The Champawat Tiger - Part 1: The Origins of the Single Deadliest Animal in Recorded History

The Champawat Tiger was a female Bengal tiger responsible for the most human deaths of any animal in history. Wes explains how she might have developed such a proclivity for hunting humans and just how much fear she stoked in the people of Nepal and India. Watch this episode here: https://youtu.be/cU95DqBKewU ~ Rocket Money - Let Rocket Money help you find and cancel unwanted subscriptions, monitor your spending, and lower your bills—join at https://rocketmoney.com/CLAW. Ethos Life Insurance - Protect your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get up to $3 million in coverage in as little as 10 minutes at https://ethos.com/tooth. Application times may vary. Rates may vary. Trustpilot rating as of 8/1/2026. onX Backcountry - Click here https://www.onxmaps.com/purchase/backcountry/membership?promo=tooth&utm_source=tooth_and_claw&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=bc_comm_nosoc_%5Btooth_and_claw%5D and use promo code TOOTH to get 30% off a premium or Elite membership to onX Backcountry LMNT - Get a free 8-count Sample Pack of LMNT's most popular drink mix flavors with any purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/tooth. ~ To advertise on the show, contact us! Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/c/toothandclawpodcast ~~ Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to an extensive library of exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts. For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social: Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast Twitter: @ToothandClawPod Wes: @GrizKid Jeff: @jefe_larson Mike: @mikey3ds Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:12Jeff Larson?

  Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of Tooth and Claw. We have our bear biologist, who only knows anything about bears, doesn't know anything about anything else. And that's Wes Larson.

• 0:25Wes Larson?

  That's me.

• 0:25Jeff Larson?

  And then I'm his younger brother Jeff Larson, and we have Mike Smith with us, who is our best friend, and we like him.

• 0:35Wes Larson?

  What's up friends?

• 0:35Jeff Larson?

  And he does some good stuff, dude.

• 0:37Wes Larson?

  Sometimes.

• 0:38Jeff Larson?

  So I want to bring up something right off the bat here, where I still kind of feel conflicted about my personal behavior yesterday at lunch.

• 0:48Wes Larson?

  Okay.

• 0:49Jeff Larson?

  So two days ago, I go to Wendover, and whenever I go to Wendover, I want a

• 0:56Wes Larson?

  Prime rib.

• 0:57Jeff Larson?

  Prime rib, every time, right?

• 0:59Wes Larson?

  For people who don't know, Wendover is like a city that lies right on the border of Nevada.

• 1:03Jeff Larson?

  It's a casino city.

• 1:04Wes Larson?

  You can gamble there.

• 1:05Jeff Larson?

  And I like a, I like a prime rib when I'm at a casino, but like Shanks was in his kennel, and I just was getting anxiety, anxiety, and it's taking a while, so I didn't get anything, but that itch was still there. So I live by like a nice steakhouse in Salt Lake City, and well, I should say expensive steakhouse. So I was like, I'll just go there the next day. So yesterday, I wait forever to get lunch. I'm like, still kind of, I've had a lot of anxiety recently, and at like 2 o'clock, I go over there to get lunch, sit down, they take my order, I'm like, yeah, I need a prime rib. They're like, we don't have prime rib. I'm like, shoot,

• 1:46Jeff Larson?

  because their website said it did. So then, every steak's like a hundred dollars, but then they have like a New York something for fifty dollars for lunch. So I'm like, alright, whatever, I'll just get this. There's like one of those situations too, where like they sit you down, I'm by myself, there's a bunch of workers, and just no one will come talk to you. Like I waited forever to put my order in, and they're just really like standing there. Anyways, I'm waiting, they bring me some bread that's not very good, and then like finally, they bring me my steak, and I cut into it, all I see is white. So then like, I cut into the middle, there's zero pink, and it's mainly just white. It's not even like brown.

• 2:30Wes Larson?

  Like fat?

• 2:31Jeff Larson?

  Yeah. It's like the weirdest looking, but like the outside looked normal, so it's weird. So I like, didn't want to eat that at all. And I'm like, you know what, if I'm paying for a ton of money for a steak, I feel like I can tell him, hey, there's, isn't even close to, because I always say medium rare. And that should be a layup for a steakhouse, is a medium rare steak. That's like how you're supposed to cook them. So the waiter comes and looks at it, and he's like, oh yeah, this is terrible, let me take it back. And I don't like sending food back, I don't trust the next meal to like not be messed with, but it's like, I wasn't gonna eat that for steak. And it takes so long. And then I start cutting into it, and it's just like, pink fat

• 3:14Jeff Larson?

  that's seared. It's not a medium rare steak, but like, this time I feel like I can't complain, because it has pink in it. So I'm just like, eat a little bit of it, and it's like starting to gross me out, especially because the news has been like, Trump sent out a ton of horses for me.

• 3:31Wes Larson?

  It's a risky time to eat steak.

• 3:34Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, I'm like, this steak doesn't feel right. And it's getting in my head, so the waiter comes back, I'm like, you know what, I'm just not enjoying it, but just bring me the bill, and we're good. And he looks at my steak, and he's like, no, that's not right. And I'm like, okay, thank you. And then he's like, leaves, and 15 minutes later, he comes back, and he's like, hey, I'm like, yeah, just bring the bill. And he's like, oh yeah, I'm just trying to get the manager over here, but he's busy right now. So I'm like, alright. And he leaves for like another 10 minutes, and I just left.

• 4:09Wes Larson?

  Uh, yeah, yeah, I don't hold that against you.

• 4:12Jeff Larson?

  I got a drink that I didn't pay for. I didn't get one drink.

• 4:16Wes Larson?

  I think that drink should be comped.

• 4:18Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, like I figured they were gonna comp it, but that wasn't positive. Worst case scenario, I would have paid like seventy dollars to make me sick though, and that feels like a scam, right?

• 4:29Wes Larson?

  Less a scam, and more of like, uh, yeah, well, that's what you get for getting the cheap one, right? The cheap steak?

• 4:35Jeff Larson?

  It's like a fifty dollar steak.

• 4:38Wes Larson?

  I, I think had you gone to like a mom and pop restaurant, and done that, I would feel like it was wrong. But like an expensive steakhouse where you're expecting a decent meal, and then they're also taking forever, I don't know.

• 4:52Jeff Larson?

  Like, and like, I, I wanted to wait for the manager, because I figured if this was just a new chef that somehow doesn't know how to cook a steak, and got a job at like the nicest steakhouse in Salt Lake, maybe the manager will try to make it right somehow, and like

• 5:08Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I've always wanted to dine and dash, just out of like, the, getting the rush, the feeling of it. Because you guys, you guys know I

• 5:16Jeff Larson?

  I felt like I was stealing.

• 5:17Wes Larson?

  I've enjoyed a little bit of shoplifting in the past, and like

• 5:20Mike Smith?

  You're a thrill junkie.

• 5:22Wes Larson?

  It is, it's the thrill for me. It's not the like, saving the money, it's more just the thrill of it. So dining and dashing, I think is kind of the ultimate, uh, part of that. I don't know.

• 5:32Jeff Larson?

  The problem is the waiters get screwed over sometimes.

• 5:36Mike Smith?

  I want to see, so like Fast and the Furious 25th anniversary just happened, we're always talking about like, what's the next point break, but with race cars gonna be. But this could be like, point break, but for shoplifting, like extreme, stole seventy dollars of ruffles from Walmart.

• 5:54Jeff Larson?

  I knew I was in the right to not pay for any of that, because of how bad of a job they did, but I still felt so guilty.

• 6:03Wes Larson?

  Alright, well, speaking of a good steak.

• 6:05Jeff Larson?

  I ate the first steak and not complained ever.

• 6:08Wes Larson?

  Yeah, a hundred percent.

• 6:11Wes Larson?

  Without a doubt.

• 6:12Mike Smith?

  Definitely.

• 6:14Wes Larson?

  Speaking of a good steak, we're gonna talk about an animal today that ate a lot of people's steaks. Uh, yeah, a lot of them. In fact

• 6:24Jeff Larson?

  You think they're putting that in our beef too?

• 6:27Wes Larson?

  People? It could be like Soylent Green?

• 6:30Jeff Larson?

  Soylent Green?

• 6:32Mike Smith?

  Soylent Green is people.

• 6:35Wes Larson?

  Alright, well, on this show, we've brought up the concept of man-eaters a few times, and how sometimes certain animals, typically out of necessity, typically these man-eaters happen out of extenuating circumstances, and because of that, of something happening, they become specialists in killing and eating humans. And among the animals that are really capable of becoming man-eaters, big cats definitely seem to be the ones that are the most adept at it. And we told a few of these stories before. We did the lines of Savo, we did the leopard of Rudrapayog, but I have been saving the queen of the man-eaters for years now. I think when we knew we were gonna do an animal attack podcast, this was like, top of the list. It's

• 7:20Wes Larson?

  right up there with Timothy Treadwell. It's the one that a lot of people constantly ask us when we're gonna get to, and I think

• 7:26Jeff Larson?

  That's what I was gonna say. You didn't get this from the listeners sending it in to you?

• 7:30Wes Larson?

  No, I mean, this is one I've known about

• 7:32Jeff Larson?

  You knew about it.

• 7:33Wes Larson?

  For most of my life, but I do think it's finally time to tell her story. And if you are putting together a list of animal attack stories from history, I think this is a top three story, I really do. And that's not only because it's a crazy story, but it's also due to the sheer number of people that this cat killed. And at the end of her reign of terror, she was reported to kill 436 people, um, the majority of them being women and children, and like the leopard of Rudrapayog.

• 8:04Jeff Larson?

  Children? That's like stat padding, kinda.

• 8:07Wes Larson?

  It is kind of stat padding, yeah.

• 8:09Mike Smith?

  It's like Anakin Skywalker.

• 8:12Wes Larson?

  Yeah, just killing 30 younglings. The terror that this cat caused loomed large over thousands of people in villages spread over hundreds of miles for the better part of a decade. So this is finally the story of the Champawat tiger, the single and most prolific and successful man-eater in history.

• 8:33Jeff Larson?

  Wow.

• 8:34Wes Larson?

  This is the undisputed champion when it comes to a single animal that has killed people, and I'm really excited. I, you know, we've been doing this for almost six years, and I think sometimes I do a story that feels, I'm, as I'm preparing it, it just kind of feels like I'm running through the motions, and it just feels a little derivative. And this one made me excited. Like I've really enjoyed researching it, I'm, I'm excited to tell it. It's one of those stories that feels fresh and fun, not fun, but like, interesting. It's incredibly interesting what this tiger was able to do and why it happened.

