Wild Times: Wildlife Education - Where's Forrest? (Bonus Episode)

Episode Date: September 22, 2020

Forrest is lost at sea searching for his amygdala, but not to worry. Retep and Pat are bringing you the normal wild times news and nonsense in this bonus episode. Forrest will be back to drop our regularly scheduled episode later this week. Keep an eye out!

Woo. What's up, man? How are you? Good, good. How are you? Pretty good. So, this is Patrick. I'm the producer, along with Retep, the professor. Cheers. Wearing a headband. Yep. Looking very bearded and unkempt.

Wild times. Forrest couldn't be with us today. He is stuck on a boat. So we're doing this podcast. This is a bonus podcast. We will also release the regular podcast with Forrest tomorrow. But people are angry with us, Peter, that it's now 1 o'clock p.m. And a podcast has not been released yet. So they were like, just fucking do it, man.

Give us our fix of your bullshit banter. Yep, they want to hear it. Forrest, I hope he's okay. You never know what he's doing. He is lost at sea somewhere looking for Cigdala. He's undeniably drinking a pinia colada on a boat. The boat broke down. Him and some guys were doing some sort of diving thing near the Channel Islands,

and I'm sure he'll talk about it tomorrow night. So we will have two podcasts this week, so don't get too bummed if you're, if you only like Forrest and you hate us, you hate our guts. We're still going to give you some news. Everyone hates you. No, no. All right. So we're going to get into a couple news stories.

We'll save a bunch for when we have our wildlife expert. but this came across my desk, and I immediately texted this to you in Forrest because an emu was involved in this headline. So it says, San Francisco police interrupts sex party involving midgets, emus, and a fountain of sperm, 71 arrests. Wait, 71 arrests?

Well, they're having a sex party. What's emus? I guess so. Beastialities against the law, yeah? And what about a fountain of sperm? Are you allowed to have that? So I quench on it. I sent it to you guys immediately.

It says they arrested 71 people seized two wild boars and eight emus. So I'm reading the story. I'm going, this is fucking amazing, right? There's a quote from one of the cops saying, there's a fetish party. There were bearded women. People were running around with ballgags in their mouths. There was two wild boars on the loos.

on the loose. So I'm like, what in the fuck is going on? So I'm rating it. And it looks like a real news story. And then I get down to the bottom where it talks about the fountain of sperm. And it says that there were 41 gallons of sperm. Yeah, so that sets off an alarm bell for me because two things. Oh, that does.

One, okay. Yeah, one, if they busted up this party with the emus and the wild boar and nude people with ball gags. Who's going to go, okay, we've got to measure out that sperm. We've got to find out exactly how many gallons or leaders are in there. Hopefully the cops. Well, yeah, so I'm like, okay, no one's doing that. And then number two, like, that would take, that would take years to accumulate 41 gallons of sperm. Human sperm, but it could have been the emu sperm mixed with the four sperm, mixed with the little person sperm. Turns out, I think it was none of those. I believe this is a fake news story.

It has been shared on Facebook two million times. Jesus. Are you serious? And it turns out it's a fucking hoax, man. They got me in with the emos. It is weird that they have these fake news sites that all they do. Like the onion I get. It's funny.

It's clearly fake. But this is like you don't even know if it's fake or not. What's the point of this? Just add money, right? I guess just clicks and ads, which is kind of fucked up. Like fuck the advertisers. paying them for that. You think Rush is doing this?

100%. Just to sew more discord for no reason. I think maybe as soon as I clicked on it, they just got all my banking information. That's probably what happened. All right, but this one, this is a real story. Did you hear about the octopus experiment they did? Oh, I did.

And I wanted to talk about it because it involves two of my favorite things, Octopus and drugs. Yeah. So I don't know where these scientists got the funding for this study, but they put five octopus, our lovely little eight armed friends. At Johns Hopkins University, they submerged five octopus in water that had been laced with MDMA. It sounds so, it sounds great. I'd like to swim in that tank.

