Great White Shark Attack - Andrew Carter and the Shark Who Bit Him

Wes takes the guys through a violent encounter that two surfers had with a great white shark. One got lucky, and one didn't. ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! ~~ Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to an extensive library of exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts. For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social: Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast Twitter: @ToothandClawPod Wes: @GrizKid Jeff: @jefe_larson Mike: @mikey3ds Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:12Jeff Larson?

  Hello everyone, welcome to Tooth and Claw Podcast. We have our wildlife biologist and animal expert and he knows a lot about bears and he's a master birder, Wes Larson.

• 0:24Wes Larson?

  Master birder.

• 0:25Mike Smith?

  That R is doing a lot of work in that word.

• 0:28Jeff Larson?

  His younger brother Jeff Larson and you know, Mike had someone, we were on a dive boat in the Galapagos and Mike had someone who's just like having fun with the whole trip, like you guys got along really well. And she like checked out our podcast and the first minute, she had it going for everyone in the boat. The first minute I introduced Mike as eating ass.

• 0:50Mike Smith?

  Yeah. I think it was a good move.

• 0:54Jeff Larson?

  And you know, I'm sorry dude.

• 0:56Mike Smith?

  No, don't apologize.

• 0:57Jeff Larson?

  I didn't, I didn't realize that was just gonna be like.

• 1:00Mike Smith?

  I've always wondered what episode would be the best one to introduce someone to the podcast. If it's a girl I'm interested in, maybe that one.

• 1:08Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, I guess that is like, she'll be like, oh.

• 1:11Mike Smith?

  Wingman, yeah.

• 1:12Jeff Larson?

  Check Mike.

• 1:13Mike Smith?

  You're the best wingman I've ever had.

• 1:15Wes Larson?

  I've had a number of times that I've like played episodes for like people I'm guiding or whatever and I'm always just like, ah, you're right, we'll just skip, we'll just skip this beginning part. We'll just get past this.

• 1:26Mike Smith?

  Get to the 10 minute mark.

• 1:27Jeff Larson?

  Like we proved that you didn't actually get a wildlife degree.

• 1:30Wes Larson?

  That's not true Jeff. The opposite has been proved actually.

• 1:34Mike Smith?

  That's what we're always doing. Like, no, I swear, one piece gets good after 700 episodes. Wes is like, no, our podcast gets good after 10 minutes.

• 1:42Wes Larson?

  You'll like the story.

• 1:43Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 1:44Jeff Larson?

  Well, what you got for us today?

• 1:45Wes Larson?

  Well, we're in Galapagos still. We're currently on Isabella and we did a dive trip right before this. Right now we're with the group of Toothies, which has been really fun. Our dive trip was also great and while we were in the water, I thought a lot about sharks. I, we saw a number of species of sharks. Do you guys remember what we saw? Name the species. I know it's hammerhead, something like. Scallop. Scallop, yeah, okay. We saw Galapagos sharks. Yeah, silky. Silky's, white tip reef sharks. Well, you can't just start answering them. No, I'm just, I'm saying them after, I'm saying them after you say them. You said the Galapagos one. You're right. There's two more that we're missing. Oh, I don't know. Black tip, black tip reef shark. And the Galapagos horn shark. Those are all the species we've seen.

• 2:31Wes Larson?

  And for me, diving, nothing quite does it like sharks. So for me, when I see a shark underwater, just the way they're moving through the water, like how graceful they are, that tiny element of danger, even when they're smaller sharks, just like it, it awakens something different to me than anything else underwater. And that I've seen so far. And so I've been thinking about sharks a lot this week. And just so everyone knows, we're recording in a hotel room. So if you hear any kind of road noises in the background, just that's Galapagos ambient noises for you. So it's been, I've been thinking about sharks and I was kind of trying to figure out what story I wanted to tell. I was looking through some different books. And I realized it's actually been a minute since we've done an episode on one of all three of our favorite animals, which is a great white shark.

• 3:16Wes Larson?

  And so I found one that I really liked. I think it's a really interesting episode because, or an interesting story because of the situation behind it. And that's what we're going to talk about today. Let's do it. I'm excited. So Andrew Carter really loved surfing, like he really loved it. So much so that when he was 16, growing up in coastal South Africa. Don't tell me, he married it. He married it. He married surfing. End of story. He told his parents that he was done going to school and that he just wanted to fully focus and devote his life to surfing. His parents weren't too thrilled about that. They were like, no, you like still have to go to school. That's still really important. But all he wanted to do was surf.

• 3:59Wes Larson?

  If you guys had to devote your life to the thing you were most passionate about at sixteen, what would have it been?

• 4:06Mike Smith?

  Ooh, sixteen.

• 4:07Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 4:07Jeff Larson?

  I mean, I didn't make my high school basketball team, but I thought I still had a shot at the NBA.

• 4:13Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Is that what you were most passionate about at sixteen?

• 4:17Jeff Larson?

  I liked basketball a lot at sixteen.

• 4:19Mike Smith?

  We were getting close to it with that whole master birder thing.

• 4:22Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 4:24Wes Larson?

  Your biggest passion at sixteen.

• 4:27Mike Smith?

  No, not really. Basketball, actually, for me, probably too.

• 4:30Wes Larson?

  Really?

• 4:31Mike Smith?

  Or track, video games or something. I don't know.

• 4:33Wes Larson?

  For me, it was probably fly fishing. I think that's when it really was starting to like, I was getting the bug big time and that I felt like it was the thing that made me the happiest. But I don't know. Yeah, sixteen, that's probably what I would say. All right. Well, for Andrew, it was definitely surfing. He slowly stopped going to school, even though his parents told him not to.

• 4:50Jeff Larson?

  Yours would have been like Puka Shell necklace.

• 4:52Wes Larson?

  Puka Shell.

• 4:53Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, he would have just made a business making that.

• 4:56Wes Larson?

  Honestly, it probably would have been The Simpsons. I was obsessed with The Simpsons back then. That was like, yeah, that was late nineties ideal time.

• 5:04Jeff Larson?

  That'd be a tough one to sell to mom and dad, though. Like, I'm quitting school for The Simpsons.

• 5:09Wes Larson?

  I'm doing The Simpsons for the rest of my life. So Andrew stops going to school and he starts, uh, working at a local surf shop. He's making surfboards in Durban and all day he would dream about saving enough money to travel the world and look for perfect lefts in clear, warm waters. We all, we all love a perfect left around here. All right. So in July of nineteen ninety-four, just one year after Jurassic Park was released in theaters and delighted audiences worldwide, Andrew was working in a surf shop near Nahoon Beach in East London, South Africa, on the Eastern Cape. Nahoon Beach is considered by many to be one of the best beaches in the entire country. Pristine conditions for swimming and surfing, it's prone to clear, beautiful weather, like a lot of places on the Eastern Cape,

• 5:50Wes Larson?

  and the Nahoon River pours into the ocean just north of the beach, and that fact, combined with some really specific geography, has led to a large amount of marine life being present in the area. So aside from surfing, it's also really popular for fishing, diving, and Mike? Snorkeling.

• 6:09Wes Larson?

  Your favorite thing to do.

• 6:11Mike Smith?

  And people are allowed to have fun, whether I.

• 6:13Wes Larson?

  Are they, Mike?

• 6:16Mike Smith?

  By law, they are. Okay.

• 6:19Wes Larson?

  The waves were the true draw at Nahoo, though, and waves there can actually get quite big. So it's become a popular destination for big wave surfing. And there's been international surfing contests that have been held there. It's a really popular spot on the eastern Cape of South Africa. Are we good?

• 6:34Mike Smith?

  Yeah. Well, I was just looking up. You said Jurassic Park came out and delighted audiences everywhere?

• 6:39Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 6:39Mike Smith?

  And I looked up, I just wanted to make sure. I looked up Roger Ebert's review because sometimes he misses.

• 6:44Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 6:44Mike Smith?

  He gave it three out of four. So he was delighted.

• 6:46Wes Larson?

  Okay.

• 6:47Mike Smith?

  To an extent.

• 6:48Wes Larson?

  Yeah, it's a four out of four, Ebert, but whatever.

• 6:50Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 6:50Wes Larson?

  Yeah. All right. So because it was such a popular surfing spot, that's precisely why Andrew found himself living and working in the area in 1994 when he was 31 years old. So around lunchtime on July 9th, he walked down to an area overlooking the beach and he noticed great six foot waves breaking out past the reef. He and a few buddies got on their wetsuits. They grabbed their boards. Sounds like the start of a Beach Boys song. Headed out to where the waves are forming and each of them took a different position in the lineup. Caught some great waves on just like a bluebird day. So we like, none of us really surf, but that sounds really nice.

• 7:25Mike Smith?

  Yeah, I've watched Point Break a lot, so I kind of know what I'm talking about.

• 7:28Wes Larson?

  Dabbled and we boogie boarded and stuff and we've surfed a few times, but like.

• 7:33Mike Smith?

  Right.

• 7:33Wes Larson?

  I imagine this has got to be a great feeling for these guys.

• 7:36Mike Smith?

  Six foot waves are pretty good. I think Bodie would kind of maybe roll his eyes a little bit.

• 7:41Wes Larson?

  Yeah, Bodie just, but he's living for big waves.

• 7:43Mike Smith?

  Exactly.

• 7:44Wes Larson?

  You know, the ultimate.

• 7:45Jeff Larson?

  I think you could still have fun on him.

• 7:47Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 7:47Jeff Larson?

  Especially if he like just robbed a bank and he's like riding that high.

• 7:52Mike Smith?

  That's true.

• 7:52Wes Larson?

  Big wave surfers are just macho jerks with a death wish, though. Isn't that what they say? Something like that. All right.

• 8:01Wes Larson?

  So about 30 minutes into their session, Andrew finds himself furthest out in the ocean. He sits up on his board. He's waiting for his next wave. I think for a lot of people, especially a lot of people in a place that's as sharky as South Africa. This might be a really uncomfortable place to be. Everyone else is in a little closer than you. You're just sitting in the open ocean on your board. The sound of the wave is kind of covering up voices and stuff. And you can't really see what's down there in the water.

• 8:28Jeff Larson?

  But like you got your board in between you and the shark.

• 8:31Wes Larson?

