Pod Insights Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks Who is the Real King of the Jungle? - Lions vs. Tigers About this episode A recent argument between Jeff and Wes now manifests itself in the form of an episode, wherein they present their case before the honorable(?) judge Mike as to which big cat truly reigns as the king.
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Transcript 14,494 words · 5 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:13 Jeff Larson? Hello, everybody. Welcome to Tooth and Claw Podcast.
0:16 Wes Larson? Objection!
0:18 Jeff Larson? Wes Larson.
0:19 Wes Larson? Objection overruled. I'm here.
0:21 Jeff Larson? Wes is here. He is our wildlife biologist and for no reason at all, I'd like to just point out that he specializes in bears.
0:29 Wes Larson? I do. And then I'd also like, for no reason whatsoever, I'd like to point out that I've written a paper about tigers and bears.
0:39 Jeff Larson? Objection.
0:41 Wes Larson? Objection sustained.
0:44 Jeff Larson? And then I'm Jeff Larson. I'm Wes's younger brother and I like candy.
0:55 Jeff Larson? And we have Mike Smith.
0:56 Wes Larson? Objection. You're the judge.
0:59 Mike Smith? I'm Honorable Judge Mike and I will be referred to.
1:02 Wes Larson? That's a demerit.
1:03 Jeff Larson? We're doing, we're doing.
1:05 Mike Smith? Or I will find you in contempt of court, Jeff.
1:07 Jeff Larson? For everyone annoyed with us already, we're doing like a court style episode this time. So me and Wes, this all stems from an argument me and Wes had in India.
1:19 Wes Larson? Yes.
1:19 Jeff Larson? When we were looking at tigers and I was like literally yawning.
1:25 Wes Larson? Yeah, Jeff didn't care.
1:27 Jeff Larson? I mean, they're amazing, but Wes made the argument that they're the real kings of the jungle over lions, I think, is how it started, something like that. But I, I kind of defended lions. And then I was like, you know what? We should just air it all out in an episode.
1:45 Wes Larson? Yeah. Cause usually when we argue, it goes really well on this show.
1:49 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:50 Mike Smith? And usually when we do an episode, it's more geared around animal attacks.
1:54 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:55 Mike Smith? If you want to animal encounters, if we want to be a little.
1:58 Wes Larson? Yeah. If you're new to the podcast.
1:59 Mike Smith? More fairytale.
2:00 Wes Larson? This is an atypical episode for us. Our typical episodes deal with an animal attack or a negative animal encounter. What happened? The story? What people can learn from it, how you can prepare for it yourself. That's kind of our, like our bread and butter.
2:16 Jeff Larson? Our MO.
2:16 Wes Larson? But we're trying to do more here on this show, and I think this is gonna be a fun little diversion.
2:21 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
2:22 Wes Larson? Let's do it. And we tried to put some guardrails around it, so it doesn't get too heated. And I, can I just make a concession right off the top? Like, not a concession, something that I think we should just put out there. I posted a video of a huge tiger, and I said something about how I think they're the kings of the jungle. We know that lions don't technically live in the jungle. Let's just get that out of the way. This is like.
2:46 Jeff Larson? A couple of them do.
2:47 Wes Larson? A couple of them do, but this is like a phrase, king of the jungle is just like a term, you know? And the, the term jungle actually comes from Sanskrit, and it means like arid land. So it, it doesn't, like jungles, it's term, the term has changed over the years. So just, let's get that out of the way. We know that lions aren't jungle cats.
3:08 Jeff Larson? What is, isn't, didn't a rapper called like, something a concrete jungle?
3:14 Wes Larson? Yeah.
3:14 Jeff Larson? It's like the concrete jungle in New York City.
3:16 Wes Larson? Yeah, I think like the more modern.
3:18 Jeff Larson? Biggie said that.
3:19 Wes Larson? The more modern term for jungle is like a lot of interwoven plants and dense undercover and understory and whatnot. And so like, yeah, a city can kind of almost be a jungle.
3:30 Jeff Larson? Also, I want to say, we are currently recording in the Galapagos.
3:35 Wes Larson? We are.
3:35 Jeff Larson? Together. We just got off of a dive boat.
3:39 Wes Larson? Yeah.
3:39 Jeff Larson? Supposed to have fifty dives. I had twelve, so. Every, like, once I told some of our fellow divers, they were pretty surprised.
3:48 Wes Larson? Yeah, you did great.
3:50 Jeff Larson? My ears aren't really doing great, so.
3:53 Wes Larson? Welcome to my world, dude.
3:54 Jeff Larson? There's a good chance that I won't hear Wes's rebuttals. I'm just gonna keep going with what I'm saying.
4:01 Wes Larson? I think that's what happens anyways. Even if your ears were working perfectly, I don't think you'd really hear them. So, yeah.
4:08 Jeff Larson? Alright, so yeah, we're gonna do kind of like a court setup. Mike's the judge.
4:12 Wes Larson? Yeah.
4:13 Jeff Larson? So, your honor.
4:13 Wes Larson? I have a, wait, wait, before we start, I have one more thing. Quick correction corner before I forget it.
4:18 Jeff Larson? Wow, okay.
4:18 Wes Larson? Uh, our Romanian. An episode where we talked about the man whose wife was killed in front of him by the the bear. I did learn since then, and I could, I should have done a little more research into this. There actually is bear spray in Romania. It's not widely used. And it's not widely educated that it's an effective deterrent. But you can get bear spray in Romania, and I had said that you couldn't. So just so everyone knows. That is possible. One other quick correction.
4:43 Jeff Larson? I object.
4:44 Wes Larson? One other quick correction from that episode. I think I made a comment that kind of made it seem like. I I was insinuating that all Romani people were Romanian. And that's not true. The Romani culture is very different. It's separate from general Romanian culture. They're all, there are a lot of Romani people all over the world. There are a fair amount of Romani people in Romania, but. I didn't want to, I didn't want to like, yeah, probably. I didn't want to make the insinuation that that is like Romanian culture.
5:14 Mike Smith? Well, I think, yeah, Rome is insinuating that they have the Romanis, right?
5:19 Wes Larson? Sure.
5:19 Mike Smith? That's weird.
5:20 Jeff Larson? How many times an hour do you think of the Roman Empire?
5:24 Wes Larson? I have never.
5:25 Mike Smith? I think, I think Rome needs to.
5:27 Wes Larson? I thought about it. Yeah, fair enough. I thought about it a bit last night. But we'll get into that. Okay.
5:34 Mike Smith? Yeah. Well, are we ready to go? Get the, get this shindig underway?
5:39 Wes Larson? Yeah.
5:39 Mike Smith? I forgot my gavel. I don't have a gavel. That's fine.
5:41 Wes Larson? Just bank, just do this.
5:42 Jeff Larson? I need my big ol' water bottle.
5:46 Mike Smith? Order in the court, Jeff.
5:49 Mike Smith? All rise, please.
5:50 Wes Larson? Put him in contempt.
5:51 Mike Smith? Court is now in session. Please be seated.
5:55 Mike Smith? Well, good evening, everyone. My name is Judge Mike Smith. I'll be presiding over court today. Could the two parties please introduce yourselves and who you're defending?
6:06 Wes Larson? Yeah, I'm Wesley Larson. I'm a lawyer.
6:10 Wes Larson? And I'll be defending the tiger.
6:13 Jeff Larson? I'm Jeff Larson. I'm not a lawyer, but I'll be representing myself. And.
6:18 Wes Larson? And your client.
6:19 Jeff Larson? Judge Mike Smith. I will be defending lines.
6:23 Wes Larson? Honorable Judge Mike Smith.
6:24 Mike Smith? Honorable, yeah.
6:25 Wes Larson? The tiger is my client.
6:27 Mike Smith? I feel like you missed a real good and easy play to the jury there, Wes, by not introducing yourself as a biologist.
6:34 Wes Larson? Oh, yeah, I should have.
6:34 Mike Smith? Yeah, it would have been a real, real solid move. But anyway, um. Any issues that need addressing? I know this is opening an avenue up for more banter that isn't needed, but. Anything else that needs to be said before we get into this?
6:45 Wes Larson? I'm good to go.
6:46 Mike Smith? All right, let's move to opening statements then.
6:48 Jeff Larson? I would like everyone to just know I do still currently have two assholes.
6:54 Mike Smith? Okay.
6:54 Wes Larson? Glad we got out of the way.
6:57 Mike Smith? A play for sympathy.
6:58 Wes Larson? Objection.
6:58 Mike Smith? It could work.
6:59 Wes Larson? Your honor.
7:00 Mike Smith? Overruled.
7:01 Wes Larson? Honor, I would like to say this is my strongest objection of the entire case.
7:05 Mike Smith? No, it's important to know. Thanks, Jeff. Okay, let's move on to opening statements. And I'm gonna start with you, Jeff, since you kind of seem like this is the episode stemmed from your feelings, it feels like mostly. So I want you to be, I want you to make your opening gambit first. In the defense of lions.
7:23 Jeff Larson? In the defense of lions, okay. So I want to start out with just personal experience and feelings towards the animals. So this last year, we were lucky enough to be able to visit Africa and lion, I guess, or sorry, visit Africa and see lions and also visit India and see tigers. If you're doing like a weird calendar in the last year we have.
7:49 Wes Larson? Sure, the last 12 months.
7:50 Jeff Larson? Yeah, yeah. And to me, what impressed me most about both environments was how much the animals in Africa just lived in constant fear. And every guide you asked, like, why is that? It's because of lions. Like elephants don't sleep laying down. And like, if they do, it's really rare. And the guides would say, that's because they're afraid of lions. When you watch a giraffe drink water, it's just like looking everywhere and then does the splits. I don't know, it's just like, that thing's huge. And it just feels like lions are in complete control of their environment and everything's afraid of them.
8:32 Mike Smith? It was cool seeing the two female, the lionesses, kind of just lazing under some trees. And there was nothing even like getting close to any of them. There was a watering hole the giraffe was like very skittishly drinking from. But they were, they were beautiful, but also obviously very.
8:48 Wes Larson? I feel like you're getting into an argument more than an opening statement. That's fine.
8:52 Mike Smith? But whatever.
