Pod Insights Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks Tooth & Claw Ranks the Wildlife of All 7 Continents About this episode After having visited each of the 7 continents, the guys feel ready to rank them according to the wildlife they each have on offer. Which continent has the best? The worst? Find out here when they give a final vote by the end of the show!
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Transcript 21,353 words · 6 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:12 Jeff Larson? Hello everyone. Welcome to Tooth and Claw Podcast. We have our bear biologist Wes Larson with us. And he's not going to talk much because this episode's not exclusively for subscribers, so he doesn't care. But me might care about all you other people, so.
0:32 Wes Larson? I got in trouble last week.
0:35 Jeff Larson? I'm Wes's brother Jeff, and then we have Mike. Wes, what'd you get in trouble for?
0:40 Wes Larson? Well, so I was doing this story, The Whale Ship Essex, and when I first thought of it, I thought, oh, this would be a two parter. And I kind of thought, I just want to end when they get rescued. And then as I was reading the book, I was like, oh, there's still like some interesting stuff after they get rescued. Kind of felt like an epilogue to me. And so I was like, you know what? I'm just going to do like an epilogue episode for our subscribers and call it part three. And, uh, you know, I think rightfully so, a lot of our non-paid listeners got a little upset about that and thought that I was cheating them out of a part three. And I think part of that was my fault for not explaining it well enough.
1:19 Wes Larson? And kind of saying like, hey, this is how I always had this designed was a two parter that ended at this point. And this was just extra content for our subscribers to kind of give them a special treat. But I did a bad job explaining it and I don't blame them for being a little upset. Cause I didn't want to do like a rug pole on anyone. Um, I love our, I love our non-paid listeners a lot.
1:44 Jeff Larson? It's like.
1:45 Mike Smith? He does. He can't stop talking about it.
1:46 Jeff Larson? Caller daddy had Jessie on to talk about her divorce and then made you subscribe to listen to her talk about Taylor Frankie Paul's Bachelor getting suspended.
1:58 Wes Larson? Sure. Yeah. I think that's exactly what it's like.
2:01 Mike Smith? Actually, let's not get into it. I don't really, yeah. Jessie, that really threw me there for a sec. I was like, wait.
2:06 Wes Larson? I, I did feel bad though. When I saw some of the comments, I thought, you know, I didn't think this through well enough and.
2:12 Jeff Larson? Did our subscribers go up?
2:14 Wes Larson? They did. Yeah, we got a lot of subscribers.
2:18 Mike Smith? Nothing to apologize for.
2:19 Wes Larson? And we do. I mean, like, we want to give our subscribers like special, really good content. But I don't want it to feel like it's a trick, you know, and I do think that's what some people felt like. And I, I hope you guys understand my explanation that it wasn't ever intended to be that. So I'm sorry that it felt that way. Truly.
2:36 Jeff Larson? Yeah, I don't understand.
2:38 Wes Larson? Yeah, okay, well.
2:40 Mike Smith? Are you not a subscriber? Subscribe, you'll figure it out. It's a great episode. No, that was well said, Wes.
2:47 Wes Larson? Okay, yeah, anyway, we won't do that again, but we, there will be some really nice. Okay, there will be some really nice bonuses for subscribers. But I, what I mean when I say we won't do it again is we'll be more clear in the, in the, like, the start about how it's gonna be laid out.
3:05 Jeff Larson? Yeah. I mean, everything's gonna be crypto soon anyways, maybe, you know, so might as well. Dollars don't even matter. You might as well subscribe.
3:18 Wes Larson? We should be buying Chinese yuan or whatever their money is called. That's what we should be buying right now.
3:25 Jeff Larson? People subscribe with.
3:26 Wes Larson? Yeah. I agree.
3:29 Jeff Larson? Or gas.
3:30 Wes Larson? Yeah, Petro dollars.
3:31 Mike Smith? Gas. Yeah, invest in gas. I'm trying to short the market on gas. I'm buying all of it and storing it in little canisters in my garage.
3:39 Jeff Larson? You know, I've heard some high up people have been doing that, too.
3:43 Mike Smith? Oh, really? I didn't know that was a thing. I'm a high end person, kinda, is what that sounds like.
3:49 Jeff Larson? I mean, like politicians, like the top.
3:52 Mike Smith? I'm not one of those. Top men, as they say in Indiana Jones. Top men.
3:58 Jeff Larson? Well, let's get moving then. We're gonna be talking about the seven continents. Because we recently just got back from Antarctica, which was all of our seventh continent. And we've been together for most all of it. Uh, the only one I've been to without you, Wes, was Europe.
4:21 Mike Smith? Mm hmm.
4:21 Jeff Larson? And, uh, me and Mike got all seven in like two years, which is kinda crazy.
4:27 Mike Smith? Together, yeah, yeah. Arm in arm.
4:30 Jeff Larson? So, yeah, started with Australia and just kept going, you know?
4:34 Mike Smith? Probably started with North America, I would say.
4:37 Wes Larson? That's true. I would say that was your
4:40 Mike Smith? But I don't remember. I don't remember all the
4:42 Jeff Larson? Started with Pangaea.
4:44 Mike Smith? Friendship. That's true. We need to go way back. Do you think all those, all those animals back then were like all one continents, baby? We did it.
4:51 Wes Larson? Yeah, we did it. They're holding like a little flag and taking a photo.
4:56 Mike Smith? Yeah. And then a comet hit the earth and killed everyone.
4:59 Wes Larson? I don't think that's how Pangaea.
5:01 Mike Smith? And that's how the continents split apart.
5:08 Jeff Larson? Before, before we get into it, we're going to be talking about like our personal experiences with each of the seven continents as well as just like some general knowledge we know about them.
5:20 Wes Larson? We're ranking quite a bit of stuff.
5:23 Jeff Larson? Huh?
5:23 Wes Larson? We're ranking quite a bit of stuff on the different seven continents. Yeah.
5:27 Jeff Larson? Before we do that, I want to use one of the things I had you guys prep for right now. And just kind of talk about some of our biggest blind spots that we have. As far as like the continents go.
5:40 Mike Smith? Yeah, sure.
5:41 Wes Larson? I wrote a whole list.
5:43 Jeff Larson? Yeah, let's just have you go for it because I think you're gonna have a better wildlife blind spot.
5:49 Wes Larson? Sure.
5:49 Jeff Larson? Radar than us.
5:51 Wes Larson? Let me do a couple that you guys have for blind spots and then I'll do some that are for all of us. Uh, the Arctic for you both is a big blind spot. Haven't been to the Arctic yet.
6:01 Jeff Larson? That's the same as Antarctica.
6:03 Wes Larson? It's definitely not. It's very different. Uh, the cloud forests of South America are a pretty big one for you guys. And then have either of you been to the Everglades? Spent much time in the Everglades?
6:17 Mike Smith? Not a ton, but I've been there. Yeah.
6:19 Wes Larson? Okay. That's a, that's a big one in North America that uh, is just like a very unique ecosystem for us. Uh, for all of us, like mountainous East Africa is some, a place that's really high on all of our lists. So like Uganda, Rwanda. That area, uh, we haven't seen gorillas. We haven't seen chimpanzees. So those are some pretty iconic animals that we're missing.
6:42 Jeff Larson? Some good snakes in there.
6:44 Wes Larson? My favorite, my number one bird probably right now is there, the shoe bill stork. Uh, yeah, some amazing snakes.
6:51 Mike Smith? There's that one hotel in Rwanda. Have you seen that?
6:54 Wes Larson? Hotel Rwanda? Yeah, that's not necessarily a place we need to visit, but maybe, I mean, it would probably be good for us to visit it. I think we should visit it. Sure.
7:02 Mike Smith? Yeah, that's like the one thing I know about that place.
7:06 Wes Larson? Western Australia is a big one. Some really cool animals out there and just cool wildlife and marine wildlife out there. The Asian steppe. So we've talked about going to like Mongolia or one of the stands. That big, high, central part of Asia has really cool, unique wildlife. That's a big one. There's a bunch, but those are some of the biggest that I thought of.
7:29 Jeff Larson? Pretty much all the Middle East for me.
7:32 Wes Larson? Yeah, China.
7:33 Jeff Larson? Like, yeah.
7:35 Wes Larson? Southeast Asia. Yeah, we are. But China's like, there's so much cool wildlife in China and we're just gonna get a little. Yeah. Avit, what are you talking about? What's that mean?
7:47 Jeff Larson? The blue guys?
7:48 Wes Larson? Yeah, that's not a real place, though. Pandora?
7:51 Jeff Larson? Well, the place is real.
7:53 Mike Smith? With the floating islands?
7:54 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
7:55 Mike Smith? Yeah, I see that all the time.
7:56 Wes Larson? Well, it's based off of a real place. Sure. Yeah, I agree with that.
8:00 Jeff Larson? Sure. I mean, if you want to get logistical.
8:03 Wes Larson? I do. Yep. Yeah, so those are some hotspots.
8:10 Wes Larson? There's others too, but those are just some I thought off the top of my. We didn't really do a Europe one. Let's throw a Europe one in there. Romania. We haven't been to Romania. It's a good spot for bears. Vampires are there and Scandinavia too.
8:24 Jeff Larson? Allow that and not avatars?
8:27 Wes Larson? Yeah, I believe in vampires. I don't believe in Pandora.
8:31 Jeff Larson? All right, well, Mike, choose a continent.
8:35 Mike Smith? Europe.
8:36 Jeff Larson? Europe? All right, we'll start with Europe then.
8:39 Mike Smith? I've been thinking a lot about Vienna sausages.
8:41 Wes Larson? Okay.
8:42 Jeff Larson? I'd kind of split up the way that we're all gonna talk about it and I assigned Wes to talk about bears, snakes, and birds. The two Bs.
8:55 Wes Larson? Yeah, BBS.
8:56 Mike Smith? Or not to be.
8:57 Wes Larson? Sounds like a surgical procedure.
8:59 Jeff Larson? And then I'm gonna be talking about, I forget what I'm talking about, something.
9:04 Mike Smith? No.
9:05 Jeff Larson? Cats.
9:05 Wes Larson? Cats, dogs.
9:06 Jeff Larson? Cats, dogs, and bugs. And not too much about bugs, just so you guys know.
9:12 Wes Larson? All right.
9:12 Jeff Larson? And then Mike's gonna be talking about mythological, prehistoric and oceans, which I didn't give them too specific of a thing. I told him, if you find anything interesting in there, just go heavy on that, you know? So.
9:28 Wes Larson? We never, did we ever clap? We did clap.
9:31 Jeff Larson? Yeah, we clapped.
9:32 Wes Larson? You wanna restart?
9:33 Jeff Larson? You wanna clap?
9:34 Wes Larson? Just to make sure.
9:35 Jeff Larson? No.
9:36 Wes Larson? Yeah, let's do it. Count us down, Jeff.
9:39 Jeff Larson? On one, three, two, one.
9:43 Wes Larson? All right, we're good. We good, Wes? Yeah, I just didn't think we'd clap.
9:48 Jeff Larson? Let's clap once more.
9:50 Wes Larson? All right.
9:55 Jeff Larson? All right, so I can kind of just start us off to give you guys kind of an idea of how to follow. All right?
10:02 Wes Larson? Okay.
10:02 Jeff Larson? So Europe was, yeah, it seems like they used to be more exciting with their wildlife and got rid of most of their cool stuff with cats and dogs. So I just have the Liberian lynx, the Eurasian lynx and the European wildcat for cats.
10:20 Wes Larson? Yeah, Iberian, Iberian lynx, not Liberian, yeah. Librarian?
10:25 Jeff Larson? Well, it says Liberian in my notes.
10:28 Wes Larson? Yep, you're not wrong. It's Iberian.
10:32 Jeff Larson? And then.
10:33 Wes Larson? The Liberian Peninsula.
10:35 Jeff Larson? We've, we've seen a Eurasian, we've seen a Eurasian lynx. It's cool.
10:41 Wes Larson? We have.
10:41 Jeff Larson? It's far away.
10:42 Wes Larson? We saw it in Asia, yeah.
10:44 Jeff Larson? Pretty fluffy. Yeah, I mean, they don't really have anything too unique. European wildcats, maybe. I don't know much about.
10:52 Wes Larson? They are low on cats. Their cat, their cat population is very small, small cats and, and not that many of them either.
11:01 Jeff Larson? And they're pretty low on dogs, too.
11:03 Wes Larson? Yeah, hotspots for Eurasian lynx would be, in Europe would be like in Scandinavia, Estonia, and then Iberian lynx you're gonna see in like Spain, sometimes Portugal, that's on the Iberian Peninsula. So, yeah.
11:17 Jeff Larson? And as far as canines go, or can't, how do you say it, candids?
11:22 Mike Smith? Canids.
11:23 Jeff Larson? Canids.
11:24 Mike Smith? Canids, sorry, canids.
11:25 Jeff Larson? Canids.
11:26 Mike Smith? Jeff threw me off, canids.
11:27 Jeff Larson? Canids. Uh, they do have gray wolves in like Scandinavia area and a little bit in like Spain and Italy.
11:36 Mike Smith? Italy has them, yeah.
11:37 Jeff Larson? And then they have red fox.
11:39 Mike Smith? Wolves are pretty widespread throughout Europe, actually.
11:42 Jeff Larson? Yeah. Hmm. But honestly, for my part, not too excited. They get a low rating from that and bugs, I don't know any European bugs.
11:53 Mike Smith? You've gotta, you've gotta have one bug. Are you serious? I just spent sixteen hours re, whatever, I don't even care. It doesn't, I'm over it. I'm just gonna had a brief moment there. I think we're gonna be okay, though.
12:07 Jeff Larson? Guy.
12:08 Mike Smith? Oh, boy. Okay, not a single bug in Europe. That actually sounds very pleasant if they don't have a single insect in the entire continent.
12:16 Jeff Larson? Do you remember seeing a bug?
12:18 Wes Larson? There's, there's bugs over there, but um. I would agree with you, Jeff.
12:22 Jeff Larson? See a bug that you can remember?
12:24 Mike Smith? I can't state a specific moment wherein I saw a bug. Cockroaches.
12:29 Jeff Larson? Remember a single.
12:30 Mike Smith? When I lived in France, my apartment was overrun. Say cockroach.
12:33 Jeff Larson? I'm doing bugs I saw and I can't remember any bugs. I didn't see a cockroach.
12:40 Wes Larson? You don't have to have seen them to say it for this.
12:43 Jeff Larson? Well, that's what I'm doing for bugs.
12:45 Mike Smith? Okay.
12:46 Wes Larson? Okay.
12:46 Mike Smith? Uh. Yeah, you did an awesome work.
12:49 Wes Larson? I, I will, I will say like. I do think Europe overall is one of the kind of least impressive. Uh, wildlife continents, so I do. Agree that it is gonna be a little.
13:03 Jeff Larson? Asia's got cool cockroaches.
13:05 Mike Smith? That's a fact. Yeah, save it for Asia. Um, so when we say Eurasian, are we talking, does that broadly cover just all of Europe and Asia? Is that what I'm supposed to believe from that portmanteau?
13:17 Wes Larson? It depends on the species. So like Eurasian lynx, yeah, I mean, they, they're found from Scandinavia all the way to, I think, like China.