• 9:11Jeff Larson?

  Interesting.

• 9:11Wes Larson?

  Yeah, interesting. Uh, so in today, it's, this is gonna be a two-part episode, and in today's episode, we're mostly gonna go over kind of the start of all this, like the history behind it, why the conditions were perfect.

• 9:27Mike Smith?

  Start at the beginning, that's a good place.

• 9:29Wes Larson?

  It's no, this isn't pulp fiction here, we're doing things in sequential order.

• 9:33Jeff Larson?

  Nowadays, it's like, you start with like a part of the end scene, and then go to the beginning and test it.

• 9:39Mike Smith?

  Oh yeah, the new Jason Statham movie Mutiny, you see the ending basically at the very beginning. That's really high quality filmmaking.

• 9:47Jeff Larson?

  Mike was saying he went and watched it by himself, and had to excuse himself because he's laughing so hard at how predictable it was.

• 9:56Mike Smith?

  I had like a weird like mental break from reality, and I think it was because I'd gotten like 20 minutes of sleep over the past couple of days before going to see it, but I just had a meltdown in the theater. It just, the most mundane things were happening, and I just couldn't stop laughing. I felt like I was going crazy. It was fun. Go see it.

• 10:22Wes Larson?

  All right. Um, where was I? I don't even remember.

• 10:26Mike Smith?

  You're at the beginning.

• 10:27Wes Larson?

  Yeah, we're at the beginning.

• 10:29Mike Smith?

  Let's start at the beginning. It's a very good place to start. Julie Andrews.

• 10:32Wes Larson?

  We're going to talk a lot about history. We're going to talk about the conditions that create man eaters. And the thing that I just want to really portray is that the second half of the story is really, really well documented because it's going to involve a guy that we have come to know and love on the show, Jim Corbett. He wrote the book about this tiger and there's a good reason that he wrote that book. But this first part of the story, there's a lot of stuff.

• 10:58Jeff Larson?

  You did it. You son of a gun. You told the end part at the beginning and now you're gonna get to it.

• 11:04Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 11:05Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, you're gonna get to why there's a good reason you wrote the book.

• 11:08Wes Larson?

  The beginning part of this story, it takes place in Nepal and there's not a lot of stuff that came out about this. When this tiger was in Nepal, there's not a lot that we know about it. So there is a book written by Dane Hucklebridge, great name. Uh, it's called No Beast So Fierce. It's all about this tiger. A lot of it is about like colonialism and kind of the specific conditions in both Nepal and India that led to this being possible. But, um, I did draw on this book quite a bit as well as Jim Corbett's book, which we'll talk about much more in part two.

• 11:45Mike Smith?

  Do you think people who are familiar with Nepal, uh, just call it Paul for short?

• 11:51Wes Larson?

  Uh, or Nep?

• 11:53Mike Smith?

  Probably not Nep, right?

• 11:55Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 11:57Wes Larson?

  Why Paul but not Nep?

• 11:59Mike Smith?

  I think Paul's a na- like we know a lot of Pauls out there. I know several Pauls. Maybe their full name is Nepal.

• 12:05Wes Larson?

  Nepal. Yeah, probably. All right.

• 12:10Wes Larson?

  This tiger was born in the lowland Tarai of Nepal in the late 1890s. She's born in the relative safety.

• 12:21Wes Larson?

  All right.

• 12:23Wes Larson?

  You guys ready?

• 12:24Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 12:25Mike Smith?

  I don't know. I just don't know.

• 12:29Wes Larson?

  She's born in the relative safety of a shallow den, or maybe the tall elephant grass in the foothills of the Himalayas. Like all tiger cubs, she was completely reliant on her mother for food and protection. During the first two months of her life, she stayed hidden at this den site while nursing, growing stronger, playing with her siblings. She left the den at about two months and she started eating meat. Her mother working really hard to kill wild boar, spotted deer, maybe the occasional livestock to feed her and her siblings. Within a year, she's learning to hunt alongside her mother and she could bring down small spotted deer and boar. Then at about 20 months, she sets out on her own, establishing her own territory in the sweltering grass and jungle of the Tarai floodplain

• 13:15Wes Larson?

  and becoming really adept at hunting spotted deer. She would stalk the deer from behind or from the side. And then when she's close enough, she'd burst out of the high grass at high speed, tackle the unsuspecting deer, sinking her canines into the spaces between the vertebrae or biting its throat and suffocating it. Death comes quickly from this immense pressure that she's exerting by her four long canine teeth that she uses to kill. That's really important. The thing about these canine teeth is the way they are shaped. They are perfect for just exerting an incredible amount of pressure on whatever this tiger is killing. So she'd spend the first years of her life in the Tarai.

• 13:57Wes Larson?

  The Tarai is a habitat that's perfectly suited for tigers, but due to a really high concentration of malarial mosquitoes, it's a terrible place for human beings at this time. Uh, this is before we had any kind of like malarial prevention in the late 1800s. But there is one group of people, an indigenous group of people called the Tharu people, who they had like this increased immunity and resistance to malarial parasites. And they thrive in this jungle environment of the Tarai. So I keep saying the Tarai and I just want to explain what that is really quickly.

• 14:31Mike Smith?

  Try to explain it to us.

• 14:33Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I'll try. Yeah. I'll try real hard.

• 14:37Mike Smith?

  I'm listening.

• 14:38Wes Larson?

  Uh, so when you look at Nepal, Nepal's kind of this skinny country that sits on the top of India. And at the northern part of Nepal, it's all Himalayas. It's very, very high country. You know, you have these incredible mountains, which Mount Everest is there. And then you get into these foothills as you approach India. And then it's the Tarai and the Tarai is this really flat floodplain. It's really jungly. It's where you're going to find all the tiger national parks in Nepal. You have like Chitwan is there. It's where you see like rhinoceroses. It is very different than what you probably are picturing in your head when you think of Nepal. Most people think of.

• 15:17Jeff Larson?

  Can a tiger kill a rhinoceros?

• 15:20Wes Larson?

  They can. It's rare, but they can kill them. Yeah.

• 15:23Mike Smith?

  How about a giraffe? Where would it bite on the giraffe's vertebrae?

• 15:26Wes Larson?

  They don't, they don't live with giraffe. So.

• 15:29Jeff Larson?

  So no, only lions can.

• 15:31Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Yeah. And lions do occasionally kill giraffes. Anyway, this is where she was probably born and that's because this is the really good tiger habitat in Nepal. But in the early 1900s, something would happen to this tigress that would change her trajectory forever. It would cement her in the top spot of the world's greatest natural serial killers. And it's impossible to say exactly what happened, but we're going to take a little bit of liberty based on the existing facts. So I'm going to tell the story of what could have happened that set the pieces in motion to make this tiger a man eater. This episode is brought to you by Rocket Money. I remember when I was little, my parents always gave me the compliment that I was a very frugal person.

• 16:16Wes Larson?

  But you know, I've since determined that it's really easy to be frugal when you don't really have any money to spend in the first place. So now that I am a working adult and have some expendable cash, I found it's easier to play a little fast and loose with the money that I have. And I think I fell victim to some lifestyle creep. I started subscribing to more stuff. I started getting more credit cards and debit cards. And all of a sudden I found it really hard to track where all of my money was going. That's why I really love Rocket Money. Rocket Money can track subscriptions and has the ability to cancel unwanted ones within the app with just a few taps, giving users an easy way to stop paying for things they don't use. And that's not all. Rocket Money can do so much more than just cancel those subscriptions. That's awesome.

• 16:58Wes Larson?

  But you can also set yourself budgets and goals. You get personalized insights and regular reports and receive real time alerts for large transactions, upcoming bills, refunds and low balances. So if you have any financial goals, Rocket Money is going to be a really helpful tool for you. It's been great for me. It really has. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps you find and cancel unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join at rocketmoney.com/claw. That's rocketmoney.com/claw. Rocketmoney.com/claw. One day, a young Tharu hunter decided he was ready to sacrifice the old ways for the new.

• 17:43Wes Larson?

  His people had existed for centuries with a deep respect for the tigers of the Tarai. And to kill a tiger is considered a sacred undertaking that requires permissions and preparation and ceremony. But the ecological and the political landscape of Nepal is changing and this boy knows that the skin from a single poached tiger could set him up with his own farm, with water buffalo, with a lot of things that his family didn't have. So one day on a whim, he decides to take this ancient muzzleloader and an old goat from his father's hut. And he heads into the jungle where he had recently seen the tracks of a large tiger. He's built a hunting stand on the edge of the grass where it meets the jungle in a tree.

• 18:26Wes Larson?

  He ties the goat down and he waits in the sweltering humidity, this goat bleeding out into the air, bleeding, bleating, like a goat does, like Jurassic Park. We're pretty much talking about Jurassic Park.

• 18:38Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, Jurassic Park. Yeah. Gotta, gotta watch out for T-Rex if you're him.

• 18:42Wes Larson?

  Yeah, he, yep, he, that's the thing.

• 18:48Wes Larson?

  As the day fades into the evening, the shadows get longer, the boy starts to doubt his resolve. And he's starting to get ready to untie this goat and head back to the village when suddenly everything goes silent. And then it's as if the grass itself is exploding and enveloping the goat. The terrified animal only has a second to loudly cry out in surprise. And then the only sound is the snapping neck and the low growl of the tiger. Just that morning, this boy had been so sure of himself as he visualized pulling the trigger and shooting a tiger right between the eyes. He imagined it over and over and over again. And now this cat in front of him looks more like a god than an animal.

• 19:29Wes Larson?

  It's so unbelievably large, imposing and powerful that he can't even imagine a bullet killing this animal. But the tiger still hasn't seen him. So almost trance like he raises the rifle to his shoulder. He takes aim at the massive head of the tiger that's now licking the blood from the goat. And the reality of what he's about to do crashes down on him. And he hesitates and he lets out a tiny whimper, which is more than enough for this finely tuned tiger to hear. She growls, she snaps her head in his direction. The sound of a shot rips through the air and suddenly in the tiger, there's blinding white hot pain in her mouth and her jaw feels kind

• 20:10Wes Larson?

  of loose. In an instant, she's gone. Her stripes hide her perfectly in the long grass and the boy's left alone shaking in his tree stand.

• 20:20Wes Larson?