8:53 Wes Larson? Proceed.
8:53 Jeff Larson? That's not to say tiger, things are obviously afraid of tigers.
8:58 Mike Smith? Sure.
8:58 Jeff Larson? You know, but to me. I just liked how they controlled their environment. Lions are the king of jungle final closing state.
9:06 Mike Smith? Wes?
9:06 Wes Larson? I'd like to start by saying I have a rebuttal to his argument, but I'm going to save it for that part of my presentation here. This opening statement probably is, shows why I would never be a great lawyer. Cause I want to start out by saying, I'm not convinced I'm completely right in this argument.
9:23 Jeff Larson? Hmm. Objection.
9:27 Wes Larson? Overruled. The reason for that is the more I thought about this, the more I feel like the things we usually rely on to win these arguments, things like size, overall size, skull structure, weapons, bite force, don't really apply too much here because these two cats are pretty close to the same size. They have pretty similar jaws. They have pretty similar skulls. I'm going to highlight the reason that I think the tiger has a slight edge, isn't its physiology, isn't its body. I think it's behavior. I think the king of the jungle is going to be the cat that has the most dominant and aggressive behavior, the best predatory skills and is generally tougher.
10:11 Wes Larson? And in my mind, that cat is the tiger. And that's what I aim to prove in my argument.
10:16 Mike Smith? All right.
10:16 Jeff Larson? I'd like to just say in response to that, what I was most worried about in my defense was
10:23 Wes Larson? Physical stuff.
10:24 Jeff Larson? Them not living in the jungle.
10:26 Wes Larson? Yeah.
10:26 Jeff Larson? And then being smaller. So I'm really happy to just let Wes keep going.
10:31 Wes Larson? I'd also like to state that I do think, I do think a pride of lions is the most dominant and effective group of predators on land anywhere. So I'm not here to argue that a pride of lions isn't more dominant than a tiger, a single tiger.
10:48 Jeff Larson? Great for me.
10:49 Wes Larson? But for my argument, I will be looking at a male lion versus a male tiger.
10:54 Jeff Larson? Cage match that.
10:55 Wes Larson? Yes.
10:55 Jeff Larson? Okay. Yeah, I got something for you there.
10:59 Mike Smith? All right, take it away, Jeff.
11:01 Wes Larson? I feel like I should have the opening argument because it directly rebutes his opening.
11:05 Mike Smith? Okay, well, let's go.
11:06 Wes Larson? Is that all right?
11:07 Mike Smith? Sure.
11:08 Jeff Larson? Yeah, I love what you've said so far.
11:10 Wes Larson? Okay, perfect. Again, I'm not fully convinced.
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14:03 Wes Larson? I knew that Jeff was gonna talk about how the lion dominates its environment. I knew that he was very impressed by that when we were in Africa. All of our guides did say those things. All of our guides said those things in India as well. There wasn't a single animal that they pointed to that they said that tigers don't kill. We learned about how all of the animals do have to adjust their behavior based on the lion's behavior, but I would argue that's based on a group of lions' behavior, not on a single lion. And I think this is a simple concept. It highlights a top-down effect that any alpha predator will have on its environment. So I think lions are the alpha predators of the African plains, for sure. I think tigers are the alpha predators of all the different environments they inhabit. Everything from the mountains
14:48 Wes Larson? of Russia to the jungles of Sumatra, tigers are the alpha predators. Nothing that kills tigers to predate on them. I think this is a flat argument. I don't think there's any water to it, because if that's all that matters, I think there's better examples of that. And the one that I think is the best example is the jaguar. Because both tigers and lions have things that they have to be careful with. Elephants being the main one in both of their respective environments. Like, there are groups of lions that have killed elephants. There are single tigers that have killed elephants. But they have to be cautious of elephants. A jaguar has no thing, there's nothing in its environment that it's worried about, aside from other jaguars and people.
15:33 Wes Larson? So if we're arguing based on that alone, I think this is a mute argument, we might as well call this. Because jaguars are more dominant of their environment than any other cat.
15:44 Mike Smith? Interesting.
15:45 Wes Larson? So, the point that I'm getting at here is that both of them do have animals that they have to sidestep. Lions, they have elephants, they have rhinos, Cape buffalo, they have, there's a lot of animals that can kill a single lion. Tigers, kind of elephants, I'm gonna argue that later. Jaguars don't have an animal like that. So if we're using the way that big cats affect its environment as a way to decide this fight, I think I'd give it to jaguars.
16:11 Mike Smith? Okay, you have a rebuttal to that, Jeff?
16:14 Jeff Larson? I mean, I do, I love jaguars.
16:19 Wes Larson? That's it.
16:19 Jeff Larson? Yeah, well, I would say, I have some stuff, I think he knew I was gonna talk about lions specifically targeting adult elephants, and he brought it up first. Smart, kudos to you. Take some steam out of what I was saying.
16:35 Mike Smith? Right.
16:35 Wes Larson? I got plenty more about that.
16:37 Jeff Larson? Christopher, I would like the floor.
16:40 Mike Smith? Yeah, Wes, please, shut, shut your trap. I don't know the legal terminology to tell someone to be quiet.
16:47 Jeff Larson? Could you mute his mic?
16:48 Mike Smith? You shut the fuck up.
16:51 Jeff Larson? Christopher Everett, he has a PhD, Wes doesn't have a PhD, he's a lawyer. Conservative scientist.
17:00 Mike Smith? Okay.
17:02 Jeff Larson? Sorry, conservation, thank you. That one was acceptable. Conservation scientist. He documented in Mcdona National Park in Africa that a group of lions, they've always targeted baby elephants, right? They've always killed baby elephants. This group of lions in this national park started targeting adult elephants. Which is crazy. When you see an adult elephant, it is like, just like, the size comparison is insane to think that they would be targeting that. And I would like to put a photo. Look at this lion on top of this elephant.
17:41 Mike Smith? Alright. I would have liked you to submit this piece of evidence ahead of time, but I accept it. That's pretty crazy, actually.
17:47 Jeff Larson? I told you.
17:48 Mike Smith? That's, yeah.
17:48 Jeff Larson? There's just a lion sitting on top of a huge elephant.
17:53 Mike Smith? Right.
17:53 Jeff Larson? There's also another park in Botswana where they've documented lions have keyed into hunting elephants.
18:03 Mike Smith? Wow.
18:03 Jeff Larson? And from the research I did, I did not see a single tiger that would hunt elephants.
18:11 Mike Smith? Okay.
18:12 Jeff Larson? That would target elephants as prey. And there's been two recorded groups of lions that target adult elephants as prey, and African elephants are bigger than Asian elephants. So.
18:25 Mike Smith? Okay.
18:25 Jeff Larson? The smaller animal is taking out the bigger prey they're taking out. It is like they hunt as a group and they can take out any animal on earth.
18:35 Mike Smith? Right.
18:36 Jeff Larson? Is my main argument. The other thing on here is that they target saltwater crocodiles. Whenever they find them out of the water, saltwater crocodiles have, or not, Nile crocodiles, I'm sorry. Nile crocodiles. Crocodiles are like, what we always say are the most dangerous animal on earth for humans. Freaking lions killing them all the time. They're like ninety percent mouth.
18:59 Mike Smith? Is that true, Wes? Crocodiles, like a Nile crocodile, saltwater crocodile, are they the most dangerous? Like, large animal for humans?
19:07 Wes Larson? I would say so.
19:07 Mike Smith? Yeah.
19:08 Wes Larson? Yeah.
19:08 Mike Smith? Even, would, do you count snakes in that? Are they, they even, okay.
19:11 Wes Larson? Large animal, I would say crocodiles.
19:13 Mike Smith? Ooh. Lions are going after them?
19:16 Jeff Larson? And then I would also like to, I submitted this ahead of time. I don't know if you had a chance to see it, your honor. But I would also like to show some video.
19:27 Mike Smith? Yeah, sure.
19:28 Jeff Larson? Of just lions hunting.
19:29 Mike Smith? Great.
19:30 Jeff Larson? Cause I think it's cool. So this is a pride of lions, pretty big pride. I don't know. So as you can see, lions, even female lions, which aren't as big as male lions, can take down huge prey. Size doesn't matter. These guys are gonna jump on your back and bite your neck until you're just like, I'm just gonna lay down.
19:51 Mike Smith? That's good to know. Your honor, size doesn't matter.
19:54 Wes Larson? Are you ready for my rebuttal?
19:55 Mike Smith? Yes, please.
19:56 Wes Larson? I'm thrilled Jeff brought this up. This was actually the thing I was hoping you'd bring up.
20:00 Mike Smith? Oh, you fell into his trap. Trap card.
20:03 Wes Larson? I read that paper. I read another paper, an academic paper, based on a pride of lions in Botswana that specialized in elephants. They're killing roughly one elephant every three days. Uh, most of those elephants, seven out of eight that they documented them killing, were younger elephants. They're not full-sized bulls. They're not full-sized females. And, an interesting thing, and this goes back to my original thing, what I said, nothing is stronger than a pride of lions. These are mega prides. They're super prides. And if there was ever less than 27 lions attacking the elephant, they were unsuccessful. 27 lions is like the break even of what they needed to bring down an adult elephant. And these
20:47 Wes Larson? were, they were adult elephants, but they were younger adult elephants. I couldn't find a record of a single adult lion killing anything aside from baby elephants. That's what they were able to do. Now Jeff mentioned that he wasn't able to find any records of single tigers killing adult Asian elephants, which are slightly smaller than African elephants.
21:09 Jeff Larson? Well, I said.
21:10 Wes Larson? Would you like to object?
21:11 Jeff Larson? Yeah, I object.
21:12 Wes Larson? Okay.
21:13 Jeff Larson? I specifically said that they never targeted elephants as prey.
21:18 Wes Larson? And that's where you're wrong.
21:20 Jeff Larson? Oh.
21:20 Wes Larson? Just last year, in 2024, just last year in 2024, wildlife officials in Jim Corbett National Park watched over three days as a single male tiger chased an adult elephant until on the third day, they found the elephant dead and the tiger feeding on its body. This tiger chased this elephant down over three days, managed to kill it, and ate it. And I do have photos that I'd like to submit, your honor.