13:27 Jeff Larson? It is kind of like an interesting conversation to have that's not gonna be part of this episode, but just like how. Asia and Europe are like the only two continents that are completely connected and just kind of a made up line through it, you know?
13:45 Wes Larson? Yeah, I mean, that was North and South America, too. It's just the Panama Canal splits them now.
13:51 Mike Smith? But there is kind of like an intuitive little.
13:53 Wes Larson? Yeah, but they were kind of, I mean, like, that's how Pumas and Jaguars spread.
13:57 Mike Smith? Yeah, but you know what we're saying. When it gets all skinny and they're connected, it's like, okay, that looks like.
14:02 Wes Larson? Oh, I get what you're saying. Like geographically, there's a natural separation.
14:05 Jeff Larson? Like when you look on a map, these two are unique.
14:08 Wes Larson? Sure.
14:08 Mike Smith? Right.
14:09 Wes Larson? I think the the tricky thing with North and South America is where Central America fits in. Because like some people say it's North America, but then some people say it's kind of its own thing. I don't know. It's kind of tricky.
14:22 Jeff Larson? No, I want to kind of bring that up. It is part of North America, though.
14:26 Wes Larson? It is.
14:26 Jeff Larson? Yeah, like it's not its own continent, so we count that. But I kind of feel like we could easily have like nine continents. If we made like the Middle East a continent and then made Central America a continent would make sense. But we don't.
14:42 Wes Larson? Sure.
14:43 Jeff Larson? And we haven't.
14:44 Wes Larson? Right. Okay. So are we all doing Europe then for our our categories?
14:49 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
14:50 Wes Larson? Who, Mike, do you want to go next?
14:52 Mike Smith? Yeah, I I'll go and it just makes sense to me to do it right now. Just a caveat on all of my categories, really, but specifically for water or marine sea life. Because like.
15:01 Jeff Larson? It ties really in, it ties really well into my bugs that I.
15:06 Mike Smith? Yes, it's like hand in hand. But I just want to say that with like ocean life, these animals are often, most of the big charismatic animals everyone knows, aren't really confined to one specific continent. So I just tried to pick the places where you have the best opportunity to see them. And some of this is like anecdotal, some of this, I tried to do as much research as I could. I did so much, Jeff. But with Europe, let's start with the water critters. So the first one that popped in my mind was the Portuguese man o' war. You gotta go with the man o' war.
15:42 Wes Larson? That's good.
15:43 Mike Smith? Portugal's in the name, Wes.
15:45 Wes Larson? After Portugal, though, yeah.
15:46 Mike Smith? Yeah, okay, that's a giant. We're going, so the best place to see blue sharks, and this is actually an exciting thing to me when we talked to Dan from All the Sharks. He said it's best off the Azores Islands, or even off just the coast of the UK, there's some really good opportunity to get blue sharks. Weaverfish, incredibly dangerous and venomous. They got spines all up and down their back. A well's catfish, this was featured on the first season of River Monsters. And Jeremy, he was just like, these probably couldn't kill an adult human, but they could easily swallow a child, so.
16:18 Wes Larson? These are all in Europe?
16:20 Mike Smith? Yeah, these are all European-based.
16:22 Jeff Larson? Where did your gooch story happen, Wes?
16:23 Wes Larson? That was in like the foothills of the Himalayas in India, not gooch.
16:29 Mike Smith? Not the gooch.
16:30 Wes Larson? Close, yeah. Can I throw one in there, Mike?
16:33 Mike Smith? Please, as many as you can and want.
16:35 Wes Larson? Basking sharks, the second biggest shark in the world, also filter-feeding sharks. The best place in the world right now to find them is off the coast of Ireland, Ireland? Don't you think? And that was the one I wanted to throw in there, basking sharks.
16:51 Jeff Larson? No snakes in Ireland, though.
16:53 Wes Larson? Nope, they got rid of them.
16:54 Mike Smith? They got chased off.
16:55 Wes Larson? Old Saint Patrick.
16:58 Mike Smith? I'm gonna move on to prehistoric now, that was another one of my categories. This is an interesting thing that I found, when I looked at the fossil map of recovered Megalodon teeth.
17:08 Jeff Larson? No eels there either.
17:10 Mike Smith? Did the same.
17:11 Wes Larson? Saint Patrick, get rid of those two.
17:13 Jeff Larson? Well, once they got all the snakes there, like, well, these kinda look like snakes and they kept going into the ocean.
17:20 Wes Larson? That's where eels came from, though, because they got chased into the ocean and they just turned into eels, right? That's not true also. What were you saying about Megalodon, Mike?
17:29 Mike Smith? Yeah, so most of the fossil records, I just saw like the hotspots on the map. It was, Europe was kind of like the biggest concentration of recovered Megalodon fossils and teeth and stuff, which I thought was interesting. So, the Mag, part three, probably it's gotta happen over there.
17:43 Wes Larson? Yeah.
17:44 Jeff Larson? And Paris, that river.
17:46 Mike Smith? The largest species of woolly mammoths, they existed. Wow, they were still alive, they're dead. Oh, the comet.
17:53 Jeff Larson? Really?
17:53 Mike Smith? The comet got them to us, right?
17:55 Wes Larson? It wasn't the comet.
17:56 Mike Smith? It was the comet.
17:59 Wes Larson? It wasn't a comet that killed the dinosaurs either, it's an asteroid.
18:02 Mike Smith? I'm gonna try to be more scientific from here on out. I'm joshing.
18:05 Wes Larson? They were struck by a lot of human technology. We think like, a lot of the megafauna, it was like human blood extinction. So like spears and, yeah, anyway.
18:16 Mike Smith? Yeah.
18:17 Jeff Larson? Wes, you're a diehard mammoth fan.
18:19 Wes Larson? I love mammoths, yeah.
18:21 Jeff Larson? The hockey team.
18:23 Wes Larson? The critter, not the hockey team. I don't really care about the hockey team.
18:27 Mike Smith? What if a human threw a meteorite at one of the mammoths?
18:30 Wes Larson? If they threw it hard enough and it was really sharp and attached to us like a long pole.
18:36 Mike Smith? There you go.
18:37 Wes Larson? Then yes, I think it could kill it.
18:39 Mike Smith? Anyway, like I was saying, the largest species of woolly mammoth existed in Western Europe, which I thought was kind of interesting. I was just kind of assumed that was maybe more of a North American thing or even an Asian side of things. But Europe, you guys had big stuff.
18:52 Wes Larson? Yeah, that's where they think Jaguars came from too, is Europe. Like their prehistoric remnants.
18:58 Mike Smith? Gonna rattle off a few more here. The cave bear, the spear deer had these super long, awesome antlers, really cool. Coastal hyenas, Abitha pygmy vipers and marsh hogs. Marsh hogs. Yeah.
19:12 Wes Larson? You got it. I like how you say that.
19:13 Mike Smith? The marsh hog. Okay, and now let's delve into the mythological. This one, so I'm gonna be talking about the Loch Ness monster. This is my, just the thing that popped out when I was doing my research. And it's a pretty cool little creation story or origin story. So legend tells us that Loch Ness, the lake itself, not the monster yet, was created in anger by the Celtic winter queen, the goddess Darkbeira. When her maid Ness was late to attend her duties, Beira raged and transformed Ness into a river.
19:41 Wes Larson? It's gotta just be a river, that would suck. That sounds kinda nice. Isn't that like what Nirvana is supposed to be like?
19:48 Mike Smith? So Nessah, she, this maiden was turned into a river.
19:51 Jeff Larson? The same woman as a river? Like she has like thoughts?
19:55 Mike Smith? She's still conscious, yeah, because she managed, she eventually manages to escape the confines of just being a river. And she's like, I'm gonna also be a lake. So she became the Lake Ness, Nessah.
20:07 Jeff Larson? I would date her dude.
20:08 Mike Smith? Uh, okay, yeah. And this is where the Loch Ness monster comes into, comes into play here. So as the myths tells it, Scotland's lakes and rivers are said to be home to kelpies and water horses, invoking some of the more famous imagery we know of the Loch Ness, kinda like with the-
20:22 Wes Larson? It looks like a plesiosaur. Like that's what most of the, like, most of the Loch Ness imagery is, is like a plesiosaur.
20:29 Mike Smith? And so these kelpies, they're shapeshifters, they're, they can change into whatever form they want. And basically what they do is they patrol the forests of the Loch Ness in hopes of luring, you know, unwitting men and women to their demise deep in the lake. So like they kind of goad them in, almost like a siren in Greek mythology, and they pull them down into the depths of the Loch Ness. And that's, this is maybe not-
20:52 Wes Larson? I always just thought it was like a big monster, like a dinosaur that lives in Loch Ness.
20:57 Mike Smith? It's still a her. Well, the lake is, I don't know about Nessah.
21:00 Jeff Larson? Sucking guys down?
21:01 Mike Smith? That's one way to say it. Um, but that's just like one version of the story. Like all of these myths I'm gonna be covering, there's gonna be a million different versions, but that was just the one I found to be most kinda beautiful and fanciful, yeah.
21:14 Wes Larson? All right, well, as far as bears, snakes, and birds are considered, um, I had, I, I ranked each of the, the continents for, for bears, snakes, and birds. For bears, I had them at number three, which is the highest Europe ever gets in any of my rankings. So they have two of the world's bear species. They have brown bears and they have polar bears in Europe. Um, but those are two of the more iconic of the bear species too, so I do think they get some good points for that. You can find brown bears throughout Scandinavia, down through Italy, uh, in some of the mountains in France.
21:54 Wes Larson? You can find them throughout, uh, Eastern Europe. Some hotspots are like Slovenia. There's a lot in Croatia.
22:02 Wes Larson? I believe up into like Latvia and stuff too. Romania is a big hotspot for brown bears. So they're brown bears are doing fairly well in Europe. Polar bears in Europe are really only found in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, which is where we're going to try and see them next summer. That's really the only European. Well, I guess, never mind, I should rewind that Greenland is owned by Denmark. And you can find them there too. So there are some other places owned by European countries where you can find polar bears. Those are the two bears. So I ranked them third and you'll hear who they're behind later for bears. Snakes, Europe is second to last, right before Antarctica.
22:43 Wes Larson? They really don't have a ton of good snakes in Europe. There's like asps. There's some other venomous snakes. There's a
22:50 Jeff Larson? They don't even have eels.
22:52 Wes Larson? Yeah, they, they do have eels. Pretty famous for eels even, I think. But as far as snakes go, there's not a lot of snake diversity in Europe. You're not going to see a lot of herpers like taking trips to Europe to look for snakes. There, I'm not going to really go through all the different species, but it's not really a snake hotspot. And then birds, I had Europe ranked again, second to last. There's a fair amount of migrations and whatnot that go through Europe. A lot of, there's some really cool birds that you'll see in other parts of the world that do show up in Europe from time to time. There's good bird life in Europe. I don't think there's a single continent where there's like really bad for birds. But it's not for me where I like really beautiful, colorful, amazing looking birds.
23:37 Wes Larson? These is subjective rankings. Europe doesn't have as many as other places for me. So I have them second to last for birds. Some highlights for their birds though are like those hoop hoopoes that we really liked in like India and Africa, those show up in, in Europe. I really like, they have a lot of golden eagles in Europe, which I love. And yeah.
24:01 Jeff Larson? They don't have too many bridges because they don't have too many bugs.
24:04 Wes Larson? Uh, yeah, sure. They, they have a fair amount. I gotta stop saying sure to your stuff. They have a fair. Amount of birds and a fair amount of insects, but it's not again, like we've talked about Europe. Europe in a large way was tamed, you know, in, in like in the Renaissance and onward. It just kind of, a lot of the wildlife was kind of pushed away and not that there aren't wild places in Europe. There for sure are, it's a huge continent, but a lot of the places we think of in Europe don't have a ton of wildlife diversity.
24:38 Jeff Larson? Well, you can even see that from the European influence. Once it migrated to the Americas, like they did tame a lot of the wildlife here as well. Like that was part of the culture for them at that time, you know?
24:52 Wes Larson? And when I say tame, I don't mean like they're taming the wildlife. I mean more they're taming the land, like they're making it agriculture. They're pushing out the native flora and fauna, but there are still really great places in Europe for wildlife. I still think it's an amazing place to go see wildlife.
25:08 Jeff Larson? I can rank mine too, real quick. For cats, I have them fifth, for dogs, I have them fifth and for bugs, I have them sixth. And then I may have done a bad job prepping you guys for how I'm going to run this episode. But I also want to do our five favorite animals each for each continent. Did you guys get that ready?
25:30 Wes Larson? Nope, I can do it.
25:31 Jeff Larson? It's kind of supposed to be like representative, representative of the continent too a bit. So like, don't like overlap animals is how I had it.
25:41 Wes Larson? Okay.
25:41 Jeff Larson? But if we want, we can just use my five and you guys can say like what you would keep and sub out or whatever.
25:48 Wes Larson? Sure. Okay. No, I, I can do five, but if Mike wants to do that, I totally, Mike, I think has had to do the most work. So I think that's fair.
25:56 Mike Smith? It was self, it was shot myself in the foot.
25:58 Jeff Larson? No, I'm glad because I'm laying up on a lot of these, so you can, you can give them the meat.
26:05 Wes Larson? Great.
26:06 Jeff Larson? All right, so my top five for Europe was a badger was the easiest pick for me.
26:12 Wes Larson? I also had a badger.
26:13 Jeff Larson? I think that's something I'd be looking for if I'm looking for European wildlife.
26:19 Wes Larson? Yeah.
26:19 Jeff Larson? And then I had a squirrel because that's the only one I saw that I got most excited about in Europe. And they came from Europe, our squirrels.
26:29 Wes Larson? Yeah.
26:30 Jeff Larson? A lot of them. I have, I put polar bear to Europe. I know that Asia and North America have more, but I kinda think the European polar bear is just like a cool spot and I wanna give it to them. And then
26:46 Wes Larson? Yeah.
26:46 Jeff Larson? I put red fox and I put walrus.
26:50 Wes Larson? Walrus, okay. Huh, okay.
26:52 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
26:53 Wes Larson? Uh, I have basking shark because I think they're really just amazing looking and just cool sharks. I have Eurasian lynx because I would, I would put them in Europe and I think they're the coolest of the small cats. Badger, I think the European badger has such a distinctive look, so I totally agree with Jeff on that one. I have reindeer.
27:16 Jeff Larson? Oh, that's a good one.
27:17 Wes Larson? Because, you know, you mostly find them in Scandinavia and whatnot. And then the last one, I picked a bird. I picked the, uh, white-tailed eagle. It's the longest wingspan of any eagle in the world. They kind of look like a cross between a bald eagle and a golden eagle. And you find them out in like central and northern and eastern Europe. So they're a really cool looking eagle that I think should be represented by Europe.
27:42 Jeff Larson? Okay.
27:43 Wes Larson? Okay.
27:43 Mike Smith? So I'm gonna do it this way. I'm gonna vote for Wes on this round. Wes wins this round.
27:48 Jeff Larson? Okay.
27:49 Mike Smith? Uh, and whoever has the most votes by the end of this episode, because there's seven continents, someone's gonna win.
27:53 Wes Larson? Yeah.
