let's do this.

What do you got? You guys are familiar with the Bermuda Triangle, yes? Oh, yeah. Never heard of it. That very scary portion of sea and islands where ships must be. mysteriously go missing, right? You have no idea why. They just things sail in, they never sail out. They did plenty of pirates of the Caribbean stuff around it. Very spooky. So here's the Battle Royale, gents. In tonight's Battle Royale, the mystery of the Bermuda

Triangle has been solved, and it is this creature, right? Head, body, abilities, whatever you want, pick three, put it together. That's the creature that has been taking ships and making them vanish or crashing airplanes, whatever you like, because the Bermuda Triangle is very mysterious place. Now, keep in mind in Bermuda, there are islands. This could be a land-based creature. There's obviously a lot of ocean. This could be an aquatic creature.

Plains have gone missing, meaning it could be a flying creature. Really, there's a lot of options here. There's a lot of options. Snake draft. Snake draft. And TEP will go first. Are you kidding me, dude? Nope.

Oh, my God. All right, so does it have to be a real animal or can I make up like a cryptid? I mean, it has to be a physical real animal that I pick the head body or tail. We're building a fictional creature. You have to go from normal animals. The 53rd time is definitely. Well, mine has the body of a fucking blue whale. That's all.

So it's big. Okay, great. Who's second? Yeah, it's huge. It has to be able to take planes out of the sky, ships out of the sea. it needs a lot of girth. Okay. All right. Okay. Yep. Smart.

Patrick, you want to go next? You want me to go next? Yeah. I'll go next. Because I'm actually a little scared you're going to take my thing that I'm going to pick. Bermuda Triangle really gets its name from Flight 19, right? Which is a mysterious battalion, a naval training flight. Five ships go out. They do a test bombing at a shipwreck. They never come back. The rescue plane that goes after them, goes out. never comes back.

Interesting. Something that just hangs out in the ocean is not going to be able to take these airplanes out of the sky unless they have one very specific skill. That is the skill. I'm taking this special ability of the archerfish.

You guys know the archer fish is a big favorite of mine. That's really clever. It uses its grooved tongue to shoot water in a way where the water in the back of the tongue goes faster than the water at the front so that it creates a ball of water

that it shoots with 100% accuracy and I'm still got to pick a head and a body and all that but it's going to have the skill of an archerfish. Man, you're a motherfucker. That is such a good pick. I'm sorry, I thought you might take that. I know you think that I always tell Patrick what he's doing is good, but that is so good

because it can live in the water and shoot things out of the sky. No, I mean, I'm used to it. You guys obviously collude on this shit before we pop. We do, yeah, we get together. We talk about how you're going to fucking about it. Talk about. Oh, look at that. Wow, what a good pick.

Okay, great. So Will has pulled up a picture of an archer fish shooting a ball of water at something it's going to eat. Knocking it out of the sky. Very clever. Very, very clever indeed. All right. Thank you, Forrest. All right.

I'm going to do, here's what I'm going to do. I'm thinking that my creature, so it takes out ships, it takes out airplanes, right? This is an animal that's got to have a lot of decks. with which to crash things. So in true sea monster form, I'm going to take the general physical form of

a colossal squid. Okay, that's smart. Now, just wait, because I get two picks, right? Now, you may be asking yourself, that's how a snake draft works for TEP, just so you know. You may be asking yourself. Are you paying attention again? Are you back in the podcast?

Now, a colossal squid is a deep sea squid. And sure, it's been known that the Kraken could come up and pull ships out of the water. But how would this colossal squid get up to an airplane? Well, my colossal squid is not just any type of colossal squid. This animal has the special ability of the flying fish. So imagine a 30-foot-long, 40, 50-foot-long squid

that shoots through the ocean with a jet engine like of propeller and then shoots out these fins that make it glide. Now, the flying fish, based on its tiny little body size, can glide like 300 yards. Imagine what a 30-foot-long squid could do when it shoots out its wings at full top speed with a jet engine. This thing is just going straight out of the water, engaging fighter pilot mode, hammering jets out of the air, pulling ships down, and those are my first two. Okay. Beautiful.

All right, so I'm going to take for my second pick, it has the ability of an archer fish. I'm going to give it the body of a sperm whale. The reason I'm going to do that. Because you're copying Retap? That's okay, though. 90,000, well, no, 90,000 pounds, 52 feet long, but also known for that big giant head that's full of oil. That's a reason why most maritime tales of whales sinking ships

are about sperm whales and not blue whales, because blue whales attack ships, whereas a sperm whale can ram it. That's great. Did you Google that, or did you plan before with four? Forest to figure that little factoid out. We had a conference call earlier. You guys have animals.

Yours spits tiny drops of water accurately. Forest luses into the air. You're going to lose this one. Just pick the animals. You've already lost. Pat, I am not interested in what you have to say. You've already stolen my large body creature. You wish you could be as good as I am at this game.