21:46 Jeff Larson? Sure. I object.
21:49 Mike Smith? Sustained.
21:51 Wes Larson? Here's a photo of that tiger.
21:54 Jeff Larson? This is devastating to my argument.
21:55 Wes Larson? Feeding on that adult elephant. Single tiger.
21:58 Mike Smith? Wow.
22:00 Wes Larson? This
22:00 Jeff Larson? That elephant's kinda small.
22:01 Wes Larson? This Indian elephant that was killed, they took a weight, it was roughly the same average weight as the adult elephants that were killed by a pride of twenty seven lions in Botswana. So one tiger, in my argument, was able to do what twenty seven lions, and again, twenty sevens, that break even point are able to do. And again, your honor, I have no qualms with his argument that a pride of lions is a dominant predatory force, probably the most dominant in the world. But I would argue that a single lion cannot do what a single tiger has been proven to do, and that's take down an adult elephant. And if you can find any evidence that shows that a single lion can do that, I will gladly withdraw my argument. Thank you, your honor.
22:46 Jeff Larson? I would just like to point out that the average sized elephant that these lions are taking down, I mean, that's a lot of young elephants. So the average isn't going to be that big.
22:57 Wes Larson? Right.
22:57 Jeff Larson? But they're taking down some that are much bigger than the average.
23:01 Wes Larson? They are. But like, this tiger, a single tiger, killed the average size that twenty seven lions will kill.
23:08 Jeff Larson? I respect that tiger.
23:09 Mike Smith? That's good to know. Okay, well, Jeff, you've made some compelling arguments. You've got some empirical and some anecdotal evidence. Would you like to call any witnesses to the stand or present any more evidence to the court?
23:24 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
23:25 Wes Larson? Oh, I've got, do we not have a lot more arguments?
23:27 Mike Smith? Oh, we've got a lot more, but I'm just, I'm wanting, what's, I want Jeff to-
23:30 Wes Larson? I feel like maybe I should, your honor, if I may make a suggestion.
23:33 Mike Smith? Sure.
23:34 Wes Larson? Maybe the next argument I should present and he should rebut, just so we kind of do a back and forth.
23:39 Mike Smith? Uh huh.
23:40 Wes Larson? Are you, are you okay with that, your honor?
23:42 Jeff Larson? Well-
23:42 Wes Larson? Okay.
23:42 Jeff Larson? I, I mean, he offered to let me bring someone in. I'd like to-
23:46 Wes Larson? If you'd like to bring someone in, I, I will-
23:47 Jeff Larson? Okay, so I call in a zebra?
23:49 Mike Smith? Okay.
23:54 Jeff Larson? Lions are terrifying. Are you kidding me? Your tires are bright orange. I could see those things a mile away.
24:01 Wes Larson? Order in the court.
24:02 Jeff Larson? Lions look just like the brown grass they lay in. I can never see them anywhere. They kill me with one bite.
24:09 Mike Smith? All right.
24:11 Wes Larson? I'd like to also ask to bring in a witness.
24:13 Mike Smith? Please.
24:14 Wes Larson? That witness is the Honorable Judge Mike Smith.
24:17 Mike Smith? I'm here for it.
24:18 Wes Larson? Can I ask you a question?
24:19 Mike Smith? Hand on the Bible.
24:21 Wes Larson? When we were in India, what was the biggest, most imposing animal that you saw?
24:27 Mike Smith? Oh, man, the male tiger that we saw near the end of our safari time in Tadoba. It felt like it was about, it wasn't, but it looked to my eye like it could just flip our car over.
24:40 Wes Larson? I like that answer.
24:41 Mike Smith? It's huge.
24:41 Wes Larson? Let me rephrase the question. What was the biggest, most intimidating ungulate that we saw?
24:47 Mike Smith? Gower.
24:47 Wes Larson? Right. And with that gower, do you think it was, aside from elephants and giraffes, bigger than pretty much anything we saw in Africa?
24:55 Mike Smith? I would say so.
24:56 Wes Larson? Are you aware that tigers routinely hunt and kill individual gower, an individual tiger?
25:02 Mike Smith? I was not aware.
25:03 Wes Larson? It's true. It's actually one of their main prey species in the parks that we visited.
25:07 Mike Smith? Those things are ripped. They're huge.
25:09 Wes Larson? You're dismissed.
25:10 Jeff Larson? Mike?
25:10 Mike Smith? Thank you.
25:10 Jeff Larson? I would like, I would like to question him as well.
25:13 Mike Smith? Okay, yeah, cross-examine. I'm here.
25:16 Jeff Larson? Would you say that you were impressed with the size of a water buffalo?
25:20 Mike Smith? Yeah, I would.
25:21 Wes Larson? Your Honor, did you see any water buffalo?
25:23 Mike Smith? African Cape buffalos.
25:25 Jeff Larson? African Cape buffalo?
25:26 Mike Smith? Yes, I was.
25:28 Jeff Larson? Would you say that the size of a guar compared to an African Cape buffalo is significantly different?
25:36 Mike Smith? I would give the clear edge to the guar, but I'm not going to say that it's any more or less dangerous.
25:42 Jeff Larson? I would like to just say a single lion has killed African Cape buffalo, which I would say are pretty similar to a guar.
25:50 Mike Smith? I think they're more aggressive, too. They kill a lot more people.
25:53 Jeff Larson? They have bigger horns?
25:54 Mike Smith? Yeah.
25:54 Jeff Larson? Right? Bigger helmet horns?
25:56 Mike Smith? Yes, sir.
25:57 Jeff Larson? Okay. And then I'd also like to just point out.
25:59 Wes Larson? I'd like to object to you arguing on the case of.
26:02 Mike Smith? On what grounds, Wes?
26:04 Jeff Larson? When you visited Africa?
26:06 Mike Smith? Yeah.
26:07 Jeff Larson? What was the most intimidating animal you saw?
26:09 Mike Smith? Uh, the lion.
26:11 Jeff Larson? I, I'll take that. Yep.
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30:28 Wes Larson? And I just think it's really important that we do our best to give them good food that's gonna keep them here a lot longer and just increase their overall quality of life. And other cat food brands know that that kind of food is better for animals, but they choose to put their wallets first. They fill their food with all these mysterious- various meat byproducts, artificial flavorings, a bunch of preservatives with names I can't even pronounce. And that Jeff definitely can't pronounce. And it sounds gross and that's not stuff that you want to eat every day and it's not stuff you want your pet to eat every day. So for a limited time only, because you are a Tooth and Qua listener. You can get thirty-five percent off Smalls plus an additional fifty percent off your first order by using our code TOOTH.
31:12 Wes Larson? That's an additional fifty percent off when you head to Smalls dot com and use promo code TOOTH. Again, that's promo code TOOTH for an additional fifty percent off your first order plus free shipping to Smalls dot com. Uh, I'd like to submit another argument, please.
31:28 Mike Smith? Okay, let's go.
31:29 Wes Larson? I'd like to argue tigers are solitary animals. Again, I think I'm gonna base my main argument on behavior. They spend their entire lives hunting for themselves. This has led to them evolving to be some of the most effective predators on earth. Lions rely on their social structure, on pride cooperation for hunting. They're a highly social animal. It's an extremely effective strategy for their evolution. I think it, I think it's really worked well for them. But not every lion has to develop the killing skills, the hunting prowess, the solitary nature of a tiger. And so I do think behaviorally, that's a big difference between these two species.
32:11 Wes Larson? I think lions very much rely on their social structure for their survival, whereas a tiger only has itself to rely on.
32:19 Mike Smith? Okay, it's lonely at the top.
32:21 Wes Larson? It is.
32:21 Mike Smith? When you're king.
32:22 Wes Larson? When you're king, yeah.
32:24 Mike Smith? I, I'm not trying to sway the jury at all, but that was a pretty good argument.
32:27 Jeff Larson? I feel like he's, he's pushing really the one-on-one factor.
32:32 Mike Smith? Sure.
32:32 Jeff Larson? In a cage match, Tate, no, it was, and it's just lions versus tigers.
32:36 Wes Larson? No, you said cage match at the beginning. Like this is a cage match, because I said, when I said the pride thing, I said, I will not argue.
32:43 Jeff Larson? Which is the king of the joke.
32:45 Wes Larson? Right, but then I said, I'm not arguing the pride of lions and you said, okay, a cage match.
32:50 Jeff Larson? Well, I was just saying, that's what you were saying.
32:52 Mike Smith? Okay, yeah.
32:53 Jeff Larson? I'm not saying that's how it has to be.
32:55 Mike Smith? Okay, sure.
32:56 Jeff Larson? That'd be crazy. I think so what I'm saying is in tooth and claw, we use cage match, right? And it's typically one V one.
33:06 Mike Smith? Correct.
33:06 Jeff Larson? But sometimes we will expand those rules to like a Hunger Games type setting.
33:11 Mike Smith? Sure.
33:12 Jeff Larson? I think, once you get up to eight lions versus eight tigers, the advantage turns to the lions. Because the lions are going to hunt together.
33:23 Mike Smith? I fully agree.
33:24 Jeff Larson? And the tigers aren't going to be able to do that.
33:27 Mike Smith? Sure, one hundred percent.
33:28 Jeff Larson? Thirty lions versus thirty tigers, I'm putting all my money on lions.
33:32 Mike Smith? What about?
33:33 Wes Larson? I am as well.
33:33 Mike Smith? What, what's the?
33:34 Jeff Larson? So if we change the rules of cage match, so it's not quite one on one.
33:38 Mike Smith? Yeah.
33:39 Jeff Larson? Which is more like what it is in nature.
33:43 Mike Smith? Sure.
33:43 Wes Larson? What was that question?
33:44 Jeff Larson? Then lions win.
33:45 Wes Larson? Ten billion lions versus the sun, who are you taking? Is that the question?
33:50 Jeff Larson? Maybe sun's the king of the jungle.
33:52 Wes Larson? Yeah, there we go. Again, your honor, I'm not here to argue that a pride of lions beats even a similar sized group of tigers. I one hundred percent agree with that argument. That for me was never the argument. My argument is that a single adult male tiger will beat a single adult male lion.