  That's actually a good point that you bring up. We're gonna get to that. But for Andrew, this is something he had done thousands of times. He didn't really have a worry or a care in his head. Neither did his friend Bruce Corby, who's surfing nearby. Bruce was 22, similarly obsessed with surfing. The two made a good pair when they're surfing these bigger waves at Newham. Nahoon, sorry. At some point, they switched spots and Bruce went out deeper. And Andrew surfed alongside his friend John. There's about 30 meters between them and Bruce. So at this point, Bruce is in the like further water. And Andrew and John are about 30 meters in surfing together.

• 9:07Mike Smith?

  Which one? Sorry, I must have missed it. So which one's the undercover cop?

• 9:12Wes Larson?

  Neither of them are undercover cops. Nearby was their friend Johnny Utah. Who, uh, yeah, was a new friend.

• 9:21Jeff Larson?

  Who just joined the group.

• 9:22Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 9:22Jeff Larson?

  Because he's good at football.

• 9:24Wes Larson?

  Also, strangely enough, Anthony Kiedis was on the beach. All right. So what neither Andrew or Bruce knew was that a 12 foot great white shark had been circling the pair. And was now moving toward Andrew, committed to a rare predatory attack. Both Andrew and Bruce's lives were about to become changed forever. And one of them wouldn't live to see another surf day.

• 9:47Mike Smith?

  Oh.

• 9:48Wes Larson?

  All right, let's do a little biology. What's that?

• 9:51Jeff Larson?

  Okay. Say it again. I was gonna do a joke, but I wouldn't. It's not.

• 9:56Wes Larson?

  Okay. If Jeff Joe, if he bails on a joke, you know it's bad. All right, so a little biology. We've talked about the shark a fair amount on the podcast. It's been a minute since we've done a full episode on them. So we're gonna gloss over some basic biology. And then we're gonna go into some interesting facts about their status in South Africa. First of all, this is the largest macro predatory shark in the world. And the largest macro predatory fish in the world. Can one of you guys remind our listeners what macro predatory means? Do you guys remember? You can probably piece it together just by like looking at the word too.

• 10:29Mike Smith?

  Yeah, micro is small.

• 10:32Wes Larson?

  Yes.

• 10:33Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, macro is so that's big.

• 10:35Wes Larson?

  Macro's big, good.

• 10:37Jeff Larson?

  Um, I'd guess it has like some. Things to do with like the amount of ambition the animal has, do you? Like an ambitious animal is a macro.

• 10:46Wes Larson?

  Like an alpha?

• 10:47Jeff Larson?

  Kinda, yeah.

• 10:48Wes Larson?

  Uh, no. Isn't that a kind of fish, a macro? Kind of. Mackerel is what you're thinking of. That's the word. I'm not gonna ask you guys those kind of questions anymore. I'm just gonna answer them.

• 11:01Wes Larson?

  Macro predatory pretty much means that they're eating bigger food. So like there are bigger sharks than the great white shark, but they're mostly eating like small schooling fish, krill, stuff like whale shark and basking sharks and mega mouth sharks. Macro predatory means they're eating like larger fish, marine mammals, other bigger stuff. So that's what macro predatory means. Since mac and cheese is, they're small. Yeah, but that, a mac and cheese would probably be big enough that it would be a macro predator. You could have a big ol' bowl of mac and cheese.

• 11:33Jeff Larson?

  That's a real juxtaposition, I think.

• 11:36Wes Larson?

  Yeah, if it was just one mac and cheese, it's just one mac and cheese, that would be enough. Yeah. That's one mac, one cheese.

• 11:46Jeff Larson?

  So like a Big Mac? Is that macro if I'm eating those?

• 11:50Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I think a Big Mac, it'd be big enough for it to be a macro. It's right in the name. Big Mac.

• 11:55Jeff Larson?

  I'm a macro predator.

• 12:00Wes Larson?

  So these are big sharks. The largest confirmed measurement of a great white puts them around 6.3 meters, which is roughly 20 feet and upwards of 4,000 pounds. A two-ton shark, that's a big, a big animal. Females are significantly larger than males. The average length for an adult male gray white is about 12 feet long, while females are typically in the 15 to 16 foot long range. They're mostly found throughout coastal and offshore waters that have temperatures between 12 and 24 degrees Celsius, which is about 54 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit. So temperate waters. Uh, some of the greatest concentrations of white sharks are found in the coastal seas around California, South Africa, and Oceania.

• 12:41Wes Larson?

  So Oceania, Australia, New Zealand, that area. But they can be found throughout the world in temperate waters. So Japan, Mediterranean, a few other places where there's like decent concentrations of great whites.

• 12:55Wes Larson?

  The western cape of South Africa traditionally has been one of the most robust populations of white sharks in the world. So many sharks were found around places like False Bay and Gansby, that there was a robust shark cage diving industry in the area. I went cage diving there in 2019 in Mussel Bay, and it's a place where filmmakers would go to make documentaries about them. You've no doubt seen the videos of of white sharks like breaching. Yeah. And that's where they filmed that. Oh. Was in South Africa. So is that like how South Africans say Mussel Bay?

• 13:28Mike Smith?

  Mussel Beach.

• 13:28Wes Larson?

  Mussel Bay. Mussel. Mussel.

• 13:31Mike Smith?

  That's how.

• 13:32Wes Larson?

  You got some big muscles. Yeah. No, it's not.

• 13:36Mike Smith?

  I'm thinking about mac and cheese still.

• 13:38Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 13:38Mike Smith?

  So you're looking for like a small little snack. You take one noodle and you slip like one shredded cheese through the macaroni noodle.

• 13:47Wes Larson?

  Is that a mac and cheese?

• 13:49Mike Smith?

  I think it might be.

• 13:50Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 13:53Wes Larson?

  Okay. Are you good to move on from it?

• 13:55Mike Smith?

  I do have one serious question if you're done with biology or.

• 13:59Wes Larson?

  I'm not done with biology. Yeah, sorry. Is it a mac and is it a mac and cheese question?

• 14:05Mike Smith?

  It's not. It's a good question, I think. I think.

• 14:07Wes Larson?

  Do you want to do it now or do you want to do it?

• 14:09Mike Smith?

  Well, so the story we're talking about six foot waves and I was just wondering what if sharks are more likely or less likely to be in a scenario where there is a break or if there isn't.

• 14:20Wes Larson?

  I don't think it really affects them much.

• 14:21Mike Smith?

  Really? They don't really?

• 14:23Wes Larson?

  I don't think it really has a big deal. I don't I don't think you're gonna see them in places where you're having like a reef break where there's like not much room between the churn and the bottom, but in these places it's not, that's not really the situation. So I've seen a lot of photos of great whites like in waves.

• 14:40Mike Smith?

  Yeah. Oh, I was just asking since we were, we did some diving with some sea lions and it was a pretty hefty kind of like swell in and out.

• 14:48Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 14:48Mike Smith?

  We were really affected by it.

• 14:50Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 14:50Mike Smith?

  But the sea lions just kind of moved through it like it was nothing almost.

• 14:53Wes Larson?

  I think it's pretty similar with sharks. Do you think they might even kind of like getting in the wave every once in a while?

• 14:58Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 14:59Wes Larson?

  But I, yeah, I don't think you'd expect to find them like right where the waves are crashing, like in that exact spot, but around that area, they're still gonna be around.

• 15:07Mike Smith?

  Cool.

• 15:09Wes Larson?

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• 15:53Wes Larson?

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• 16:38Jeff Larson?

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• 17:25Wes Larson?

  All right. So around 2013, we're talking about these heavily populated areas in the western Cape of South Africa. Around 2013, shark cage diving operators in those places started reporting less and less sharks year by year.

• 17:39Jeff Larson?

  What happened?

• 17:39Wes Larson?

  Well, we're gonna get to it. Can you, can you wait? Can we put a tiny pin in it? The pin's gonna fall out in like 15 seconds. By the late 2010s, around when I went, some of those places that would see multiple great whites per day in the early 2000s, we're now not seeing any great whites over the entire season. So I remember when I visited South Africa, I first looked at like Gansby, because that's where I'd heard it was the best, and they weren't seeing any sharks at all. So we moved further to Mossel Bay, and that's where they were still having like somewhat frequent sightings. And now even in Mossel Bay, I don't think they're seeing them very often.

• 18:14Jeff Larson?

  Why not?

• 18:15Wes Larson?

  There's a few theories. There's a few theories for what might be going on in the western Cape. One of the leading ones is that a group of orcas has moved into that area, and they've become highly specialized in killing great white sharks.

• 18:29Jeff Larson?

  Oh, man.

• 18:29Wes Larson?

  And when they do it, they mostly just eat their livers. You know, maybe with Yeah. some Quixote and fava beans.

• 18:39Wes Larson?

  Those orcas probably killed enough great whites that a lot of the others just moved out. These are intelligent animals. I think if they see enough orcas in the area, they're just not gonna hang around. So I think, you know, they, enough great whites see orcas around, they're probably just gonna move out of that area. So I don't think what we're talking about here is that those few orcas decimated that population so much as that they scared those great whites out of those areas.

• 19:04Jeff Larson?

  Hmm.

• 19:05Wes Larson?

  And what's happening now is they're seeing other sharks move in, sharks like bronze whaler sharks, a few other types, seven gill sharks, but the great whites aren't there anymore. Now, there are

• 19:15Jeff Larson?

  Crazy. Yeah, they're just like take, it's like one bite type of situation?

• 19:19Wes Larson?

  Uh, I think they kill them by like ramming them, and then, yeah, they just like eat out their livers.

• 19:24Jeff Larson?

  Because like, are they that much bigger than a great white?

• 19:27Wes Larson?

  They're significantly bigger.

• 19:28Jeff Larson?

  Like, well, if a great white rammed an orca as hard as it could.

• 19:32Wes Larson?

  It wouldn't do anything. Read it. If they bit it, it would take a big chunk out of it. Yeah. But it probably won't kill it. It just may get mad. There's a video that actually I think a friend of mine, Aaron, helped record of a killer whale or an orca ramming like a big female great white shark out in the open ocean. Yeah. And it's pretty impressive and you can just see like they're not equally matched at all. Hmm. Yeah. The crazy thing though, the interesting thing is that roughly during this time when these white sharks were disappearing from the western cape, large numbers of white sharks started being reported in the eastern cape. Now, there are some papers that refute the theory about the orcas that they're saying it may just be one of several factors that led to sharks shifting their territory east.