  He waits, he carefully walks to the dead goat, which is now joined by a small pool of tiger blood and the shattered remnants of two long tiger canine teeth. He stares at them in the dirt and then a roar from the grass nearby is so loud and so full of rage that he can feel it deep inside his chest. He slings the rifle over his shoulder and he heads back to the village, cursing himself for his moment of weakness and his terrible shot. But what this boy doesn't know is that his attempt at poaching has severely altered the main killing implement of perhaps the greatest predator on the planet. And without the ability to break vertebrae or crush a windpipe, a powerful prey like a deer or

• 21:02Wes Larson?

  boar, she needs to adapt to something new. Prey that's easier to surprise and kill, prey that has softer skin, slower reaction times. And this boy has unknowingly created a serial killer that's going to take the lives of hundreds of people.

• 21:19Jeff Larson?

  Wow. Damn. That's like the lions of Savva.

• 21:23Wes Larson?

  It is. It's like them. It's like the leopard of Rudrapayog. Well, actually, was the leopard of Rudrapayog injured? I can't remember.

• 21:31Jeff Larson?

  It was a god, I remember.

• 21:33Wes Larson?

  Yeah, it was a god.

• 21:35Mike Smith?

  Like King Kong in the new empire when they had to replace his tooth.

• 21:39Jeff Larson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 21:40Wes Larson?

  Remember that?

• 21:40Jeff Larson?

  Many on the eight.

• 21:41Wes Larson?

  I do remember that.

• 21:42Mike Smith?

  They only had to eat people.

• 21:44Wes Larson?

  Luckily, they had that whole thing just ready to go to replace that too. When you look at these big man eaters, the ones that have killed hundreds of people, there almost always is some injury that leads them to then specialize in people. And I keep comparing them to serial killers and I kind of feel bad for that because we're going to have a serial killer category and I got kind of grossed out trying to pick one. And I think-

• 22:10Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, well, it's like, that's why I don't count Jeffrey Dahmer as a serial killer. Because he ate them all. He used it all.

• 22:18Wes Larson?

  Yeah, it was like-

• 22:19Jeff Larson?

  You know, a lot of them just buried it all.

• 22:22Wes Larson?

  Subsistence serial killer.

• 22:24Jeff Larson?

  I think if you eat it, you're just feeding yourself. So I don't think the tiger's a serial killer.

• 22:29Wes Larson?

  Okay.

• 22:30Mike Smith?

  We should have a serial killer on the show just to talk through some of these questions.

• 22:36Jeff Larson?

  If anyone knows anyone, reach out.

• 22:39Wes Larson?

  Do you relate with this tiger or no? Uh, no, but I, I think Jeff, you weirdly kind of got it right at what I was trying to say is that this is an animal displaying natural behavior. This tiger couldn't kill the prey that it had specialized in its whole life. And so it switched to something else. What I'm getting at here is it's not really fair to call these animals serial killers, even though they kill a ton of people. It's kind of just like if you were calling them a serial killer because they'd kill a ton of spotted deer before this. This tiger just learned to specialize in humans because of something that happened to it that made it no longer able to kill its typical prey. So we became prey for it, but it wasn't like motivated by revenge, or it wasn't, you

• 23:24Wes Larson?

  know, suddenly like blood thirsty for humans. It just decided to specialize in humans, much like the leopard of Rudrapayog. The lions of Savva kind of feel like they were like demons or something, but-

• 23:38Mike Smith?

  Possessed.

• 23:39Wes Larson?

  Yeah, but this one, just, it just is a tiger that specialized in people.

• 23:44Mike Smith?

  Well, one of the lions didn't have a toothache.

• 23:47Wes Larson?

  Yeah, the lions did have some, some weird, yeah, some issues with their teeth and stuff.

• 23:51Mike Smith?

  Like King Kong.

• 23:52Wes Larson?

  That was part of-

• 23:53Mike Smith?

  King Kong in Godzilla new empire. It's exactly the same.

• 23:55Wes Larson?

  Exactly like that.

• 23:56Jeff Larson?

  If you count killing deer, there's a lot more serial killers.

• 24:01Wes Larson?

  Yeah, then they're killing thousands.

• 24:03Mike Smith?

  Yeah, they made a whole movie.

• 24:04Wes Larson?

  Off the charts.

• 24:05Mike Smith?

  Deer Hunter, Robert De Niro.

• 24:08Wes Larson?

  It's usually paws and jaws that are the injuries that lead them to start specializing in people. Because those are the two parts of their body that really make it impossible for them to kill their typical prey.

• 24:19Mike Smith?

  That's such a good name.

• 24:21Wes Larson?

  For a podcast.

• 24:21Mike Smith?

  Tooth and Claw had ever been, if it had been taken, we could have been Paws and-

• 24:25Jeff Larson?

  Or if anyone like copies us.

• 24:28Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 24:28Jeff Larson?

  Paws and Jaws.

• 24:29Wes Larson?

  Paws and Jaws. Don't take that, we're gonna, we should trademark that immediately. All right. So it's impossible to say exactly how she was injured. We don't know. But it was likely the poor shot of a poacher or a terrified farmer. It's really, you know, we just don't know. But that injury is the event that likely forced this tiger to start killing and eating people. And there were also though, some large contributing historical factors that did influence this whole thing. And I think that's where the story gets really interesting is the history behind it. So on this episode, we're really going to dig into that history, the factors that lead to big cats becoming man eaters. Next episode, we'll dig deeper into general tiger biology. Because in a way, this is our first main

• 25:13Wes Larson?

  feed Bengal tiger episode. It is our main feed Bengal tiger episode, our first. We did Tatiana, the Amur tiger. And I do think we need to hit on something really quickly when it comes to that pain point. I don't even know if it's a pain point. Depending on who you ask, both of those tigers, Amur tigers or Siberian tigers and Bengal tigers are subspecies of Pantera tigris. So the main like tiger is Pantera tigris. But that's really hotly contested. For a long time, people thought there was nine subspecies of tigers. Three of them went extinct, the Javan, Bali and Caspian tiger. Of the remaining

• 25:53Wes Larson?

  six subspecies, the South China tigers thought to be extinct in the wild. And the other five are Bengal, Amur, Indo-Chinese, Malayan and Sumatran. But recent DNA work says that there may just be two subspecies. So basically like tigris tigris, and then the Sumatran tiger is thought to be the other subspecies. But other DNA work shows that there is enough distinction to maintain all of those six living subspecies. And they are different enough to be considered actual subspecies. So it's complicated.

• 26:32Mike Smith?

  I'm sure I'd be scandalized if I had been aware of any of these things ahead of time, but I'm just living my life still.

• 26:38Wes Larson?

  I just took you through a real roller coaster of emotions.

• 26:41Mike Smith?

  Really got tumbled over and over there.

• 26:43Wes Larson?

  Yeah, it's complicated. We'll talk about conservation more on episode two. But I just want to illustrate that again, that subspecies science is complicated. There's often a lot of debate, but we are going to treat the Bengal tiger as a separate subspecies from the Amur tiger for the purposes of our show. So this is kind of a new animal for us on Tooth and Claw. It's one we've been saving for a while.

• 27:08Jeff Larson?

  Great. Wow.

• 27:09Wes Larson?

  Okay, not a new animal, new subspecies. All right. Some history. I'm gonna dumb this down a little bit. This book that I mentioned, No Be So Fierce, yeah, dumb it down. It really goes into this history a lot. If you're really interested in this stuff, I highly recommend that book. But a lot of it is about the history contributing to this man eater. We do need to talk about it because it is interesting. So-

• 27:34Jeff Larson?

  And if you're just kind of interested in it, I recommend this episode.

• 27:38Wes Larson?

  Yeah, if you're just moderately interested, hopefully we can recommend the episode when we're done with it.

• 27:44Mike Smith?

  And if Wes isn't dumb enough for you, Jeff is going to record a follow up episode later today. Maybe that'll get you.

• 27:51Wes Larson?

  He'll use only single syllable words.

• 27:55Mike Smith?

  Explain it to me like I'm three. What some of our audience is saying.

• 28:01Wes Larson?

  So for a long time, the people of Nepal, much like the people of India, were able to repel colonialism. They really weren't wanting to be colonized. But Nepal was able to do it a lot longer because the tarai, that ecosystem we just talked about was essentially impassable for people that weren't immune to malaria. Like the malaria there was so bad that it was a death sentence to go on the tarai if you didn't have this resistance. And if you didn't know how to ride an elephant, it was also really hard to get through because it's wetland. There's this thick grass, thick jungle. Yeah, once you, I think once you get the elephant willing to let you ride it, the hard part is over.

• 28:41Mike Smith?

  Hannibal, when he wouldn't, he wasn't able to ride the elephants through the mountain pass, but he could have gotten through the malaria screen or whatever.

• 28:48Wes Larson?

  Probably, I don't know if he could have, probably not, if he wasn't a Tharu person.

• 28:54Wes Larson?

  So between the Himalayas to the north and the tarai to the south, Nepal was like kind of perfectly protected from British invaders. That all changed in the mid 1800s, when a new British friendly Nepalese government decided it wanted to modernize. And they kind of decided to let colonizers in. And during that time, they were able to turn a lot of this fertile, really pristine tarai into farmland.

• 29:21Wes Larson?

  So the Tharu people, the indigenous people to the Tarai, were essentially classified as non-desirables. It gives the government and the British permission to burn, to raise, to essentially tame the Tarai. And huge swaths of it are turned into farmland and rice paddies. And what that meant is this really productive, really good tiger habitat, those huge areas of wetland, elephant grass, jungle, they're getting more and more fragmented. So there's just these little island pockets now of really good habitat. And these tigers are forced into these smaller pockets, which leads to increased competition between tigers. Tigers are highly territorial, so they don't like sharing their territory with other tigers. And that's not

• 30:03Wes Larson?

  a good situation for them. The British, especially the British nobles, loved killing tigers, too. And now they have these really small pockets of jungle that are just chock full of tigers that had all been pushed into the same habitat, and it's shooting fish in a barrel for them. So they go on these tiger hunting expeditions while riding elephants, and they're shooting dozens of tigers in single trips. Single sport hunters during this time would kill hundreds of tigers, like on their own. And they're encouraged to do it because the British East India Company thought tigers are bad for business. They classified them as vermin.

• 30:43Wes Larson?