34:10 Jeff Larson? I'd like to ask him a question.
34:12 Mike Smith? Okay.
34:13 Jeff Larson? In nature, uh, do you think that it'd be more likely that a tiger encounters a single lion by itself? Or a pride of lions?
34:21 Mike Smith? A pride of lions.
34:22 Jeff Larson? Okay.
34:23 Mike Smith? Yeah.
34:23 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
34:24 Mike Smith? Okay, that's a good, that's a good question. I like that question. It seems like we're arguing down parallel tracks, not quite towards the same destination.
34:30 Jeff Larson? I'd like to give some facts about lions.
34:33 Mike Smith? All right.
34:35 Wes Larson? I would still, before we get into that, I would still like to assert that if we're talking about dominance over their environment, I still think the tiger is just as dominant, a single tiger is just as dominant over, as a pride of lions over their environment.
34:50 Mike Smith? Okay.
34:50 Jeff Larson? Ooh, I disagree.
34:52 Mike Smith? Okay, sure. I want to hear why.
34:54 Jeff Larson? Well, I think Wes has already said.
34:55 Mike Smith? Well, a pride of lions is the most dominant predator on the planet. You're right. I withdraw that argument.
35:02 Jeff Larson? I would like, I would like to pull upon a wildlife biologist by Wes Larson, who has stated a pride of lions.
35:10 Mike Smith? I will agree with that. That's permissible in court.
35:12 Jeff Larson? Okay, so some facts. One of the facts that I think is most impressive about lions. So Wes is right. They lose a tiny bit in bite force. They lose a tiny bit in size if you're taking the biggest male lion compared to the biggest male tiger. And especially more so if you take the biggest female lion compared to the biggest female tiger. I think you significance even is a bit more illustrated, but what they lose in that size, they gain in speed. Because they're the fourth fastest land animal on earth.
35:45 Mike Smith? Okay.
35:46 Jeff Larson? Tied with the wildebeest, I should say. So fourth fastest.
35:49 Mike Smith? Yeah, right.
35:49 Jeff Larson? Wildebeest.
35:51 Mike Smith? The wildebeest people.
35:53 Jeff Larson? So, I don't know. I just think that's really fast.
35:57 Mike Smith? Yeah.
35:57 Jeff Larson? So like, if the lion's losing to the tiger, it can run away like Neo in The Matrix.
36:04 Mike Smith? Sure. I agree with that.
36:05 Jeff Larson? Learn how to fight a bit more and come back and fight again.
36:09 Mike Smith? Lions would be great at running away from tigers. I'd say the lions are more like Agent Smith, though. They just have like a billion of them against one Neo.
36:16 Jeff Larson? The biggest recorded lion ever shot was eight hundred twenty-five lobs pounds.
36:21 Mike Smith? Lobes.
36:21 Jeff Larson? In Mount Kenya.
36:23 Mike Smith? Yeah.
36:24 Jeff Larson? I did find a different source that said that was six ninety, though, so I would not like to be quoted on that.
36:30 Mike Smith? Yeah, I don't believe.
36:32 Jeff Larson? Typically, three hundred thirty to five fifty.
36:36 Mike Smith? Okay.
36:36 Jeff Larson? Um, and then another one is just, yes, both cats, both male cats have manes. Wes, we saw a tiger with a pretty good mane, actually, but manes are a visual sign of dominance. That's their main purpose, is to show dominance over, over other cats.
36:57 Mike Smith? Yeah.
36:58 Jeff Larson? So.
37:00 Jeff Larson? The lion's dominating the tiger in the main.
37:03 Mike Smith? In the hair game, for sure.
37:05 Jeff Larson? Like the biggest male tiger's mane is a lot bigger than biggest male tiger.
37:10 Mike Smith? But wouldn't you think that like the tiger doesn't need any like flashy outward shows of dominance? The tiger is just a little more self-confident.
37:18 Wes Larson? I was about to make that argument. I think the best kings throughout history haven't had to prove that they're the best kings with like expensive outerwear and whatnot. I think they just shown through power and you know, through being good leaders that they're good kings.
37:32 Jeff Larson? I also have one more section I want to bring up. I don't know if I should do it now or.
37:37 Wes Larson? Well, I think I should build a rebut. I think I should build a rebut. I like that what Jeff just said. I I agree with a lot of it. I again, I'm not going to go into physical attributes because I think they're close enough to where it doesn't really matter. I think a good comparison for me is even like grizzly bears and polar bears where grizzly bears are generally smaller than polar bears. They have similar physiology. But because grizzly bears are so much more aggressive and have to kind of defend their food much more commonly and whatnot. They usually are able to push polar bears off of kills. And I think the one place.
38:13 Jeff Larson? Pride of grizzly bears.
38:14 Wes Larson? Yeah, I think something, again, I'm not arguing the pride thing. I agree with you 100% on that. The thing that I would say is Jeff just brought up their manes. And in my mind, this was always kind of my big point that I didn't want him to bring up because I do think a mane is really good protection in a fight. And that's part of the reason they have manes. It protects their neck. It makes it harder for an animal to get a good kill on them. And I think that goes into my next point, which is, well, you know, I'm going to leave it. I just want to say that I'm not going to argue any kind of physical facts with Jeff. I think it's irrelevant. And that's my closing argument with that.
38:51 Jeff Larson? Okay, uh, I'm going to need one second.
38:54 Wes Larson? I'll go ahead and make my argument.
38:55 Mike Smith? Take a five minute recess for Jeff.
38:57 Jeff Larson? I need to open one.
38:58 Wes Larson? It's probably my turn to go first anyway.
39:00 Mike Smith? That's true. Wes, what do you got?
39:02 Wes Larson? What I want to argue right now is fighting experience. So it was actually an argument I wasn't going to bring up because I thought it would go squarely to lions. The social nature of lions means they find themselves fighting quite a bit. They're constantly fighting for dominance.
39:17 Mike Smith? Like amongst each other.
39:18 Wes Larson? Amongst other lions. Male lions have to go through lots of fights throughout their life to prove themselves as a dominant breeding lion. That's just part of their social structure. They fight a lot. And to me, that seemed like a big checkmark in lions' favor. But as I read things from different big cat experts, it actually made me think this might be a bit of a detriment for lions. And here's why. Lions spend a lot of time fighting, but it's exactly that. It's dominance fighting. And those lions aren't necessarily trying to kill each other. They're just battling to exert dominance. So basically, they'll fight until one of the lions, it's like, says, I've had enough and walks away.
39:59 Wes Larson? But they're trading swats. They're fighting each other. They're not necessarily trying to kill each other. But a tiger, because it's solitary, really the only time they ever fight with other animals, they're trying to kill that other animal. So tigers become very good at killing stuff as quickly as possible. They don't just like trade a bunch of blows and try and disable that animal. They try and kill it. So, these big cat experts talked about how tigers, when they have fought lions throughout history, you know, whether in captivity or in the wild, they just generally go straight for the kill while the lion is really focused on just trying to kind of beat up the tiger.
40:39 Mike Smith? Okay. Do tigers fight other tigers very often?
40:43 Wes Larson? Not that often. Often when two male tigers come in to like close quarters with each other, it's more of like outward expressions of dominance, not so much battling. When they do battle, they often get up on their back legs and trade some swats and stuff. But it's not nearly at the level that lions have to fight to exert dominance.
41:03 Jeff Larson? I don't have a rebuttal. I think that's a good point. And I think they are faster at killing. Like lions sometimes eat things alive, even like a bear. Okay, so my next point kind of goes with my last one about the mane. I'm just thinking of things that I think the lion does a bit better than the tiger. And I think the lion of any animal has the most intimidating noise. I think they have the best roar of any cat and I think it beats any animal's intimidation. It's a lion's roar and I'd like to submit my last video to the people.
41:43 Jeff Larson? So this is a lion, they're eating a hippo, a huge Nile crocodile comes up, it wants a little chunk of hippo.
41:53 Jeff Larson? And then you see the alpha male of the pride say, you ain't getting none of this.
42:13 Speaker 03 Today, the pride's protector has earned his keep.
42:17 Jeff Larson? I'd like to say I don't agree with this narrator's narration.
42:22 Wes Larson? Samuel Jackson.
42:23 Mike Smith? It's pretty sweet.
42:24 Jeff Larson? I just think it's cool that a saltwater crocodile in the water.
42:28 Wes Larson? Nile crocodile.
42:29 Jeff Larson? Sorry, I keep saying that. A Nile crocodile in the water was like too intimidated by the, uh, what do you say, alpha? Or what would be?
42:39 Mike Smith? Yeah, the dominant male.
42:40 Jeff Larson? The dominant male's roar to like make it back up.
42:44 Mike Smith? It's cool. Yeah, hearing a lion's roar is, I've only heard it maybe once at the Hoagland Zoo, like a full tilt roar.
42:51 Wes Larson? Yeah.
42:51 Mike Smith? And it kind of like you feel your rib cage.
42:53 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
42:54 Mike Smith? Rattle. It's pretty impressive.
42:55 Wes Larson? It's a great roar. And I do want to say earlier too, to your point about crocodiles, tigers do kill mugger crocodiles and sometimes even saltwater crocodiles. As far as the roar goes, we've also all heard tiger roars. They're pretty impressive. And they're actually a little bit different from lion roars. They produce an infrasonic sound that has been shown to penetrate solid objects like bones, which is why people report feeling the tiger roar. And this low frequency sound has been shown to cause drowsiness, vibration of internal organs, chills and even depression. And they think that tigers sometimes use it to actually paralyze their prey right before killing it.
43:37 Mike Smith? No way.
43:38 Wes Larson? Yeah. So I would argue that tigers actually have the most impressive roar of all the big cats.
43:45 Mike Smith? Did, yeah. Lions, do they have infrasonic?
43:47 Jeff Larson? I don't, I don't.
43:49 Mike Smith? Whatever that was.
43:50 Jeff Larson? I don't agree. I don't know that research. Wish he would have shared that with us.
43:57 Mike Smith? Right, yeah.
43:58 Wes Larson? That's not how this works.
44:00 Mike Smith? We're striking that from the record, Wes.