• 20:14Wes Larson?

  But whatever's going on is pretty fascinating and it happened really fast. This is like, when you think about it, it'd be like suddenly if every grizzly bear in Yellowstone moved up to glacier over a period of like 10 years, that'd be crazy. Everyone would be, you know, like pretty shocked by what's happening. And that's similar. And they are a highly migratory species. So while they'll often return to the same coast during specific parts of the year, they do sometimes also go out into the open ocean to congregate in deeper waters. This is also something I found really interesting. This phenomenon has been studied particularly well with great whites on the Pacific coast of the US and Baja California. And researchers have seen tag sharks travel to an area between Baja and Hawaii that they've named the White Shark Cafe.

• 20:59Wes Larson?

  At this cafe, sharks spend about 100 days in the area and researchers aren't completely sure what they're doing there. But some recent research seems to indicate that they're feeding on squid and fish that also show up in that area during that time of year. Hmm. And the reason they think that's what's happening is they see these sharks, especially the males, doing these like up and down dives. They're diving really deep, like hundreds of meters deep. And they're following kind of the pattern of what squid do. So squid go down into like deep, dark water during the day and they come up closer to the surface to feed. And the great whites are showing essentially the same kind of movement pattern through the water. And it's crazy how deep they're diving.

• 21:41Wes Larson?

  I don't remember exactly, but I feel like I read like 900 meters, which is really, really deep. That'd be what, like, almost three thousand feet deep? And they're just out there eating squid and fish for a while, which is really cool. In the middle of the ocean. All right, a couple more things. Great whites, the most popular name in this for the species in the U.S. Elsewhere throughout their range, white shark is a common name for them. It's what a lot of shark scientists call them. In Australia, they call them.

• 22:07Mike Smith?

  White pointer?

• 22:08Wes Larson?

  Correct, white pointer. Uh, all those names are indicative of the bright white coloration of their ventral or their bottom side. They look especially white when they're dead or dying individuals are found belly up on beaches. So they think that might be part of that naming convention. When people first saw them, they were on the shore.

• 22:26Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, it feels like they're kind of just ignoring all the gray.

• 22:30Wes Larson?

  Yeah, they should be like a two-tone shark or something.

• 22:32Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, like a white and gray shark.

• 22:34Mike Smith?

  Is that an often thing, you find a dead great white shark?

• 22:37Wes Larson?

  Not that often.

• 22:38Mike Smith?

  Not often.

• 22:38Wes Larson?

  It was probably like ones they'd caught fishing to, and they would often like drag them ashore and they just look bright white.

• 22:44Jeff Larson?

  I'd call, I call them white-bellied graybacks.

• 22:47Wes Larson?

  That's a good name, sure. It's kind of long.

• 22:50Mike Smith?

  A little unwieldy, make an acronym out of it, maybe.

• 22:52Wes Larson?

  Bitey, white-bellied graybacks. I like that. Another really interesting thing about their color. We recently learned in a study in 2022, it showed that great whites may use different hormones to actually control their color, making themselves darker to prey above or lighter during periods of great excitement.

• 23:11Jeff Larson?

  Oh, wow.

• 23:11Wes Larson?

  So they have a melanocyte stimulating hormone that can cause melanocytes in the skin of a great white to dissipate. And that gives them a darker color, effectively camouflaging themselves. So this hasn't been outright proven, but there are species of horn sharks and other sharks that have been proven to be able to like, change their skin color to camouflage themselves. So they think that this is very possible for great whites.

• 23:36Jeff Larson?

  That's cool.

• 23:36Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 23:37Mike Smith?

  That's awesome.

• 23:37Wes Larson?

  The study found that in a few individuals, but there hasn't been a sample size big enough yet. All right, they eat fish, marine mammals, marine invertebrates. Uh, many of the coastal great whites specialize in marine mammals, specifically pinup heads like fur seals, elephant seals, sea lions. They often deliver a devastating bite in an ambush attack and then take their time to finish off their prey. Which is really smart. If you're an animal that could get bit by your prey, if you just like really mess it up with one big bite, then you can kind of just wait for it to bleed out and you don't have to take any more risk. And that pattern often follows in attacks on people. So shark attack specialists are a bit divided between thinking if that first bite is often enough to either

• 24:21Wes Larson?

  the shark's just trying to dehabilitate the person to come back in, or if it's like a mistaken identity. Or like we've talked about a lot on the show, it might be just like it bites into a person. It's like, this is too bony. I don't even want to eat this.

• 24:34Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 24:35Wes Larson?

  Like an exploratory bite. So I've kind of gone all over. I do kind of like this idea though, that some shark biologists think that they're actually trying to like kill a person with that big bite. But then often with people, the person can either escape, like they can get into a boat, or their friends come in and help and the shark just decides not to do.

• 24:57Jeff Larson?

  Like it takes its time a little too much.

• 24:59Wes Larson?

  Yeah. And people are able to get away.

• 25:01Jeff Larson?

  That makes sense.

• 25:02Wes Larson?

  Like pinup heads often aren't.

• 25:03Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 25:04Mike Smith?

  Tortoise and the hare kind of thing.

• 25:06Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 25:06Mike Smith?

  Finish the race, dude.

• 25:07Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 25:08Mike Smith?

  I think that's why a lot of people are taking Ozempic to shed off all the fleshy bits.

• 25:12Wes Larson?

  So they're not attractive to gray whites anymore?

• 25:15Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 25:16Jeff Larson?

  I don't think that's in the top thirty reasons.

• 25:20Wes Larson?

  Thirty?

• 25:21Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 25:22Wes Larson?

  What? Really?

• 25:22Jeff Larson?

  No, I don't.

• 25:24Wes Larson?

  That's the other, and that's the other big kind of prevailing theory is that they're just coming up and biting us and thinking, oh, wow, that's like way too much bone, not enough fat, whatever. I don't really buy, personally, I don't buy into the mistaken identity thing. I think this is way too perfect of a predator to mistake us for a seal.

• 25:43Jeff Larson?

  Yeah. You think they know what surfboards look like though?

• 25:46Wes Larson?

  Uh, no.

• 25:47Jeff Larson?

  So they, what do you think they think it is?

• 25:50Wes Larson?

  I think they're just checking it out, you know? Again, like they don't have hands to reach out and touch something and feel what it is. They're opportunistic predators, so they investigate with their mouths.

• 26:01Mike Smith?

  It's like that, the Japanese game show where everything, like there's a secret object in the room made out of chocolate. And the guy has to go around biting everything until he finds what it is.

• 26:10Jeff Larson?

  Or like, is it, is it cake?

• 26:11Mike Smith?

  It's amazing.

• 26:12Jeff Larson?

  Yeah. Where you have to like bite cake stuff to see if it's cake or not?

• 26:16Wes Larson?

  Those are weirdly perfect analogies for this.

• 26:20Wes Larson?

  All right. Well, Andrew Carter was about to get one of those devastating bites. As he looked out over the swirling ocean and prepped himself for the next set of waves, he didn't get any indication of the 12-foot white shark shooting toward him in the water, opening its mouth and rolling back its eyes as it approached his left thigh. No fin broke the surface. There's no speeding blur in the murky water, no ominous soundtrack in the background. Just one minute, he's sitting calmly on his board, and suddenly something slams into his leg, like a huge truck.

• 26:57Wes Larson?

  All right, so Andrew rolls sideways in the water, and as he does that, he feels stuck to his board, like it was impossible to slide off.

• 27:05Jeff Larson?

  Oh, wow.

• 27:06Wes Larson?

  There's a really good reason for this.

• 27:07Jeff Larson?

  Shark's mouth.

• 27:08Wes Larson?

  Yes, the top jaw of the shark was firmly crushing down into his thigh, while the bottom jaw was chewing into the board. So he was literally pinned to his board in the mouth of the shark, and he watched as these teeth cleanly separated skin, flesh, and muscle from his leg, and the shark shook its head, and those teeth were slicing down and hitting his femur bone.

• 27:30Jeff Larson?

  Ah.

• 27:31Wes Larson?

  He let out one shrill, piercing scream, and almost immediately the water around him turned red from this cloud of blood pouring out of his leg. Now, for John, who was right next to him, watching a huge shark peel away all the flesh from Andrew's leg, was a lot for him to handle, and thinking his friend was literally about to be bitten in half, he just started paddling for sure. And Andrew, I watched an interview with Andrew. I read a lot of articles about this. He definitely did not blame John for this. Like, he, he kind of thought he was dead too, and, you know, that's a scary thing to see.

• 28:03Mike Smith?

  Yeah, I wouldn't hold it against you guys.

• 28:05Wes Larson?

  Yeah, it does.

• 28:07Jeff Larson?

  Roughly like surfed.

• 28:09Mike Smith?

  Or like, if you kept taking the good bed in hotel rooms.

• 28:13Jeff Larson?

  I'm in the worst bed ever. But like, what if like a perfect wave was coming while you're getting attacked?

• 28:23Wes Larson?

  Would you go that against me if I like took the wave? No, no, no, no, I wouldn't. There is like, and, and we'll talk about this when we kind of get into what you should do. There is a lot of evidence that shows that when people go to rescue a shark bite victim, that it often stops the, the shark from coming back in. Uh, so we should. You should help if you, if you can make that happen, but I don't blame anyone for being pretty scared. Does that work with like sea lions? It probably would, yeah. If like two more come and just get in there? In fact, recently I saw a video of like a pod of, I think they're called pods of sea lions that like chased a great white shark away. Cause there's so many of them. Yeah. All right. So not the king of the ocean jungle then? No, that work. Yeah.

• 29:08Wes Larson?

  Kelp forest. Andrew's still staring at the shark sawing through his leg and all he could do was hold on to his board in horror and watch the shark chew through him. Suddenly the shark adjusted its bite, probably to kind of lurch forward and bite down even more and get a bigger grip. But because Andrew was holding his board so tightly, this momentary loss of pressure caused the board to kind of shift. When there wasn't pressure from the shark anymore and it jammed sideways into the shark's mouth. No way. Free himself. Yeah. And the shark started shaking the board back and forth, tears a huge chunk out of it. It's super frustrated, but Andrew's free. Yeah. His first impulse is to start swimming for shore, but he's bleeding a lot and he's a couple hundred meters from shore.