27:54 Mike Smith? Uh, they get, uh, [BLEEP] or something. I'll give, I'll give, I'll, uh...
28:01 Jeff Larson? Well, Wes is waiting, so that's great.
28:04 Wes Larson? I actually liked my, I like Jeff's picks better there. I'll give you guys the winner some candy is how, well, I'll do this.
28:10 Mike Smith? Okay.
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30:44 Wes Larson? Let's go with South America.
30:47 Jeff Larson? Oh, is that one of them?
30:49 Wes Larson? Yeah.
30:54 Wes Larson? I'm gonna go first.
30:54 Mike Smith? My heart can't take this.
30:58 Mike Smith? I'm on the verge of dying. You need to know that.
31:03 Jeff Larson? I forgot about that one. All right, hold on.
31:06 Wes Larson? I'm gonna go first. All right.
31:10 Wes Larson? So for bears, I have South America ranked fourth. They have one bear species, but it's a very iconic, cool bear species. It's the Andean bear or the spectacled bear. One of the, one of the cooler bears that I've ever seen in the wild. Just really unique habitat, unique bear. Probably like up there with pandas being the least dangerous bear in the world. There's no really recorded attacks on people. I think there was a guy that cornered one once and it attacked his dogs and maybe attacked him, but not really a dangerous bear in any sense of the world, word. But they're, they're the only bear in South America. So that is why they're ranked fourth for bears.
31:53 Wes Larson? For snakes, I have them third for snakes. So there are a lot of really cool snakes in South America. It's hard for me. Asia, Africa and South America are like, like leaps and bounds above everyone else when it comes to snakes. So it was hard to rank those, those ones, but I did put them third. They have the heaviest snake in the world, the green anaconda. They have the longest viper in the world, the bushmaster. And then they just have lots of really iconic, cool snakes. We're talking like Emerald Tree boas. We have different types of rattlesnakes down there, like the neotropical rattlesnake. Lots of cool vipers, just really cool snakes in South America.
32:38 Wes Larson? It's definitely a herper kind of hotspot. So they're ranked third for snakes. And then for birds, I also have them ranked third after Africa and Asia. It's hard to beat Africa and Asia on a lot of these. But there are really amazing birds and again, really iconic birds in South America. Toko toucan is my favorite personal South American bird. But man, if you ever get the chance to go to Ecuador or Colombia to go birding, you are gonna be just be blown away by the amount of, you know what?
33:13 Wes Larson? I think I gotta put them second. I'm actually putting South America second. Oh, yeah. So, so just because I was thinking of Ecuador and how, I mean, when we went there, we saw over 350 species of birds in a single week.
33:27 Mike Smith? We weren't even trying.
33:28 Wes Larson? Yeah. Amazing words. I was trying. I was trying really hard, actually.
33:35 Wes Larson? But yeah, so I'm gonna put them second for birds.
33:39 Mike Smith? Cool.
33:39 Jeff Larson? Penguins.
33:40 Wes Larson? Penguins, yeah, but penguins you find in a lot of the other places too.
33:45 Mike Smith? Tortoises, those are kind of like snakes.
33:48 Wes Larson? They're not, but there's reptiles, I guess.
33:50 Jeff Larson? But we're not bringing them up anywhere else. So that's good call out still.
33:55 Wes Larson? I had to say, yeah, I guess I would probably give South America tortoises because they got those Galapagos ones.
34:01 Jeff Larson? We got tortoises too, though.
34:04 Wes Larson? And you know, there's some really similar sized tortoises in like the seashells and stuff too, to the Galapagos ones. So anyway, that's South America for me, for my three critter species.
34:16 Mike Smith? What a great continent. I love Salamanca. Yeah, go for it.
34:20 Wes Larson? Amazing continent.
34:21 Jeff Larson? So, actually, I kinda wanna ask Wes.
34:26 Jeff Larson? So, do you know the types of cats in South America that don't live in North America? Can you name? There's, I think there's four.
34:37 Wes Larson? Yeah, I would say the jaguarundi, the margay.
34:41 Jeff Larson? There are some jaguarundi in Central America.
34:45 Wes Larson? Oh, yeah, I forget that Central America counts as North America. There's probably margay in Central Amer- America too, right?
34:52 Jeff Larson? I didn't, when I looked up North American cats, it didn't, it had jaguarundis and didn't have margays.
34:58 Wes Larson? Okay, fishing cat?
35:00 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
35:01 Wes Larson? And pontinol cat?
35:03 Jeff Larson? Um, I didn't see a pontinol cat. I have andean cat, cod cat. Did you know there's a jeffroy's cat?
35:12 Wes Larson? Uh, oh wait, yeah, yeah, I do. Down in Patagonia, right?
35:15 Jeff Larson? That'd be cool.
35:16 Mike Smith? Do fishing cats ever catch catfish? That'd be fun.
35:19 Wes Larson? Probably, yeah.
35:21 Jeff Larson? And a pampas cat.
35:22 Mike Smith? Nature is so crazy.
35:24 Wes Larson? The pontinol cat's another one. Uh, margay, I do think you can find in Central America, but I'm not sure.
35:31 Jeff Larson? And then for dogs, the main noteworthy one is the maimed wolf is very unique to South America. Um, there's a South American fox, but they kinda just look like your typical fox, just not.
35:43 Wes Larson? Bush dogs are only in South America.
35:46 Jeff Larson? Bush dogs are cool.
35:47 Wes Larson? They're really cool. That's a white whale, and not many people have seen them.
35:50 Jeff Larson? Oh, really?
35:51 Wes Larson? Yeah.
35:52 Jeff Larson? Do they have, they're not related to bush masters?
35:55 Wes Larson? No, nope, not at all.
35:57 Mike Smith? Or George Bush?
35:58 Wes Larson? Uh, also not in the bush family, yeah.
36:02 Jeff Larson? Or just bushes?
36:03 Wes Larson? I'm pretty sure crab eating foxes are only in South America, right?
36:08 Jeff Larson? I didn't see them.
36:10 Wes Larson? Didn't see them what, when you're doing your exhaustive research?
36:14 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
36:15 Wes Larson? Yeah, okay.
36:19 Wes Larson? Uh, I can look that up for you real quick, Jeff.
36:22 Mike Smith? Do, do insects.
36:23 Wes Larson? Uh, yeah, just in South America.
36:25 Mike Smith? Do one insect, please.
36:31 Wes Larson? Here, let me help you with a few other dogs that are just in South America. The South American Grey Fox, the Pampas Fox, um, the Culpeo or Andean Fox. Those are also dogs that are only in South America.
36:44 Mike Smith? Those are good dogs.
36:45 Jeff Larson? I said.
36:46 Mike Smith? But they all are, aren't they? Does all dogs go to heaven? Is that like for even wild dogs?
36:51 Wes Larson? I would think so.
36:52 Mike Smith? Like all Canids?
36:53 Wes Larson? Canids.
36:54 Mike Smith? Canadians?
36:54 Wes Larson? Yeah.
36:55 Jeff Larson? For bugs?
36:55 Mike Smith? Yeah, go bugs.
36:56 Jeff Larson? I'm gonna do the Brazilian wandering spider.
36:59 Wes Larson? Okay.
37:00 Jeff Larson? Pretty cool insect.
37:02 Wes Larson? Yeah.
37:03 Jeff Larson? Are they, they're not insects.
37:05 Wes Larson? Definitely not an insect, an arachnid, yeah.
37:08 Mike Smith? Bugs is kind of a, you know what we mean, right, listener?
37:11 Wes Larson? Yeah.
37:11 Jeff Larson? That's why I said bugs instead of.
37:13 Wes Larson? Arthur Potts.
37:14 Jeff Larson? So I could do spiders.
37:15 Wes Larson? That's a great, a great bug. Um, we did an episode on them and, uh, that was an interesting one where we learned that their venom can produce a three day boner.
37:26 Mike Smith? Right.
37:27 Jeff Larson? And for.
37:27 Mike Smith? What's four days you tell your physician, right? So you're good.
37:31 Jeff Larson? Bugs I saw, I don't know if scorpions count as a bug, but I did, seen that scorpion.
37:37 Wes Larson? If Brazilian wandering spiders do, then scorpions do too, they're same family. Uh, yeah, we saw the, um, South American Yellow Scorpion in Brazil, which is one of the most potent venoms of any scorpion on the planet.
37:53 Wes Larson? And it happened to be right next to one of our guests head in her bed, so.
37:57 Mike Smith? Oh, yeah.
37:58 Wes Larson? Yeah.
37:58 Jeff Larson? Do you guys have any bugs that come to mind when you think of South America or trips?
38:03 Wes Larson? There's a lot of good bugs down there.
38:05 Mike Smith? Specifically?
38:07 Wes Larson? There's lots of really cool cryptic moths in South America that look like leaves. Um, I saw this Katie did in, uh, in Ecuador that had like, it looked perfectly like a leaf. And then if you kind of got close to it, it popped its wings out that had big eyes on them. And I think it's called a peacock Katie did, and it looked like a predator. And it was just like really cool example of mimicry. We could do a whole podcast on bugs in South America. Just so you guys know, there are so many bugs down there. Bullid ants are in South America.
38:42 Mike Smith? Ooh, that's a good one.
38:43 Wes Larson? About them, you know?
38:44 Mike Smith? Yeah.
38:45 Wes Larson? There's some incredible, like, army ants and, and leaf cutter ants are responsible for a huge aspect of the rainforest. So, yeah, anyway.
38:55 Mike Smith? Leaf cutters.
38:56 Jeff Larson? That spoiled my North American bug.
38:58 Wes Larson? Okay.
38:59 Jeff Larson? Leaf cutters.
39:00 Mike Smith? Oh, man. Uh, my turn, right? For water in South America?
39:04 Wes Larson? Yeah.
39:05 Mike Smith? This, South America has some really cool, unique water creatures. We've talked about a couple of them already, but I'll shout out a few real quick. So the Amazon River dolphins, the pink ones. Wes had a pretty good episode about those. They just look kind of like, uh, sausages that aren't quite done being grilled up. Piranha, I think are only South American? Or are there others?
39:29 Wes Larson? You can find them in Central America as well, but.
39:31 Mike Smith? Okay. But that's like, South America is where you would put them, right?
39:35 Wes Larson? Pretty uniquely, yeah, South American.
39:37 Mike Smith? Electric eels, also only found in South America. Not actually eels, technically they're fit, knife fish, most closely related to fish. So that's kind of a confusing little. Next time you're at a party and you, someone's like, hey, what about those eels?
39:55 Jeff Larson? They better watch out if it's a Saint Patrick's Day party.
39:59 Mike Smith? Right.
40:00 Wes Larson? That's true. Go get chased into the.
40:02 Mike Smith? Jeff talked a little bit about these, the, I think you say congeru? The ones that are purportedly, folklorically said to swim up your urine stream and get you in the.
40:11 Wes Larson? Urethra.
40:12 Mike Smith? Yeah.
40:12 Jeff Larson? The Lorena Baba episode.
40:15 Wes Larson? Yeah.
40:16 Mike Smith? That's why, dude, women are so lucky. They don't have to deal with that. Sea lions.
40:21 Wes Larson? Congeru.
40:22 Mike Smith? So this is more anecdotal, but like seals and sea lions. When we went to the Galapagos, I'd never quite experienced anything quite like that. I think seals probably more appropriately would maybe even go to Antarctica. But I'm going to put them here, I think. Just because it was insane how, like, every beach we went to, there's just like a billion of them rolling around.
40:40 Wes Larson? We gotta give seals to Antarctica. Like, Antarctica doesn't have anything. Besides like seals.
40:47 Mike Smith? No idea. Sure.
40:48 Wes Larson? Okay.
40:48 Mike Smith? All right. Anyway, uh, and then hammerheads. I gave hammerheads because Ecuador is probably the prime spot in the world to see hammerheads. And that's great.
40:54 Wes Larson? It is interesting. I've been looking at diving spots lately and like every list about the best diving spots in the world. Almost every single one Galapagos is number one on their diving spots.
41:06 Mike Smith? All right, let's rattle through prehistoric real quick. The Titanoboa, you heard about that guy? Huge snake, it's like 50 feet long.
41:12 Wes Larson? A movie coming out about it this year.
41:15 Mike Smith? No way.
41:15 Wes Larson? So exciting.
41:16 Mike Smith? Yeah. It's gonna be good. Jeff, ground sloths?
41:19 Jeff Larson? Yeah, I like those.
41:21 Mike Smith? They're how big, were they like?
41:22 Jeff Larson? Brazilian caves that they, after a while, figured out was like a sloth's home that they made.
41:27 Mike Smith? So cool.
41:28 Wes Larson? I went to one of those caves in Minnesota.
41:31 Mike Smith? Yeah, they're supposed to be, I guess, they were the size of elephants, which is just kind of a crazy, basically everything prehistorically, like the signature feature of them is that they're animals, but huge.
41:42 Wes Larson? Yeah.
41:42 Mike Smith? Huge ones. There's the Titanus, a terror bird. It was like a six and a half foot tall bird and for like 40 million years, it was the apex predator on the continent.
41:53 Wes Larson? That's so cool.
41:54 Mike Smith? It was crazy, just like this huge bird and it was super fast. It could run like 40 miles an hour and just had this crazy beak and would go to town on whatever it wanted to sound like.
42:04 Wes Larson? There was overlap between humans and them too, right?
42:06 Mike Smith? Yeah, they didn't go extinct until maybe like pretty early humans were definitely around at the same time. And then, so this is maybe a controversial one, but I'm giving, because otherwise I would just say like the coolest dinosaur for every continent. But the oldest living fossil records of dinosaurs actually come from South America. So I'm just giving South America dinosaurs just as like a blanket, just so we're not just like saying T-Rex for, you know, the rest of these continents, but 230 million year old fossils from Argentina and Brazil, the Eoraptor and the Herrerosaurus. So there you go. Okay, I'm gonna do the mythological creature I found to be most compelling in South America.
42:46 Mike Smith? It's called the Boitata. So I just, I also want to shout out the, what's it called? The Encantado. We talked about that in the Pink River.
42:54 Wes Larson? I was gonna say, if it's not the like, the dolphins that dresses like a guy in a white suit and go and like knock up every woman.
43:02 Mike Smith? Yeah, yeah. Wear dolphins, it's so awesome. And they have to wear a hat to cover up their blowhole, because that doesn't go, it's the only part that doesn't go away. It's awesome.
43:11 Wes Larson? I love that, like, when people got pregnant, they just said, no, it was the dolphins. The dolphins came in.
43:19 Mike Smith? But the one I went with, it's actually a huge snake called the boitada. So in the Rio Grande do Sul region in Brazil, did I say that right, Wes?
43:28 Wes Larson? Uh, no, but it's okay. Rio Grande.
43:30 Mike Smith? Rio Grande.
43:31 Wes Larson? Rio Grande do Sul.
43:33 Mike Smith? Do Sul, region in Brazil. A legend tells of a period of endless rainy nights in the forests. An anaconda that lived in a dark cave was awakened by the floods and being able to see in the dark just fine decided to feast solely on its favorite delicacy, the eyeballs of all of the other animals. After gorging on the bright eyes of the other animals, the anaconda lit up from the inside and briefly turned fiery bright before dying. And then it was reincarnated into a great protector snake called the boitada, who would attack those who mean to harm the trees and animals of the Amazon, causing any to cross its path to go blind, mad, or even just outright die on the spot. With eyes like two beacons and transparent and sparkling skin, it slithers in the night through the fields and along riverbanks protecting the forests.