44:04 Jeff Larson? But I don't know, just from my experience hearing both roars, I think a lion.
44:11 Wes Larson? I think to our frequency of what we hear as humans, a lion roar does sound more impressive. I think this infrasonic part of a tiger roar is what gives it the edge to me.
44:21 Mike Smith? Sure, yeah. Kingly.
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46:48 Jeff Larson? I'd like to, or do you have a section you want to move to?
46:51 Mike Smith? I have one more argument before my closing statements. Do you want me to go first, or do you want to go first?
46:56 Jeff Larson? Well, that's what I was asking.
46:57 Mike Smith? I'll go first.
46:57 Jeff Larson? Okay.
46:58 Mike Smith? All right, let's go. I'd like to talk a little bit about the history between these two species. So I'm gonna start with the biologist and the curator of the big cats at the Smithsonian Museum. His name's Craig Saffo. He's an expert on their history. He was interviewed by this group called Life's Little Mysteries. And he said in ancient Rome, there were actually a lot of recorded fights between these two species. And that records show that the tiger more often than not would emerge the victor. There's also been a number of modern fights in captivity. You can find a lot of these videos. There's like a 10-minute compilation of them fighting. To me, it looks fairly evenly matched in a lot of these. I'm just gonna go ahead and say that. There's not like a clear victor in these captivity fights.
47:42 Mike Smith? But apparently in ancient Rome, there was. There was also supposedly a ruler in India that had a tiger that killed 30 different lions. I can't find any actual documentation of that. I will say, to my opponent-
47:55 Wes Larson? Point and I do think this is a check mark for lions and but I do think I have to say it. These two animals did used to exist sympathically in India. There are currently lions in India, but they they don't live in tiger habitat. They did used to share habitat and there is one record that's like on the record. It's verified of a British group of soldiers that saw these two fighting in the wild. And the fight went on for a very long time, but the lion did emerge the victor in that fight. But there are a lot of tales of tigers also emerging the victor, especially in captivity.
48:31 Jeff Larson? It's like Corianta. Uh, shit.
48:38 Wes Larson? All right. That's my my argument. Jeff, if you want to rebut.
48:41 Jeff Larson? I would just say, you know, I'm putting it. You put a question mark on it. I'm putting a bigger one on that one. Tiger killing thirty lions.
48:50 Wes Larson? Yeah.
48:51 Jeff Larson? I'd like to know the conditions of those lions. Were they male? Were they female? Was the tiger a male?
48:57 Wes Larson? Yeah, it seems like the tiger had home court advantage. The Roman Empire was my main argument.
49:01 Jeff Larson? Like was it like the cockfights where one has a razor and one doesn't type of situation?
49:07 Wes Larson? Racers. I don't think anyone's taping.
49:10 Jeff Larson? I'm just I'm just wondering. I feel like if you think cockfights are always completely fair, more power to you. I don't.
49:18 Wes Larson? I completely agree with you. I don't think there's too much we can put on that. Yeah. You know, that's why it was my last argument.
49:25 Jeff Larson? Great. My last argument. Can I question the judge?
49:28 Wes Larson? Please.
49:29 Jeff Larson? Your honors, Michael.
49:31 Wes Larson? Yes, yeah.
49:32 Jeff Larson? So pop culture, right? Disney's done a movie with a tiger.
49:39 Wes Larson? Yep.
49:39 Jeff Larson? And with a lion.
49:40 Wes Larson? Correct.
49:40 Jeff Larson? One's called The Lion King.
49:42 Wes Larson? Yes.
49:42 Jeff Larson? One's called The Jungle Book. Would you say Mufasa projects more confidence than Shirkhan?
49:49 Mike Smith? Shere Khan, uh, confidence. I thi- it feels like a different kind of, I'm like much more afraid of Shere Khan, I'm gonna say. Mufasa seems like-
50:00 Jeff Larson? But who's more in control?
50:01 Mike Smith? Be fatherly. Uh, Mufasa-
50:04 Wes Larson? Who dies?
50:05 Mike Smith? That's true. That's also true. Mufasa, he projects a good image. I'll say that.
50:10 Jeff Larson? Mufasa. He, he controls his environment.
50:13 Wes Larson? Kinda. All it takes is like him to die and then suddenly everything goes to shit.
50:19 Mike Smith? Yeah, he gets, he gets smoked by his brother.
50:22 Jeff Larson? Alpha lion.
50:23 Mike Smith? Remind me how Shere Khan gets foiled, Wes?
50:25 Wes Larson? Shere Khan gets foiled when Mowgli ties a burning stick to his tail as he's fighting Baloo. And that he doesn't like fire. Fire's his weakness. He runs off. That's the last we see of Shere Khan.
50:37 Mike Smith? I think I'm giving that, this little match to Mufasa.
50:40 Wes Larson? I will say though, Shere Khan's big thing is he doesn't like people, you know? Like, people are always problems for the jungle and, and we see him as the villain. When we look back through history, like Shere Khan kinda had the right idea. Shere Khan knew that like, the more people that were around, the worse things we're gonna get for animals. And so, for me, that's like true king shit right there. Recognizing the true enemy. Meanwhile, Mufasa just wants to fight with his brother.
51:09 Jeff Larson? I'd like to just show a picture of both. Here's a picture of Shere Khan.
51:14 Wes Larson? I love Shere Khan, yeah.
51:15 Mike Smith? Oh, he's got the Jay Leno chin.
51:17 Jeff Larson? And then-
51:19 Mike Smith? Mufasa's more handsome, I can already tell you that.
51:22 Jeff Larson? Here's a picture of Mufasa. Just based off those pictures, who would you pick?
51:26 Wes Larson? I'd also, I'd also like to submit two photos.
51:29 Mike Smith? Two Jay Leno.
51:29 Wes Larson? A photo of Shere Khan.
51:31 Mike Smith? Oh, the claws. That's bad.
51:34 Wes Larson? And then I'd also like to submit one of-
51:36 Jeff Larson? Would you tell the audience what you-
51:37 Wes Larson? Yeah, it's Shere Khan looking at his claws as he, you know, looks down at him. And then I have one also of Mufasa here.
51:45 Mike Smith? Shere Khan's kind of like a sassy showman with that.
51:48 Wes Larson? Yeah. Here is a photo of Mufasa that I'd like to submit to the court. That's Mufasa falling into a group of wildebeest, looking absolutely terrified.
51:59 Jeff Larson? That's actually another point I had that I marked as just like facts, I think, but didn't look up.
52:07 Jeff Larson? I think lions are a little bit better at climbing trees.
52:11 Wes Larson? I think you're probably right. They're both pretty similar, though.
52:15 Wes Larson? I will say that I do think lions have better PR.
52:20 Wes Larson? I think Disney's done a really good job pushing the lion is king argument, you know?
52:25 Jeff Larson? And I wasn't done questioning.
52:28 Jeff Larson? If you're working in sales, are you gonna compare your top salesman to a lion or a tiger?
52:35 Wes Larson? I thought, wasn't, isn't always like wolves going after sheep, isn't that?
52:39 Jeff Larson? It's normally lions. This guy's a li- like be a lion.
52:43 Wes Larson? I've never seen a king be preoccupied with sales.
52:46 Jeff Larson? I mean, if you wanna be the top salesperson in your office, you gotta really just be as much of a lion as.
52:55 Wes Larson? I'll also, I'd like to submit, though, that I think some of the most toxic people in our modern society, like toxic men, toxic countries are obsessed with lions. Lions are like their animal.
53:12 Wes Larson? What they love. It's like that, to me, they are, they become associated with, I think, some of the worst people on earth.
53:21 Jeff Larson? Do you think those people are often in positions of power?
53:25 Wes Larson? I think they would like to be. I think they're people that chase power.
53:28 Jeff Larson? So they view lions as power?
53:30 Wes Larson? I think they view lions as dominant, powerful animals.
53:34 Mike Smith? They're misguided people.
53:35 Wes Larson? Yeah, I view them as dominant, powerful animals. I'd, I'd love to submit my closing argument.
53:41 Mike Smith? Yeah, I'd love to hear it.
53:42 Wes Larson? Okay, Your Honor. As I researched this, I did find myself second guessing tigers a few times. Also finding that most big cat researchers do tend to give tigers the slight advantage when talking about hypothetical fights between single animals. Again, I think if we are arguing a pride of lions versus a a group of tigers or a pride of lions versus a single tiger, I 100% concede that lions are the more dominant animal. One on one, I think it's a very close fight. I think that both of these animals are the kings of their respective environments. That being said, if we were to do a cage match right now between a big male Bengal tiger
54:23 Wes Larson? and a big male African lion, and if I had to watch, which I wouldn't want to, and place a bet, I would put my money on the tiger and I will rest my case on that.
54:35 Jeff Larson? Uh, I would also put my money on the tiger. Tiger will win one on one, but I think Wes is doing something very clever right now where he's slightly changing the original argument that we had to a cage match argument.
54:51 Wes Larson? I thought that's what it was.
54:53 Jeff Larson? It was never the argument.
54:54 Wes Larson? It was.
54:55 Jeff Larson? Why?
54:56 Wes Larson? I thought it was like which is stronger. I thought it was which is stronger tiger or lion.
55:00 Jeff Larson? No, the argument has always been which one controls their environment the most.
55:05 Wes Larson? No, it was which is the king of the jungle.
55:07 Jeff Larson? Right.
55:08 Wes Larson? Right, so to me, that's like if these two animals meet in the jungle and they fight, which one wins?
55:13 Jeff Larson? No, it was, I always argued that lions control their environment more than tigers and control their environment, which is how this all started.
55:22 Wes Larson? And I disagree with that.
55:24 Jeff Larson? Okay.
55:24 Wes Larson? I still do.
55:25 Jeff Larson? So, in a lion's environment, they hunt in prides, right? Wes has already admitted a pride of lions is superior to the equal amount of tigers, but hunting solo. So, in the wild, lions are the king of the jungle. Because Wes himself admits, he admitted himself
55:54 Jeff Larson? that a pride of lions beats the equal amount of tigers.
55:59 Wes Larson? Right.