• 29:53Wes Larson?

  So he's pretty far and he knew that if he kept swimming, he's just going to be easy pickings for this great white. If it decides to follow him. So he knows probably his only source of help at this point is his surfboard, which is in the jaws of great white shark. Wow. He turns around, he faces the shark, it's still tearing at his board. But when he turns around and faces it, it releases his board and disappears into the water. He doesn't really have a choice at this point, so he swims back to his mangled surfboard, climbs onto it, paddles a few strokes and then catches the luckiest wave of his life. No way. Surf's into shore. He surfed? I mean. Like on his body? That's insane. That's awesome. That's cool. Yeah. Love you went back out for like more.

• 30:38Wes Larson?

  That's a good way.

• 30:41Wes Larson?

  paddles the rest of the way in, climbs onto some rocks where two girls that were sunbathing run over to help him. Andrew's clutching the top of his thigh, trying to stem the bleeding. He's already starting to feel incredibly weak and dizzy from all the blood he's lost. And he tells the girls that he needs a tourniquet. So one of them takes off her shirt, ties it tightly around his leg to slow the bleeding. His leg's so torn up that only about two inches of flesh seemed to be holding the rest of his muscle and his leg to his torso. Ugh. I will say, it does seem like it was torn up from like puncture wounds, not so much from ripping and tearing. He didn't actually end up losing a lot of meat, but the shark had bit kind of a perfect circle around his butt and his upper thigh. Yeah. One of these girls is holding his hand and he said he could feel her warmth passing

• 31:26Wes Larson?

  through her hand and into him, and he knew that he was about to die. His life passed before his eyes. He started to lose his vision and his hearing, but he was struck by an incredible feeling of calm that washed over him. He wasn't afraid to die, and more than anything, he felt a deep sense of serenity and comfort. Wow, that's really nice. Yeah. Something much less nice. Out in the water, a scene far less serene and comforting was happening. Twenty-two-year-old Bruce, who'd been further out in the water than Andrew, had started paddling in to help his friend and wasn't lucky enough to catch a wave like Andrew. On his way back to shore, the shark had changed targets and focused on Bruce. As Andrew lay dying, Bruce slowly paddled into shore. All of the attention was on Andrew, but someone noticed Bruce and yelled him to get out

• 32:10Wes Larson?

  of the water because Andrew had been attacked by a shark. "I've been attacked too," Bruce calmly responded. "I just lost my leg." Geez. So I'm in a five-star hotel right now in Thailand. I'm sitting on the bed. It's a great bed. It's amazing. I'm still dreaming of my bed back home, and that's because it's a Brooklyn Bedding bed. I have the Sedona Elite from Brooklyn Bedding. I absolutely love it. Every night I look forward to just climbing into bed and going to sleep because it's such a good mattress. And that's because Brooklyn Bedding has been assembling top-tier mattresses for over 30 years in their Arizona factory. There's no middlemen, there's no gimmicks, just top-tier quality, honest pricing, and real American craftsmanship for a better night's sleep.

• 32:55Wes Larson?

  Brooklyn Bedding knows that sleep isn't one size fits all, and that's why they offer 15-plus different mattress models for every body, every sleep style, even in the hard-to-find sizes. And if you sleep hot, they use Glaciotex covers, copper-infused foams, and temperature-regulating materials to help keep you cool and comfortable all night long. Me and Jesse actually had a really, really nice mattress prior to this, and it was hard for me to give it up because I just didn't think that Brooklyn Bedding could possibly be better, and it is. I'm really happy, I'll never look back, I just love my mattress. So go to brooklinbedding.com, use our promo code TOOTH at checkout to get 30% off site-wide during the Black Friday sale exclusively with our code.

• 33:38Wes Larson?

  That's brooklinbedding.com and promo code TOOTH for 30% off site-wide. Let them know that we sent you in the survey after checkout. Brooklinbedding.com, promo code TOOTH.

• 33:50Mike Smith?

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• 34:35Mike Smith?

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• 35:10Jeff Larson?

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• 35:51Jeff Larson?

  practices and premium fabrics and finishes, which is really important to tooth and claw. I've really loved Quince for traveling. My turtleneck is so comfortable, and one of my favorite things is I used to pack so full, and then I'd see like some rug with a bird on it that I just had to have and I didn't have room to bring it home, so I wouldn't get it. But with Quince, I've had a lot of extra space in my suitcases because it packs so light and it's so comfortable. So now I can get all the souvenirs I want, which is too many souvenirs. For your next trip, treat yourself with luxurious upgrades you deserve with Quince. Go to quince.com/tooth for three hundred sixty-five day returns plus free shipping on your order.

• 36:33Jeff Larson?

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• 36:42Wes Larson?

  Bruce was pulled from the water and off his board, and his leg was missing above his knee. It'd been cleanly bitten off by the shark, and he had paddled through the area where Andrew had been bitten. When he looked down and saw that he only had a stump on his upper thigh, he went into hysterics and full-blown shock. Within two minutes, he wasn't breathing. Some of the crowd started CPR on Bruce, and they managed to get him breathing again, but he would never regain consciousness again. Forty-eight hours later, Bruce Corby would be pronounced dead in the hospital, and his cause of death was massive blood loss. Andrew's friends-

• 37:16Jeff Larson?

  And shark bite.

• 37:17Wes Larson?

  Yeah, massive blood loss from shark bite, yeah.

• 37:20Jeff Larson?

  That's why I'm getting the tattoo, I bet, is there's like all these shark bites and it, they just count as like blood loss.

• 37:28Mike Smith?

  Missed the tribute.

• 37:31Wes Larson?

  This is a really rare double bite from a great white. This really doesn't happen very often. This is why earlier I said a predatory attack. I think had this shark been just investigating new prey and not really interested, it would have stopped after Andrew. But the fact that it targeted Bruce again, I really think the shark wanted a meal.

• 37:51Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 37:52Wes Larson?

  Andrew's friends and some of the onlookers used his surfboard as a makeshift stretcher. They moved him to an easier area for where paramedics would be able to get to him. And when Andrew got to the hospital, the priority was still on Bruce. Bruce was still alive and he was more, Andrew was more or less stable. So he had to wait two hours before surgeons started on him and his wounds. And many of his muscles and tendons had to be sewn back together or reattached. In his, in his interview, he talked about them like pulling the muscles together and then sewing them up.

• 38:22Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 38:22Wes Larson?

  And his tendons all had to be reattached. Because the shark hadn't like torn out a lot of meat, it was kind of just like pushing everything back together and sewing it back up.

• 38:32Jeff Larson?

  Crazy.

• 38:32Wes Larson?

  Yeah, altogether, he received about 2,000 stitches and 150 staples to piece him back together. Somehow, his major arteries had been missed and they hadn't been severed. Had they been severed, he much likely would have, or much more likely would have suffered a similar fate as Bruce. Andrew wasn't very mobile for a few months, but once he was, he went to Indonesia and got back in the water. He did notice an overall change in his composure. Things that used to bother him really didn't bother him anymore. He was a lot more patient and calm.

• 39:03Jeff Larson?

  Oh.

• 39:03Wes Larson?

  Uh, he felt as though he's living on borrowed time and he just had a deeper appreciation for life.

• 39:08Jeff Larson?

  I'm like, you gotta get bit by a shark.

• 39:12Mike Smith?

  I could really use that. Like my therapist should be really-

• 39:15Wes Larson?

  Argue.

• 39:16Mike Smith?

  I've got an alternative method.

• 39:19Mike Smith?

  Mental health.

• 39:19Wes Larson?

  Been in Nahoon Beach. Yeah, it did take him some time to get completely used to surfing back in South Africa. But ultimately, he would surf back at Nahoon and he was able to pretty much fully overcome the trauma of this bite.

• 39:33Mike Smith?

  That's great.

• 39:33Wes Larson?

  Yeah, he's an inspirational dude for sure. Still alive, as far as I know. The, the interview I saw was just from a couple of years ago and he's like, I think he was in his sixties, but he looks like very fit and in good shape.

• 39:47Mike Smith?

  That's how you know final destination is purely fiction, you know, he would have, they would have come for him by now.

• 39:53Wes Larson?

  I don't know. Sometimes he takes his sweet ass time.

• 39:56Mike Smith?

  That's true.

• 39:57Wes Larson?

  Yeah. All right. So that's the story. Do you guys have any other questions about Andrew Carter or Bruce Corby?

• 40:03Mike Smith?

  I have a question about sharks.

• 40:04Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 40:05Mike Smith?

  So do they have, um, like taste receptacles, like taste buds? Do they have tongues? Are they enjoying what they eat? Or is it purely just for sustenance?

• 40:14Wes Larson?

  It's hard to say they enjoy, you know, like for us, that's a really tricky thing to say. They do have like tastes, you know, they have tongues, I believe. I'd be shocked if they didn't.

• 40:26Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 40:27Wes Larson?

  You know, we've talked a bit about they're different. They have some crazy senses.

• 40:31Jeff Larson?

  Great white and bite your tongue?

• 40:35Wes Larson?

  Let me do just a quick search and make sure I'm not lying about that. That way I don't have to do a.

• 40:40Mike Smith?

  It just seems a little wrong for them. If they do have tongues, why don't they lick in surfboards? They don't have to bite it. It's a little rough. I, I can't imagine licking a surfboard would be that awesome.

• 40:53Jeff Larson?

  Well, I think if it is like, they think it might be some type of sea lionish thing. If you lick it, it's not going to sit there.

• 41:00Mike Smith?

  That's true. It'll. Maybe they bite and then start licking the chomp lick move.

• 41:06Wes Larson?