  So essentially, it's open season on tigers. You can just go kill tigers if you're British. Plus, as these farms and villages are occupying the edges of this now reduced tiger habitat, there's a lot more conflict. More and more tigers are shot as they're killing livestock, occasionally killing people. And it's this all out war on tigers, and it closely resembles what's also going on across the border in India. Like in Nepal, India has these certain rulers in the middle of the 1800s that had learned that cozying up to the British colonizers is going to benefit them personally. So they create legislation that's beneficial to the British Empire, but often highly destructive

• 31:26Wes Larson?

  to the country itself. One such piece of legislation is the Indian Forest Act of 1878. It prioritized the large scale clearing of forests to produce lumber and make room for agriculture. You know, it's really benefiting these nobles. Everyone else is paying the price. So like in Nepal, these big areas of habitat in India that are home to tigers and their prey are cleared, and tigers and these other iconic Indian subcontinent wildlife like sloth bears, Asian elephants, Indian rhinoceros are increasingly pushed in these small pockets of habitat. And those habitat pockets are now bordered by villages and communities. Also similar to Nepal, tiger hunting is just booming in India, both for sport and in response

• 32:10Wes Larson?

  to conflict and bounties. In India, the government said like, hey, we will give you money to kill tigers. So it's open season. Their population starts crashing. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, it's thought that there were close to 100,000 tigers on the Indian subcontinent. And by the early 1970s, there was less than 2,000.

• 32:32Mike Smith?

  Dude.

• 32:33Wes Larson?

  Yeah, it's a lot. A lot of killed tigers.

• 32:39Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, I wish one of these tigers would just get some revenge.

• 32:45Wes Larson?

  Unfortunately, it does, but not on the people that deserve to be killed by it.

• 32:51Mike Smith?

  Oh, isn't that, man, that's so metaphorical, isn't it?

• 32:56Jeff Larson?

  You know what? Any people will do for me. I'm not picky.

• 33:00Wes Larson?

  You just anyone.

• 33:02Jeff Larson?

  Children? Yeah, just get some revenge against humans.

• 33:04Mike Smith?

  Remember the children part?

• 33:06Wes Larson?

  Well, you might want to walk that back here in a little bit. We'll see. All right. So just to put this all together, to paint this entire picture and kind of close the circle, let's take a second of why all of these out, why all of these outside factors really led to the Champawat tiger becoming a man eater. Something that's really important to understand about tigers and most of the big cats is that they're generally adaptable animals when it comes to their prey and their environment. And this is really important when it comes to talking about man eaters, because basically it means that an injured or displaced or incapacitated tiger can switch to a nude food, a new food source and a new habitat. Nude, nude. Their food sources are nude when you think about it.

• 33:51Mike Smith?

  Most of ours are too.

• 33:53Wes Larson?

  That's true. Most of ours are too.

• 33:54Mike Smith?

  I guess.

• 33:55Wes Larson?

  Do you eat anything with clothes?

• 33:56Mike Smith?

  Like shrimp? They're kind of wearing pants when you eat them.

• 33:59Wes Larson?

  Yeah, shrimp.

• 34:02Wes Larson?

  Yeah. All right.

• 34:05Wes Larson?

  Lobster.

• 34:06Mike Smith?

  Lobster is wearing a back, yeah, shell.

• 34:09Wes Larson?

  There's a few other things, too.

• 34:11Jeff Larson?

  Uh, like clams?

• 34:12Wes Larson?

  Clams, that's a good one.

• 34:14Mike Smith?

  That's a really good one. Yeah.

• 34:15Wes Larson?

  Yeah. All right. Uh, let us know, listeners, what other animals are wearing clothes when we eat them. They are really adaptable, though. And this doesn't always hold for big predators. Like, when you think about it, a large great white shark can migrate, it can change habitat, or potentially switch up the type of seal it might be eating, or fish. But they have such a narrow feeding niche that they really can't make big changes to their prey, which is often why they don't decide to feed on people after they bite them, because they just know that we're not good enough for them. And then I think an even better example for that is a polar bear. Polar bears have evolved to fit this very narrow niche. Do

• 34:58Wes Larson?

  you guys say niche or nish? I think someone gave me a hard time for this.

• 35:01Mike Smith?

  I say niche.

• 35:02Jeff Larson?

  Nish.

• 35:03Wes Larson?

  I'm gonna stick to niche then. They fit this very narrow niche, and they essentially have to eat the high fat content of marine mammal blubber to be able to survive in an Arctic environment.

• 35:14Mike Smith?

  It's like Jeff's steak.

• 35:16Wes Larson?

  Yeah, exactly. Maybe you got a seal steak.

• 35:19Jeff Larson?

  Dude, I think it was like 3D printed.

• 35:22Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 35:24Mike Smith?

  3D printed. Maybe they thought you were a seal, dude. Maybe they're like, what's this guy's?

• 35:29Wes Larson?

  Or a polar bear.

• 35:30Jeff Larson?

  Polar bear would be like, he just wasted two perfectly good steaks.

• 35:35Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Polar bears like looking at your plate, being like, I don't know what he's having. So they are able to survive in the Arctic in long fasting periods because of their food. They have evolved to become specialists in this one thing, which is seals and other marine mammals. Their white coat, their teeth, their claws, their paws, even their metabolism has evolved to fit that very specific prey. So they are true specialists. If you change their habitat, if you injure it to where it can't catch seals anymore, it's going to die. They don't have that flexibility and that adaptability. But tigers do. If a tiger

• 36:17Wes Larson?

  no longer has ample prey because the habitat has changed, or if it's injured or it can't effectively kill this large, fast prey, like spotted deer, wild boar, stuff with thick skins, that is able to get away, it's often simply able to just start learning how to specialize in killing something easier that maybe it avoided in the past because of unknown risks. You know, like tigers don't often kill us because we're just like something unknown to them. They don't really want to try and kill something that maybe has risks that they don't understand.

• 36:49Mike Smith?

  We could have anything in our pocket. They don't know.

• 36:52Wes Larson?

  Exactly.

• 36:53Mike Smith?

  A knife? Grenade?

• 36:56Jeff Larson?

  Chocolate.

• 36:57Wes Larson?

  Grenade.

• 36:57Mike Smith?

  Chocolate. Chocolate's bad for cats, huh?

• 37:00Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 37:04Wes Larson?

  So in the best case, when a tiger needs to adapt like this, it's going to be livestock. In the worst case, it'll be humans.

• 37:13Mike Smith?

  Chicken bones. They have a chicken bone.

• 37:18Jeff Larson?

  It's gonna splinter.

• 37:20Wes Larson?

  An atom bomb.

• 37:27Wes Larson?

  All right. A quick myth that we need to dispel before we move on is one that we talked about in some of our other stories about man eaters. And it's this myth of the animals getting the taste for human flesh. Basically, it's this idea that like, what actually creates a man eater or whatever animal killing someone is that it's hooked down how good we taste. Like, the second they have humans, they're like, oh my, oh my God, I have to keep eating.

• 37:51Jeff Larson?

  That's just us humans being like, oh, we're the best.

• 37:54Wes Larson?

  We're so good. Yeah.

• 37:57Jeff Larson?

  I heard that bunch when I was a kid was like, if you ever ate any piece of human, you wouldn't be able to stop.

• 38:06Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 38:06Mike Smith?

  I mean, look at Jeff. We got data points on that. Dahmer kept eating people.

• 38:10Wes Larson?

  That's true.

• 38:11Jeff Larson?

  Epstein files a bunch of them eating people.

• 38:14Wes Larson?

  Jeff would probably taste like Cheetos and Taco Bell.

• 38:18Mike Smith?

  Yum.

• 38:19Wes Larson?

  Ooh. Anyway, uh, that's not true. Like, we can't say that for sure because we don't know 100% for certain the motivations of any given animal. But there's a lot of science out there that shows that that's not the case. Basically, we're just talking about specialization. Before her injury, this tiger was probably specialized in deer, boar, maybe livestock. And having killed those animals hundreds or even thousands of times, got really good at it. What it was no longer able to kill, what it specialized in, it had to learn to specialize in something easier and riskier, which it did. It wasn't bloodthirsty, wasn't revenge, wasn't a taste for humans. It was an adaptation to an unfavorable set of conditions and some bad luck.

• 39:06Jeff Larson?

  I still haven't learned very much from doing Tooth and Claw, but one thing I have for sure learned is that you can't plan your own death. No matter how safe or prepared you are, accidents happen, life is dangerous. And personally for me, I feel like it's impossible to predict how and when I'm going to go. But me, Wes and Mike all depend on each other financially. So to protect the people closest to me, in case I ever get, I don't know, trampled by an elephant or something, I used Ethos to find the perfect life insurance plan to take care of my loved ones for when that day does eventually come. It was a really easy experience to get life insurance through Ethos, and I got everything covered that I needed to without spending too much money.

• 39:51Jeff Larson?

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• 40:29Wes Larson?

  Let's continue our story of this tiger. It's impossible to say when she killed her first human victim, but it's likely that's when she was still living in this humid Tarai. She's injured, she's probably starving. Her desperation for food would have led her to start taking risks that previously weren't worth the payoff. One of those risks might have been getting closer to a Tharu woman as she went out onto the tall elephant grass to cut some for her livestock. The rhythmic chopping of her blade is hiding the soft footfalls of the tigress as she creeps within a few meters of this woman. Her back turned to the thick grass in nearby forest. Then in a motion this woman's probably done thousands of times,

• 41:11Wes Larson?

  she bends to pick up this grass she had just cut, arrange it into a bushel. And suddenly there's a blur of orange, an almost unbelievably loud roar. She slammed into the ground and before she can even start to put the pieces together, she starts to scream in surprise when suddenly her breath is cut short and her mouth gurgles with blood. Her eyes could only see the tawny orange and black fur in her face. And as she's realizing what's happening to her, her thoughts start to blur and she loses consciousness. The thought of a tiger eating her would be her last thought she would ever have. Seconds earlier, this tiger's eyes had been fixed on this woman. It's unblinking, it's tracking her every movement.

• 41:56Wes Larson?