56:00 Jeff Larson? The whole argument came from which animal impacts their environment the most, which animal controls their environment the most. This isn't a cage match.
56:08 Wes Larson? I would.
56:09 Jeff Larson? This is these animals in their habitats, which one is dominating their habitats? And it's the lion, you heard it from Wes himself.
56:19 Wes Larson? Your honor, objection.
56:20 Mike Smith? That was clever too.
56:21 Wes Larson? Objection.
56:22 Mike Smith? Uh, sustained.
56:22 Wes Larson? I would, I would argue that that was one of his main arguments, which animal dominates its environment more. I think our original argument though, was which of these two animals was king of the jungle?
56:34 Mike Smith? Well, here's what I'm gonna say.
56:35 Jeff Larson? I, I would like to say to that. I would never have said a lion would be a tiger one on one in a cage match. I don't think that's an argument. So like, that was never my point.
56:48 Mike Smith? So here's what I'm gonna say. At this point, it doesn't matter what the original argument was. Cause we're gonna turn it over to the jury, the listeners. You're gonna have to all write in with your comments telling us who you think won.
56:58 Wes Larson? But who won what?
57:00 Mike Smith? Exactly.
57:00 Wes Larson? We need to establish what the, the-
57:03 Jeff Larson? The whole thing was always been-
57:04 Wes Larson? King of the jungle.
57:05 Mike Smith? King of the jungle.
57:05 Wes Larson? Okay.
57:06 Mike Smith? Let's just say that, no, okay.
57:08 Wes Larson? King of the jungle.
57:08 Mike Smith? Interpret that however you want. You've both made compelling arguments, one on one. Wes, made me think that the tiger's the king of the jungle if we're talking just one. Jeff does a great job arguing that if it's a-
57:22 Wes Larson? It's not an argument. I agree with that.
57:24 Mike Smith? Sure. But like, to me, a lion, or a king, I guess I should specify, is someone who kinda delegates their responsibilities to everyone else. The male lion is kinda kingly, sitting there, being like, go do the hunting, go do the fighting, all step in if needed. That's very kingly.
57:40 Wes Larson? It's a great point.
57:40 Mike Smith? I'm gonna say now, though, I think it's the jaguar.
57:46 Wes Larson? That's a strong argument for that.
57:51 Mike Smith? Wes, I mean, his like, opening statement, or wherever that came in, I was like, you know what? This argument's kinda over for me. It's the jaguar. But, uh, we're really interested in hearing what everyone else thinks. Um, and we'll tally it up-
58:03 Wes Larson? Yeah.
58:03 Mike Smith? -to the best of our abilities and see who wins.
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58:36 Wes Larson? This episode of Tooth and Claws brought to you by Graza, which is honestly my new favorite olive oil. It's never blended. It comes from a single type of oil, which is straight out of high-end Spain, where over half- For the world's olive oils produced and having this kind of single origin goodness is really important. It means there's no mysterious blends. You're gonna have a traceable fresher product without mixing in any lower grade or unknown oils. And honestly, if you'd told me this a few months ago, I would have said, why does that even matter? But using these squeeze bottles with Graza, it's not only fun, but their oil tastes great. It's my new favorite thing to add to a salad. I love cooking with it. There's no messy tins or drippy spouts. You can just aim, squeeze and go.
59:20 Wes Larson? And they have three types of oils for any task. They have their frizzle oil, which is brand new. It has a higher, a four hundred and ninety degree Fahrenheit smoke point, which is perfect for frying, crisping or grilling. They have sizzle, which is a four hundred and ten degree smoking point. It's great for roasting, marinating or sauteing. And then they have drizzle, which is kind of my favorite to experiment with. It's a punchy finishing oil that you can sprinkle on salads. You can dip your bread in it. You can even put on some ice cream if you're feeling wild, which you know, why not? Life is short. Put some of this oil on your ice cream. I'm an occasional cook. I don't cook that often. Jesse cooks a lot more than I do. But when I do, I really love the ease of cooking with Graza.
1:00:01 Wes Larson? It's just no mess. It's really easy to use and it always makes my food taste better than with the oil I was using before. So you can get ten percent off your first order on Graza's site. And I really recommend grabbing the trio. That's all three squeezy bottles. So you're gonna be set for any style of cooking. So head to graza.co and use tooth to get ten percent off trio, which includes sizzle, frizzle and drizzle, which is hard to say all at once, and get to cooking your next chef quality meal. Graza.co and use code tooth. Speaking, like going into categories now, speaking of what everyone else thinks, I posted a video recently of a huge tiger that we saw in India.
1:00:46 Wes Larson? And I got a lot of responses on that video and I'd love to just read a few of them. If you guys will allow me.
1:00:52 Mike Smith? Let's do it.
1:00:52 Wes Larson? Cause I, I, you know, we just brought up what everyone else thinks and I think people have very strong opinions about this. So here's a few. This one says, they're considered kings of the jungle because of their manes. Read a fucking book.
1:01:07 Mike Smith? To you.
1:01:10 Wes Larson? Interesting.
1:01:12 Mike Smith? Okay. Got a good point.
1:01:14 Wes Larson? This one just says, your thing is huge.
1:01:17 Mike Smith? That's good.
1:01:18 Wes Larson? This one says Ronaldo is forty years old, playing in Saudi. Messi is close to retirement, and all of you people still flaming each other on lion versus tiger. Both are majestic, endangered, and a rich dentist with a bow can kill them both easily.
1:01:34 Mike Smith? That's a good point.
1:01:35 Jeff Larson? I object.
1:01:35 Mike Smith? Ronaldo and Messi.
1:01:37 Jeff Larson? Lions aren't really endangered. Tigers kinda are.
1:01:40 Wes Larson? They both, they both though.
1:01:42 Jeff Larson? Lions have like thirty thousand.
1:01:43 Wes Larson? Thirty thousand, but they're threatened. Yeah. They're protected.
1:01:47 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:01:47 Wes Larson? Lions live for glory, honor, and dominance, protecting their family and territory, mainly battles during his life. Many battles during his life. Tigers are just lonely cats in jungle. Okay.
1:01:58 Mike Smith? You know, maybe dentists are the kings of the jungle.
1:02:03 Wes Larson? It's amazing how many people are arguing about this garbage, and some diss lions or tigers in the process. Like, bro, tell me the last time a lion or tiger paid your rent.
1:02:14 Mike Smith? Do kings do that?
1:02:14 Wes Larson? I don't know.
1:02:16 Mike Smith? I mean, kings, well, whatever.
1:02:18 Wes Larson? This is a good one. A tiger's not typically considered the king of the jungle because the title is primarily associated with lions due to their social behavior, living in pride groups, and cultural symbolism that links them with royalty and power. Even though tigers are incredibly strong predators, essentially, the king title is more about cultural perception than just raw strength or size. Source: Pornhub.
1:02:45 Mike Smith? That's permissible in court.
1:02:47 Wes Larson? Tiger mostly attacks from behind, but lion always attacks from front. That's made lion a king.
1:02:53 Mike Smith? That's not true.
1:02:54 Wes Larson? Not true at all. Uh, I got a couple more. Do you think either lion or tiger cares on who is called king by a weaker race that they can break like a twig?
1:03:04 Jeff Larson? Point.
1:03:05 Wes Larson? Uh, a king always.
1:03:06 Jeff Larson? Proven.
1:03:09 Wes Larson? A king always remains the king. He owns the clown. Lions are kings. I don't think kings always remain a king. I think that's a bad point.
1:03:17 Mike Smith? Yeah, often.
1:03:18 Jeff Larson? Even in lions, they kill the king a lot.
1:03:21 Wes Larson? There's lots of short kings that said like, it's all about attitude, not about size. There's probably like thirty of those.
1:03:27 Jeff Larson? I had a, I had a point that I didn't bring up about UFC fighters.
1:03:31 Wes Larson? Uh huh.
1:03:31 Jeff Larson? Like. It's always the short, stocky guys that end up winning it all. Like Khabib versus McGregor.
1:03:39 Mike Smith? Right.
1:03:40 Jeff Larson? And that guy who Sean O'Malley just lost to from like Georgia the country.
1:03:45 Mike Smith? Right.
1:03:45 Jeff Larson? They're just like short, stocky.
1:03:48 Wes Larson? There's one more I wanted to do.
1:03:50 Mike Smith? You know, I think that song does a lot of heavy lifting for lions. The in the jungle, the mighty jungle.
1:03:55 Jeff Larson? Well, the tigers, I didn't want to bring that up because tigers have Eye of the Tiger, which is pretty good.
1:04:00 Mike Smith? That's a good song. Yeah.
1:04:02 Wes Larson? I got one more here.
1:04:04 Mike Smith? That's a good, we should have brought that up. I guess we just did.
1:04:08 Wes Larson? Lion equals kingpin, tiger equals John Wick. See different?
1:04:13 Mike Smith? Yeah, I guess I do see different. So lion, lion's the kingpin, tiger's John Wick. Well, I don't know.
1:04:20 Wes Larson? It's a good point.
1:04:20 Mike Smith? It's, I do see the difference.
1:04:22 Jeff Larson? I, I kind of agree with that. Kingpin's like delegating, but can still really mess someone up.
1:04:29 Wes Larson? But one tiger just rips through a million people.
1:04:31 Jeff Larson? Another, even in a cage match, I think I might take kingpin.
1:04:36 Mike Smith? Well, yeah, that's true.
1:04:37 Wes Larson? All right. So we got some more categories. Uh, one other one I came up with, I wanted to ask you guys, like, I think if you make an action movie with animals, like tiger and lion are both gonna be like the two big leads in it. So I'm curious of an action movie that you guys like where there's two big leads that face off.
1:04:57 Mike Smith? I mean, I've, I've done this before and I know it's annoying. It's boxing and not act like action.
1:05:02 Wes Larson? Yeah, that counts. We'll count it.
1:05:04 Mike Smith? Rocky versus even Ivan Drago and Rocky IV is my favorite all time, like head to head fight against like two tough guys. I think it's the best.
1:05:13 Jeff Larson? Ends the Cold War.
1:05:14 Mike Smith? It does. Rocky, he wins it for us in Russia.
1:05:17 Jeff Larson? Just US versus Russia, like Soviet Union.