  So I was going to get into this a little bit, but they, they obviously, we've talked about their different receptors, like their different senses. Obviously the ampulla of Lorenzini is like one of our favorites to talk about. But they also, we have talked a bit about how they have like papillae also lining their mouths. They think those are some of their more potent taste receptors. They do have kind of a primitive tongue. It's a piece of cartilage called a baccial, which is located on the floor of their mouth. But it's not muscular like ours. It's more a kind of bony or not bony cartilaggy. And, um, so it's, it doesn't, apparently doesn't play a big role in like taste. But they for sure do have some sense of taste.

• 41:46Mike Smith?

  That's another thing about sharks is I always hear it's they're purely cartilage, right? They don't have skeleton, right? They're not a bone in their body.

• 41:54Wes Larson?

  Right, and so there is a bone, it's their jaws and their teeth. And that's, that's why for prehistoric sharks, all we have are their jaws. So there's a lot of like interpretation when it comes to like what prehistoric sharks looked like, because really all we have are jaws.

• 42:09Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, they're probably gonna be like, yeah, actually they had feathers.

• 42:13Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 42:15Wes Larson?

  They'll figure, those dumb paleontologists will figure out a way to ruin sharks for us too.

• 42:19Mike Smith?

  Totally ruin the may for me.

• 42:23Mike Smith?

  Also, one other question, I'm, I'm being a little asky right now.

• 42:27Wes Larson?

  No, it's fine.

• 42:28Mike Smith?

  We recently learned, or I recently learned, Hammerhead shark mating behavior? How they like bite onto each other and then mate? Is, do we know, do you know much about great white mating behavior?

• 42:39Wes Larson?

  No one does. So that's the crazy thing about them is that a lot of their reproductive history is like really unknown. We don't really know where they mate, we don't really know where they have their pups. Recently, the, like, the first time ever a newborn great white was recorded, I think in California. I can't remember where it was, but it was near the surface and someone saw a newborn. It's the first time in history we'd ever recorded that.

• 43:03Mike Smith?

  Really?

• 43:03Wes Larson?

  So a lot isn't known, but they do have, sharks have, males have claspers. It kind of looks like a modified like emi penis almost, and females have.

• 43:14Mike Smith?

  Nice.

• 43:15Wes Larson?

  Oh, big old hammy. Yeah. Females have coddle fins. Think I'm saying that right? I believe so. Anyway, this, I'm drawing on just reserves here, but they, most sharks seem to mate kind of the same way. Where the males are smaller, they use those claspers to kind of like anchor themselves on the female. They, you know, they have an actual penis that like, you know, inserts and then they kind of wrap themselves around and like bite on to the female. I imagine with great whites, it's probably similar, but I don't know if they're seeing like females with big bite marks either.

• 43:49Mike Smith?

  Yeah, that's, you gotta be careful if you're the dude biting with those kinds of teeth.

• 43:53Wes Larson?

  Yeah, yeah. And this may be the animal that has the strongest bite force in the world. We don't really know, but it's likely.

• 44:00Jeff Larson?

  Wouldn't orca have a stronger bite?

• 44:02Wes Larson?

  Uh, not necessarily.

• 44:04Jeff Larson?

  They don't even have sharp teeth, really. And they're poning everything.

• 44:08Wes Larson?

  We've gotten into this before, but like when we talk about bite force, there's two different ways to talk about there's there's like bite force quotient. Which is, you know, you're adjusting for the size of the animal and whatnot. And then there's just overall.

• 44:21Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 44:22Wes Larson?

  Pressure exerted. And yeah, maybe a orca would have the overall most, but. From what I've kind of read is with orcas, it's more like tearing and ripping.

• 44:30Jeff Larson?

  Hmm.

• 44:31Wes Larson?

  So they, I don't think they necessarily bite as hard as gray whites, but I'm not sure. All right, let's move on to categories. Uh, what's your most memorable limb loss in pop culture when someone lost a limb?

• 44:45Jeff Larson?

  I like the one hundred twenty seven hours guy.

• 44:47Wes Larson?

  Oh, that's a good one.

• 44:48Jeff Larson?

  I forget his name.

• 44:49Wes Larson?

  Aaron Ralston.

• 44:50Jeff Larson?

  Aaron Ralston, nice job, boys. Uh, my favorite part of the story is it's like really amazing story. Like you have to respect his survival.

• 45:00Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 45:00Jeff Larson?

  And like being able to do that. But then like the rescuers were like right there after he was done is kind of fun.

• 45:08Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 45:08Jeff Larson?

  It sucks. Like they were about to find him, but I think his arm was toast anyway.

• 45:14Wes Larson?

  Probably, yeah. I remember when I, when me and Jesse first started hanging out. She was like, we were talking about that movie and she kept calling it a hundred. What is it? It's a hundred twenty seven. Yeah, she kept calling it like a hundred and twenty seven days or something.

• 45:28Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 45:29Wes Larson?

  And so I sent her, I sent her a drawing of a guy with like a skeleton with his arm stuck in the rock. But then we established that it was a hundred twenty seven hours. And a little bit later, we were, we were walking through the canyon. She's like, how long was he stuck again? And I was like, uh, a hundred and twenty seven hours.

• 45:47Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 45:48Wes Larson?

  And she's like, oh, yeah.

• 45:50Jeff Larson?

  It is like, you don't really think about how long that is.

• 45:53Wes Larson?

  That's a crazy long time.

• 45:55Jeff Larson?

  What, like five days or something?

• 45:57Wes Larson?

  That's longer than that.

• 45:58Jeff Larson?

  Love it.

• 45:58Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 45:59Mike Smith?

  Hundred twenty seven days is the sequel, kind of like twenty eight days later goes to twenty eight weeks later or whatever.

• 46:05Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, it'd be like.

• 46:06Mike Smith?

  I forget.

• 46:07Jeff Larson?

  A little bit more than five days.

• 46:08Wes Larson?

  Yeah, that's so long. A hundred and twenty seven hours is crazy.

• 46:11Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 46:12Wes Larson?

  All right.

• 46:12Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, good job. Maybe would have died had he not cut it off.

• 46:16Wes Larson?

  What, yeah. What hour Jeff, do you think he started drinking his own pee? Like two second hours, just finally I have my opportunity.

• 46:25Jeff Larson?

  Read his book or listened to it.

• 46:27Wes Larson?

  Yeah, we listened to it on our cross country trip.

• 46:30Jeff Larson?

  Okay.

• 46:30Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 46:31Jeff Larson?

  His pretty is right away.

• 46:32Wes Larson?

  The gross thing was like.

• 46:33Jeff Larson?

  Before the rock fell on his.

• 46:36Wes Larson?

  Gross thing was how many times he had to drink it.

• 46:40Wes Larson?

  Before.

• 46:43Wes Larson?

  Gross thing was how many times he had to drink it and how it was getting like brown and muddy at the end.

• 46:48Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 46:49Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Mike, you want to go next?

• 46:51Mike Smith?

  Yeah. So the heroic trio, it's a Hong Kong film, Michelle Yeoh, she's the best. There's, I forget what the actor's name is. He's in Hard Boiled though. He's like the main bad guy of Hard Boiled. He's kind of a silent antagonist in this one, but there's kind of a running joke of his body parts just keep getting cut off. But he doesn't really acknowledge it. It like doesn't affect him at all. And that movie's amazing. It's so funny. But there's a moment where his arm just gets like whacked off and it just kind of keeps going. It's great.

• 47:19Wes Larson?

  I, I kind of.

• 47:23Jeff Larson?

  I want to watch. It sounds good.

• 47:25Wes Larson?

  Wax off. All right. Uh, I couldn't decide between two, so I'm just going to say both of them. Got to shout out my guy Pennywise. Just ripping off a kid's arm, like first scene of those movies.

• 47:35Jeff Larson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 47:35Wes Larson?

  In the book. For me that.

• 47:37Jeff Larson?

  Georgie, right?

• 47:37Wes Larson?

  Yeah, that was always so scary to me because usually I feel like in movies especially, you don't see that happen. Seeing a kid actually like lose his arm, like a little kid was always. Yeah. Scarring in the best possible way. Uh, another weird one. You guys remember the movie The Jackal? It's not a great movie. It's Bruce Willis where he's like a, a killer, but like a highly proficient one. And he's got this like rail gun or some crazy gun. And he takes like Jack Black out into a field and makes him stand by a car and he's got a little computer targeting system. And then he just like, Jack Black's like, holding something that he's gonna shoot. And he just blows his arm off.

• 48:20Wes Larson?

  And then he just like, lights him up with a bunch of shots. I just always thought it was a crazy scene. And I think it was one of the first scenes I saw as a kid where I saw someone's arm get blown off. So it just kinda stuck in my, my consciousness. All right.

• 48:33Jeff Larson?

  I like the one too in Kill Bill with like the assistant lady.

• 48:37Wes Larson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 48:37Jeff Larson?

  Who's always on the phone.

• 48:38Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 48:39Jeff Larson?

  And she like chops off both their arms and then rolls me down a hill.

• 48:42Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 48:43Jeff Larson?

  Which is like, really mean thing to do.

• 48:48Wes Larson?

  All right, next category. What's one of your luckiest breaks ever? Cause Andrew sure caught a lucky break catching that wave.

• 48:55Mike Smith?

  Mine actually kind of involves the ocean too. And I don't know why this is the first thing that came to my mind, but I was in Thailand with my brother, stuck in the back of a bus. And I needed to go to the bathroom so bad.

• 49:07Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 49:07Mike Smith?

  And it got to the point where I thought I was just genuinely gonna take a dump on the bus and like, probably have to leave the country and

• 49:13Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 49:14Mike Smith?

  Change my identity, just be so mortified that it happened. But then just randomly, the bus pulled over and everyone offloaded into the ocean.

• 49:22Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 49:22Mike Smith?

  And so I was like, that's my one, this is my chance. So I went like deeper into the ocean and went to the bathroom like, kinda deeper in. And then somehow like, kinda the smell of it blew back in towards the shore and everyone blamed it on a whale. They're like, I think a whale. So it's like, I, I unloaded the bowels and I got away with it. No one like, no one's ever gonna blame it on me.

• 49:45Wes Larson?

  That's a potent.

• 49:46Mike Smith?

  Yeah. It was crazy. I don't know. That was weird.

• 49:50Wes Larson?

  Blaming on the

• 49:50Mike Smith?

  Maybe it was a whale.

• 49:51Wes Larson?

  Biggest animal in the world.

• 49:53Mike Smith?