  Investigating new prey had to be done very carefully so she would wait for the opening. And when the woman bends down, it triggers something deep inside of this tiger. Just like deer that had killed countless times, it knew when the head goes down, the deer is unaware and that it has an opening. The switch flips, its muscles act on memory. Springing forward, the tiger heads towards its prey, covers the distance within a second. As it enters this final pounce, it stretches its forearms out and razor-like three-inch claws push out of their sheaths and tear into the soft flesh of this woman's back. The tiger tackles her to the ground, her neck's easy to find. And without the ability to slip these broken canines between her vertebrae,

• 42:40Wes Larson?

  it wraps its mouth around the front of her neck, squeezing tightly and feeling the blood pulse and spray into its mouth. Then with almost no fight whatsoever, it's over and the tiger is happily and greedily licking blood off of her motionless body. It picks up the corpse and takes it to the safety of the nearby thick brush and starts to feed. So if you're tiger and you like, aren't able to defend your territory anymore and you know, it's hard to find prey and then you kill something and it's this easy, you're probably gonna be like, okay, this is my new thing. Like this is what I'm gonna kill from now on.

• 43:17Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, shoot.

• 43:19Wes Larson?

  So it's, darn.

• 43:21Jeff Larson?

  That is crazy.

• 43:22Wes Larson?

  Doggone.

• 43:23Jeff Larson?

  She got her, that, she got her good.

• 43:25Wes Larson?

  And you think about this, this tiger did this 436 times, which is just insane to think about.

• 43:32Mike Smith?

  I'm sure it wasn't any more difficult, but would the tiger's strategy for killing have altered much, if at all, without those two teeth? Would it have to have, you know, used those claws a little more?

• 43:45Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I mean, with other prey, like stuff that has thicker skin or like has kind of these built-in defenses, it probably wouldn't have been able to really kill with just those two canines because it just can't exert that same pressure. But with us, I think we're just soft and easy enough that it was able to, yeah.

• 44:03Mike Smith?

  What did the rest of Tiger, the tiger's teeth look like?

• 44:06Wes Larson?

  Long and sharp.

• 44:08Mike Smith?

  They're still long and sharp?

• 44:09Wes Larson?

  You mean the, like outside of the canines?

• 44:11Mike Smith?

  Yeah, the ones that this tiger's miss, missing outside of that.

• 44:14Wes Larson?

  So they have incisors in the front that are like short, sharp teeth. And then they have like, kind of molar-looking shearing teeth in the back. But all tiger teeth are designed for shearing and cutting meat. You know, they don't have like grinding molars like ours that can like process vegetation. Their teeth are all sharp. If that makes sense, yeah.

• 44:39Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 44:39Wes Larson?

  It should make sense. That's pretty simple.

• 44:42Mike Smith?

  That was dumb enough for us, Wes. Thank you.

• 44:46Wes Larson?

  All right, so because of these broken teeth too, it's very likely that she was no longer, longer able to really defend a territory. And that might be why she decided to leave the Tarai. It could also be that her newfound favorite prey was really scarce in the Tarai. I mean, we mentioned really only the Tharu people live there because of all the malaria. So she might have just learned that there's much more populated settlements just to the north in the true foothills of the Himalayas. And it could be, and it's very likely that she left a trail of bodies on her way to these more fertile hunting grounds, but we'll never know. We just don't have records. But what we do know is that once she got to the village of RuPaul, yeah, I don't know if it's RuPaul.

• 45:27Mike Smith?

  No, really?

• 45:29Wes Larson?

  It's spelled the same way, but I think it's like Rupel is how they say it.

• 45:33Mike Smith?

  Paul for short.

• 45:34Wes Larson?

  Yeah, Paul, once again, Paul. We gotta keep our Pauls straight here. Paul Paul. This is Paul Paul and Nepal is just Paul. This is where her true reign of terror really begins though. And this is because RuPaul was a bit of a paradise for displaced tiger. The village is populated, has homes right on the edge of these steep hills with ravines that are covered in dense forest. So basically she could make a kill and then just drag it up into one of these ravines and people couldn't even follow her up there because it was just too tricky of terrain to navigate, especially if you're chasing a tiger. You don't really wanna be like navigating this really dense, tricky terrain.

• 46:17Wes Larson?

  So unlike the Tharu people too, these are people that didn't grow up around tigers really. They didn't live in a constant state of alert. Because tigers would show up occasionally, but they're incredibly rare. And that state of alert thing is about to change in a very fundamental way for the people in RuPaul. We don't have a lot of details about this time from her life, but it's exactly what she'd been searching for. An unclaimed territory, free of other tigers, full of her new prey. And she freaking just runs the table in RuPaul.

• 46:50Jeff Larson?

  Wow.

• 46:51Wes Larson?

  People start disappearing.

• 46:52Jeff Larson?

  What would the people in the village, is it village or town?

• 46:55Wes Larson?

  It's, it's like a village.

• 46:58Jeff Larson?

  What would they have as far as weapons?

• 47:01Wes Larson?

  Probably not much. Like if they did have any weapons, it was probably really old muzzleloader rifles. What they had in Nepal and India at the time were these people called shikaris. And shikaris were essentially like government hunters, people that they would hire to go kill animals. And often it was man-eaters or whatever else. So they would send shikaris when there was issues with tigers or whatever else. But the people themselves didn't usually have very good weapons. So people start disappearing near the edge of the forest in RuPaul, often with their companions hearing their screams and then the roar of a tiger. There's a young girl fetching water from a well, tackled by the tiger and carried off in its jaws while screaming for her parents.

• 47:45Wes Larson?

  A shepherd with his goats who didn't come back in the evening left only fingernail marks in the earth and a bloody trail into ravine. A woman collecting sticks on the edge of the forest for firewood, whose head and feet were all that could be recovered. She'd kill at all times of the day, so no time of the day felt safe. And while victims were often women and children, she would kill men too. Often all that's left of the people was fragments of bone, puddles of blood and clothing.

• 48:14Wes Larson?

  Now again, I'm taking some liberty here because details are really scarce, but what we do know is that the feeling of dread that came over RuPaul was so thick, you could almost feel it in the air. And even though paid shakaris were called in by the local government to kill this tiger, she evades all of them. By the time her death toll in RuPaul had reached about 200 people, government leaders know they had to do something really drastic, or the entire town would be killed by this ghost of a tiger that had gotten really, really good at specializing in humans.

• 48:46Jeff Larson?

  It's crazy. It's like John Wick.

• 48:48Wes Larson?

  So I'm just curious, like, we're gonna do a little, what would Mike and Jeff do right in the middle of this story? You're in this village, they're sending paid professional hunters to kill this tiger that are unable to do it. It's picking people off. What are you doing to get this tiger out of your town?

• 49:06Jeff Larson?

  I mean, would they pay me to kill it?

• 49:08Wes Larson?

  Yeah, if you kill it, you're gonna get the reward.

• 49:12Jeff Larson?

  I think I'm going Predator. I'm gonna cover myself up in med.

• 49:17Wes Larson?

  Okay, med? Why did you, you put so much emphasis on that, too. Med. What the heck?

• 49:25Jeff Larson?

  I don't know. Maybe I have a computer program because I just like short circuited there. I'm gonna cover myself in mud so it can't see my heat. And then I'll do a bunch of booby traps and just live in the jungle with it.

• 49:44Wes Larson?

  Okay.

• 49:47Mike Smith?

  Oh, you're just gonna live with it?

• 49:49Jeff Larson?

  Well, I mean, that's what Arnold does to get the Predator.

• 49:54Mike Smith?

  Sure, eventually he does. They, yeah.

• 49:56Wes Larson?

  Blows it up with a bomb on its wrist, right? Or no, he's like, stabs it with stuff.

• 50:02Jeff Larson?

  He booby trapped it.

• 50:03Wes Larson?

  Okay.

• 50:04Mike Smith?

  What if, this is a little counterintuitive way of thinking, but what if you introduced more tigers into that same little space it was operating in?

• 50:13Wes Larson?

  Hmm, that honestly isn't a terrible idea, cuz like, but the problem is a wild tiger that doesn't kill people. And, and again, just to stress this, tigers really, really don't often do this. Like, they don't want anything to do with this. 99.9% of tigers. But, so a wild one wouldn't wanna kill people, and it also wouldn't have any prey there, so it would probably leave.

• 50:36Jeff Larson?

  Hmm, yeah, maybe you introduce lions.

• 50:39Mike Smith?

  Get our answer once and for all.

• 50:41Wes Larson?

  Also, no prey for them, but, well, what the people there did is probably crazier than what you're thinking. What they did was called a beat.

• 50:50Jeff Larson?

  Kamikaze a plane into it.

• 50:53Wes Larson?

  No, it's not quite that crazy.

• 50:57Wes Larson?

  So, some sources say this was organized by the Nepalese army. Some people say it was organized by the villagers themselves. It's impossible to say what is true, but it was probably somewhere in the middle. But what this consisted of was about 1,000 men, elephants, some shakaris and soldiers, who essentially formed a moving human wall. Uh, they were like within an arm's reach of each other. They all lined up where they knew this tiger was. And then they just made as much noise and commotion as possible as they moved through this area to push this tiger down. The only real valley that connected into RuPaul, they're trying to push it down that valley and into the river.

• 51:40Wes Larson?

  So they're banging machetes together, they're firing rifles in the air, they're yelling, they're doing whatever they can to scare this tiger down west, out into the Sharda River, where it could be corralled and then they could hopefully kill it. The thought was like, as they push it up against the river, it's just not gonna have anywhere to go, and they can kinda pin it against the river and kill it. This actually works. It works all the way up until when they get the tiger to the river. But instead of finding the tiger at the river's edge, scared, defensive, unwilling to cross, and preparing for probably the last fight of its life, it simply swims across this river

• 52:20Wes Larson?

  and into the Kumon, which I need to work on that pronunciation, but Kumon region of India. RuPaul had driven this predator away, this ghost that had been haunting them for years. And finally, these villagers can return to their homes, continue mourning their dead, and try and get back to their lives.

• 52:39Mike Smith?

  The tigress had been.

• 52:40Wes Larson?

  Dressing in peace. RuPaul, Ru, see now I can't even remember how to say RuPaul, yeah. The tigress had been terrified during this beat, but now the pressure's finally off. She's once again forced to reestablish herself in a new territory. She's dripping wet from her swim, she growls softly and moves into the trees of India for the very first time. She'd been pushed into a new hunting ground, and once again, she would drastically change the lives of the humans that live there. But this territory came with the hunter of its own. And Jim Corbett is about to face his first prolific serial killer in the village of Champawat. And that's on part two of the story.

• 53:19Jeff Larson?

  Wow, Jim Corbett is there?

• 53:22Wes Larson?

  He's in Champawat. He's right in that area, yeah. And he's only in his twenties at his time. This is like his first big, yeah, story.