My next pick is the special ability of an electric eel. And not just any electric eel, this electric eel, nobody has discovered yet, because it can produce lightning into the air.

You hear me? He doesn't understand. He doesn't understand how the game works. Never. No. Electric eels exist. From the animal kingdom that do specifically exist.

You understand this exists. You just haven't found it. Get to work. There is a fucking electric eel out there. This is what is happening to all of these fucking airplanes and ships. The airplanes, dude, he's shooting lightning bolts right into the air and then eating everyone on the plane. And you know why he's eating and how he's eating everyone on the plane? Because he has the head of a fang-toothed moray eel.

Okay. All right. This thing is a mess, but I'm all for it. That's right. It's a very long. It's a blue whale. Will, can you bring up a picture of the, bring up a picture of the Moray eel and it's glass.

It's moray, not moray. It's glass. Glass teeth. Moray is of style. Bring up the Moray eel, Will, the Moray eel. Will, the moray eel. Yeah, baby. That bitch is fucking shooting lightning bolts at planes.

Okay. In a blue whale body. Yeah, that's something. That's right. That's something. But since no, nothing in the animal kingdom can shoot lightning. bolts. You're disqualified. All right. So...

I'm just illustrating what it's doing. It's putting invisible shock, electricity out into the air. Very scary. And yes, animals can do that. It's very scary. And by the way, the teeth on that eel are crazy. They are. All right. So I've got my 90,000 pounds sperm whale diving up from 3,000 feet, smashing ships

with its head. Then it is sticking out the tongue. I'm taking this. The tongue of the tube-lipped nectar bat, which has the longest tongue to body ratio in the world. Its tongue is twice

as long as its body. God damn it. It now is then sticking out a 104 foot long tongue, rocketing balls of water. Sometimes it just will stick its tongue up and just grab one guy off a ship just to be real mysterious.

I get what you're doing because if the plane's flying at 30,000 feet overhead, you got to stick that tongue out there and then shoot the water. You need every bit of every bit of re-I want that extra hundred feet. Yeah. Makes sense. Makes sense. There's been no reports of this animal.

If it did exist, they would be, people would have seen this behavior in the wild. People have seen it. They're just at the bottom of the ocean dead. No, that's not true. You're saying that it never misses, that it gets every single time it tries. Methinks not cat, Pat. This is a two-nosed bat, Patrick? The tubes, no, this is the tube-lipped nectar bet.

Will has pulled up a picture. Gotcha, okay. God, that thing is fucking creepy looking, dude. Yeah, look at that tongue, dude. Quite something. Up to twice as long as the body. Imagine that thing comes up behind you and just, like, gives you a tongue lap behind the ear. Fucking point out.

I would just go to the CDC office and be like, I'm here. I've been contaminated. Patient zero. Yeah. All right. In the next pandemic. I can round it out. Yeah.

So I've got my 50 foot long squid super intimidating, which has the locking wing abilities of a flying fish. So it can shoot out of the water to latch on to things in the sky, on the boat, pull it down. And just to give it, you know, just to give it the means by which to accomplish these things in the Bermuda triangle, I'm going to give it the intelligence of an orca. So not only is this thing huge, it can fly, it's incredibly smart, it can pack up with others, and have social behaviors, present coordinated attacks. I mean, nothing is escaping my genius squid flying fish creature.

And that's why I won the Battle Royale. If you don't believe me, you can go and vote. You can let us know whether my colossal squid with flying fish wings and orca brains is the reason behind the Bermuda Triangle. Is it Patrick's sperm whale with the face of a tube-lipped bat and the ability to shoot balls of, balls of water like an archer fish?

Or is it Retep's blue whale-shaped electric eel that has the head of a fang-tooth moray and can shoot lightning bolts like Thor from Marvel? Is that what I'm understanding? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that makes sense. That one exists. Disqualified.

If you vote for Retep, you are ineligible for any prizes moving forward. He's de-kewed. It's patently false. I'm the only one that talks to everyone, so I will go work my magic with my silver tongue. Make sure I get the votes. I will be whipping the Brosner's,

much like they do in Congress to get votes because I have won this battle royal. Where do you interact with the Brouseners? In the Discord. That would be, just go to the Wild Times Podcast.com forward slash info to find all the links to the Discord, to the YouTube, to the fucking podcast audio everywhere. There's like 20 million links to the,

The merch, just go to the wild timespodcast.com forward slash info. You can find all that stuff there. I clearly won. I have a sperm whale with a eel head with glass teeth that shoots lightning. You can shut up, Pat. Good night. Dude, that was so rambly. I was embarrassed and bored at the same time.

Were you gargling marbles while you were saying that? Yeah, Jesus. How many of those have you had, mate? It doesn't matter. Fuck you guys. They look delicious. I despise both of you. Good night.

Good night.