  That's a little insulting, but.

• 49:55Wes Larson?

  That's so good. Jeff?

• 49:57Jeff Larson?

  Hmm, I didn't think of a good one, but I have one.

• 50:00Wes Larson?

  Okay.

• 50:02Jeff Larson?

  I'm thinking of when we went to Loretto. And we did like a blue whale tour, right? And I was like, blue whales were maybe the animal I most want to see. Biggest animal that's ever existed. And I was looking at it and it was cool. But for the animal I most wanted to see in my life is kind of underwhelming. You know, just seeing like a spout.

• 50:25Wes Larson?

  The tiny bit of its back.

• 50:26Jeff Larson?

  Pump backs, you see way more gray whales, you see way more whale. Blue whales, you just see like.

• 50:31Wes Larson?

  Kind of have to be above it.

• 50:32Jeff Larson?

  Maybe like one twentieth of the whale or something. So then, uh, yeah, you need like get in the water. So I was kind of like, all right, that is cool, but not the best. And then an animal that like, obviously I'd want to see, but wasn't really on my radar. Wes spots it, a pod of orcas come up to our boat. And then we just like followed them for like an hour and a half. And they like made the whole ocean crazy too. Like a thousand dolphins formed a super pod. It felt very lucky that like we were able to see orcas on our blue whale.

• 51:08Wes Larson?

  That's awesome. It was one of my favorite ocean days ever. And we were on like a very touristy, kind of dumb little tour. And it ended up just like so amazing.

• 51:16Jeff Larson?

  The tour that I thought was going to be like my favorite animal sighting ever. Turned out being that in a different way.

• 51:24Wes Larson?

  Yeah. I had, the only one I could think of is like, when I was deciding what to do with my life. I thought I was going to be some kind of doctor for a long time and knew I want, knew I was obsessed with wildlife, but kind of just like got stuck in thinking I needed to make a bunch of money. And so I was like applying to schools and thinking I was going to maybe be an optometrist or something. And I happened to spend a night at my grandpa's house. My cousin Eric was there and me and him just stayed up all night talking. And he had just started a wildlife program as a master student. And the more he talked to me about it, the more I just thought, this is actually what I want to be doing. Like I am not living like the stuff that I, I'm not living my passion. I'm just worried about money.

• 52:08Wes Larson?

  And we talked about it for a long time. And the next day is when I really changed my mind and thought, okay, I'm going to go into wildlife full. Like that's what I want to do. And, um, had we not just happened to like stay there that night, both of us. Cause he just kind of stayed there on a whim too. I don't know if I would have ever become a biologist, so.

• 52:25Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 52:26Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 52:26Mike Smith?

  Yeah, I mean, the podcast.

• 52:28Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 52:28Mike Smith?

  Itself is.

• 52:29Wes Larson?

  For sure.

• 52:30Mike Smith?

  I consider to be, I mean, people say, often say, luck is preparation meets opportunity.

• 52:34Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 52:35Mike Smith?

  And like, I think all three of us did, in our own way, kind of go through it to learn everything that's necessary to make a quality product.

• 52:42Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 52:42Mike Smith?

  But at the end of the day, it's kind of just like, you never know when something's gonna go viral, or catch on for whatever reason.

• 52:48Wes Larson?

  I don't think I was destined.

• 52:50Mike Smith?

  You think so?

• 52:51Wes Larson?

  I don't think I was lucky. Like, I think even without you guys, I'd be popular podcaster.

• 52:55Mike Smith?

  You might be right, actually.

• 52:58Wes Larson?

  Covid, covid in a weird way was the lucky break. Yeah.

• 53:01Mike Smith?

  Seriously, like, I.

• 53:02Wes Larson?

  Sorry to anyone who might have lost someone.

• 53:05Mike Smith?

  Yeah, but I trace it all the way back to like, what if I hadn't answered that call when Jeff and I first met? And like, we hadn't hung out, and like, none of this ever.

• 53:14Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 53:14Mike Smith?

  Happened, kind of thing, so it's like.

• 53:16Wes Larson?

  So I'm your lucky break.

• 53:17Mike Smith?

  A little bit, yeah.

• 53:18Wes Larson?

  I would love to like, have that someday where you could see like, where your life would have gone had you not made like, certain tiny decisions.

• 53:27Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 53:27Wes Larson?

  Butterfly effect, dude. Maybe you would have killed yourself in the, in the womb, like he did. Oh, yeah, Ashton. Ashen, yeah.

• 53:35Mike Smith?

  Yeah, that was the single time I ever cried in a movie.

• 53:40Mike Smith?

  Not really.

• 53:41Wes Larson?

  That's like, the director's cut. Yeah, yeah. That's a terrible movie. I rewatched it recently. I was like, this is really bad.

• 53:49Speaker 03

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• 54:01Speaker 04

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• 54:04Wes Larson?

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• 54:50Wes Larson?

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• 55:33Wes Larson?

  fresh, healthy food. So head to ollie.com/tooth and tell them all about your dog and use code TOOTH to get 60% off your welcome kit when you subscribe today. Plus, they offer a clean bowl guarantee on the first box. So if you're not completely satisfied, you'll get your money back. That's O-L-L-I-E dot com slash tooth and enter code TOOTH to get 60% off your first box. All right, let's do a quick what would Mike and Jeff do? So you can put yourself at any point in this story and tell me what you'd do.

• 56:06Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, I mean, I kind of feel like he did it. Catch a wave was like what I was thinking.

• 56:11Wes Larson?

  You'd just go back out.

• 56:12Jeff Larson?

  I think I'd go back. I think I'd finish this well.

• 56:15Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 56:15Jeff Larson?

  You know, for sure. If it's like six-foot waves, that's perfect, especially if they're tunneling. All right. And then, yeah.

• 56:23Mike Smith?

  He had no access to his surfboard after the shark got it, right?

• 56:26Wes Larson?

  No, he did.

• 56:27Mike Smith?

  He had a piece of it?

• 56:27Wes Larson?

  He went back on it. Like, they just took one huge bite out of it. And then they put him on it to like stretcher him.

• 56:34Jeff Larson?

  You know what? I would do a metal surfboard.

• 56:37Wes Larson?

  Oh, that might not work very well, but sure.

• 56:40Jeff Larson?

  I mean, I don't think the shark would bite through it.

• 56:42Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I'm just saying it might not float.

• 56:44Jeff Larson?

  It, when it gets stuck in its mouth?

• 56:46Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I think we're miss- I think we're still missing the most important part of this.

• 56:51Mike Smith?

  No. So what I would really do is I'd use the surfboard leash to turn and get myself immediately, maybe.

• 56:56Wes Larson?

  Oh.

• 56:57Mike Smith?

  Maybe.

• 56:57Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 56:58Mike Smith?

  Or off of Jeff's line of thinking, I would paint the bottom of my surfboard to look like a torpedo. So they don't want to bite that.

• 57:05Wes Larson?

  It's like, I don't want to blow myself up.

• 57:07Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 57:08Jeff Larson?

  Or like, maybe paint like a baby seal on the bottom of your surfboard? So it's still gonna attack it, but like with a smaller mouth.

• 57:17Wes Larson?

  Ooh.

• 57:17Jeff Larson?

  You know?

• 57:17Wes Larson?

  Like it's just gonna nibble at it. Yeah, alright.

• 57:21Mike Smith?

  That's a good thi-

• 57:21Wes Larson?

  It would have been funny too of when they're carrying him on this surfboard like a stretcher, if he like popped up.

• 57:28Wes Larson?

  And like pretended to surf. So really quickly, again, a few things you can do. Number one, with any kind of shark, the main thing is prevention. So pay attention to the conditions. These are highly crepuscular animals. They're very active, early morning, late evening. Uh, they use that low light as cover for hunting. So you're taking a much bigger risk just by going in the water during those times of day. You should know about where you're hanging out in the water. You should just know whether or not it's a place where they're commonly seen or sighted. And then another really important thing to pay for, uh, pay attention to is any kind of like extenuating circumstances that might draw sharks in the area.

• 58:08Wes Larson?

  So if there's a dead whale nearby, if you happen to see a lot of marine life happening, sometimes that means there'll also be sharks in the water. Just paying attention. If you are in the water and you see a shark coming toward you, uh, we've talked about this before. Stay as calm as possible. Splashing can really draw them in and just keep something in between you and the shark. If you had a surfboard or something, you could face the shark and try and keep the board in between you two. Any kind of pole or anything you might have to keep a barrier between you and the shark. You don't actually want to hit them with it. You just want to keep it tween you and them. Hitting them with something can actually trigger more of a defensive bite. A shark does come up and bite you.

• 58:49Wes Larson?

  At that point, your main thing is just fighting back as much as you can. Eyes, gills, their nose, whatever you can do. And then if you are able to escape from the shark, again, just calmly getting to help as quickly as possible.

• 59:04Jeff Larson?

  So with Andrew, I like wanna give him credit for knowing he needed a surfboard. Because I think that'd be really hard to go back towards the shark.

• 59:14Wes Larson?

  I agree.

• 59:14Jeff Larson?

  So like that, I think he gets a lot of credit. And my main question would be with Bruce, should he have done anything different?

• 59:22Wes Larson?

  We don't, that's the thing about the story is we don't really even know what he did.

• 59:26Jeff Larson?

  But like if there's, I guess more what I'm asking is if you know your friend just got attacked by a great white shark and you're a little bit deeper than him, like what should you do?

• 59:36Wes Larson?

  I think I probably like would have tried to avoid the media area where he was bitten. Cause there's still gonna be blood in the water and the shark's probably gonna be around there. So try and give that a wide berth.

• 59:47Jeff Larson?

  But you kind of said too that you should try to help. So maybe he's like paddling to help.

• 59:52Wes Larson?

  He might've been.

• 59:53Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 59:53Wes Larson?

  We just really don't know. Cause even when, as soon as he got on shore, he went unconscious. So he couldn't even tell his story. So we don't know when he was bitten. There's like the possibility he was bitten before Andrew even. We don't know that. So it's impossible to say what he did right or wrong.

• 1:00:09Jeff Larson?

  I feel like I would wanna like get my legs out of the water though.

• 1:00:13Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I mean, but that's usually what you do is you lay flat on your board and paddle, you know?