• 53:30Mike Smith?

  Before the Rudraprayag.

• 53:32Wes Larson?

  Before Rudraprayag, he, I mean, he becomes famous for being able to kind of understand these man-eaters. And I just gotta say, like, from reading this book, I love Jim Corbett. Like, he, he just has such an appreciation for the animals and he just understands them. He just is so cool. I'm, I'm so excited to talk more about him, cuz.

• 53:53Mike Smith?

  Yeah, I remember thinking a lot of him after our leopards episode. I think we all walked away feeling pretty high on Jim.

• 54:01Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I think usually we think like, oh, you know, great white hunter kinda guy, but he's actually like legit. He's really cool.

• 54:08Jeff Larson?

  He is a great white hunter.

• 54:10Wes Larson?

  But he was born in India and like loved, he's, I don't know, he, we're gonna talk about it in part two.

• 54:17Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 54:18Wes Larson?

  Okay, you guys got any questions about part one before we go into our categories?

• 54:22Jeff Larson?

  So, what, in Nepal it got about 200?

• 54:27Wes Larson?

  In Nepal it killed about 200 people, yeah. So, almost half of its, of its whole tally.

• 54:33Jeff Larson?

  That's a lot. That's not nothing.

• 54:35Wes Larson?

  That's not nothing. I mean, the Sava Lions, Patterson said they killed over 100 people, but a lot of people think they only killed like 30 or 40. And it was crazy, you know, in Sava when that was happening. So think about 200 people, most of them all from one village. Like, it's hard to imagine what those people would have been feeling.

• 54:57Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, like, over how much time?

• 55:00Wes Larson?

  A few years.

• 55:02Jeff Larson?

  Few years, and then is it just like going into homes or waiting in the grass?

• 55:07Wes Larson?

  It wasn't like the leopard where it'd enter homes. It would just pick people off as they're going out to do like things they had to do to survive, you know, cuz this is an agricultural community. When you think about that, though, like, probably everyone in that village knew someone or was close to someone that had been killed by this tiger. I don't think we can picture it.

• 55:27Mike Smith?

  Are there any other tigers who came anywhere close to this kill total in history?

• 55:31Wes Larson?

  This is, this is like, it, she really killed a lot of people. But I think our, I think the leopard of Rudraprayag was like in the 300s, and then tigers, there's other tigers that killed close. But, but she's in her own level, for sure.

• 55:46Mike Smith?

  This is like the Wilt Chamberlain 100-point game, kinda?

• 55:49Wes Larson?

  Or of like sleeping with women.

• 55:52Mike Smith?

  I don't, I, some people have tried to break down the math on that, and I think I'm starting to not believe that he slept with 20,000 women. That's just me, though.

• 56:02Jeff Larson?

  Well, like, those lions had to crawl through all the thorns, so it's easier for the tiger.

• 56:09Wes Larson?

  You guys will see what this tiger has to go through in part two, but it's, it's pretty, it's a fascinating story. I think part two is the real meat of this story. This one was mostly set up, so I'm excited to tell it.

• 56:21Mike Smith?

  Yeah, if I were the tiger, I would've just done like a Pac-Man on that lion, the wall of people, just munched them all just right in a row.

• 56:31Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 56:33Jeff Larson?

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• 57:13Jeff Larson?

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• 57:57Jeff Larson?

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• 58:06Wes Larson?

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• 58:49Wes Larson?

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• 59:33Wes Larson?

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• 59:49Wes Larson?

  Well, with that, let's move into our categories. We may have done a couple of these in past episodes, but you know, if we have, it's a long time ago, and there's a lot of fertile ground here. So, first one is the scariest serial killer in pop culture or real life. You can pick which one you want to do. I picked Richard Chase, who was the vampire of Sacramento. So the guy who like, was active, I think, mostly in the 70s. I actually, when I was researching for this category, I got really grossed out. I like, I feel like I used to kind of have the temperament to listen to those stories and not be too darkened by them, I guess, like not get brought down into too much of a pit. But I couldn't do it this time. As I was reading

• 1:00:33Wes Larson?

  through a lot of these, I was like, I can't think about this. So he is definitely not the worst that I read, but he was pretty bad, where he killed victims and then like drank their blood because he thought the government had like vaporized his blood, and so he needed to drink human blood to survive. And he did some pretty gnarly stuff to do that.

• 1:00:53Mike Smith?

  Ah, the government's pretty far-reaching.

• 1:00:55Wes Larson?

  They might have done it.

• 1:00:56Mike Smith?

  I wouldn't put it past them.

• 1:00:57Wes Larson?

  Vaporized his blood.

• 1:01:01Jeff Larson?

  I'm gonna go, I'm gonna switch it up, actually. And I'm gonna say Epstein.

• 1:01:05Wes Larson?

  Okay.

• 1:01:06Jeff Larson?

  Cause he killed a lot of people, and he was up with the elite. So that's just a scary thought to have.

• 1:01:14Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:14Jeff Larson?

  You know?

• 1:01:16Mike Smith?

  Yeah. And his targets, I'm not saying that there's any like, good targets for him to have gone after, but he seemed to be going after the most vulnerable and...

• 1:01:26Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:26Mike Smith?

  What a dirtbag.

• 1:01:27Jeff Larson?

  Pretty in the open. Like, a lot of people knew about it and didn't, and did bad things.

• 1:01:33Wes Larson?

  Yeah, still. A lot of people know about it.

• 1:01:36Mike Smith?

  Uh, I'll lighten it up a little bit and just go with a fictional one. I recently watched a movie called Kind Hearts and Cornets. It's an old Alec Guinness movie. And the serial killer in that film is just so devoid of any kind of like human emotion or empathy. Like, he just goes about it like it's the most normal thing in the world. And it's a funny example, because the movie ostensibly is more of a comedy than anything, but it was really disturbing seeing him just kind of think his way through these killings and then execute on them without really any emotion attached to it. And it was just chilling in that way.

• 1:02:11Jeff Larson?

  It's funny listening to Bill Simmons do the rewatchables on Silence of the Lambs, because I used to think Buffalo Bill was really scary. And now he's like, treated it like it's a comedy. And it just completely changed my perspective.

• 1:02:30Jeff Larson?

  Big ol' fat guy.

• 1:02:31Mike Smith?

  Big ol' fat.

• 1:02:36Wes Larson?

  Does the tuck dance?

• 1:02:38Mike Smith?

  So funny.

• 1:02:38Wes Larson?

  He puts lotion in the basket. All right. Uh, we've done favorite tiger, but we're gonna do it again, because this is a Bengal tiger. So your favorite tiger in pop culture, extra points if you do pick a Bengal tiger.

• 1:02:52Mike Smith?

  I know last time we did a tiger, probably the last several times we did tiger categories, I just do Hobbs, because that's the easy one. And it is, he's my favorite from Calvin and Hobbs. But, I'm gonna switch it up. I'm gonna go with the spiky tiger. I think it's the third boss from the old Super Nintendo game, Secret of Mana. Dang, that boss fight, the arena's cool, the music is just absolutely incredible, and the design is awesome. He's got like this cool little spike strip on his back, and he's just going, it's a tough boss, too, Wes. You wouldn't...

• 1:03:22Wes Larson?

  I love when you pick something obscure, because your register kind of changes, like you're talking to one listener out there. Like, you're having a conversation with that one person that's listening that's like, oh my god, that's what I would have picked, too.

• 1:03:36Mike Smith?

  Give me a call, we'll talk.

• 1:03:37Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:38Mike Smith?

  Yeah. My Discord tag, Mikey3DS. Spiky Tiger.

• 1:03:42Jeff Larson?

  Yeah. I'm just gonna go with Joe Burrow right now. I mean, he is an LSU tiger, and now he's a Bengal. And, you know, he likes reptiles. He's a pretty good-looking guy, so I like Joe Burrow.

• 1:03:58Mike Smith?

  What's his hair situation this season? Do we know? I haven't seen a picture of him.

• 1:04:01Jeff Larson?

  It's pretty classic, like parted a bit. Still very sexy, but nothing too exciting.

• 1:04:08Wes Larson?

  Okay. So ShareCon's always been my probably favorite tiger, the classic Jungle Book from the Disney, like animated one. But I'm gonna go with the ShareCon from the 1990s live-action Jungle Book. If you've ever seen that, it has like Carrie Yules and some other actors in it that you might know. But, um, and I think, what's her face? The woman that plays Cersei plays like, Mowgli's love interest in that. What's her name? Why can't I think of her? She's also in like Dread, and, ah, anyway.

• 1:04:39Mike Smith?

  Oh, the drug dealer lady?

• 1:04:41Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:41Mike Smith?

  Um, in Dread? Yeah, what's her name? I forget. She's awesome.

• 1:04:45Wes Larson?

  I should know it. But anyway.

• 1:04:46Mike Smith?

  Big, yeah, she's great. What's her name? Big Mom or something in Dread?

• 1:04:48Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Um, so, that movie, I loved it as a kid, and we recently re-watched it, me and Jesse. And the tiger scene at the beginning where it kills a bunch of, like, the British soldiers is such a good scene. It's really scary. It's like a great animal attack scene. And the tiger they use in it is just a beautiful tiger. And I'm constantly torn between being happy that animals aren't being mistreated, because they don't have to act and they just use CG. But then also, when they have a really good animal actor in a movie, it's just so fun to watch. So, yeah.

• 1:05:24Jeff Larson?

  Swiss Family Robinson.

• 1:05:26Wes Larson?

  Swiss Family Robinson's tiger is an all-time tiger. I learned, Jeff, that tiger, when it's in the pit, apparently it wasn't like scripted to jump out of the pit, and they didn't think it could get out. And the trainer was like, there's no way it's getting out of that pit. And then it just jumps out of it, in Swiss Family Robinson.

• 1:05:45Wes Larson?

  All right.

• 1:05:46Jeff Larson?

  I mean, you got a bunch of pirates running around. What'd you expect?

• 1:05:50Wes Larson?

  Exactly. You gotta chase one of those pirates. This one's called, I called this category, "I'm Built Different." And I'm curious what your personal, personal physical impairment is that makes life the most difficult for you. Kind of like how this tiger lost her teeth, that made things really hard. What's something that, on your body, that has made life difficult? Besides your tiny wieners?

• 1:06:13Jeff Larson?

  My...

• 1:06:14Mike Smith?

  Shoot, that was my answer.

• 1:06:15Jeff Larson?