So tell what is MDMA, Peter? So MDMA is commonly known as ecstasy, but ecstasy is cut a lot. MDMA is like the pure root ingredient. The kids call it Molly, I believe. Interesting side note, it was actually invented way back when in the mid, you know, in the mid-1900s to help with marriage counseling. So it was used for that and then shortly after banned because the government realized it causes you to have too much fun. Wait, so what? They would give like couples that were fighting.

they would give them Molly and they'd love each other again? Well, I mean, it was mixed with therapy, obviously. And then, you know, they would give them Molly and then they would have therapy sessions. And if you've ever taken it, it makes you pretty like empathetic and shit. So I'm quite curious to hear about what happened with these octopi. Well, that makes sense because the octopus or octopi that they put in there, apparently they have similar serotonin pathways to humans.

and they really enjoyed their trip on the MDMA because it said that they started ignoring the toys that they normally would play with and get their attention like some of their favorite items and they all started cuddling and rubbing each other. No bullshit. They literally started an octopus cuddle party when they were high on Molly.

Also known as a rave. So the octopus were having a rave. It's funny that they stopped playing with their toys because if you've ever seen groups of people on ecstasy, not only are they cuddling and touching each other, but they're also doing weird things like sucking on pacifiers and rubbing Vicks vapor rub on each other and all kinds of weird.

Lots of glow sticks. A lot of play with glow sticks. Dude, that would be sweet. They should have given the octopus glow sticks, man. They could probably do some crazy shit with eight fucking arms. It's true. You could make some crazy trails. When was the last time you did Molly?

Oh, my God. It's been years. and years. I'm afraid of drugs in my old age, but I would say, God, I don't even know. It meant me seven, eight years ago. Why don't you? It sounds like you like it. I mean, everyone's cuddling.

Couples are getting back together. Don't you just all do Molly next? Well, first of all, I mean, it's, I'm pretty good. Like, it just really knocks you out of whack. So you'll take it, you'll have a great day, a great night or whatever you take it. Then the next

day you'll just be you'll I mean not always but you could just be massively fucking depressed and sometimes that would last for like two three days when I would do it and I and I don't like to risk dude I barely I mean I don't even drink to the extent I used to because I can't deal with the repercussions of that shit anymore it's just too much time moves so slow when you're feeling like shit as an adult when you're a kid it's like whatever I mean everything's fine you're not scared of everything like now I'm like I'm going to be depressed forever. Dude, I used to like, you know, we would just like go on benders, man.

Me and my friends like Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and then Monday would be a complete fucking waste. Like, barely get any work done, just feel like shit. And like that was just part of the deal. Like you were guaranteed one day a week. I've gotten much better at just avoiding that. Right. I hate that where you're just like, today is bad.

Yeah. I haven't been that hung up. over in a while. I think it was two birthdays ago. I had a real fucking rotten day the next day. Well, you know what I realized? Or one of the big things for me is if I'm allowed, if it's a weekend and I can just go back to sleep until 5 p.m. or lay in bed or do whatever, browse Reddit for six hours while I lay in bed and kind of just sleep off the terrible feeling. That's fine. But as an adult, you got to go to work and you have responsibilities. And, dude, it is terrible. I used to be a television editor, as you know, going and trying to edit something is awful while you're hung over.

You're like falling asleep. You're in a dark room. I can't handle that shit. So I choose not to do it. The one thing, though, and this is related to octopus because both octopus and this item have been speculated to be of alien origins, and that is mushrooms, dude. That's the one I'll still do occasionally for many reasons, but the main one being is there's no hangover. And if you don't take a lot of them, it's actually just a really, it's a good experience. I mean, they're using it to cure depression now or to treat depression, I should say. If I'm going to do anything, it's the safety of natural, delicious, hallucinogenic mushrooms as an adult. When was the last time you did that?

I've done that. I've eaten a few mushrooms here and there over the years. I mean, I don't know. I did it last summer. I did it while I was camping. There's a, you know, looking at the stars, walking through a field in the middle of the night with a headlamp on, hearing frogs and crickets.

I felt so connected to the goddamn earth. What about you? I haven't done mushrooms in a few years, but I thought I thought I was on mushrooms for a minute when I saw a clip of, we've talked about her a few times on this show. Did you see Carol Baskin on Dancing with the Stars? I did not see it. Heard about it.