• 1:00:18Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:18Wes Larson?

  So it does.

• 1:00:19Jeff Larson?

  It seems like his leg was maybe dangling in the water if it got bit off.

• 1:00:23Wes Larson?

  I don't, we don't even know if he knew that Andrew was being attacked by a shark.

• 1:00:27Jeff Larson?

  Well, his response suggests that.

• 1:00:30Wes Larson?

  Well, someone said Andrew's been attacked and he said, I have too.

• 1:00:34Jeff Larson?

  Okay, yeah.

• 1:00:34Wes Larson?

  So it doesn't, yeah. Okay.

• 1:00:37Jeff Larson?

  He, but like if he didn't know Andrew got attacked, I'd be like, oh, that's a coincidence.

• 1:00:41Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:42Jeff Larson?

  You know?

• 1:00:44Wes Larson?

  Uh, let's do your favorite recent animal experience. We've had a good couple of weeks with a lot of different animals, both marine and terrestrial. What are you guys' favorite recent animal experiences?

• 1:00:54Mike Smith?

  So, and I actually genuinely mean this, the most shocking experience, startling even, was in one of our final dives of our trip. I forget what island we were off of. Me and your friend Ashley actually were kind of close together. About twenty-three meters under the water, and all of a sudden, right between us from behind, we saw a flightless cormorant zip right between us.

• 1:01:17Wes Larson?

  That's where like seven, that's seventy feet.

• 1:01:20Mike Smith?

  It was like seventy, eighty feet down. This is a bird that's like diving to find food. And we kind of like turned and looked at each other, and it was just like, we looked at our watch again just to make sure, like, we knew how deep we were. It was really, really cool.

• 1:01:33Wes Larson?

  That is.

• 1:01:34Mike Smith?

  It was awesome.

• 1:01:35Wes Larson?

  I wish I would have seen that. That's amazing.

• 1:01:36Mike Smith?

  Really cool.

• 1:01:37Jeff Larson?

  Uh, I'll go with sea lions. Galapagos is like pretty much an islands of sea lions. Like, there's more sea lions than people, almost, it feels like.

• 1:01:46Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:47Jeff Larson?

  But there was one time where I was just snorkeling a little bit on my own, which was like unique, and there was two sea lions that, I just kind of got tired, and I was just like laying there on my stomach with my face under, just kind of breathing through the snorkel. And the sea lion, two of them, but especially one, had its head like one inch from me for like ten minutes. And we were just kind of floating together, and it just felt like, we kind of were in the same like mindset, you know, like, yeah, let's just kind of have a moment together.

• 1:02:20Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I think Galapagos might be the place I've been where the wildlife is the least kind of concerned with humans.

• 1:02:29Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:29Wes Larson?

  You know, like, everything here seems very willing to share space with humans, which is, it's really cool. It's a neat place to visit. For me, I, I kind of was bouncing between seeing marine iguanas underwater, which was just amazing. But I think I have to pick my other one, which is, after one of our dives, we were on a boat, and there was a big pot of dolphins, like, jumping everywhere, like really acrobatic, and they were coming closer and closer, and then one just like, jumped and landed inches from our boat and splashed us.

• 1:02:59Jeff Larson?

  I thought it was gonna like hit me in the face. It's cool.

• 1:03:03Wes Larson?

  We all, and I had like my camera right there underwater. I didn't get a good video of it underwater, but someone with their phone on, they got a crazy video, and then our guide also got one, so it was really. That was the thing that probably made me the most excited.

• 1:03:16Jeff Larson?

  Laura.

• 1:03:16Wes Larson?

  Yeah, Laura. Yeah. Good video, Laura. Good job. And Paulo. All right, uh, let's do a couple Patreon questions. I feel like it's been a minute since we've done too many and I want to get to a few. We've gotten some good ones. So first, let's do, this one's from Kim. Kim says, guys, I want to know, are you good about returning your parents and loved ones texts and phone calls? My kids suck at answering me in a timely manner, if at all. Help me understand.

• 1:03:45Jeff Larson?

  I mean, mom texts me to tell me she thought Danielle did a good job on our March Madness bracket yesterday. I haven't responded yet. So, sorry, mom. She responded right after this.

• 1:03:58Mike Smith?

  I think, so I'm not going to say anyone's doing anything wrong in this scenario. I don't want to cast any judgment on anyone, but I'm pretty notorious in our family and friend circle for being bad, at least on an initial call to answer and texts can go red, but not answered for days, maybe even weeks. So my family is adapted to me and that's like really nice of them. They send me texts like, call when convenient. Uh, so it's kind of, they put the ball in my, uh, my side of the court. And that does, that's actually really effective because all of a sudden it's like, well, I gotta do it now or else I'm gonna forget. Kind of thing. So.

• 1:04:34Wes Larson?

  For me, I am generally really good at getting back quickly, but then sometimes like midway through the conversation, something grabs my focus. And then I forget for like days to like text back to the last thing they said. I would just say, Kim, that, you know, it's a weird, it's a weird world right now. And there's a lot of things pulling people's focus all over the place. So I don't think you can really read that as.

• 1:04:57Jeff Larson?

  Wes is good at it.

• 1:04:58Wes Larson?

  Yeah. I think it's hard to read that as like, as anything but people not being able to kind of focus me.

• 1:05:04Mike Smith?

  Yeah. It's not ad hominem or personal.

• 1:05:06Jeff Larson?

  I mean, I text my mom more than most people. I just don't text her very much. So.

• 1:05:11Wes Larson?

  Yeah. You gotta text her after this.

• 1:05:14Speaker 03

  Your sausage McMuffin with egg didn't change. Your receipt did. The sausage McMuffin with egg extra value meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just $5. Only at McDonald's for a limited time.

• 1:05:26Speaker 04

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• 1:05:29Mike Smith?

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• 1:06:57Mike Smith?

  set and save over 40% off. Again, that's trymiracle.com/tooth to treat yourself. Thank you again, Miracle Maids, for sponsoring this episode.

• 1:07:07Wes Larson?

  All right, uh, this one is from Megan. Megan says, I've listened to every episode, love the podcast. Thank you, Megan. Uh, but I haven't heard this answered. Did you Wes have to have your friends or Jeff sign a death waiver or no liability agreement when they helped you with bears denning? Uh, no, Jeff was the only person that I trusted to go into the dens with me. Um, aside from like Clint and some of the other wildlife professionals. But we had a few friends that got to join us on bear denning trips, but they never got to actually go into the den. That was just you and you were the only, but you did not have to sign anything. I don't think, nah.

• 1:07:47Jeff Larson?

  I mean, what was I going to do if I got killed by a bear? Sue you?

• 1:07:51Wes Larson?

  Yeah, exactly. You can't even.

• 1:07:53Jeff Larson?

  Mom and dad are gonna sue you on my behalf?

• 1:07:55Wes Larson?

  I was just trying to get your inheritance.

• 1:07:58Mike Smith?

  Oh, they're not giving, they, that's all going to Cyrus. They're not proud of either of you at this point.

• 1:08:04Wes Larson?

  That's true, especially my dad. All right, this one's from Olivia. Uh, there's a serious question and then a question for all three of us. I thought the second question fit really well with this trip. First of all, the serious one, what are your tips for food storage in bear country, especially black bear country? Is hanging a bear bag the best method or is that outdated? The best method would probably be getting a bear proof container, like they have bear bags. They have different types of containers that really reduce the amount of scent that'll come out. You put all of your food in that container, put it in a bag and hang it from a tree. I think that's still probably the best method unless you have, like in the Yellowstone sites, we installed bear proof containers where the, they're like cemented in the ground.

• 1:08:49Wes Larson?

  That would be the absolute best, but if you don't have that, then hanging is probably still the best option.

• 1:08:54Mike Smith?

  Not the bacon under the pillow move?

• 1:08:56Wes Larson?

  No, no, that's a bad one.

• 1:08:58Jeff Larson?

  If you wanna see bears?

• 1:08:59Wes Larson?

  Yeah, if you want, wanna really see him, don't, right, still don't do that.

• 1:09:02Mike Smith?

  Yeah. Uh, that was your grandpa that did that?

• 1:09:04Wes Larson?

  It was our great uncle.

• 1:09:05Mike Smith?

  Great uncle. That's amazing.

• 1:09:07Wes Larson?

  Just got licked in the face.

• 1:09:08Mike Smith?

  I guess that just goes to show you like how unlikely the chances are that you're gonna get attacked by a bear. If like that guy never quite got.

• 1:09:17Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:18Jeff Larson?

  Or just like our accessibility to bacon now. He was like so jazzed about bacon. He had to sleep with it under his pillow.

• 1:09:27Wes Larson?

  If you guys don't remember this story, it was our great uncle and he woke up to a black bear licking his face.

• 1:09:33Jeff Larson?

  You gotta go through me to get to this bacon.

• 1:09:37Wes Larson?

  The other question from Olivia, what animal has the nicest feet?

• 1:09:42Jeff Larson?

  Blue footed booby.

• 1:09:43Wes Larson?

  That's what I thought you were gonna say. I think it's a great answer. Yeah.

• 1:09:46Mike Smith?

  Nicest feet. I'm not, I'm not really a feet guy if I'm being totally honest.

• 1:09:51Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:52Mike Smith?

  Give me a sec. Do you have a good answer that was?

• 1:09:54Wes Larson?

  Um, I'll, I'll go with the Galapagos answer as well, even though I, I haven't really thought about all of them. I really like the, the giant tortoise's feet. I think they look just like really cool with their big nails and like pads. I just think they're really cool.

• 1:10:08Jeff Larson?

  Kind of like a dino.

• 1:10:09Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:10Jeff Larson?

  Like a brontosaurus.

• 1:10:11Wes Larson?

  I found myself really staring at their feet a lot while we were looking at them. So.

• 1:10:15Mike Smith?

  Maybe a tree frog with their big splayed out fingers.

• 1:10:18Wes Larson?

  That's a good one.

• 1:10:18Mike Smith?

  Those are cool.

• 1:10:19Jeff Larson?

  Yeah. I like sand cat toes with all their fur on them.

• 1:10:23Wes Larson?