44:16 Mike Smith? The best way to avoid its wrath was to remain still without breathing and keeping your eyes tightly closed. Running from it is a risk best not taken, since the snake might suspect you of being an arson who has set fire to the woods. Which I think is really funny. It's like, a snake is sitting there just pondering, you know?
44:33 Wes Larson? That's right.
44:34 Mike Smith? Like, I don't think it knows the word arson.
44:36 Wes Larson? It's on fire.
44:37 Mike Smith? Yeah, there you go. Fiery, big ol' fiery serpent, it's like, don't mess with, it's like a will-o'-the-wisp, you know?
44:43 Wes Larson? Loves to eat eyeballs.
44:44 Mike Smith? Don't mess with the forests.
44:45 Wes Larson? Yeah.
44:46 Mike Smith? Or else it'll get ya.
44:47 Jeff Larson? It'll get ya.
44:48 Mike Smith? It'll get ya. For South America, I have Jaguar, Toco Tucan, Giant Ann Eater, Mained Wolf, and Green Anaconda.
45:01 Jeff Larson? That's the one, my hardest one I left off. I have-
45:04 Mike Smith? It's gonna be tough to beat.
45:05 Jeff Larson? Jaguar, Spectacle Bear, Ann Eater, Mained Wolf, Caiman.
45:12 Mike Smith? I'm glad you did Spectacle Bear, that definitely should have been in my list. I think the Spectacle Bear is gonna give the vote, get my vote, to go to Jeff. So, you're tied up.
45:22 Wes Larson? Okay. All right, what continent's next?
45:25 Jeff Larson? Um, you know, let's keep the Americas together, so let's go North America. So, um, you know, I think Mike's part of this episode's the most fun, and I don't want it to be too long, so- Intentionally, I didn't prepare very much.
45:42 Wes Larson? No.
45:42 Jeff Larson? But for cats, the main ones are Canada lynx, mountain lion, jaguar, which belong more to South America, bobcats, osloots, and jaguarundis, which more South America for sure. And then dogs, we have gray wolf, red fox, arctic fox, coyotes, and red wolves. And lots of coyotes, which, you know, put them ahead of South America for me for dogs. But then I'd probably put South America above North America for cats.
46:18 Wes Larson? If you had to pick a quintessentially American canid, it would be the coyote.
46:22 Jeff Larson? And then for bugs, probably the zombie ants we saw in Costa Rica are what I think of the most. Also, the leaf cutter ants that we saw in Costa Rica. I really like the bullet ant that bit Wes. A lot of Central American bugs for me, though. North America, like, I'd go classic grasshopper ladybug type of bugs.
46:49 Wes Larson? Firefly?
46:51 Jeff Larson? Ooh, that's a pretty good bug.
46:52 Wes Larson? I love that bug. Beetle, more accurately.
46:57 Jeff Larson? Mike, you wanna go?
46:58 Mike Smith? I'll do it. Water, we got manatees. You gotta go to Florida to see them. No other place in the world. Orcas, I think it's the best place in the world is just off the coast of Washington State in the San Juans. You can see him and you can fit, correct me if I'm wrong, Wes.
47:12 Wes Larson? No, no, I think that's probably the best place, like, maybe the best place to see him from like a boat. The best place to see him right now is in this Nor- like Norwegian fjord where you can like dive with them and there's tons of pods in there. But yeah.
47:27 Mike Smith? Basically, all of like, not all of them, but a lot of the big whales, like blue, gray, and humpback whales are a north. Here's another thing. The whole Oceania part of the world is hard to like ascribe to a continent. Because that's like an awesome spot to see all of the sea life. And I don't really know like how to divvy that up, but I'm just gonna give it to North America because the Baja in Mexico is like, that's a premier spot to see whale sharks. Uh, narwhals in the Canadian Arctic. That's, you gotta count those. Those are cool. They're real, it turns out.
47:58 Wes Larson? They are real.
47:59 Mike Smith? I bet a few people out there are learning that right now. Tiger sharks in the Bahamas.
48:04 Wes Larson? That is probably the best, that and the Maldives, best place to see those. Yeah.
48:08 Mike Smith? I was tempted to include dolphins off the coast of California, but I don't, it just seems like they're everywhere. So I don't know. I don't really know how to do that one.
48:17 Wes Larson? My best dolphin experience was in the Bahamas. So dolphins, yeah.
48:21 Mike Smith? Cool.
48:21 Jeff Larson? Mine was Mexico.
48:22 Mike Smith? Prehistoric. Giant, short-faced bear. Those dudes.
48:26 Wes Larson? Sweet bear.
48:27 Mike Smith? Yeah, 14 feet tall. Uh, saber-toothed tiger. This is their stomping grounds, this is North America. Uh, the dire wolf, the American lion, and the archalon ischirus. There's a ruler turtle, basically twice the size of a leatherback. So that's a huge, it's a big animal.
48:43 Wes Larson? Yeah. T-Rex, North American.
48:47 Jeff Larson? No, Mike gave all dinosaurs to South America.
48:51 Wes Larson? I kinda have to say though, like that's, that's the most famous dinosaur and it's found like in Montana.
48:57 Mike Smith? I was a hard take and I'll, I'm gonna die on that hill. Okay. My mythological creature from North America, every bone in my body screamed out just to go with Bigfoot, right? That's like part, firmly entrenched in North American lore. But I am actually going with a First Nations people's mythology of the thunderbird and horned serpent.
49:17 Wes Larson? Nice.
49:18 Mike Smith? Cause this is more of like a creation myth and I think that's a little more like, just like fundamental to the land itself. So I thought it was a little more fun to do. So I pulled this primarily from the Algonquin mythology. But again, a lot of different tribes share similar stories. The thunderbird, in many First Nation people's mythology, it's a brightly feathered bird who helped create the universe and who represents order, light, and life. It's big and strong enough to swoop down and pick up whales in its talons and from its perch on the upper World, he surveys the lands below, controls the weather and protects humanity from the great horned serpent who embodies chaos, darkness and death. And whenever the serpent is like, starts acting up a little bit, the thunderbird just like casts thunderbolts down at it, which is pretty, it's kind of a fun little like, it's probably fun for both of them, you know, they're having fun.
50:04 Mike Smith? But in some traditions, the thunderbird will just show up in like a dream or a vision and basically that marks that person to receive like, bountiful gifts, or maybe even go on to become the war chieftain. But yeah, it's just kind of like a cool little, and again, that like it varies vastly from a tribe to tribe. Like I'm not pretending this is like the one sole creation myth that exists, but I just thought this version of it was kind of, kind of cool to think that there's a protector bird just sending rain and thunderbolts down to help us common folk out every once in a while, you know?
50:35 Wes Larson? I like that.
50:36 Jeff Larson? Yeah, good.
50:37 Wes Larson? Cool. All right, my turn?
50:38 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
50:39 Wes Larson? Okay, so for bears, I have, uh, North America ranked third. So we have, uh, three bear species. We've got polar bears, brown bears and American black bears. So great, great bears all around. I, I love the American black bears are quintessentially North American bear. Uh, so I do really like them. So we're number three, go us.
51:04 Jeff Larson? Guess second.
51:06 Wes Larson? You would have guessed wrong. You would have guessed right. Sorry. It is second.
51:13 Wes Larson? Europe was third.
51:14 Mike Smith? Yeah.
51:14 Wes Larson? Good at guessing. Yeah. Uh, we are second. I put a second. My bad. Uh, North America's second for bears. Snakes, we are, let's see, what is that? Fifth? I put us fifth for snakes. We got some great snakes. I think rattlesnakes are mostly North American. And they're kind of our coolest snake in my opinion. I just think it's neat that they have such a cool defense mechanism. We have some other really cool snakes though, too. We got coral snakes, indigo snakes. Lots of really great snakes in North America, to be honest, but I put us still fifth because. There's some other continents with a really amazing snake life. And then for birds, I have North America ranked, uh, once again, fifth.
51:57 Wes Larson? Great birds here, but again, I think kind of similar to Europe, maybe a little bit more drab, a little bit less impressive than some of these other continents. I'm just gonna throw out bald eagles and turkeys as two of, two of our coolest birds. So we have in North America.
52:13 Mike Smith? Hmm. Mike Tyson would not agree.
52:16 Wes Larson? Uh, pigeons. He loves pigeons. The pigeons, though, a lot of the coolest pigeons are in other places. Um, all right. Should we do our favorite animals from North America?
52:26 Jeff Larson? Yes.
52:27 Wes Larson? Let's do it. You go first.
52:29 Jeff Larson? Okay. I have, I have grizzly bear, black bear, moose, sloth and coyote.
52:36 Wes Larson? Gave sloths to North America.
52:38 Mike Smith? Oh, interesting.
52:39 Jeff Larson? Cause Central America is part of North America.
52:41 Mike Smith? That's a fact.
52:42 Jeff Larson? Sure. And that's where I think if I want to see a sloth, I think it's Central America first.
52:47 Mike Smith? Yeah, right.
52:48 Wes Larson? I did puma, uh, or mountain lion, I guess. We'll do the North American name. Grizzly bear, coyote, American black bear and Gila monster.
53:00 Mike Smith? We'll go with Wes.
53:01 Jeff Larson? Yes.
53:02 Mike Smith? Oh, the Gila monster. Are you kidding me, Jeff?
53:04 Wes Larson? Yeah. One of two venomous lizards.
53:06 Mike Smith? Yeah. Have you ever licked one? Don't.
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57:05 Jeff Larson? Let's go to Africa next. One for wildlife, it's hard to, you know?
57:13 Mike Smith? I think it's easy to beat. You gonna say one of the best continents? Yeah.
57:18 Jeff Larson? For wildlife.
57:19 Mike Smith? Which, you know, applies to all of them.
57:20 Jeff Larson? I think it's number one for me right now. I can start us off, though. So for whatever reason, I didn't put all, oh, wait, yeah, I did. I just kind of have it mixed up here. All right. So the big, most famous cats there are lion, cheetah, leopard, serval. Or those are the four that I've seen that are like the most noteworthy in Africa. We saw a serval, right?
57:44 Mike Smith? We did see a serval, yes.
57:45 Jeff Larson? Yeah. And then the other ones that-
57:48 Mike Smith? There's also caracals, yeah.
57:50 Jeff Larson? Yeah, there's caracals that we didn't see. Then they kind of look similar.
57:55 Mike Smith? They, they aren't spotted. They, they look like kind of a lynx. They have a really long wisp on the end of their ears. Really cool looking cats.
58:03 Jeff Larson? The main one I'd want to see, but it's also part of the Middle East is a sandcat. I think they're really cool.
58:10 Mike Smith? Oh, the huge ears.
58:11 Jeff Larson? There's African wildcat, um, black-footed cat, African golden cat, jungle cat.
58:19 Jeff Larson? So.
58:19 Wes Larson? I've seen some of those. I've seen the wild cat and I think I saw the black footed cat.
58:24 Jeff Larson? Are hyenas, would they count as a dog? Because when I looked up, it wasn't, no.
58:29 Wes Larson? They're, they're phyllophores, so they're their own thing, yeah.
58:32 Jeff Larson? Their main dogs are jackals and painted dogs.
58:36 Wes Larson? I'd agree with that.
58:37 Jeff Larson? Uh, they have, they have a lot of foxes too, like fennec fox and different, different types of fox. For whatever reason, if you search.
58:44 Wes Larson? Let's not gloss over them.
58:45 Mike Smith? No, couldn't possibly.
58:47 Wes Larson? Can't gloss over a fennec fox.
58:48 Jeff Larson? You know, foxes, when you search like wild dogs in Africa, they, for whatever reason, never list fox.
58:56 Wes Larson? It's probably because wild dogs is like the
58:58 Jeff Larson? Yeah, it sounds.
58:59 Wes Larson? name of a species of African wild.
59:01 Jeff Larson? I had to like search fox separately and I think I forgot.
59:04 Wes Larson? Oh, you can't do that. Yeah, you can't do that.
59:07 Mike Smith? Yeah, you live and you learn. Next time we do this, you'll have that.
59:11 Jeff Larson? But fennec foxes are really cute.
59:14 Wes Larson? Yeah.
59:14 Mike Smith? They're great. We love foxes around here.
59:17 Jeff Larson? For bugs? Dung beetles are so cool. We saw a few dung beetles. And they're just so good for the ecosystem too, which makes them like extra cool. So they have some really big beetles out there too, like some of the best beetles are out in African jungles. But I'm given like my most noteworthy bug goes to dung beetles for Africa.
59:44 Wes Larson? Okay.
59:45 Mike Smith? The best.
59:45 Jeff Larson? And then I'll rate cats, I'm gonna rate them number one. And for dogs, I'm gonna rate them probably like fourth or fifth. I'll say fourth because painted dogs are just so cool.
1:00:01 Wes Larson? I'm gonna take a quick second and poke some holes in your cat ranking if I might.
1:00:05 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:00:06 Wes Larson? Uh, all three of the big cats that you like in Africa can also be found in Asia.
1:00:11 Jeff Larson? Cheetahs, pretty much not.
1:00:14 Wes Larson? But they can be. They're still there.
1:00:16 Jeff Larson? Where at? In India?
1:00:18 Wes Larson? No, like in Iran and the Middle East, there's a, there's a cheetah. What I'm saying is if like you're ranking continents based on what they have for those species, there are better cats. Like there are more species of cats in Asia than there are in Africa.
1:00:33 Jeff Larson? I see.
1:00:34 Wes Larson? Like you have all of the African ones, plus tigers, plus snow leopards, plus.
1:00:39 Jeff Larson? I think if you're just looking at a list, you're right. I think if you're looking at a list of what each continent has, you're right. But I think if you're considering like accessibility to the animals, if you're considering like the amount that each continent has and like, like if you're going to the continent, what you're going to be able to see, I think Africa is number one for cats.
1:01:07 Wes Larson? I'd still pick Asia.
1:01:08 Jeff Larson? I think your argument's fair. I don't, I don't disagree with your disagreement, but you didn't change my mind either.
1:01:16 Wes Larson? Okay, uh, this, you know, this makes sense as a big lion enthusiast too, you know?
1:01:22 Jeff Larson? And cheetah too.
1:01:24 Wes Larson? Okay, Africa for bears, not very good. They, I put them, no, I put them above Antarctica. So they're number six for bears. And the only reason I did that is because they used to have bears in Northern Africa. They used to have brown bears. Honestly, Australia should probably be lower than Africa, but because of koalas, even though they're not bears, I'm gonna, yeah.
1:01:51 Jeff Larson? Drop bears.