So Carol Baskin from the Tiger King, she was sort of, sort of became like the villain of that show. There were rumors that she may have killed her husband. She had her first dance. Of course, it was a tiger-themed dance on Dancing with the Stars. She danced to Eye of the Tiger, quite literally, wearing tiger print dress. She looks, she's much taller than her male partner. And she looks freakish. It's on YouTube if people want to watch.

She is literally lurching around like a Frankenstein creature. Ooh, I'm looking. I'm just looking at the pictures, and obviously they, there's some hilarious still photos of her just in dance, in the mid-dance, and it's kind of frightening, man. Yeah, she kind of has this, like, hippie tiger-themed thing going. She's really bad. I mean, like, look, I don't claim to be a good dancer.

she's like barely moving. She's just, it really is lurchy and uncoordinated. And she really, she looks like she smells like mothballs. Yeah, she looks like it. When you look at her. Yeah, you can just look at her. And I feel bad for the partner because he's giving it 100% effort. Yeah.

Do you think he has it in the back of his mind? Like this woman might be a murderer. Like they might have paired me up with a killer. Just her body language and everything. I'm watching it now. she dances like a serial killer. She really does. She's freakish.

How much would you have to be paid to go on dancing with the stars? I would do it for a meager 100,000 maybe. I mean, you're essentially just embarrassing the shit out of yourself on national television and then it exists forever. You can never get rid of it. But I think, you know, you learn how to dance. So you go in there and you practice. I mean, you train.

It's not as if I just was going to. to dance on stage alone without any preparation whatsoever. Now, how much would you have to be paid to go on dancing with the stars, but you only get 30 minutes of practice? Just for podcast publicity, I'd do it for a meager $50. Yeah. God damn, it would be so ridiculous. I was just picturing myself, it would have to be like the down payment for a house

because I don't think in my line of work it would affect me negatively. like people would just laugh. Sure, right. The problem is you can't, like, it used to be like you could go on TV and it would just be done with, you know, it would just be over. Yeah, not anymore. Nah, it's out there forever. Another thing that's out there forever is we've got a little egg on our face

because we reported a news story. I think it was last podcast about a tiger that was on the loose in Tennessee. Oh, yeah. Forrest had received a call from. the Knoxville Department of whatever to try and get this thing under control, yeah? Yeah. And turns out, turns out they found the culprit. They found the tiger.

Except it was pretty small for a tiger. It was also just not a tiger at all. It was a bobcat. Dude, a tiny adorable bobcat. Who the fuck? Multiple people called it in as a tiger. They look nothing alike. Humans, humans, we really have bad brains.

It is funny, though, that this is what it turned out to be, because on the same recording when we were talking about this when it first broke, Forrest told a story about the case of the mistaken identified tiger in like Indonesia or something, and it turned out to just be like a painted dog. Yeah. Dude, but if you see, like, Forrest has bobcats up by where he lives, Uh-huh. They're definitely too big to be a house cat, but there's no realm where you would ever look at that and go,

that's a fucking tiger. I can relate because on this podcast, I am the layman. And I could mistake probably an elephant for a small house cat, I mean, especially if I was eating mushrooms and un-extasy. Just for comparison, a male, a full-grown adult tiger. Uh-huh. He's going to weigh somewhere between 300 and 680 pounds. Okay. A full grown adult bobcat 19 pounds.

Dude, what? The size differential is the same as if you saw a squirrel and you called and we're like there's a pit bull on the loose up in that tree. It's running across the power lines. That's weird, man. Again, like who knows what's going on? I blame this on Russia again, fake news. They're calling in threats to local governments about animals.

It shouldn't be there. It's too bad. It would have been great if Forrest had like flown in if they flew them in VIP first class to solve the case. Oh, my God. He's just like, yeah, no, it's a slightly bigger than a house cat. And in no way is that a tiger. How about this one? This one I really, this is fantastic.

So our producer Will puts together this little show doc. This is one of my favorite stories, mostly because of the chimpanzees. name. So January of 1999, I was a teenager then. I remember this. It was the big tech boom, the dot-com bubble on the stock exchange, the NASDAQ. Everyone was buying tech stocks. All you needed to do was say you had a tech company, it could go public. A chimpanzee named Raven Thurogood the third, was anointed as a stock picker by some fucking assholes. And he created an index of 10 tech stocks, right? They had Raven Thurga the third pick 10 tech stocks.