  Yeah. All right. This one's from Mary. Mary says, if you guys were in a Groundhog Day movie situation, what would you spend your time doing?

• 1:10:30Jeff Larson?

  Pass. Pass.

• 1:10:35Wes Larson?

  Yeah, I feel like I wouldn't be a very good person.

• 1:10:37Jeff Larson?

  Oh yeah. I'd go psycho. Like I think Palm Springs, Andy Samberg kinda hints at that, that he just lost his mind.

• 1:10:45Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:46Jeff Larson?

  And did everyone and everything and like just killed people and like nothing matters.

• 1:10:51Wes Larson?

  Know there's no consequences and everything resets the next day.

• 1:10:55Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:56Wes Larson?

  I think I would constantly live in fear though of like, maybe this is the day that it doesn't, for at least a few years, I would feel that way. And then after that, I'd probably just go pretty crazy.

• 1:11:06Mike Smith?

  I would go full foodie mode because you could just gorge yourself and none of those calories count the next day.

• 1:11:11Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:11Mike Smith?

  I think I'd do a lot of really, really bad eating.

• 1:11:14Wes Larson?

  How far do you think you could get from your place?

• 1:11:17Mike Smith?

  In 24 hours.

• 1:11:18Wes Larson?

  Not that far.

• 1:11:19Mike Smith?

  Whoa. Well, I don't know, same day flights. You could probably get to anywhere in the world for at least a little bit.

• 1:11:25Jeff Larson?

  There's a lot of food.

• 1:11:26Wes Larson?

  Yeah, maybe.

• 1:11:27Mike Smith?

  Not anywhere, but like any major.

• 1:11:29Wes Larson?

  Yeah. And be there for a few hours.

• 1:11:31Mike Smith?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:32Wes Larson?

  Man, that would feel so restrictive. I don't want that to happen to me. Oh, I hope it doesn't happen.

• 1:11:37Mike Smith?

  It usually doesn't, so I think you're safe.

• 1:11:39Jeff Larson?

  All right. That we know of.

• 1:11:41Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Amanda asks, would you prefer for all marine animals to be able to fly in addition to being in the ocean? Or all land animals, including humans, to be able to breathe underwater? I mean selfishly, I gotta say breathe underwater, but it would be cool if all the ocean animals could just fly when they wanted.

• 1:11:59Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:00Mike Smith?

  Can you imagine just a whale flying?

• 1:12:02Wes Larson?

  We'd be a lot more worried about sharks in our day to day lives.

• 1:12:06Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, I think that's bad.

• 1:12:08Wes Larson?

  But just seeing a blue whale cruise by in the sky would be so cool.

• 1:12:12Mike Smith?

  Oh, but underwater mammals, they can be trained to do some pretty sophisticated stuff. You know, someone's gonna weaponize a blue whale and just like.

• 1:12:19Wes Larson?

  True.

• 1:12:20Mike Smith?

  And what, what, what would they do with a huge blue whale?

• 1:12:23Jeff Larson?

  I mean, I think we got stuff that would work better than a blue whale.

• 1:12:27Mike Smith?

  Maybe.

• 1:12:29Wes Larson?

  Pilotless drones and stuff, but you're just gonna use a blue whale. That's like when people talk about, there's a Jurassic Park storyline where they were like.

• 1:12:37Jeff Larson?

  Jurassic world.

• 1:12:38Wes Larson?

  Yeah, we're gonna turn these raptors into fighting things. It's like.

• 1:12:41Jeff Larson?

  You point a laser pointer at someone and the raptor kills them. It's like guns. You can just point a gun at someone.

• 1:12:49Wes Larson?

  Shoots a projectile at them. Alright, uh, I think that's good. We've been getting a lot of good questions. Thank you everyone for sending them in. We really definitely appreciate it.

• 1:12:58Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, you know. I've been thinking about guns a lot.

• 1:13:01Wes Larson?

  Have you?

• 1:13:01Jeff Larson?

  Yeah, I think being in Ecuador where there's not really accessible guns is getting to me.

• 1:13:06Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:07Jeff Larson?

  After dinner, I didn't have anything to shoot.

• 1:13:10Mike Smith?

  You are a gun in American.

• 1:13:13Wes Larson?

  Alright, quick conservation corner. Worldwide gray white sharks are vulnerable. They're I C N ver- burnable. I U C N vulnerable, uh, but they're critically endangered in the Mediterranean and throughout Europe. Fishing's by far their biggest threat.

• 1:13:29Jeff Larson?

  Europeans don't have any dangers.

• 1:13:31Wes Larson?

  No, they've just got rid of all of them. Yeah. Uh, fishing's by far the biggest threat, both direct target fishing and bycatch. There are people out there that still target great whites and like sport fishing. But mostly bycatch in commercial fishing and then finning too.

• 1:13:46Jeff Larson?

  What are the sharks in the Paris shark movie?

• 1:13:50Wes Larson?

  Probably like makos or great whites. That's like what every movie is.

• 1:13:53Jeff Larson?

  So Paris has some.

• 1:13:56Wes Larson?

  What's that movie called?

• 1:13:57Mike Smith?

  I never saw it.

• 1:13:58Jeff Larson?

  I think it's called like Sharks.

• 1:13:59Wes Larson?

  Under Paris or something. Yeah. Yeah. So they are like all sharks, they're under threat. We don't really know how many great whites there are out there. It's really hard to get a number on them. So it's really important that they receive the, the right amount of conservation and.

• 1:14:13Jeff Larson?

  It's crazy you guys haven't even figured out how they have sex yet.

• 1:14:17Wes Larson?

  No, they're like such a mystery.

• 1:14:19Jeff Larson?

  What are you guys using our taxes for?

• 1:14:22Wes Larson?

  It's not me. I don't know why you're saying that to me. I'm not a shark biologist.

• 1:14:25Mike Smith?

  I don't know. I put more of the blame on the sharks in this one. Like.

• 1:14:29Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Why are they such prudes?

• 1:14:30Mike Smith?

  Sex in front of us.

• 1:14:31Wes Larson?

  I know. It's not us watch.

• 1:14:34Mike Smith?

  It's not that much to ask.

• 1:14:36Wes Larson?

  All right. And finally, let's do our claw rating again, just because it's been a while and I just love talking about how much I love this animal. I'll go first because mine's really easy to know. Uh, this, you know, if I could mint three animals as 10 claw animals. This is without a doubt, one of them. Often this is my favorite animal. I just think they are incredibly beautiful. I think they're so amazing. Every time we do an episode about them, I learn something new that just boggles my mind. This time it was the camouflage skin stuff. I am in love with great white sharks. I just absolutely love them.

• 1:15:10Jeff Larson?

  Marry him.

• 1:15:11Wes Larson?

  I would love to marry him, just like he loved surfing.

• 1:15:15Jeff Larson?

  I, yeah, I, mine's 10. I think I got him ranked like 13th or something, which I feel good about. I, I got orca, like sea animals. I got whale sharks and orcas ahead of them. I think that might be it.

• 1:15:29Mike Smith?

  10 for me. They're my third favorite animal. I think traditionally I've said tigers, orcas, great whites. And when we saw them in Australia, it was truly like my breath was taken from me. It's just incredible, beautiful, charismatic. But also like at the same time, just like a very natural entity as well. There, I didn't sense any kind of intent that was. You know, like there anthropomoraphism is a problem. I know. And we do that a lot to these animals. But when I looked at a great white shark, I just felt like it, the beauty of nature.

• 1:16:02Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:02Mike Smith?

  Pure and simple. Nothing more, nothing less.

• 1:16:04Wes Larson?

  Like that. It's a great note to end on. If you out there.

• 1:16:08Jeff Larson?

  Like snakes.

• 1:16:09Wes Larson?

  No snakes.

• 1:16:10Jeff Larson?

  When you look at snakes, you're like, that thing's.

• 1:16:13Wes Larson?

  They start licking their chops. They want you to eat fruit.

• 1:16:16Jeff Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:18Wes Larson?

  There's our Bible reference. Uh, thanks everyone for listening. As always, if you want more content, check us out on Patreon or on Apple Grizz Club. Uh, it is truly what keeps us going on this trip. We've had pretty much everyone on this trip, I think, as a subscriber and it just has like really nailed home for me. How much our podcast has been supported through subscription and how without it, we probably stopped a long, long time ago. So, um, we really love them.

• 1:16:47Jeff Larson?

  Paying $14 a month is because you book through Apple iOS and you can get around that.

• 1:16:53Wes Larson?

  Yes.

• 1:16:54Mike Smith?

  Cancel it.

• 1:16:55Wes Larson?

  Just do it on your desktop.

• 1:16:57Mike Smith?

  Desktop.

• 1:16:57Wes Larson?

  Yeah. Or on your browser.

• 1:16:59Mike Smith?

  Right.

• 1:17:00Wes Larson?

  And then get the app.

• 1:17:01Jeff Larson?

  And you can still use that. Right. Yeah.

• 1:17:03Mike Smith?

  Yep. And you don't get, you don't have to listen to ads. If that's something that's important to you, you get a little bit early access. If that's something that's important to you, you get community posts. We're trying to post more and more. We get access to Discord and that's a growing thing. We have like movie nights and all kinds of like awesome friendly people who've become honestly like really, really close friends through that little community hub. So there's a lot of, a lot of benefits and the Grizz Club too, but that's purely if you're just after more content.

• 1:17:30Wes Larson?

  It's kind of funny that when we started it, $10 was kind of like, it felt fair, but it felt like a fair amount of money.

• 1:17:36Jeff Larson?

  But we didn't know. We just.

• 1:17:38Wes Larson?

  Right. Yeah. Now $10 is like.

• 1:17:41Mike Smith?

  Bargain.

• 1:17:41Wes Larson?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:42Mike Smith?

  Yeah. You get like 150 hours of extra content, plus all that other stuff.

• 1:17:46Wes Larson?

  Yeah. All right. Well, thanks, guys.

• 1:17:48Jeff Larson?

  Still kind of a lot.

• 1:17:50Wes Larson?

  I don't, I think it's a, I think for everything they're getting, it is a crazy deal. Uh, thanks, guys for listening. We love you.

• 1:17:57Jeff Larson?

  Love you.

• 1:17:58Wes Larson?

  See ya.