1:01:53 Wes Larson? Yeah, I put them at six for bears. No bears currently in Africa. They used to have a brown bear in Northern Africa. Uh, snakes, I put them number one. I think there's a good argument for Asia. There's probably more species in Asia. So Jeff, you could argue the same thing. Yeah. But some of my personal favorite snakes are only found in Africa. And that's why I had the argument for the cats is they're found in both places, but Africa, but Asia has more species. Africa, some of my favorite all time snakes you can only find on the African continent. Gaboon vipers, rhinoceros vipers, black mambas, a lot of the
1:02:35 Wes Larson? bush vipers, you can only find in Africa. I think they're incredibly beautiful. I think some of the African cobras are the coolest looking cobras. So I picked Africa as number one for snakes for those reasons. And then birds, this was really hard. I ended up switching this around, right? I gave South America number one. No, number two. South America was number two. So Africa is number three. Really cool birds in Africa. The one that comes to the top of my mind is secretary birds. It's a raptor that like walks around on huge long legs and eats snakes. Just such an amazing bird. Lilac breasted rollers are incredible, beautiful birds. I think Africa is always an incredible surprise for birding. Shoebill storks.
1:03:20 Jeff Larson? Ostriches.
1:03:21 Wes Larson? Ostriches. Yeah. I mean, there's incredible bird life in Africa. For me, it was really hard to pick between Asia, Africa, and South America for birds. But Asia took top spot for me in almost everything. And I'll go into that when we rank our continents for for everything. But um, yeah, so I'm ranking them third, but they have incredible bird life. If you're a birder, it's hard to beat Africa. No, I love Africa. I think it's, I think I get why it's for a lot of people, their number one wildlife destination. But you got to check out Asia, too.
1:03:56 Mike Smith? Well, let's talk about some water animals then, huh? We got hippos.
1:04:01 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:04:01 Mike Smith? I mean, come on.
1:04:01 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:04:02 Mike Smith? What more is there to be said? But I do have some more. So the sardine run, that's like the famous sardine rundown off the coast of South Africa. It's pretty iconic. If you've never seen like pictures or videos of it, it's kind of bewildering how many just billions and billions of sardines going crazy. And then like all the predators swim through and catch them all. We have Goliath tigerfish in the rivers of, I think, Congo is where they're most known for, but they're huge, like kind of the gnarliest looking fish I've ever seen. I'm surprised I hadn't heard about that until last night, just like what they look like. Let's move on to prehistoric. I don't want to do, oh, the otter bear. You guys heard of the otter bear? 200 kilo terrestrial relative of sea otters. Can't beat that.
1:04:46 Wes Larson? That's combining like the otter bear is like the two famous gay communities, right? Otters and bears?
1:04:53 Mike Smith? Bears.
1:04:54 Wes Larson? All combined in one animal? That's cool.
1:04:56 Mike Smith? It's kind of like you can be whichever one you want to be on any given day.
1:05:01 Wes Larson? What hog did they have down there, over there?
1:05:03 Mike Smith? Giant Ethiopian hog.
1:05:07 Wes Larson? Jeff's seen a few of those in his web research.
1:05:11 Jeff Larson? My travels.
1:05:12 Mike Smith? They used to have a, they used to have a long-legged hippo, which is fun, and African dire bear.
1:05:17 Wes Larson? Ooh, that's cool. Dire bears. That does sound sweet.
1:05:22 Jeff Larson? Robb Stark would have won the war if he had a dire bear instead of dire wolf.
1:05:27 Wes Larson? Just would have never shown up like his dire wolves. I get, no, that was more John, huh? Robb's actually helped him.
1:05:33 Jeff Larson? Uh, Robb's wolf was sick.
1:05:35 Wes Larson? Yeah, it was. Got killed.
1:05:37 Mike Smith? I got, I got some, a myth for you all. Sit down while I spin you a story. This little spider named a Nancy. So forgive me if this rings more true to like Western retellings. This is like very much an oral tradition, a lot of these stories that were passed down. And the telling of the story that I read most from was out of Ghana from the Akon religion, but it goes like this. Lived in a small village nestled deep within the verdant forests of West Africa, he was a clever little spider named a Nancy. And when he wasn't engaged in some sort of trickery or other, he could be spotted beside his elders as they spun tales around glowing fires and fusing their embroidered words with all manners of ghosts and spirits. But Anansi grew frustrated that there were only so many stories to be told.
1:06:18 Mike Smith? And so to claim all of the world's stories as common property for all people to share, he began to spin a long thread that reached all the way to the heavens where he confronted the sky god, asking that he be given dominion over all the stories of the world. The sky god gave him three challenges, including defeating a giant snake, braving a flaming forest for precious timber, and overcoming the mermaid queen who resided deep down in the sea. Overcoming each challenge with wit and bravery, the sky god proclaimed, "Well done, little Anansi. No earthly creature has ever bested me so, nor shown such talent for bending reality itself. Let all the stories of this world and others be now yours to share as you please." So I just like, it's a real David and Goliath kind of thing where this little spider went
1:07:00 Mike Smith? out and confronted the world for the sake of telling stories to everyone. It's pretty sweet.
1:07:05 Wes Larson? That is sweet.
1:07:07 Jeff Larson? All right. This was my hardest top five, just because there's so many I wanted in here, but I did elephant, giraffe, cheetah, lion, hippo.
1:07:19 Wes Larson? Hippo, giraffe, and cheetah as well, because I do think, even though you can find cheetahs in Asia, you're right, like Africa is the best spot for them. Both hippos and giraffes you can only find in Africa. So I do think they're very uniquely African. I picked the secretary bird. I think it's one of my all time favorite birds. Both of our African trips, that was like a highlight for me was seeing those birds. And then I picked the Gaboon viper. I think it's a really cool looking viper, has the longest fangs of any viper and extremely high venom load. So, um, yeah, I wanted to make sure we had some reptiles represented as well.
1:07:56 Jeff Larson? My favorite snake.
1:07:58 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:07:58 Jeff Larson? And I didn't even pick it on purpose.
1:08:01 Wes Larson? Yeah. I think that's an easy win for me.
1:08:04 Jeff Larson? What?
1:08:04 Wes Larson? Personally. Yeah. But I'm gonna let Mike say what he thinks.
1:08:08 Jeff Larson? African elephants you don't think are notable?
1:08:10 Wes Larson? Secretary birds? You don't even have them in there?
1:08:13 Jeff Larson? I don't have gorillas.
1:08:14 Wes Larson? Elephants. We got elephants in Asia too. Yeah.
1:08:16 Mike Smith? I'm going with Jeff, actually. That's tough. Secretary birds aren't my favorite bird, but like.
1:08:21 Wes Larson? You also don't like to be told which way you're gonna go. And I said that you're gonna pick.
1:08:25 Mike Smith? That's true.
1:08:25 Wes Larson? So I knew I was gonna lose it as soon as I said that. Yeah.
1:08:30 Jeff Larson? Alright, let's do Australia.
1:08:32 Wes Larson? Let's do it.
1:08:33 Jeff Larson? So, there's no types of like native cats in Australia. The, in like the late seventeen hundreds, early eighteen hundreds, people were starting to like colonize it more. And they really loved having pet cats back then, more than now even, I think. Because rodents were such disease spreaders. That like, having a pet cat actually kept you safe more than having a pet dog even sometimes, you know? Cause they would kill rodents. So, lots of people had pet cats, they went to Australia with pet cats, tons of cats got loose.
1:09:14 Jeff Larson? It's like, one of the biggest issues in all of Australia, like twenty-two types of, um, marsupials? Or some, yeah.
1:09:24 Wes Larson? That sounds like the right word.
1:09:26 Jeff Larson? Marsupials have gone extinct from the cats in Australia. And like, just a bunch of bunch of animals are having trouble because invasive cats are like one of the worst. Yeah, feral cats.
1:09:40 Wes Larson? They are the worst, they are the worst invasive animal in the world. And we're not just talking Australia, everywhere, that there are wild feral cats, or even just house cats that are loose, kill a ton of wildlife.
1:09:54 Jeff Larson? It says here, it's estimated each year domestic and feral cats in Australia kill nearly one point one billion mammals. Three hundred ninety-nine million birds, six hundred and nine million reptiles. Ninety-three million frogs, Mike, you love frogs.
1:10:14 Wes Larson? I love those guys.
1:10:16 Jeff Larson? And one point one billion invertebrates.
1:10:18 Wes Larson? Yeah, it's pretty wild. How, and like worldwide, it's just, it's incalculable how many animals cats kill. They're perfect little predators.
1:10:27 Jeff Larson? Makes you kinda mad at cats.
1:10:30 Wes Larson? It doesn't, it makes me mad at, um, at irresponsible cat owners, but I will say this. We've talked about this a bit on the show before, and I haven't really thought of the right way to put it to people. Cause I don't want people who have let their cats outside to feel guilty about it. What I do think is that if you do feel like, oh, that's a change you should make. I don't think it's fair to take a cat that's been living outside its whole life and change it. But I do think on your next cat, you should keep it indoors. That's I think that's a good compromise is like, next time you get a cat, you've learned your lesson, keep it inside.
1:11:04 Mike Smith? That makes sense.
1:11:05 Jeff Larson? Yeah, I'm okay with that.
1:11:07 Mike Smith? I'll agree to that.
1:11:08 Jeff Larson? Messaging.
1:11:09 Mike Smith? Cosign.
1:11:09 Wes Larson? I'd like to go hard.
1:11:10 Jeff Larson? Wild birds in your house.
1:11:12 Wes Larson? Uh huh. Yeah, that's true.
1:11:14 Mike Smith? Invertebrates all over the place.
1:11:16 Wes Larson? Yeah, you probably do have invertebrates all over the place.
1:11:19 Mike Smith? Oh, my gosh.
1:11:20 Jeff Larson? For dogs, it's just dingoes, but then.
1:11:24 Wes Larson? Is it just dingoes?
1:11:25 Jeff Larson? Isn't it?
1:11:26 Wes Larson? There's foxes there too. Yeah.
1:11:28 Jeff Larson? Ah, foxes.
1:11:30 Wes Larson? Oh, yeah.
1:11:32 Mike Smith? The fox.
1:11:33 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:11:34 Jeff Larson? What type of fox do they have?
1:11:36 Wes Larson? I'm not sure. I wasn't on dogs. They definitely have red fox.
1:11:42 Jeff Larson? Really?
1:11:43 Wes Larson? But, yeah.
1:11:44 Jeff Larson? That's interesting.
1:11:45 Mike Smith? Star fox.
1:11:47 Wes Larson? It is interesting.
1:11:49 Jeff Larson? Let's see, fox. So I think it's just dingoes and red foxes then.
1:11:54 Wes Larson? Okay.
1:11:54 Jeff Larson? And red foxes would be the only native.
1:11:57 Wes Larson? They're not native.
1:11:59 Jeff Larson? Oh, they're not native either.
1:12:00 Wes Larson? No.
1:12:00 Jeff Larson? They were introduced.
1:12:01 Wes Larson? Mm hmm. It, yeah, it ends up happening like they want to hunt them or whatever else and they release them. So.
1:12:08 Jeff Larson? Hmm. Yeah, I see.
1:12:10 Wes Larson? Yep.
1:12:10 Jeff Larson? So, yeah, no native dogs, but there are.
1:12:14 Wes Larson? I, I think dingoes, I think there's a very good argument for dingoes now being considered native wildlife to Australia because they were introduced so long ago and they are part of the ecosystem there now that.
1:12:25 Jeff Larson? It feels like it. Like if you see a dingo, I think it's like, it's a pretty wild animal.
1:12:31 Wes Larson? There's protections for them in Australia. I think they, I think there's a good argument for them being considered part of Australia's wildlife now.
1:12:39 Jeff Larson? Okay. And then for bugs, I like our funnel web one that we did our story on and their web is just sweet. So I'm going with funnel web.
1:12:48 Wes Larson? Okay.
1:12:48 Mike Smith? Yeah, those guys are cool. I want one.
1:12:51 Wes Larson? All right, I had Australia ranked fifth for bears. They definitely don't have any bears, but you know, koalas, colloquially, people call them bears. I probably should put them last because of that, but I do think it's kind of funny and drop bears. The, you know, famous kind of cryptid in Australia, but there are no bears in Australia. There never have been bears in Australia. So they probably should be below Africa because Africa used to have bears at least. So I am going to switch those. Australia is sixth, Africa is five for bears. And then.
1:13:28 Jeff Larson? Africa doesn't have any bears right now though.
1:13:30 Wes Larson? Uh, yeah, no, but they used to at least and Australia doesn't have any.
1:13:36 Wes Larson? Australia is fourth for snakes in on my list, and I think people might kind of balk at that a little bit because it is famous for having really cool snakes. I think the thing that separates Australia from the other continents, and this is important to mention, is there is so much cool endemic wildlife in Australia where you only find it in Oceania in Australia. And that's true for their snakes. And so it's hard to rank them because I think if you're ranking unique wildlife, Australia might be number one. But I just don't get as into their snakes as I do Asia or Africa. But they do have incredible snakes. They have the inland Taipan, which most people consider to be the most potent venom of any snake.
1:14:22 Wes Larson? They have really cool, they have green tree pythons. They have lots of amazing snakes, tiger snakes, eastern brown snakes. It's a great place for snakes, but I just don't think it's quite, you don't see the diversity and the number of species that you see in places like Asia or Africa, continents like Asia or Africa. Birds, again, incredible endemics in Australia. It's really amazing. I still put it at fourth behind Asia, Africa and South America, or Asia, South America and Africa.
1:14:54 Jeff Larson? You think they're clearly ahead of North America?
1:14:57 Wes Larson? I do again, because like so many cool endemic, so many amazing birds. You got cassowaries, you got emus, you got cockatoos, you got a lot of really amazing birds in Asia. It is hard to say, Jeff, because Central America has a ton of bird life. But um, I still am going to pick Australia. Kiwis.
1:15:17 Mike Smith? Kiwi.
1:15:18 Jeff Larson? Those mountain parrots in New Zealand.
1:15:21 Wes Larson? Yeah, Kias.
1:15:21 Jeff Larson? Yeah. You like Kia cars?
1:15:24 Wes Larson? Hmm, I'm pretty neutral on Kia cars. I think they're pretty affordable.
1:15:27 Mike Smith? That's Korean.
1:15:28 Wes Larson? Which is nice.
1:15:29 Mike Smith? That's for Asia. Save it.
1:15:30 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:15:32 Mike Smith? Um, is it my turn?
1:15:33 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:15:34 Mike Smith? Oh, my gosh. For Australia? Are you kidding me right now? So they've got dugongs, just like we here in the north of America have manatees. Dugongs do exist in other places, but I'd read that Western Australia is considered widely to be the best place to see them. Um, and those are cool. Stonefish, I feel like one of like maybe the most venomous fish. You gotta shout that out. And I think Australia is like a real hotspot for them.
1:15:58 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:15:59 Mike Smith? Giant cuttlefish. We're all pretty big, uh, newly converted fans. A couple of us to cuttlefish, I know. Um, they got some really cool camouflage mating type stuff going on if you're into fish doing that kind of stuff.
1:16:13 Wes Larson? I'm not.
1:16:15 Jeff Larson? Why you need to wear camo to mate?
1:16:18 Mike Smith? Um, they're, so it's like, some people get off on exhibitionism. They want to be seen. Some people want to keep it private. And if you're wearing camo, you can do that anywhere you go.
1:16:28 Wes Larson? Okay.
1:16:28 Mike Smith? This is controversial, Wes. Great white sharks? Is that, are you gonna give me that one?