His portfolio was called the monkey decks. Nice. Very creative. People actually were tracking the monkey decks. And Raven Thurga the third was apparently very good at it. he had a 213% return in 12 months. Wow. So he put in 100 bucks, you make 213 bucks.

That year, he beat six, his, the monkey decks beat 6,000 fund managers that actually manage people's money, humans, not, not other chimps. Sure, sure. Yeah, and Raven Thurga III earned him a place in the Guinness Book of World Records. He's now a legend on Wall Street. That's according to Will, the producer, that part I can't verify that he's a legend on Wall Street. What are your thoughts on this? Well, I mean, you know, you're the stock guy.

Me and you have talked about stocks. I ask your advice sometimes. And now it appears you're no smarter than a monkey. Well, 213% in a year is pretty astronomical. It really pisses me off, though, because I'm like, man, I was 18 back then. And, like, obviously didn't have any money. You know, any money I had just went towards beer or, like, Makazi shots. But like, I wish I could have lived through that and been an adult and like had the

wherewithal that I have now to take advantage of that. I mean, that's always the thing. It's like you realize by the time you realize how to do this thing or you're smart enough to do it, the time is past. If that makes sense. I mean, like I missed the boat on Bitcoin, for example. I was like, legit. I was considering hundreds of dollars in Bitcoin when it was was 11 cents back in like 2011. Yeah, me too. And dude, and then, you know, I'm just like, well, whatever. I just let it bypass.

And it's a big bitter regret I had. Dude, Bitcoin, let's see, what is Bitcoin at? I mean, I was working on a show where we filmed, it was a long run. So it's still 10,500 per Bitcoin. God, that's a lot. And I was working with the cinematographer for, you know, for it was like seven, eight, months we were shooting the show. And it was all he wouldn't shut the fuck up about it. Right. Yeah. He was actually mining Bitcoin at his house rather than buying it. So he had servers all over. He

turned like he was a super weird guy. He turned all like the lamps and electronics into his house into servers. And he was all excited because he rented the house and the utilities were included. So he didn't have to pay electricity. So he was mining Bitcoin. And he was telling us all to buy Bitcoin when it was less than a quarter. It was less than 25 cents each. And I had money. Like I easily could have been like, I'll throw a hundred bucks in, right? Sure.

And bought 400 Bitcoin, which would be worth over $4 million today. And I just didn't because I was like, ah, he's just, he's a fucking weirdo. Yeah. This is like the same guy claims

that he once breathed underwater. So like, you know, when he was talking about Bitcoin, I was just like, nah, this is just, okay, okay. Whatever. Right. With your coins.

Game I want to play with you, and I think it's going to be interesting. A new game. I think it'll be fun because we're missing forest, much the same way he's missing his amygdala. This game is called Random Fact or Fiction, where I am going to tell you either facts or myths about animals and wildlife, and then you as a, would you consider yourself an expert or a, just a dumb idiot? Probably somewhere in between there.

I mean, definitely not an expert like the level forest is, but yeah, I've been working in this space for 15 years. I'm pretty curious, you know, so. All right. So we are going to. I think I'm going to nail all these. We're going to test your, your bullshit detector. So our first fact or fiction, Pat, for you to decide felines and canines are colorblind. Fact or fiction.

That's going to be a technicality there. I mean, colorblind's a weird thing because humans that say they're colorblind, it's really they just mix up greens and reds so that they can see color. They can see some color, I believe. They just have a lot less cones and a lot more rods, which gives them more visual acuity at night and low light, but they're less good with color, but they can detect it. So your answer is no, they are not colorblind,

and you guess that it is a technicality. You are correct because although it was long believed that our furry companions had limited vision, it's not the case. Cats and dogs have much better color eyesight than we thought. They can both see blue and green. Yep, they can both see blue and green, and cats actually have way more light-sensing cells

or also called rods in their eyes than we do, and that's why they can see better in low light. That's exactly what I just said. And I'm really smart. Interesting thing about cats, which if anyone listening has a house cat, their eyes are really bad up close. Like they have really bad up close vision. So like if you like hold like a treat or something like really close to your cat's eyes,

their eyes kind of cross and it looks really funny. So I highly recommend tricking your cat. Okay. Our next one, cows painted with zebra like stripes can avoid being bitten. by flies. What do you think about that one? Fact, fiction. That's fiction. That's just pure bullshit. I see no reason why that would happen. Ooh. Incorrect, sir. Cows, they have to deal with flies. And luckily, they're in shit all the time. I know. They're stepping around in shit. Flies love shit. Well, but now they can protect themselves by painting zebra-like stripes.