1:05:20 Mike Smith? And it's in, the fight takes place in Russia and they're cheering for Rocky.
1:05:26 Jeff Larson? It's inspiring. Eye of the Tiger.
1:05:29 Mike Smith? Oh, that's, yeah.
1:05:31 Wes Larson? I had to go with Point Break, Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze. I feel like these, they're like the perfect lion and tiger too, where they kind of respect each other and love each other, even though they're on opposite sides of the fence. So that, that's my pick.
1:05:45 Jeff Larson? You know, I really don't get to talk about this enough, but I would say face off.
1:05:51 Jeff Larson? Nick Cage starts off as the bad guy. He hides a nuke in LA.
1:05:55 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:05:56 Jeff Larson? Right? Only his brother knows about it.
1:05:58 Mike Smith? Yep.
1:05:58 Jeff Larson? Uh, so luckily John Travolta, who's taller and fatter is able to switch faces with Nick Cage and become Nick Cage essentially.
1:06:09 Mike Smith? Yeah, it goes really well for him.
1:06:11 Jeff Larson? But Nick Cage, Castor Troy wakes up mid-surgery, makes the doctors give him John Travolta's face, which was never in the plan. And so now he, the bad guy, they think he's a good guy.
1:06:26 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:06:26 Jeff Larson? He's like having sex with Nick Cage's wife. Nick Cage has to go to a jail where he wears magnet boots.
1:06:32 Mike Smith? The boots.
1:06:33 Jeff Larson? And, but at the end they face off.
1:06:36 Mike Smith? Yeah, like for, yeah, that's great. Metaphorically, not literally.
1:06:40 Jeff Larson? Shout out to Predator, cause it's like Schwarzenegger at that point was so like just on top of like the action hero game that is like, we need a literal alien for him to like have a true competitor.
1:06:55 Mike Smith? It would have been great if Van Damme was, he ended up playing the Predator, cause he was originally cast. That would have been a great face off. Uh, shout out also, uh, The Rock versus Vin Diesel.
1:07:06 Wes Larson? Yeah, that's a good one.
1:07:06 Mike Smith? Fast and Furious.
1:07:07 Jeff Larson? That's great. In five.
1:07:09 Mike Smith? Yeah, he stomps through the.
1:07:10 Jeff Larson? That, the real face off happened before and like the legal negotiation for how many punches they were allowed to land on each other.
1:07:20 Mike Smith? That's, that's how you know someone's like a true alpha male.
1:07:24 Wes Larson? That's, that's lying behavior right there.
1:07:26 Mike Smith? If it's written in their contract, they can't get punched more than six times.
1:07:30 Wes Larson? All right. And then we're just gonna do, Jeff asked for listener questions about this topic. So I think we'll just go into a bunch of those.
1:07:37 Mike Smith? Great.
1:07:37 Wes Larson? Uh, to wrap this up.
1:07:38 Mike Smith? You know what I like is when MJ calls Peter Parker tiger in Spider-Man.
1:07:43 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:07:43 Mike Smith? That's, that's a cool.
1:07:45 Wes Larson? I will, I do, I want to say something before I forget to say this too. I'm not an expert on either of these animals. I did write a paper about tigers, but it was like, they were a subject. The paper, not like the focus of the paper necessarily. So if there's anything I got wrong, I think I just wanna like give myself immunity from my biologist title on this one. Cause this wasn't, these aren't animals that I specialize in.
1:08:09 Jeff Larson? I'd like the record to reflect, I am an expert. I actually co-host a wildlife podcast. That's like maybe the biggest wildlife podcast. So I think I actually am an expert on this.
1:08:23 Wes Larson? I agree with what Jeff thinks about.
1:08:25 Jeff Larson? I think so far from tooth and claw stories, lions have been more dominant than tigers.
1:08:31 Wes Larson? That makes sense.
1:08:34 Wes Larson? They got better PR.
1:08:37 Wes Larson? Yeah, we, we really haven't.
1:08:38 Mike Smith? The Chompa.
1:08:39 Wes Larson? We're gonna do the Chompa what tiger and we're also gonna talk about the book, The Tiger from John Valiant, which is about an Amur tiger. That pretty much like took out some vengeance on people. But the Chompa what tiger is famous for being the animal, like the single animal that's killed the most people.
1:08:57 Jeff Larson? Sure, but we haven't told.
1:08:58 Wes Larson? We haven't.
1:08:59 Jeff Larson? Saying of our listener experience so far, I would say they should think lions are more.
1:09:05 Wes Larson? Our only dedicated tiger episode so far has been like our first. Which is Tatiana.
1:09:12 Mike Smith? We did.
1:09:15 Wes Larson? Twelve feet out of her enclosure.
1:09:17 Mike Smith? John Carlos or whatever his name was. Uh, I did one on the Korean peninsula, having tigers like before world wars. No, some cool history for both of them.
1:09:27 Wes Larson? All right, you got some questions for us?
1:09:29 Jeff Larson? Yeah, I do. Rachel K. Ariza asked, which has a higher success rate for hunting?
1:09:34 Wes Larson? Uh, Pride of Lions, I would guess has a higher success rate than a single tiger.
1:09:39 Jeff Larson? I know tigers are kinda high though.
1:09:42 Wes Larson? Yeah, I don't, I'm not sure.
1:09:43 Jeff Larson? Okay, I think they both are pretty good at killing stuff.
1:09:47 Wes Larson? From what I read, lions, last time I looked at this, lions are like thirty percent actually, and I would guess the tigers are higher than that. So if I had to guess right now, I'd actually guess tigers.
1:09:57 Jeff Larson? Here's a good one for tigers, I think maybe. Do tigers scavenge like lions do?
1:10:03 Wes Larson? Not often, no. They will, but they're not nearly at the level that lions do.
1:10:09 Jeff Larson? Actually, though, I kind of think scavenging shows dominance over the land, too. Like, you get things off of a kill and you just
1:10:18 Mike Smith? That's a good point.
1:10:18 Jeff Larson? take the work of other animals. Like, T-Rex scavenged. You think T-Rex wasn't the king of the jungle?
1:10:25 Mike Smith? I don't know. Did they? How do we know that? They think that T-Rex scavenged.
1:10:28 Jeff Larson? Dude, how do we know any of that?
1:10:30 Mike Smith? So I guess that's the next question.
1:10:32 Wes Larson? Tigers, tigers will scavenge, but they don't do it at the same level that lions do.
1:10:36 Jeff Larson? B. Cortna23, I do respect not scavenging, but I don't think scavenging is like Yeah, I think it's kind of impressive.
1:10:46 Wes Larson? Our arguments are over. We don't have to.
1:10:47 Jeff Larson? Well, I'm just saying. I mean, I'm reading listener questions of a thing I said. Lions versus tigers, which is the king of the jungle.
1:10:56 Wes Larson? That's fair.
1:10:57 Jeff Larson? Okay. B. Cortna23, what about queen of the jungle?
1:11:03 Mike Smith? Isn't that kind of lionesses?
1:11:05 Jeff Larson? It feels like lionesses are pulling a lot of weight for lions. But I mean, Wes's argument holds up even more so, I think, with females. Like, a female tiger is beating a female lion one on one.
1:11:19 Wes Larson? I would agree.
1:11:19 Mike Smith? What about the matriarch of a herd of elephants?
1:11:22 Wes Larson? I, so that's like, if we're just talking the most dominant animal in any of these places, it's elephants.
1:11:27 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:11:28 Wes Larson? Like, elephants are more dominant than both of these cats, without a doubt.
1:11:32 Jeff Larson? Do you think, though, I feel like in Africa, so they are more, like, they're obviously more physically dominant.
1:11:40 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:11:40 Jeff Larson? But I would argue that elephants are more afraid of lions than lions are afraid of elephants, like, day to day.
1:11:48 Wes Larson? I wouldn't. I would disagree.
1:11:50 Jeff Larson? Really?
1:11:50 Wes Larson? Yeah, and like, even in that Botswana paper that I read, the only time the lions would ever even try to approach an elephant, those groups of elephants is when they were, like, kind of separated. When there was like a smaller group of elephants that were on their own. I think there is nothing more dominant than a bull elephant.
1:12:07 Jeff Larson? But I'm saying, like, their behavior throughout the day. I think elephants actively try to avoid lions. I don't think lions are actively, like, they don't approach them.
1:12:18 Wes Larson? I think they're actively trying to avoid bull elephants all the time.
1:12:22 Jeff Larson? Okay, no, yeah, I'll concede to you on that. I don't know. Uh, which, who would, or this is from Jossa Lee Keb.
1:12:32 Wes Larson? Okay.
1:12:33 Jeff Larson? Uh, sorry about that. Whoever asked, actually asked this. Who would you, or who would kill you faster, a lion or a tiger?
1:12:41 Wes Larson? A tiger.
1:12:41 Jeff Larson? I'd agree with that.
1:12:42 Wes Larson? Both are gonna be pretty fast, but I'd say a tiger.
1:12:45 Jeff Larson? Let's just do a random.
1:12:46 Wes Larson? They're the throat goat. That's what that means, right?
1:12:48 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:12:51 Jeff Larson? Well, this one, yeah, this one's inspired.
1:12:54 Wes Larson? Nancy was a tiger.
1:12:56 Jeff Larson? Travis J. Clark, this isn't his actual answer, but inspired, or my question, but inspired me. Let's say they're the exact, a male lion, male tiger, because that's like the, the most impressive fighter.
1:13:11 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:13:12 Jeff Larson? Exact same size. Which one wins?
1:13:15 Wes Larson? I'm giving it to the tiger. And again, that's kind of my argument. Based on their behavior. I think the tiger kills the lion before the lion kills the tiger.
1:13:23 Jeff Larson? Yeah. No, I'd probably agree with that. Okay, last one. Sarah Loris asks, which would you be more scared of to encounter in the wild? Like not in a vehicle, you're just like roaming around.