1:16:33 Wes Larson? I like it. I like it for Australia.
1:16:35 Mike Smith? Okay.
1:16:36 Wes Larson? They are everywhere, but there, there used to be like hotspots where you could go cage dive with great white sharks. And a number of them had been closed, like the one in Mexico was closed because of irresponsible operators. The one in South Africa has like ceased to exist because of movement patterns for great white sharks. So really at this point, there are others, like there's one now in Canada, in New Zealand. But I think New Zealand and Australia are the kind of premier spots to see great whites these days. So I, I think that's a good pick.
1:17:09 Mike Smith? Cool. Um, let's go over some quick, uh, prehistoric animals. We have the pallorkestes. Those are the huge marsupials dwelling in trees. They're like the size of a horse is what I kept reading. Uh, huge claws, basically just like a, um, yeah, koala, but huge. Just think about that.
1:17:28 Wes Larson? Oh, that's cool.
1:17:29 Mike Smith? Tasmanian tiger, maybe not quite prehistoric, but extinct now sadly. The Megalonya, yeah, massive monitor lizard. I think the most exciting one to me there though is a horse sized koala, right?
1:17:45 Wes Larson? That is exciting. Their chlamydia must be so big.
1:17:48 Mike Smith? Those huge ones. Mythological, oh, we just gotta talk about the drop bear, right? Should we tell our listeners? Should we dispel the myth? So there's said to be vicious marsupials that inhabit the tops of trees and they attack unsuspecting people. They'll drop out of a tree and attack. So the joke is the way to avoid these attacks. Cause some people genuinely believe like, oh, wow, I've heard drop bears crazy. It sounds violent and dangerous. So like the prank is you put forks in your hair and you like smear Vegemite all over your body. And there's other different like little tactics. You can like douse yourself in urine is another one. Some people are like, just do that and you'll be safe, you know? And some people fall for it and I think that's really great.
1:18:33 Mike Smith? So there has been like very serious documented scientific research on this phenomenon, even though it's like pretty clearly these don't really exist. But I just like that it's so much of a cultural icon that people in those spheres of science, you're just like, yeah, let's have some fun with this. Let's, it's, let's do some write ups.
1:18:51 Wes Larson? That, that was one of the biggest shocks for me is learning that cryptozoology is like something you can get your PhD in. Like you can go out and become a serious cryptozoologist researcher, which is just like, it's strange to me. But whatever, there's weirder things in the world.
1:19:10 Jeff Larson? Like bear biologists. I don't get that.
1:19:13 Wes Larson? Yeah, I know you don't, pal.
1:19:18 Wes Larson? All right. Is that it for us? Oh, we gotta do our five favorites, right? Me and Jeff. Okay. I'll go first this time, I guess. I'm gonna go with koala because they are, you know, incredibly cute and very unique to Australia. Wombats, I think wombats are amazing animals. They, you know, poop cubes, really cool looking. Cassowaries, one of my all time favorite birds.
1:19:44 Jeff Larson? New Zealand is included in Australia as a continent, right?
1:19:48 Wes Larson? Yeah, Oceania, yeah. Frilled lizards, that lizard that like has this huge frill that comes out that they based a lot of Saurus on. I just think they're one of the coolest lizards in the world. And then I also picked the platypus because platypus are the, one of the two egg laying mammals. They have a venomous spur behind their leg. They are like, they seem like they're half bird, half mammal, half fish. They're just incredible animal that only Australia could produce. So those are my five.
1:20:20 Jeff Larson? I got koala, kangaroo, coocas, is she smiling all the time?
1:20:27 Wes Larson? Cute, cuties, yeah.
1:20:29 Jeff Larson? Platypus and crocodile.
1:20:33 Wes Larson? Which species of crocodile?
1:20:35 Jeff Larson? Saltwater crocodile.
1:20:36 Wes Larson? Salties.
1:20:37 Jeff Larson? My biggest, like, I wish is on there is cassowary.
1:20:43 Wes Larson? I was gonna put salties and I picked the frilled lizard instead because salties you can find in a lot of Asia too.
1:20:49 Mike Smith? This is by far the hardest one I've had to choose because I love cassowaries. But saltwater crocodiles, I mean, come on. Let's go Jeff. Jeff's up three to two.
1:21:01 Jeff Larson? All right, all right. Let's save Asia for last. So let's go Antarctica where we, actually, let's do Asia right now. We'll save Antarctica for that.
1:21:08 Wes Larson? Okay, Antarctica was our last continent. We went two together.
1:21:12 Jeff Larson? So Asia, I'll get us started real quick. Cats, obviously tigers, like what you'd think of first for Asia, right?
1:21:22 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:21:23 Jeff Larson? They have leopards all throughout India and a couple other spots probably. Snow leopards.
1:21:31 Wes Larson? Pretty much throughout Asia. Yeah.
1:21:34 Jeff Larson? Clouded leopards throughout Asia. Palace cat is a really good, like, Asian specific cat that a lot of people love. Like I said, there's sand cats in the Middle East, there's. Like Wes said, there are lions. There, I guess, is a tiny population of cheetahs.
1:21:55 Wes Larson? There is, yes.
1:21:56 Jeff Larson? And that's pretty cool. There's a rusty spotted cat, Wes.
1:22:02 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:22:03 Jeff Larson? Fishing cat.
1:22:04 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:22:05 Jeff Larson? There's jungle cats, Borneo bay cat, flat-headed cats. Have you seen those?
1:22:12 Wes Larson? I haven't.
1:22:13 Jeff Larson? Flat-headed cat, look that up.
1:22:15 Wes Larson? Okay. I'll look it up. I'm not gonna do it right now. I will just say Asia has, by a good margin, the most species of wild felines.
1:22:26 Jeff Larson? Look up flat-headed cat.
1:22:28 Wes Larson? There's seventeen species in Asia and ten in Africa. The Americas actually have more wildcat species than Africa does. There's twelve in the Americas, but Asia does have, by a good margin, the most wildcats.
1:22:41 Jeff Larson? Yeah, the Americas are two continents.
1:22:44 Wes Larson? Yeah, that's true. That's a good point. Yeah, they're a cool-looking cat, flat-headed.
1:22:49 Jeff Larson? And then for dogs, what's like the first dog you think of for Asia?
1:22:54 Wes Larson? I think of gray wolves, but, um, doles are another one.
1:22:59 Jeff Larson? Just because they're only in Asia.
1:23:02 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:23:02 Jeff Larson? You know which one is really cool is the Tibetan fox.
1:23:05 Wes Larson? Tibetan fox are really cool.
1:23:07 Mike Smith? They're so sweet.
1:23:09 Jeff Larson? Um, and then, yeah, gray wolf, the raccoon dogs in Japan or the tanuki.
1:23:16 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:23:17 Jeff Larson? Um, we saw one for a sec. It's cool.
1:23:19 Wes Larson? Yeah, it's great.
1:23:21 Jeff Larson? Uh, we saw gray wolves and you guys saw doles. I didn't get to see doles.
1:23:26 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:23:28 Wes Larson? Cool. How about bugs?
1:23:30 Jeff Larson? Bugs. My favorite bug I ever met was in Borneo. It was a cicada and we shook hands.
1:23:37 Wes Larson? Yeah, I remember that. That was a good bug. You got your first rhinoceros beetles in Asia, too.
1:23:43 Jeff Larson? The ones I remember were in Costa Rica.
1:23:46 Wes Larson? Indonesia, the one that you saw him in Costa Rica?
1:23:49 Jeff Larson? Oh, wait. No, you're right. I'm thinking of Indonesia.
1:23:52 Wes Larson? Yeah, it was in Komodo. Yeah.
1:23:54 Jeff Larson? Yeah, no, Komodo. Yeah, great rhinoceros beetles.
1:23:58 Wes Larson? Okay, uh, so for my, or do you want to go first, Mike? You go first.
1:24:02 Jeff Larson? Wait, sure. Where would you rank them for dogs?
1:24:08 Wes Larson? Uh.
1:24:09 Jeff Larson? Or what would you put first for dogs?
1:24:12 Wes Larson? I would honestly.
1:24:15 Wes Larson? Probably put Asia first.
1:24:17 Jeff Larson? For dogs? Really? I think I'd have them third. I think I'd have North America first, just because I think coyotes have taken it over so well. And like, we have gray wolves.
1:24:29 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:24:30 Jeff Larson? And then we have fox, but the, and like Arctic fox, but then like painted dogs just bring Africa up so high for me because I just think they're so like, I think of all wild dogs.
1:24:43 Wes Larson? Dogs are hard. And then main wolves are so cool, too.
1:24:46 Jeff Larson? And then like Australia, it's like, you're not gonna give us dogs. What do we get even then?
1:24:50 Wes Larson? Yeah, right?
1:24:52 Jeff Larson? That's like one of the main ones we have.
1:24:55 Wes Larson? Our soup eels. All right, Mike, why don't you do Asia?
1:24:58 Mike Smith? Yeah, so for water, this one, a bit of an abstract listing, but so spanning Indonesia, Malaysia, like all over that kind of Micronesia, all over the place. It's the global epicenter of marine life, hosts seventy percent of all known coral species and over two thousand reef fish. And you know me, that's what I'm all about when we're diving.
1:25:18 Wes Larson? Coral, coral triangle, right?
1:25:20 Mike Smith? The coral triangle. Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, so they got a little bit of everything down there. Well, not quite everything, but like a huge amount of everything there is to see. You can see it in Asia in that little stretch.
1:25:31 Wes Larson? Best place to see blue whales.
1:25:33 Mike Smith? Uh, manta rays, giving them octopi and jellyfish. Uh, millions, billions, maybe even trillions. Probably not, right?
1:25:43 Mike Smith? Harmless jellyfish. Uh, there's a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Palau where you're just like surrounded by really cool, beautiful jellyfish kind of thing. So yeah.
1:25:53 Wes Larson? Cool.
1:25:53 Mike Smith? Uh, any other water? I'm forgetting some, I'm sure.
1:25:56 Wes Larson? There's so many. I mean, I agree with you. It's really hard to quantify. But I do think when it comes to reef ecosystems, like Asia is pretty hard to beat. You have like the gold or the coral triangle there and it's really cool, like big stuff, too.
1:26:12 Jeff Larson? I talked about the turtles in Vietnam a little bit, just for like that.
1:26:17 Wes Larson? The soft shell, the soft shell turtles.
1:26:19 Mike Smith? Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. Uh, let's go prehistoric. So woolly rhinos, they're like rhinos, but shaggy. They got that big.
1:26:28 Jeff Larson? Oh, that's.
1:26:28 Mike Smith? Kind of like a yak fur almost, but their horns are huge. They're like, like four and a half feet, I think is what I saw listed.
1:26:35 Jeff Larson? Like it's big as a big trumpet.
1:26:37 Mike Smith? Yeah, as big as a big trumpet is how I would describe that. Um, speaking of big, we got the giant ape, uh, the Alctiten hippopotamopus. It's not a hippopotamus, it's a hippopotamopus. So don't get that wrong. Uh, found in Kazakhstan, Kazakhstan, pretty cool animals.
1:26:57 Jeff Larson? Colombia has hippos, Wes.
1:26:59 Wes Larson? Uh, yeah, but not native. So, yeah. And that's a very recent introduction. So I wouldn't even come close to saying they're native there.
1:27:07 Mike Smith? All right. And for mythological, I'm going to go with the yeti. I think the yeti is kind of like the one everyone probably knows and would think about just off the top of their head. There are many, you know, Chinese dragons or even the Japanese, the Kappa.
1:27:19 Jeff Larson? Oh, yeah, they kind of get dragons, huh?
1:27:22 Mike Smith? Yeah, but I wanted to do the yeti because I learned a couple of interesting things about them. So the belief in these sightings are so old and storied that even by the time Alexander the Great was storming through that Indian subcontinent part of the world. He reportedly, he demanded to see one. He was like, he was so excited to see a yeti when he was just like, you know, raising the land. And the locals were just like, no. Well, there, it was kind of funny because their retort was like, well, they actually don't really do well at low altitudes. So we can't bring one to show you. So he was like, well, shoot. And then I guess he just left disappointed, but.
1:27:59 Wes Larson? Just raised there, yeah.
1:28:01 Mike Smith? Um, but throughout the centuries, the accounts continued until pretty distinct variations of the yeti story started permeating through Buddhist mythology. And they're just like, they look a little different depending on where you're from. They could either be huge and white or small and strong and red. But always skewing more malevolent in the Western.
1:28:22 Wes Larson? Perception of what they are, but actually for people that live in those lands, they see them more as like a benevolent force of nature, like a protector spirit of the mountains. So I just thought that that was kind of a cool. I just did never heard that. I always thought that like the abominable snowman is gonna rip your arm off and eat it kind of thing. That's what they did in Diat, Diatlov Pass. They killed those guys. Yeah. That's right. We got it. When you're covering that story. We'll do it at some point. All right. So Asia for me, um, pretty squarely, I think the best continent when it comes to wildlife. I, and I, I would argue that to my dying day. I think it's really hard to be because you have essentially every ecosystem in Asia.
1:29:06 Wes Larson? You have, you know, these massive deserts, you have steppes, you have mountains, you have Arctic, you have rainforest, you have savanna, everything is there. It has incredible wildlife. When it comes to bears, it is hands down the best. Six of the, of the world's eight bear species are all found in Asia. So, and there's a few that are only found there, including giant pandas, sun bears, Asiatic black bears and sloth bears. So half of the world's bear species you can only find in Asia, which That's pretty good. Yeah, it's a good stat. It's, it's gonna be really hard for me to pick a top five from Asia. For snakes, I'm gonna give it to Asia. Or no, sorry, I gave it to Africa. I'm gonna give second to Asia.
1:29:51 Wes Larson? Some of my favorite snakes are there. You got king cobras, you got Indian cobras or, or spectacled cobras. You've got the blue insularis viper that we saw in Komodo. Tons of variation of snakes, really cool crates there. Just like incredible snake life throughout Asia, um, especially some hotspots are like Indonesia, India, China has like Mengshan vipers, which are really cool looking. So, yeah. Birds, it's number one for me. Gotta be Asia. There are an, an incredible number of birds in Asia. Again, because there are so many ecosystems there. So I, I could just talk about birds in Asia all day,
1:30:32 Wes Larson? but they have like pitas, they have the Himalayan monocle, they have bearded vultures. There, there's just like, my head's exploding just thinking about all the birds in Asia, you know? Oh no. That's crazy. Yeah. Put it, put it back together like that one egg. Take a break. I just think, I think just because of the vast size of the continent, the fact that it includes the Indian subcontinent, which has incredible wildlife, that includes Indonesia and like all these different islands, like it's impossible to beat Asia for wildlife. It just has the coolest wildlife. It just does. So that's, that's where I'm coming from with my argument for Asia.
1:31:14 Wes Larson? And yeah, those are my three categories. Should we do our top five?
1:31:18 Jeff Larson? So wait, you got them ranked first for bears, first for birds, first, or second for snakes?
1:31:24 Wes Larson? Second for snakes. And that's a personal preference for African snakes. But I think if you were looking at like number of species and diversity, you'd probably have to give it to Asia too. Yeah.