  I got back pain when I first got COVID, and it stuck with me for like, six years now. And made it so I didn't like having sex, and that was tough.

• 1:06:26Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:27Jeff Larson?

  Because I still had the drive.

• 1:06:29Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:31Mike Smith?

  How'd you deal with that?

• 1:06:33Wes Larson?

  Don't know.

• 1:06:34Jeff Larson?

  I would do a lot of ghosting. Like, sex once, and then I would feel terrible, and then I wouldn't talk to anyone for a week.

• 1:06:44Mike Smith?

  All right. Well, just let me know if you want to cut that part.

• 1:06:48Jeff Larson?

  I've gotten better. I'm feeling better now.

• 1:06:51Mike Smith?

  Good.

• 1:06:52Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:53Mike Smith?

  Now we're happy for you.

• 1:06:56Wes Larson?

  Mike, what's yours?

• 1:06:57Mike Smith?

  I am, for a long time, I've had trouble hearing out of my right ear and it's getting worse and worse. And it's gotten to the point where basically I have to situate myself on the left side or on people's right side just to have like a conversation with them if we're walking like side by side, you know? And it's just kind of gotten me into nothing super awkward or difficult, but it is kind of like sometimes I have to do that weird like old person head turn where you're like, huh? What? And do the cup around the ear.

• 1:07:27Jeff Larson?

  You should get the horn that they stick in their ear.

• 1:07:30Mike Smith?

  I do need the horn.

• 1:07:33Wes Larson?

  What? Mine's also ear related. So since 2018, I've had an inner ear issue where I constantly have like popping and clicking. And it feels like there's a weird pressure there that's just won't ever release. And I've seen like five or six different ENTs. None of them know what's going on. But it gets so bad that it keeps me up at night, like the popping and clicking where I'm just like, man, I just want to blow my head off. So that I don't ever have to like hear this again. Uh, and not in like a literal way.

• 1:08:03Jeff Larson?

  That would work.

• 1:08:04Wes Larson?

  Yeah, it would work. There'd be one big pop and then it'd be done. Uh, I am so sick of it though, and it is definitely the physical thing that has bothered me the most in my life. So. It just feels like I constantly have water in there that won't clear. It's awful. All right. This is a game of who killed more people. So you guys are going to guess if it was the Chompa Wot Tiger or the other thing that I'm, that I'm saying.

• 1:08:30Mike Smith?

  Oh.

• 1:08:30Wes Larson?

  Chompa Wot Tiger or every great white shark in recorded history?

• 1:08:36Mike Smith?

  Chompa Wot.

• 1:08:37Jeff Larson?

  Chompa Wot.

• 1:08:39Wes Larson?

  Correct. There are only 59 recorded fatalities from great white sharks. Chompa Wot Tiger killed 436 people.

• 1:08:46Mike Smith?

  Really?

• 1:08:47Wes Larson?

  They've without a doubt have killed more than that, but I would still guess that Chompa Wot Tiger has killed more people.

• 1:08:53Mike Smith?

  When did we start? I guess there's not like an exact date. I'm sure for keeping track of great white sharks, but.

• 1:08:58Wes Larson?

  I think early 1900s.

• 1:09:00Mike Smith?

  Hmm.

• 1:09:02Wes Larson?

  So, I mean, they've killed a lot of people, I'm sure, but we really had, didn't swim a lot before that either, you know? So, I don't know. At least like a lot of people didn't.

• 1:09:13Mike Smith?

  That's an interesting idea I've never considered.

• 1:09:16Jeff Larson?

  Which one did you think bit more people?

• 1:09:20Wes Larson?

  Probably great white sharks. Actually though, I think no, like as far as recorded, there's only 300 something bites for great whites. So.

• 1:09:30Jeff Larson?

  Probably like more bites from the tiger. A couple of people that didn't kill.

• 1:09:36Wes Larson?

  But it killed most of the people it got. Most of them. Yeah.

• 1:09:40Mike Smith?

  But you have to think maybe one or two.

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• 1:11:08Wes Larson?

  The Chompa Wot Tiger or the Wisconsin Peshtigo Fire of 1871? Which is the most disastrous fire in our nation's history as far as fatalities?

• 1:11:19Jeff Larson?

  Tiger.

• 1:11:20Mike Smith?

  I'll go fire.

• 1:11:21Wes Larson?

  It was the fire. It killed 1,152 people.

• 1:11:26Mike Smith?

  Whew.

• 1:11:27Wes Larson?

  The Chompa Wot Tiger or.

• 1:11:29Jeff Larson?

  9/11 killed more than that.

• 1:11:31Mike Smith?

  9/11 got more than that.

• 1:11:33Wes Larson?

  Chompa Wot Tiger or Luis Garavito? Who's often thought to be the most prolific serial killer in human history.

• 1:11:40Mike Smith?

  Luis on this one.

• 1:11:42Jeff Larson?

  The tiger.

• 1:11:43Wes Larson?

  It's the tiger. Luis is thought to have killed 193 people that were confirmed.

• 1:11:49Jeff Larson?

  Oh, there's one more he got. Hear that?

• 1:11:52Mike Smith?

  Is he still active?

• 1:11:53Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, they can hear they're after him right now.

• 1:11:56Mike Smith?

  Geez, the fire truck is going.

• 1:12:01Wes Larson?

  All right. The Chompa Wot Tiger or the annual worldwide deaths from scorpions?

• 1:12:06Mike Smith?

  Annual. Uh, tiger.

• 1:12:09Jeff Larson?

  Tiger.

• 1:12:10Wes Larson?

  Scorpions kill between 2,500 and 3,000 people every year. So that's about that one. Yeah.

• 1:12:17Mike Smith?

  What the heck?

• 1:12:18Wes Larson?

  Chompa Wot Tiger or worldwide.

• 1:12:20Jeff Larson?

  Wall for the scorpions in their town.

• 1:12:23Wes Larson?

  And the beat. Yeah.

• 1:12:24Mike Smith?

  Step.

• 1:12:25Jeff Larson?

  Because a river would kill them.

• 1:12:27Wes Larson?

  That's true. Unless they hide it like hop on a frog.

• 1:12:31Mike Smith?

  Hop on the frog. And then the frog's like, what the hell dude?

• 1:12:34Wes Larson?

  Still kills them, but they get to kill a frog too. All right. Chompa Wot Tiger or worldwide deaths from diarrhea?

• 1:12:41Mike Smith?

  Diarrhea, please.

• 1:12:43Jeff Larson?

  Diarrhea.

• 1:12:44Wes Larson?

  Diarrhea kills about 1.5 million people every year.

• 1:12:49Mike Smith?

  Yeah, well, I'm not one of them. Yeah. I'll never be one of those.

• 1:12:53Jeff Larson?

  Diarrhea kills them?

• 1:12:55Wes Larson?

  I think it dehydrates them. So, yeah.

• 1:12:58Mike Smith?

  Dysentery.

• 1:12:59Jeff Larson?

  Hmm.

• 1:13:00Mike Smith?

  Dude, that stuff was always messing you up in Oregon Trail. I died from dysentery like every run.

• 1:13:05Wes Larson?

  Oh yeah, run. Chompa Wot Tiger or the number of people in the US that die from constipation in 2020? Ooh, I like diarrhea more than that.

• 1:13:15Jeff Larson?

  Constipation in the US.

• 1:13:18Wes Larson?

  In 2020.

• 1:13:19Mike Smith?

  I'll go tiger.

• 1:13:20Jeff Larson?

  2020. I mean, what? I feel like we put all those deaths as we counted all those as COVID. So I'll go tiger.

• 1:13:29Wes Larson?

  Was the tiger is 207 people that died from constipation in 2020 in the US.

• 1:13:36Mike Smith?

  Isn't it so like, I'm sure constipation does, uh, like obviously, like you just said, but I don't know.

• 1:13:42Jeff Larson?

  You just explode.

• 1:13:43Mike Smith?

  Related at all. Yeah, you just kind of burst.

• 1:13:47Wes Larson?

  If you ever see someone that's just like.

• 1:13:51Mike Smith?

  Didn't they find like a 40 pound compacted mass of fecal matter in Elvis's bowels when he died or something? Maybe that's what got him or John Wayne or something. I don't know. Maybe both. I think it's the opiates.

• 1:14:04Jeff Larson?

  I feel like I.

• 1:14:05Wes Larson?

  More in your territory.

• 1:14:05Jeff Larson?

  When I had abscess in Cosima, I almost killed myself trying to push it out.

• 1:14:13Mike Smith?

  You were straining.

• 1:14:18Wes Larson?

  All right, last one. Chompa Wot Tiger or snake bites in Brazil each year?

• 1:14:24Jeff Larson?

  In Brazil?

• 1:14:25Mike Smith?

  Snake bites in Brazil.

• 1:14:26Wes Larson?

  From Brazil. Annual snake bite deaths from Brazil.

• 1:14:29Jeff Larson?

  I'll go snakes.

• 1:14:31Mike Smith?

  Tiger.

• 1:14:32Wes Larson?

  The tiger. About 125 people each year in Brazil die from snake bite.

• 1:14:36Mike Smith?

  Hmm. What kind of venomous snake action we got going on down there?

• 1:14:40Wes Larson?

  Mostly Bothrop species. So like, kind of like a Fer de Lance, but they're Lance head vipers. That's the main one.

• 1:14:47Jeff Larson?

  Island forever.

• 1:14:48Wes Larson?

  Yeah, they have rattlesnakes too, but the Bothrop's ones like the, um, man, Jararaca is what they call it. That's their most deadly snake.

• 1:14:57Jeff Larson?

  Anacondas.

• 1:14:59Wes Larson?

  They don't kill people.

• 1:15:00Mike Smith?

  They bite them though.

• 1:15:01Jeff Larson?

  All right. They're proof that they have.

• 1:15:05Wes Larson?

  This is a cage match that I put a little bit of time into because I think when we talk about tigers, they're an animal that people really like to talk about.

• 1:15:14Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, it's a good one.

• 1:15:15Wes Larson?

  So I have some categories. I have animals that I think it easily beats that we've talked about. Animals that probably beats, but it's interesting. Animals that are really good fight. Animals that probably loses to, and then animals that definitely loses to.

• 1:15:32Jeff Larson?

  Wow.

• 1:15:33Wes Larson?

  So easily beats chimpanzee, wolf, leopard, puma, coyote, snow leopard. Some of our smaller sharks in waist deep water, like our Mako shark, probably some of the smaller ones. Black bear, Asiatic black bear, orangutan. I think those are all animals that our tiger dispatches pretty easily.