There was a study in 2019, the numbers of biting flies on Japanese black cows painted with black and white stripes were significantly lower than those on non-painted cows. Interesting. That makes no sense. The stripes may cause a kind of motion camouflage targeted at the insect's vision confusing them, much in a way that optical illusions confuse us. I mean, look, as a human being, flies aren't a big issue, right? They don't often land on us. They land on food. You get a fly in the house. That can ruin your whole week. Right? Oh, yeah. I made an emergency purchase of a fly swatter because I don't own one and I had a fly in the house. And I was like, if this gets here tomorrow, then I can just make it a mission to find this fly and kill it.

It never appeared when the fly swatter was in range, right? Yeah. So anytime I had the swatter nearby, the fly was gone, I don't know where it was. And then it would appear at intervals throughout the day. That said, I now know, I haven't seen it. I know there's just a dead fly sitting somewhere in my house, which is just terrible to know. Yeah, but what about your cat, man? Doesn't your cat go around capturing flies?

That's what they're for. They're good for nothing else. No, cats were bred to kill mice. Yeah, but they kill anything that moves quickly in front of them and they see. Isn't your cat out hunting? I've seen your cat on top of your refrigerator. Don't know how it gets up there. I was just assuming it was trying to catch a fly.

Well, because we have these big sliding glass doors and I'll leave them open in the summer and shit, like an occasional moth will fly in. And if a moth gets in the house, the cat is just, its instincts kick in. It's laser focused. Okay. Moths are more disgusting than cats even.

Can't stand moths. Okay, last one. It's going to be a good one. All right, all right. I think it's relevant because I am a pig Pat, factor fiction, some pigs in China are the size of bears. Is that a myth or is that, is that a factual statement? All right, that they have somehow bred, look, I don't put anything past. They have no regulations in China for farming, for mining, for really much of anything. I'm going to say it's a fact. I believe they have shot up pigs with so much growth hormone, of bovid growth hormone. that they have a pig that is the size of a bear.

I'm going to say that's a fact. Well, sir, you are correct. It is a fact, but it has nothing to do with China's complete contempt for the rest of the world. In fact, in Nanning, the capital of China's Guangxi prophets, a man named Pang Kong has a remarkable pig, 1,100-pound pig living on his property. It's roughly the same size as a full-grown adult. male polar bear. I'm looking at the pig.

To be honest, I mean, yeah, I guess it probably weighs a lot. It's not that impressive looks-wise. It just looks like a pretty big pig. Yeah, I mean, it's more weight, too. I'm kind of looking at it. It's clearly big, but it's not as if it has the height and width of a bear. It's just weighs as it as the mass of a polar bear. Yeah, I mean, it's dense, right?

It's a very dense animal, apparently. Here's what I'm saying about this pig. Unless you were like the type of person who like goes to the state fair and tries to get blue ribbons for your prize pig, you're not going to like notice this pig and be like, oh my God, that's huge. Like you have to be a real pigger to like be excited about how big Yuan's pig is. Indeed. I forget how many you got right. You got two right out of three, I believe.

So you did, in fact, win the. game. Pat, you're a genius when it comes to Animal Facts. Forrest's to be proud. Yeah. Yeah. We'll have to see how Forrest does. If he gets less than two, then I'm the expert, and he is now the producer. That's a fact.

All right, well, Retep, nice little midday podcast. Let's get this out for the few people who will want to hear us without Forrest. The few thousand, I should say. Yep. No Battle Royale. We'll save that for tomorrow. Remember

Yeah, this is the bonus podcast. We'll be back with Forrest next week. Retep. Good night. Hit us up on social media at Wild Times Pod. Forrest will be back. We're releasing another episode. We didn't want to leave you hanging entirely this week.

We love you. Hope you enjoyed it, even though it was just me and the very, very rage-inducing terrible producer, Pat. You love you. Love you guys. Bye-bye. Good night.