1:31:35 Jeff Larson? Yeah. I, there's one that I'm kind of like, I think I could maybe choose something else, but I'll, I'll save it for last. So I have tiger easily, right?
1:31:47 Wes Larson? Okay.
1:31:47 Jeff Larson? Yeah. Then we have orangutan, snow leopard, giant panda. So there's four. And then my fifth one, I put red pandas. And I think I could be talked out of red pandas, but I like having them in there because I think of them when I think of Asia.
1:32:05 Wes Larson? Yeah. Uh, we have very similar lists. So I also had tiger, giant panda, snow leopard and red panda. Those are all the same. Uh, I dropped orangutans for king cobra because it is the longest venomous snake on the planet. I think they're incredible snakes and I wanted reptiles to be, uh, included in a, in a top five of Asia.
1:32:28 Mike Smith? Wes gets it. The cobra is just, I mean, you gotta have a cobra in there.
1:32:32 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:32:33 Jeff Larson? For birds, they don't really have like any huge birds, right?
1:32:38 Wes Larson? Uh, huge birds.
1:32:42 Jeff Larson? Like
1:32:43 Wes Larson? I mean, they have like, they don't have
1:32:44 Jeff Larson? Australia. I mean, Africa has ostrich and then like Australia.
1:32:51 Wes Larson? The bird family you're talking about are the rattites. So Asia does have cassowaries and they belong in that family.
1:32:59 Jeff Larson? They do?
1:32:59 Mike Smith? They do.
1:33:00 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:33:00 Mike Smith? What the heck?
1:33:01 Wes Larson? So there's a, there's a northern cassowary and you can find them in like Rajah Ampat. Some of the Indonesian islands have cassowaries.
1:33:09 Mike Smith? Are they cool? Are they just as cool?
1:33:12 Wes Larson? They're really cool. Yeah. They're even more brightly colored than the southern cassowary. So.
1:33:16 Mike Smith? Well, dude, what in the world?
1:33:18 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:33:19 Mike Smith? What are you talking about Australia cassowaries for?
1:33:20 Wes Larson? This is what I'm saying, guys. Asia, like, almost every animal that we're talking about when it comes to like Africa and Australian stuff, there's a variant of it in Asia. It's just really hard to beat Asia unless you're like a huge fan of South American wildlife. Cause even a lot of our North American wildlife, like our most iconic North American wildlife, most of those animals you can also find in Asia.
1:33:44 Jeff Larson? What country would you say has the best primates? There's three main ones. South America, or sorry, continent.
1:33:50 Wes Larson? Continent?
1:33:51 Jeff Larson? South America, Africa, or Asia?
1:33:53 Wes Larson? I'd say Asia.
1:33:55 Jeff Larson? Gorillas and chimpanzees in Africa?
1:33:57 Wes Larson? I know. It'd be, Africa would be my next pick, but with the orangutans, gibbons, those Chinese snub nose monkeys, all the different like, yeah, I, I think I have to give it to Asia, but that's just me. Yeah.
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1:37:52 Jeff Larson? All right, let's move to Antarctica. So.
1:37:55 Mike Smith? We're tied up on our top five.
1:37:57 Jeff Larson? I can start.
1:37:58 Mike Smith? It's 3-3.
1:37:59 Jeff Larson? Or no, Wes, you start.
1:38:01 Mike Smith? I'll start.
1:38:02 Jeff Larson? Or Mike, you start.
1:38:03 Mike Smith? I'll start. We got penguins. You give, you gotta go penguins, Antarctica. It's like, the one thing you can just, with a bullet, say they've got. Hourglass dolphins are apparently, this is really kind of the only part of the world you can find them. Colossal squid, the most massive, meaning heaviest cephalopod that's down in Antarctica. They're longer ones, but they're no, they're none that get heavier. These things are just like a chunk, 1,000 pounds plus. And that's really cool. And I think you're probably right. We give seals to Antarctica. I'm gonna like, I'm gonna do a little bit of a tie thing. I'm gonna cheat here. Like, there are just a huge variety of different species of seals down there, and they're all amazing and beautiful in their own way, except for elephant seals.
1:38:47 Jeff Larson? You didn't like elephant seals?
1:38:48 Mike Smith? I don't think I did. It made me really uncomfortable to be close to them.
1:38:53 Jeff Larson? Okay.
1:38:54 Mike Smith? They smelled really bad and it was like they didn't look comfortable. They looked, they slept like they all had sleep apnea. It was really stressing me out. They're making weird sounds and like rolling around and crawling on top of each other. It was like a weird scene. So I had to move on pretty quick. Anyway, uh, any other sea life? Do you think we should attribute to?
1:39:13 Wes Larson? I mean, like it, it's a huge place for whales, you know, it's like,
1:39:17 Mike Smith? Of course.
1:39:17 Wes Larson? Uh, like if, if you're a whale fan, Antarctica is definitely a destination.
1:39:21 Jeff Larson? Grisgids, exactly.
1:39:23 Wes Larson? Yeah. So humpback whales, blue whales, minky whales, um, sail whales. There's, yeah. A lot of really cool whale species there and just the quantity.
1:39:33 Mike Smith? Um, yeah.
1:39:34 Wes Larson? Orcas, dolphins.
1:39:36 Jeff Larson? Not really dolphins.
1:39:37 Wes Larson? I mean, there are, but like, I thought the, the dolphins that are there are really cool. Like I thought those hourglass dolphins were really cool.
1:39:43 Jeff Larson? But like, they don't go to Antarctica. Like they don't go that, like, you know, they kind of stop halfway through the Drake Passage.
1:39:51 Wes Larson? But it, but what we learned was like halfway through the Drake is when you're actually considered to be in like the territory of Antarctica. So I do think they're considered Antarctic wildlife.
1:40:00 Jeff Larson? I think it's noteworthy that they kind of stop and that's the most southern dolphin.
1:40:05 Wes Larson? Well, orcas are dolphins.
1:40:07 Jeff Larson? Hmm. You're right.
1:40:08 Mike Smith? Prehistoric animals I think are really fun to shout out. So there's a, something kind of recently identified called an elasmosaur. And just think of the Pokemon Lapis, just like a huge, kind of a Loch Ness monster type of thing. Long neck, pleseasaur, I guess is the more scientific comp we can make. Uh, the Colossus Penguin, just penguins, but huge, like twice as big as emperor penguins is so freaking sweet to me. Um, an ancient duck.
1:40:36 Wes Larson? Okay.
1:40:37 Mike Smith? You got that?
1:40:41 Mike Smith? Sixty-nine million year old fossil, a duck skull. So there you got that. And the mythological creature I want to shout out. So this is kind of an interesting one because there's not, there's no. People haven't really traditionally ever lived on Antarctica, so there aren't like, you know,
1:40:57 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:40:58 Mike Smith? myths per se, and it's much more heavily skewed towards the cryptid side of things. And there are a couple of genuine cryptid stories that have been developing over the recent
1:41:06 Wes Larson? The thing?
1:41:06 Mike Smith? hundred or so years. The thing, that I mean, honestly, that's about as famous a cryptid as you can get from Antarctica. These are all just stories we're all telling anyway. So I think the thing kind of counts, but I want to shout out Antarctic Godzilla. So in 1958, there is a crew, a Japanese ship called the Soya, and they were all relaxing on the bridge when a huge black object appeared on the surface of the sea 300 meters away. At first, some thought it might be an oil drum abandoned by a vessel ahead of them, but they soon realized that an oil drum couldn't possibly stand perpendicular to the sea surface in a wind speed of seven to eight meters. As everyone looked on, the now more visibly hairy object turned towards the Soya. And as they approached, what they now realized was some sort of creature with a long neck
1:41:50 Mike Smith? and large head that resembled a monkey's, had dorsal spikes lining its back and a body roughly shaped like a cow. So an engineer, he took off, he ran to grab his camera, but by the time he got back, of course, it had disappeared. But the story's been perpetuated with more recent sightings and other, just like not confirmation, but people seeing similar things around Antarctica as they've voyaged down there. And I just think it's kind of fun that like, you know, a continent that's more recently been discovered and explored is now developing a mythology of its own. And I just think that's a fun idea.
1:42:23 Wes Larson? I like that. We're kind of seeing it happen in real time because there was no like indigenous people there.
1:42:28 Mike Smith? Exactly.
1:42:29 Wes Larson? It was, it was fun being there and like, having them show us places that were named by explorers and not having to kind of feel a sense of guilt when they were talking about it. All right. Uh, you want me to go, Jeff?
1:42:43 Jeff Larson? I can go next.
1:42:44 Wes Larson? Okay.
1:42:45 Jeff Larson? So for dogs, I want to talk a little bit about the race to the South Pole.
1:42:51 Wes Larson? Okay. Oh, yeah, let's do it.
1:42:53 Jeff Larson? Um, so there's a Norwegian team led by a
1:42:59 Jeff Larson? Rolled Amerson.
1:43:01 Wes Larson? Amenson. Amenson.
1:43:02 Jeff Larson? Amenson, Amenson.
1:43:05 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:43:05 Jeff Larson? Then there was, at the same time, a British expedition led by Captain Robert Falcon Scott. Right?
1:43:14 Wes Larson? Mm hmm, right.
1:43:15 Jeff Larson? So, he was very opposed to using dogs to like, transport all of their materials and stuff. He thought that that was cheating and that it wasn't like a noble Engli- English endeavor to get to the South Pole using dogs. The Norwegian led by, the Norwegian party led by Amerson, they were using dogs. And it was interesting because Scott brought dogs with him and he brought electric sleds. So it's not like, I don't know, it's not like he was going just like, the show alone or something, you know? He still had stuff, but it's like, we have to push the sleds ourself to like, say we really made it there.
1:43:56 Jeff Larson? And lo and behold, the dogs got the Norwegian party there a lot faster. They chose a better route and once the British group arrived, they had already like, seen the Norwegian flag and seen that it had already been discovered.
1:44:15 Wes Larson? Drat when they saw that.
1:44:17 Jeff Larson? So that's what I got for Antarctic dogs.
1:44:20 Wes Larson? Okay.
1:44:21 Jeff Larson? And then for cats.
1:44:22 Wes Larson? Plus that movie with Paul Walker, Eight Below, let's not forget that.
1:44:25 Jeff Larson? Is that in Antarctica?
1:44:26 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:44:27 Jeff Larson? Uh, cats, there's like, British research teams that were set up in Antarctica and they'd always have a pet cat. And one cat like, fell off of the equipment, that like, this big tower it used to perch on. And then something fell on it and it died. And then they got another cat. And for like, 20 years, there's a cat at their research station. And it was just killing so many baby birds, like, all the time. It would just hunt birds. So one of the researchers eventually is like, we're researching birds as part of our research. Like, we can't just have a cat killing all of these birds.
1:45:07 Wes Larson? It's crazy that took eventually for that to happen.
1:45:10 Jeff Larson? Yeah. So, that's Tubby the cat, shout out.
1:45:15 Wes Larson? Shout out Tubby.
1:45:16 Jeff Larson? And then for bugs. There's no bugs. Nah, Peter's yelling at me right now. The Antarctic gnat. So what, uh, the gnat is.
1:45:30 Wes Larson? Two.
1:45:30 Jeff Larson? Huh?
1:45:31 Wes Larson? There's the midge too. The midge was the one Peter really wanted.
1:45:34 Jeff Larson? Oh, yeah, the midge. I always mix midge with gnat. So there's, uh, the Antarctic.
1:45:39 Wes Larson? There is a gnat too.
1:45:40 Jeff Larson? Midge, which is the only land animal considered to be a land animal in Antarctica. Because it just.
1:45:48 Wes Larson? Great.
1:45:48 Jeff Larson? Like stays there. It doesn't go to the ocean. So it's actually the only Antarctic.
1:45:55 Wes Larson? Terrestrial.
1:45:56 Jeff Larson? Terrestrial animal is the Antarctic midge. Sorry, I said gnat. And, um, we didn't see any, so we gotta go back.
1:46:06 Wes Larson? Yeah. Go back.
1:46:08 Jeff Larson? But yeah, very exciting stuff, these midges. Peter really wanted to see one and we prob. We had to give him his money back.
1:46:17 Wes Larson? We gave him his money back because he didn't see any midges. Yeah. All right. Uh, for bears, there are no bears in Antarctica and as far as I know, they have never existed in Antarctica. Uh, there are no snakes in Antarctica and there probably used to be back when it was like Gondwana land back before Pangaea split up. But now there are no snakes. And then birds, there are birds in Antarctica, but I did still rank it seventh. I think there are people that really want to go birding in Antarctica and it's a big draw for birders. But it's because you're only going to see certain birds there. Um, but there's really not a high diversity of bird life. I remember looking at the list when I was down there and it was like
1:46:59 Wes Larson? less than a hundred species total that you can see down there. Less than 50, I believe. There are some cool notable standouts though, penguins being like the biggest of those. Like if you want to see good penguins, it's hard to beat Antarctica and like South Georgia.
1:47:14 Mike Smith? And they are. Disappoint. They didn't. Just had such a joyful time watching them.
1:47:19 Wes Larson? I, I never was that into penguins and Antarctica converted me. I think they're so cool. And watching them on land be all like dopey and goofy and then in the water being incredibly streamlined and beautiful. They're just amazing animals.
1:47:33 Jeff Larson? They're kind of like the primates of birds, just like an animal you could watch all day. Because they're kind of silly and then like. But then when they wanna be, they can be really graceful.
1:47:45 Wes Larson? Yeah, there's also like the wandering albatross is found in Antarctica. It has the largest wingspan of any bird on the planet. Um, and when you see them next to people, you get a real feel for just how big they are. Uh, lots of other great birds, sheathbills, which are kind of this weird mix between like a vulture and a seabird. So there are some really cool birds in Antarctica, but I still rank them seventh overall. All right, should we do our top fives?
1:48:12 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:48:12 Mike Smith? Oh, it all comes down to this.
1:48:14 Jeff Larson? So I have the midge. I have emperor penguins. I have elephant seals. I have leopard seals and I have albatrosses.
1:48:26 Wes Larson? Okay.
1:48:26 Jeff Larson? Want, I can be wandering. What's the ones we saw?
1:48:30 Wes Larson? We saw royal, southern royal and black browed.
1:48:34 Jeff Larson? Black browed albatross is mine.
1:48:37 Wes Larson? Okay. I picked king penguins over emperor penguins because they're about the same size, but I think their orange coloring is like a lot prettier.
1:48:46 Jeff Larson? Wow.
1:48:47 Wes Larson? I picked leopard seals. Think they're amazing. I picked the B two orcas. Uh, they're found in Antarctica and they're the ones that have learned to do the waves to push seals off of ice flows. Which I think is really neat and they have those cool colorings like that cape that you only get in the Antarctic orcas. I picked the wandering albatross specifically because it does have the largest wingspan of any bird on the planet. And then I also picked humpback whales because there's one named after me. And because uh, it's just such a cool place to see him down there. I mean, I think they're like an amazing, incredible whale. So I picked humpbacks for Antarctica. So actually that is, yeah.
1:49:32 Mike Smith? Five?
1:49:33 Wes Larson? That's five. King penguins, leopard seals, orcas, wandering albatross and humpback whales.