• 1:15:57Mike Smith?

  Shark could have a hard time beating a shark because like they don't have those vertebrae.

• 1:16:02Wes Larson?

  Yeah, they got cartilage. So it just kind of it's like bendy.

• 1:16:05Jeff Larson?

  You can't really choke them either.

• 1:16:07Wes Larson?

  Yeah, they're hard to choke. Yeah. Smaller shark, I think it can do though. Probably beats, but it's interesting. Brown bear, like a grizzly bear, inland grizzly bear, Komodo dragon. Komodo dragon, I think is really interesting because their skin is so tough. But I'd still probably put my money on the tiger. An alligator, a gorilla, a bull shark and a jaguar are all animals. I think it. I put my money on the tiger, but it's an interesting one. I'm not betting the farm on it. Really good fights. Lions? Jeff?

• 1:16:42Jeff Larson?

  Yes. Yeah. I think female tiger easily beats a female lion. I think male lion versus male tiger is pretty good fight.

• 1:16:52Wes Larson?

  I might agree with you. Yeah. All right. Tiger shark, I think is hard for a tiger to kill. They're just so big.

• 1:16:58Jeff Larson?

  Because they're cousins.

• 1:17:00Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:00Mike Smith?

  They got the tiger and shark.

• 1:17:02Wes Larson?

  Wait, there's stripes on you like.

• 1:17:04Mike Smith?

  It's like two against one.

• 1:17:06Wes Larson?

  Do I mate with you? Do I fight you?

• 1:17:09Wes Larson?

  Nile crocodile, I think is a good fight. Um, they kill mugger crocodiles in India, but they are smaller than Nile crocodiles on average. Here are the animals I think it probably loses to, probably. A large coastal brown bear. It's like the really big brown bears. A male polar bear, a great white. I think those are all animals that probably beat the tiger.

• 1:17:31Jeff Larson?

  Hmm.

• 1:17:32Wes Larson?

  Here are the animals I think it definitely loses to. An orca, a big adult elephant and a sperm whale.

• 1:17:39Jeff Larson?

  Okay, yeah.

• 1:17:40Wes Larson?

  All right. Any, any input on those?

• 1:17:44Mike Smith?

  Hmm. What superhero do you think a tiger, one of these tigers could beat in a fight?

• 1:17:49Wes Larson?

  Oh man, Batman.

• 1:17:51Jeff Larson?

  Black Widow.

• 1:17:52Wes Larson?

  Batman is a sourceful. Yeah, Black Widow for sure.

• 1:17:56Mike Smith?

  Hawkeye.

• 1:17:58Jeff Larson?

  No, Hawkeye is, Hawkeye's.

• 1:18:01Wes Larson?

  Hawkeye kills it unfortunately. I don't really like Hawkeye, but I think he kills it.

• 1:18:07Wes Larson?

  I think Black Widow's a good pick and her sister. Yeah. Anyone that's like hand to hand combat is their thing. I think the tiger probably kills.

• 1:18:16Mike Smith?

  Okay, sure.

• 1:18:18Wes Larson?

  Okay, something you recommend this week?

• 1:18:24Mike Smith?

  Mutiny?

• 1:18:26Wes Larson?

  The movie Mutiny with Jason Statham. You are an unabashed Jason Statham fan, aren't you?

• 1:18:31Mike Smith?

  I like, I, I don't mind. I mean, when he hits, he hits. When he misses, it's a pretty big swing and a miss. Mutiny is in a real middle ground for me right now. I don't know what to think.

• 1:18:42Wes Larson?

  The nice thing about going bald in like your late, late twenties like him is that you look ageless for like forty years.

• 1:18:49Jeff Larson?

  Hmm. Interesting. Have you seen the new thing with like people who go bald on top where they give themselves a woodpecker haircut?

• 1:19:00Wes Larson?

  No.

• 1:19:01Jeff Larson?

  It's so cool. It makes me wish I was like bald. You just keep it on the back and you spike it and it looks like a woodpecker. Interesting. I recommend that.

• 1:19:13Wes Larson?

  Huh. Yeah, I'll check it out.

• 1:19:14Mike Smith?

  That's a good recommendation.

• 1:19:15Jeff Larson?

  I'm gonna go, you know what? I did my first fantasy football draft and it was really fun just looking at all the names. Before the season starts where like one of your players is gonna get hurt in the first minute and it, your season's over. It's kind of fun.

• 1:19:32Mike Smith?

  Okay. What's yours, Wes?

• 1:19:33Wes Larson?

  Uh, mine is having a bunch of houseplants. So I just, um, have bought a lot of houseplants from places that aren't like super, you know, nice, like, like a place where you go to buy plants where they cost thousands of dollars, you know, like I go to like Home Depot or Walmart or whatever and buy houseplants. And I just collect them and it makes my house feel a lot more just like vibrant and alive, I feel like. And then the main thing though, that I really wanted to recommend. This is a free ad sponsorship because I think it's just some guy that makes this stuff. I buy this stuff on Amazon called Superthrive. And it's just like a nitrogen fertilizer that you pour of, just a splash of it in your water that you give your plants.

• 1:20:17Wes Larson?

  And my plants do so well. I've had the same plants for like eleven years. They're just thriving. And it's honestly, I think because I use this guy's magic formula, Superthrive. So there's some free business for that guy.

• 1:20:31Mike Smith?

  Yeah, I need to get into real houseplants. I've got a bunch of fake ones and that's, that's done me well since I kind of have a, a black thumb.

• 1:20:39Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:39Mike Smith?

  Brown thumb, whatever you call the opposite of green thumb. I'm ready to try again.

• 1:20:43Wes Larson?

  I'm good at it. I'll walk you through it because honestly, mine are doing great. I mean, not in here. I only have this one and a cactus, but in our house, we have a ton of big plants.

• 1:20:53Mike Smith?

  So my real recommendation is gonna be T. Kingfisher's book, A Sorceress Comes to Call. Uh, it's great. It's my first book I've ever read by her and I heard her described as a cozy horror author. And that tracks. It was like a real pleasant, but also kind of spooky, but fun, magical, really easy read, but uh, there's a horse. The thing that got me interested in the, her in the first place was that I read that she was a big horse hater. And I was just like, I found my author. I think I found her. The, there is a horse character in the book that you really learn to hate and it's just like such a joy.

• 1:21:33Jeff Larson?

  I thought you got interested in her because she's a cozy whore.

• 1:21:38Mike Smith?

  She's a cozy whore. She cuddles afterwards.

• 1:21:42Jeff Larson?

  A cozy whore author.

• 1:21:44Mike Smith?

  No, horror, horror.

• 1:21:47Wes Larson?

  I got a quick, yeah, a quick would you rather? Cause I saw an interviewer ask Rebecca Ferguson this. Would you rather have a bee in your butt or ten bees in your mouth?

• 1:22:00Mike Smith?

  Bee in the butt.

• 1:22:02Jeff Larson?

  I think I want ten in my mouth. Bees can only sting once.

• 1:22:05Wes Larson?

  Yeah, but I know, I can, know I can expel them out of my mouth and in my butt. I don't know if I'd be able to.

• 1:22:12Mike Smith?

  Just flex and kill it.

• 1:22:13Wes Larson?

  Yeah. I guess I just don't have, what's the sphincter? Is it the sphincter that you have, Mike?

• 1:22:18Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:20Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, I think butt, but I don't like it.

• 1:22:23Wes Larson?

  She had the best answer. She said both.

• 1:22:27Mike Smith?

  That's the real, that's the answer.

• 1:22:29Wes Larson?

  She's so flirty in all her interviews. I think mouth for me.

• 1:22:33Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:35Wes Larson?

  Okay. Butt for Mike. Jeff's doing butt. I'll do mouth. All right.

• 1:22:39Mike Smith?

  Get a little bit of vibration going on.

• 1:22:41Wes Larson?

  Yeah, you guys get to have a very unique experience that like hardly anyone else gets to. Yeah, you, you've sold me on butt.

• 1:22:48Jeff Larson?

  Mouth injuries I just play with, with my tongue and they never heal.

• 1:22:52Wes Larson?

  I'm gonna, but you could play, yeah, you could have someone else play with it.

• 1:22:58Mike Smith?

  Man.

• 1:22:59Jeff Larson?

  See, that sounds great.

• 1:23:00Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I'm, I'm sold on butt. I'll do butt. Um, I'll do butt, he says, against the episode. You know, sometimes with these like bigger episodes, I want them just to be really neutral so anyone can listen to them. We kind of got off of that here at the end. I'm sorry. All right. Uh, your claw rating for Bengal tigers. Is the tiger you're gonna find in like India, Nepal, that area of the world? For Mike, it's a ten. Favorite animal?

• 1:23:28Mike Smith?

  Spinal tap. No, we're going spinal tap. We're turning this up to eleven. We're going eleven out of ten for these. This is probably my favorite animal, specifically Bengal. Yeah.

• 1:23:38Wes Larson?

  Gorgeous animals. Jeff?

• 1:23:40Jeff Larson?

  It's hard between nine or ten because it's probably my, it's like third or fourth favorite cat. It's my fourth favorite cat. So I almost feel like I have to give it a nine.

• 1:23:52Wes Larson?

  Yeah, by your rules, I think you have to.

• 1:23:55Mike Smith?

  You have to.

• 1:23:55Jeff Larson?

  Damn, that's tough though. They deserve a ten.

• 1:23:58Wes Larson?

  Also, all the tiger slander you've done on this podcast, I'll be kind of pissed if you give them a ten.

• 1:24:04Jeff Larson?

  I'll go nine.

• 1:24:07Wes Larson?

  They're a ten for me. After seeing tigers in the wild for days, it's all I can think about is just how beautiful they are. Like, I just, I think they're so amazing. So I'm really stoked that we're doing another tiger episode. I, this is a long time coming. I can't wait for part two because it is a cool story and I hope you guys are excited for it.

• 1:24:28Mike Smith?

  I am.

• 1:24:30Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:30Wes Larson?

  And guess what? We're gonna let everyone have it.

• 1:24:34Wes Larson?

  Not just our subscribers yet. Everyone's getting it. All right. Love you guys. Thanks for listening and we'll talk to you later.

• 1:24:44Jeff Larson?

  Love you.

• 1:24:45Mike Smith?

  See ya.

• 1:24:46Wes Larson?

  Bye.