1:13:37 Wes Larson? Without a doubt a tiger. That one's easy for me a hundred percent. There are, there are like the Sun Bush people in the Kalahari. For a long period of their history, a big way that they got food was by confronting a pride of lions on a kill and they would just scare them off. Like they'd just run up and the lions would scatter and leave their kill. You can't do that to a tiger. Like a tiger would kill you. So for me, I think you can be like physically imposing enough to where a lion's just like, oh, what is this? I don't want to mess with this. And I think a tiger would kill you if you did that.
1:14:12 Jeff Larson? Hmm. Actually, one last one here. This one's great. Can't pass it up. Anna Libby asks, which one would you rather cuddle with?
1:14:20 Wes Larson? Probably a big male lion.
1:14:22 Jeff Larson? See, I'd I'd say adults, I'd rather cuddle with the tigers.
1:14:26 Wes Larson? Really?
1:14:27 Jeff Larson? But a baby, I'd rather cuddle with the lion.
1:14:29 Wes Larson? Their babies are cuter.
1:14:30 Jeff Larson? I think.
1:14:30 Wes Larson? I will give them that. They're definitely cuter babies.
1:14:33 Mike Smith? The bigger, the big male tiger we saw in Tadoba, it had kind of like a paunchy gut.
1:14:38 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:14:38 Mike Smith? And it just looked like kind of soft.
1:14:40 Wes Larson? They are so beautiful.
1:14:42 Mike Smith? Yeah, that's hard for me to.
1:14:43 Wes Larson? Amazing.
1:14:43 Mike Smith? But like a mane of a lion would be so fun.
1:14:45 Jeff Larson? When I see a tiger, I want to touch it more than when I see a lion.
1:14:50 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:14:50 Jeff Larson? Like lions don't have enough hair like on their body.
1:14:53 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:14:54 Mike Smith? The stripes make me want to like trace them with.
1:14:56 Wes Larson? That'll be our next big argument.
1:14:58 Mike Smith? All centrally.
1:14:59 Wes Larson? For cuddling.
1:14:59 Jeff Larson? And you'll just like pull one out that wasn't even part of the argument. Actually, it's a snow leopard.
1:15:09 Wes Larson? All right.
1:15:09 Jeff Larson? A snow leopard's a good choice, actually.
1:15:11 Wes Larson? Yeah, thanks for your questions, everyone. Jeff brought this up earlier, but I wanted to dip into conservation quickly. It's hard to to put an exact number on both of these cats, how many are left in the wild. Best estimate for tigers is about fifty five hundred. Uh, they were much lower than that, but India especially has led the charge on tiger conservation, on establishing national parks where they're protected, on diverting money that went to hunting back into tourism, and they've rebounded really well, and they they're continuing to rebound. Their main threat currently is still the traditional medicine trade, and a lot of tigers are poached for their parts, for their bones, for their teeth. And that continues to happen, especially outside of protected areas.
1:15:55 Jeff Larson? What country are you like needs to really get it together to protect tigers?
1:16:02 Wes Larson? There's some, there's some countries where they're like extremely like critically threatened, like the Malay tiger, the Sumatran tiger, the South Chinese tiger are all subspecies that we'll probably see, um, extirpated in our lifetimes.
1:16:16 Mike Smith? I know this might be an unfair question or a leading question or something, but I know China has traditionally been viewed as like maybe one of the biggest offenders of that kind of traditional medicine world.
1:16:28 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:16:28 Mike Smith? In your experience. Knowledge, is that fair to like, hold that against them specifically, or they know worse or better than anyone else in the world?
1:16:36 Wes Larson? I think, I think this is like, a big conversation that we could probably do a whole episode on. And I just wanna say, I think there's a lot of value to tradition, to cultural traditions, to people using traditional medicines, because I think that speaks to like, our values as people. I think the problem is, is that in a lot of those countries where traditional medicine involves wild animal parts, A, I think it's wrong on an ethical level, and B, the demand has become such to where there's no way that you can do that sustainably. You just can't.
1:17:09 Mike Smith? Sure.
1:17:09 Wes Larson? Um, and, and most of those medicines have been proven not to be effective. So, for me, I'm trying to answer this in a diplomatic way. China is the main offender there. Um, Vietnam has some issues with it. There are countries where.
1:17:23 Jeff Larson? I'd say, kinda just like, Asian-based countries have a lot of medicinal reasons to take advantage.
1:17:30 Wes Larson? Yeah, and, and it.
1:17:32 Jeff Larson? Like Malaysia, when we went to the Sun Bear conservation place, he was like, they wanna eat, like, people wanna eat their whatever, because it.
1:17:41 Wes Larson? Yeah, they take their bile. They take their bile and, and, yeah, it's, it's, it's been a huge detriment to conservation. It has completely decimated a lot of different populations of a lot of different animals, and it needs to stop, and I do think it will. As newer generations age, I think some of those practices are gonna age out.
1:18:00 Mike Smith? It makes me really think highly of India, that they're doing so much for tigers. That's really, that's cool to hear.
1:18:05 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:18:05 Mike Smith? That's great.
1:18:06 Wes Larson? As far as lions are considered, uh.
1:18:08 Jeff Larson? Especially for having like, the world's biggest population.
1:18:11 Mike Smith? Seriously.
1:18:11 Jeff Larson? Like, setting aside that much land is really noble.
1:18:14 Wes Larson? Yeah. Uh, lions, there's somewhere, there's as few as twenty thousand, but probably more around thirty thousand lions in the wild today in Africa. There's a few hundred wild Asiatic lions in India. So they're doing better, but populations have decreased as much as forty-three percent since the nineteen nineties. So there have been a lot of lions that have been killed. Those killings are due to direct conflict. Humans often so either like competition for prey livestock depredations. Uh, just people that are afraid of lions. Uh, there are still have lion hunting in a number of different African countries.
1:18:53 Jeff Larson? Dentists.
1:18:54 Wes Larson? Yeah, dentists. And habitat loss too, climate change. There's a lot of things that are that are affecting both of these species. So I think they're lucky in that they're both iconic, king-like animals. That we love and that people care to protect, but we definitely uh, could do a lot more for for both of these species.
1:19:16 Jeff Larson? For sure. I'd like to, we had an idea that we didn't do. Where I thought we should each have to say something nice about the other person. Because like, we do, I slightly prefer lions to tigers.
1:19:32 Wes Larson? And I slightly prefer tigers to lions.
1:19:34 Jeff Larson? But we both love each others, like we both love, I shouldn't say each others, like we own it, but like. We both love both animals a lot. So like, I just wanna say for tigers. I mean, they do for sure, like have complete control over their environment. It was like. The only animal I've really been wanting to see a hunt. And what we saw cheetah chase a, uh, what were they called again?
1:20:03 Wes Larson? Topi.
1:20:04 Jeff Larson? Topi, but then this lion like brought, chased a bunch of deer out of the jungle.
1:20:10 Wes Larson? Tiger.
1:20:10 Jeff Larson? Or sorry, this tiger in India and like leapt at him. And I watched that and it was just so impressive and like. They're just so huge and so powerful and like their coloration is amazing. So, yeah, I just wanna say that I really love tigers.
1:20:30 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:20:30 Jeff Larson? I think it's cool. I kind of forgot that they had manes, but I think it's cool that they have manes.
1:20:36 Wes Larson? I would like to just say that I think it's amazing that lions have a social structure that they're really the only big cat that does that. There's some pumas in Patagonia that sometimes hunt as a group.
1:20:47 Jeff Larson? Cheetahs a little bit.
1:20:48 Wes Larson? Yeah, but it'll be like coalitions of males, not it's not like part of their strategy necessarily. At their exist like their overall evolution. And I think that's an amazing thing. I do think it makes them when they're in a pride, the most dominant probably predator on the land. And I think they have cuter babies. I will concede that. I think lion babies, their big heads with their like spotted bodies. Tigers have too many stripes. There's like too much going on to make them look as cute as a baby lion.
1:21:22 Jeff Larson? I was looking at your Instagram pictures the other day of and that one of like the mom licking the baby lion.
1:21:30 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:21:30 Jeff Larson? Which is so freaking cute.
1:21:31 Wes Larson? They are very cute. Alright.
1:21:34 Mike Smith? I have a question about India.
1:21:35 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:21:36 Mike Smith? In Indiana. I know sometimes we get those two confused.
1:21:40 Wes Larson? I don't.
1:21:40 Mike Smith? But you do you think Indiana was named that because someone was like India and another guy was like nah, because it wasn't India, it's India.
1:21:49 Wes Larson? I don't think so.
1:21:50 Jeff Larson? Could have been New India.
1:21:51 Wes Larson? I definitely don't know.
1:21:53 Jeff Larson? I have a question about Detroit.
1:21:55 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:21:56 Jeff Larson? Do you think it's fair for their professional sports that they have the lions in football and the tigers in baseball? Don't you think that's kind of unfair?
1:22:07 Wes Larson? I think they I think Detroit has had enough bad things happen to it that they deserve to have those big cats for their mascots.
1:22:14 Jeff Larson? I don't think they should be able to have both. Like Chicago, it's like they have the bears and the cubs.
1:22:20 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:22:20 Jeff Larson? Like, you know.
1:22:21 Wes Larson? You think it should be like the lions?
1:22:22 Jeff Larson? I think they should have chose one.
1:22:24 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:22:24 Jeff Larson? Or tigers and.
1:22:26 Wes Larson? Lions and lionesses.
1:22:28 Jeff Larson? And.
1:22:28 Wes Larson? Jackals.
1:22:29 Jeff Larson? Yeah. Siberian tigers.
1:22:31 Wes Larson? Sure.
1:22:33 Wes Larson? Alright.
1:22:34 Jeff Larson? Well, the tigers and the stripes.
1:22:36 Wes Larson? I'm glad we did this because I will admit that before what we went into this and I did the research, I thought it was more clear that tigers were like more dominant. I still give them my edge, but I'm glad we did this because I learned a lot about both species. I think they're both amazing animals and I hope no one ever makes them fight in captivity ever.
1:22:56 Jeff Larson? You're always edging.
1:22:57 Mike Smith? You're edging towards tigers.
1:22:59 Wes Larson? A lot.
1:23:01 Wes Larson? Me too.
1:23:05 Wes Larson? Alright, we'll see you guys later. Love you. See ya.
1:23:08 Jeff Larson? Love ya.
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