1:49:38 Mike Smith? Yeah, Wes wins that one pretty handily. Um, good try, Jeff. But the king, there's something about king penguins. It's always done it for me and it's probably what Wes is saying. I did, there's something. They're kind of overlooked and I always like that, the underdog, you know?
1:49:53 Wes Larson? And you don't like elephant seals. So I get some candy, some candy.
1:49:58 Mike Smith? Some, yeah.
1:49:59 Jeff Larson? All right. So real quick, before we get to categories, let's just say as far as wildlife goes and just our travels, let's each rank.
1:50:09 Jeff Larson? All seven continents.
1:50:11 Wes Larson? Okay, I've got them ranked here. For me, I'll, I'll go top to bottom. Asia's number one. It's a pretty easy win for me. Then Africa, then South America, then Australia, North America, Europe, and Antarctica.
1:50:27 Jeff Larson? Okay, I'm gonna go.
1:50:28 Wes Larson? Actually, you know what? I'm gonna swip- I'm gonna switch Antarctica and Europe. I'm gonna go Antarctica, Europe.
1:50:33 Jeff Larson? Europe's last for me, and then it's really hard for me to put Antarctica only six because it's so cool.
1:50:41 Wes Larson? It's so incredible.
1:50:42 Jeff Larson? Everywhere you look, there's wildlife, but there's just not enough diversity. You're right. So I think.
1:50:47 Wes Larson? Right.
1:50:48 Jeff Larson? Ah, it's just hard.
1:50:50 Wes Larson? The quantity, it's incredible, but the diversity, it's not. Go with your heart, man.
1:50:56 Jeff Larson? I'm gonna put Anar- oh, Antarctica six, Australia fifth, then North America fourth, South America third, Asia second, Africa first.
1:51:10 Wes Larson? Okay, Mike, I'm curious about yours.
1:51:13 Mike Smith? I'm pretty biased. You guys know where my heart really lies. It's in the water. So I think I'm actually gonna go, I mean, my favorite scuba diving is still in Mexico, but I'm not putting North. I'm gonna go Asia, South America, North America, Australia, Africa, Antarctica, Europe.
1:51:32 Jeff Larson? Okay, alright, so.
1:51:35 Mike Smith? I think Asia on average wins, right?
1:51:38 Jeff Larson? Yeah, let's, and Europe on average is completely last.
1:51:43 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:51:45 Jeff Larson? Alright, so let's go to our categories. So, what's like your most memorable food from each continent? I'll start, so I did, or favorite, uh, I did like personal experience and I didn't want to do like where I live, so I chose. Corn tortillas in Guatemala. In South America, I liked my Galapagos lobster that I had a lot. Where it's like the first day of lobster season at that one restaurant. And then, and it felt like sustainable, which made it nice to eat a lobster. Asia, I'm gonna go that soup dumpling thing we had in Singapore recently.
1:52:30 Wes Larson? Yeah, I'm good.
1:52:31 Jeff Larson? But a close second for Kobe beef in Japan. Australia was my hardest one. I just put ice cream because I remember eating some ice cream. Europe, a sandwich we had in Rome that was just so good. And then Africa, I had some lamb chops in Kenya that were just delicious. And Antarctica, I went with the banana smoothies that our boat made.
1:53:01 Wes Larson? Yeah. I, North America, I picked burria tacos or tacos al pastor. Definitely Mexican food for me in North America is my favorite. South America, I picked feijoada, which is like a Brazilian black bean soup that you put on rice that I think is incredibly delicious. Europe, I picked gnocchi, usually with like a vodka sauce or like a red sauce is probably my favorite thing to eat in Europe. But I love Italian food especially, so that's a hard one to pick. In Africa, I, South Africa does like a bri, which is a type of barbecue. It's just really a fun, like, good barbecue system and they often do them like at sundown, which is really fun.
1:53:44 Wes Larson? So an African bri, a South African bri. In Asia, I picked the miso ramen that I had in Tokyo. In Australia, I picked Tim Tams, the little chocolate cookies.
1:53:55 Mike Smith? They're so good. That's such a good pick. Oh, man.
1:53:58 Wes Larson? And Antarctica, I picked krill for all the animals that are eating.
1:54:03 Mike Smith? What? You did that too?
1:54:04 Wes Larson? I did krill as well.
1:54:05 Mike Smith? Okay, so we'll double up on that one. Uh, North America, I did probably a bad job, but I did New York style pizza. I know it's just so good.
1:54:15 Wes Larson? That's a good pick. It's hard to beat a good, a good New York slice.
1:54:19 Mike Smith? Yeah. Uh, South America, I just put, uh, Brazilian barbecue.
1:54:25 Wes Larson? Yeah, sure.
1:54:26 Mike Smith? Is that, I mean, that's like a million different things, kind of.
1:54:29 Wes Larson? Chuhosco, Chuhosco is like, yeah.
1:54:32 Mike Smith? Europe, raclette. It's like a really melty cheese kind of dish. You do your little dishes and you pour out your cheese over potatoes and meats and stuff is really great. Asia, I'm going pad thai, which is a real upset, but it was all I could think about when I thought about food from Asia. Um, Australia, I put violet crumble.
1:54:49 Wes Larson? Oh, yeah.
1:54:50 Mike Smith? So freaking good. Yeah. And then Antarctica, I'll, I'll go with the, uh, that one potato we ate.
1:54:57 Wes Larson? That made me sick for like three days.
1:54:59 Mike Smith? Oh, my gosh.
1:55:00 Wes Larson? Like eating a big old tonsil stone.
1:55:02 Mike Smith? It's the worst.
1:55:02 Wes Larson? I can finally talk about it.
1:55:04 Jeff Larson? All right. Favorite movie in each continent? I, I did it like, some of mine are American movies that were just filmed in different continents, but I'm excited to, I hope you guys, I let it open ended, so.
1:55:21 Wes Larson? Yeah, I did not do that, but yeah.
1:55:23 Mike Smith? Okay.
1:55:24 Jeff Larson? I really want to pick Apocalypto for North America, but I just didn't know for sure where it was even set. So I ended up just saying King of New York, which I feel like is not a good answer.
1:55:35 Wes Larson? Apocalypto would have counted, but yeah.
1:55:36 Jeff Larson? Okay. I'll do Apocalypto then. And then
1:55:39 Mike Smith? Okay.
1:55:40 Jeff Larson? South America, I kind of cheated too, because I said Narcos, which is a show, but I just love that show so much about Colombia. And it made me want to go there like more than any movie or show. And then next I have The Raid from Indonesia, like one of my top five movies of all time.
1:56:01 Jeff Larson? And then I have Mad Max Fury Road for Australia. I have Inglourious Basterds for Europe. I have Ghost in the Darkness for Australia, I mean for Africa, and The Thing for Antarctica.
1:56:17 Wes Larson? Okay. I picked Jurassic Park for North America. I picked City of God for South America. Ooh. Uh, Brazilian production Paddington Two for Europe. Um, nice. I picked the Battle, the Battle of Algiers for Africa. I watched it a long time ago, but I haven't watched it since and I actually really want to. Because I know it was a big inspiration for one battle after another and they talk about it a lot. But I will admit, when I first watched it, it, a lot of it went over my head, but I do like want to try and re-watch it. I had a hard time with Africa picking one. Um, and then. Lion King would be a good one. Asia. Ooh, yeah.
1:57:00 Wes Larson? I, I am gonna go with The Handmaiden. Um, it was between that or Parasite. But I think The Handmaiden is one that I kinda like going back to more and not in a horny way and just like it's a really good movie. So, um. Australia, I picked Lord of the Rings. It was made in New Zealand. Uh, yeah. New Zealand production company, so I think it counts. And Antarctica, I also picked The Thing because there really isn't like, there isn't movies that are non-American movies. Frankenstein. I don't think, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Although it was in the Arctic. It was, it was in Antarctica. It was the Arctic. Uh. Yeah.
1:57:41 Mike Smith? Uh, Antarctica, I'm gonna give it to At the Mountain of Madness. Um, the long story to production hell fiasco that. Guillermo was close to maybe sort of almost getting into producing, um, just so I don't have to pick the thing like everyone else, but it would be the thing. For Australia, I'm going Razorback, Jaws on Trotters, a movie kicks. Oh my gosh, you guys didn't like it and that breaks my heart.
1:58:05 Wes Larson? Jeff liked it. I was, I was mediocre on it. Yeah.
1:58:09 Mike Smith? Asia, I'm gonna go In the Mood for Love or Yi Yi. I can't pick, but Tony Lung and Maggie Chung in In the Mood for Love are like the two most attractive people that maybe have ever lived. So let's just go with that one. Africa, District Nine. I think it was a New Zealand production technically, but it was, it took place in Johannesburg. I think it was filmed in South Africa, so I'll go with that one. Europe, The Conformist. Uh, it's incredible, beautiful, terrifying, very prescient movie, still relevant to this day.
1:58:41 Mike Smith? Four days in September for South America. It would be City of God, but I knew Wes was gonna go with that one. And anything with Alan Arkin in it's gonna do it for me. In the North America, I'm going The Matrix. It's my favorite movie.
1:58:53 Jeff Larson? All right, let's get some listener questions and then close this thing out. So Jeremy
1:58:57 Mike Smith? Already?
1:58:58 Jeff Larson? Rabinald says, if aliens had, you talk the most by far. I was quick.
1:59:04 Mike Smith? He also had the most assignments.
1:59:06 Jeff Larson? If, you've made this so long, Mike. If aliens had to land on one of the seven continents, which, which would you pick first for contact?
1:59:17 Wes Larson? Uh, one of the seven continents, which I would pick first? I'd pick Australia. I think, I think Australians are like of, of everyone that I've met, like the biggest, the highest battering, batting average for just being like really friendly and happy people. And I want them to meet someone that's friendly and happy.
1:59:36 Mike Smith? I think the Independence Day aliens did it the right way. They just showed up everywhere all at once and just blasted everybody. Just took care of all the monuments and buildings and stuff. So that's what I would recommend they do.
1:59:48 Wes Larson? Just clean house.
1:59:49 Jeff Larson? I'm gonna say Antarctica, just so like, they think there's no life here. Yeah, they're like, well, it's just birds, like, let's go.
1:59:56 Mike Smith? This place is cold. This place sucks.
1:59:58 Jeff Larson? I want them to get out of here.
1:59:59 Wes Larson? No, they would be like, this is the most beautiful place in the world, but it's also cold and there's just birds. Yeah.
2:00:05 Jeff Larson? They'd take all the ice with them. And then we wouldn't have to worry about it melting. That would be good. Then we wouldn't flood.
2:00:13 Mike Smith? Yeah. It's a good point. It would not be good. But yeah.
2:00:19 Jeff Larson? Liv Likes Frogs says, which continent has seen your worst poop?
2:00:24 Wes Larson? North America.
2:00:26 Mike Smith? Yeah, it's Thailand, so Asia for me.
2:00:28 Jeff Larson? Yours is Mexico, right, Wes?
2:00:30 Wes Larson? Yeah, yeah.
2:00:31 Jeff Larson? Yours is Thailand, Mike?
2:00:33 Mike Smith? Yeah.
2:00:33 Jeff Larson? I got, I had to get like
2:00:35 Wes Larson? You gotta tell that story sometime.
2:00:39 Jeff Larson? I had to get comforted in the Guatemala airport. Someone was like, you'll be all right, man.
2:00:47 Jeff Larson? All right, TXN Peach says, where's the coolest place you've pooped?
2:00:53 Wes Larson? I mean, watching a snow leopard in the Himalayas is pretty hard for me to be. Like, I made eye contact with that snow leopard while I was pooping. So, yeah, it's probably that one for me.
2:01:06 Jeff Larson? Yeah, for me, it's Mexico, watching the whales while I pooped.
2:01:10 Wes Larson? Yeah, it's a tough one for me. I guess the, close to the Great Wall of China. It wasn't on the ground, it was a toilet, but it was still pretty close to.
2:01:18 Jeff Larson? Has the best toilets, but they're normally in like a little room with no view, you know?
2:01:24 Wes Larson? Right, so that's what I was in a, in a room with no view, but that wall was close, so that's cool.
2:01:31 Jeff Larson? All right, we didn't really go over this completely, so Alicia Villuine asks, which continent has the most venomous animals slash insects? Do you think Australia kind of gets the most?
2:01:48 Wes Larson? They get the fame for it. I would, honestly, it might be Australia. If we are, if we're expanding insects to like all arthropods. Um, so like including arachnids, it might be Australia. Um, they've got the most spider, yeah.
2:02:05 Jeff Larson? NZ asks what continent's the most biodiverse?
2:02:09 Wes Larson? Asia.
2:02:10 Jeff Larson? And then, is there an animal that can be found on all seven continents?
2:02:15 Wes Larson? Um, like a single species? No.
2:02:18 Jeff Larson? Yeah, red fox is close.
2:02:21 Wes Larson? Antarctica, that was the big, the one that like removes it.
2:02:24 Jeff Larson? Midge?
2:02:24 Wes Larson? There's, there's animals that can be found on six, but yeah, not in Antarctica. I, you know, the biodiversity thing, I should rewind because the Amazon might make South America more biodiverse. But as far as like, I, I would still think it's Asia. And as far as like animals that we are aware, that we know of, like not little insects and stuff that are like in the human collective consciousness, it's Asia.
2:02:49 Jeff Larson? And then, last one, Lisa's Lions wants to know if you're excited for Easter candy season, Wes?
2:02:55 Wes Larson? I have been way too excited for it. I've put on, I, I'm like getting a little soft because I've been eating so much Easter candy, so. I have not had the restraint I've had in past years.
2:03:08 Jeff Larson? What's your main go to?
2:03:10 Wes Larson? Uh, I really, this is gonna sound gross to a lot of people. I really like Cadbury cream eggs, like the full sized ones.
2:03:16 Jeff Larson? I just got some because I was thinking of you.
2:03:19 Wes Larson? Oh, they're good.
2:03:20 Jeff Larson? I like the mini ones, though. The big ones have too much stuffing.
2:03:24 Wes Larson? I like them. I like, um, Robin eggs. I like the little Cadbury chocolate eggs. I like, man, I, I like so much Easter candy, Starburst, jelly beans, peeps. There's so, there's so many good things out there.
2:03:39 Jeff Larson? Alright, that's it for the episode. Thank you everyone for listening. And thank you for all of our travelers who have helped us get to all seven of these continents.
2:03:49 Wes Larson? Yep, we do, for those of you who haven't been able to join us yet, we have some really fun trips lined up for next year. Uh, we're trying to do budgets to kind of fit a lot of different uh, income levels and everything, just so people can make it if you want to. We know they're really competitive. Uh, there's just some, we can only do so many. So hopefully if you wanna go on one, you can get on one. Um, and we definitely, like, we wanna keep going to places that we really wanna go to, so that we're equally as excited for these trips. So we are gonna continue going places that are sometimes a little hard to get to, but we're really excited for them.
2:04:26 Jeff Larson? Alright, thank you everyone.
2:04:28 Wes Larson? Yep.
2:04:28 Jeff Larson? Love you.
2:04:28 Wes Larson? We'll see you guys.
2:04:29 Jeff Larson? Love you.
2:04:30 Wes Larson? Bye.
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