Pod Insights Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks History's Deadliest Sloth Bear: The Sloth Bear of Mysore About this episode Wes tells the story of how in 1957, an unusually aggressive sloth bear is thought to have caused the death of at least 12 people and the mauling of several others. Jeff wonders about how often sloth bears bonk their heads. Mike gets angry about The Jungle Book.
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Transcript 17,826 words · 5 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Wes Larson? All of you Tooth and Claw listeners know I love a good story and that's why I want to tell you about What Was That Like? What does it feel like to get hit by a car while you're biking? Or be attacked by an alligator? Or learn that your spouse hired someone to kill you? If those are the kind of stories you find interesting, then What Was That Like? is the podcast for you. What Was That Like? is filled with real stories about the most surreal experiences of people's lives. On each episode, a guest comes on and tells about the time they found themselves in some kind of extreme situation. It could be an animal attack. Hello, Tooth and Claw listeners? A plane crash? Winning the showcase on The Price is Right? One of my personal dreams? And more. The show brings you tons of completely surreal, completely true stories, all told through the lens of the person who actually experienced it.
0:45 Wes Larson? Check out some of these topics that I know will be especially interesting to you Tooth and Claw listeners. Episode 178, John was attacked by a tiger. A guy in Russia who was attacked by a tiger and only had a road flare to defend himself. Or episode 41, Lauren was attacked by a monkey. A primate specialist who was working with howler monkeys and ended up having a pretty crazy experience with one of them. So if you want to hear some unbelievable and inspiring firsthand stories, I invite you to check out What Was That Like? Every story is verified, so you know even the most bizarre tales are someone's reality. Listen to What Was That Like? on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or the app you're using right now. Hey, everyone, it's Wes. Two quick things before we start this episode.
1:27 Wes Larson? First, this is the first of two episodes that we're doing in collaboration with Backpacker Magazine to support their annual Bear Month. Really excited about this partnership. They do a lot of fun content for Bear Month, a lot of good safety messaging. I wrote an article for them about Night of the Grizzlies. So check out Backpacker, go to their Instagram, go to their website. There's some really good bear content for you guys there. Second, in this episode, you're going to kind of hear a stumble over talking about doing some donations for Wildlife SOS, an incredible nonprofit that I've worked with that's done some amazing work with sloth bears. So here's how that's going to look. On our Instagram, Tooth and Claw Podcast, in our bio, we're going to have a little donation link that will be money that will go directly toward Wildlife SOS.
2:11 Wes Larson? So if you feel like donating, go to our Instagram, you can donate there, and we are going to match donations up to $2,000. So any amount after a week. We are gonna match and hopefully we get up to that $2,000 goal. They do some incredible work. I've worked with them closely. I know that money is really used to its maximum potential. So check it out on our Instagram, Tooth and Claw Podcast. Okay, that's it. I hope you guys enjoy the episode.
2:51 Jeff Larson? Hello, everybody. Welcome to Tooth and Claw Podcast. We have our bear biologist Wes Larson with us. How we doing Wes?
2:58 Mike Smith? Heyo, I'm doing good. How are you guys?
3:01 Jeff Larson? Doing good. And then we have Mike Smith, who's our tech guy, and he loves Superman. Anything, everything about Superman. Superman's his favorite. He's obsessed with Superman. And I'm Jeff Larson.
3:15 Mike Smith? Okay, now you said it all for me. Yeah, I guess I don't really need to have any input on that one. Man of Steel, are you into Superman?
3:22 Wes Larson? Not particularly, no.
3:25 Jeff Larson? Okay, you love Superman. Why are you saying that?
3:29 Wes Larson? I'm jealous of Superman. I like Lois is who I like.
3:32 Jeff Larson? Yeah, you even like him so much, you don't even think Clark Kent's a dork. You're like, no, Clark Kent's even cool. Because you like everything about Superman.
3:42 Wes Larson? Yeah, I like his, his glasses, the thick bottle Coke bottle glasses. I think he's a, what is he, a reporter? I don't even know what Superman is. I can't keep this facade up. I'm sorry, Jeff. I don't, I literally know nothing about him.
3:57 Mike Smith? Zord, is that part of Superman? Is there a Zord involved somewhere?
4:01 Wes Larson? There's a General Zorg or Zord or something. That's who Michael Shannon played in that one movie.
4:07 Mike Smith? Never saw it.
4:07 Wes Larson? Too many, there's too many superheroes, too many superhero movies out there.
4:11 Jeff Larson? You boycotting them?
4:12 Wes Larson? Yeah, I know, but I'm tired of them. I got, I got all excited for the new Marvel one because people were saying it was great. And then I just kind of thought it was a pretty mid movie. I didn't think it was that great.
4:24 Mike Smith? Mid, whoa, damn it.
4:27 Jeff Larson? You think it would have been better with Superman?
4:29 Wes Larson? I'm not a huge Superman fan either. I feel like Superman's too strong.
4:33 Jeff Larson? So what do you want?
4:33 Wes Larson? Not that fun. Uh, I just kind of am ready to be done with, with superheroes for a bit. And then maybe bring them back in like five years, you know?
4:41 Jeff Larson? Okay, interesting take.
4:44 Wes Larson? So we are doing the first of two episodes that are special episodes because we are teaming up with Backpacker Magazine and Outside and we're supporting them for their Bear Month, which is really fun. You know, sharks only get a week, bears get a whole month over at Backpacker.
5:04 Wes Larson? So they've got a lot of different bear related stuff coming out all month on Backpacker. I wrote an article for them about Night of the Grizzlies. We're doing these two episodes in support of Bear Month and I think they're doing a little article about Tooth and Claw, maybe too. So it's gonna be a fun little partnership. Yeah.
5:21 Jeff Larson? That's cool. Do you tell them to let them know we're beefy boys?
5:26 Wes Larson? Yeah, make sure it says they're beefy. Maybe we get like a centerpiece spread, just like being all thick on the centerfold. I'm really happy we're doing it with them though, because they do a really good job with their information about bears. It's not, because Shark Week sometimes gets a little bit too focused on how scary sharks can be. And Bear Month with Backpacker, it's very balanced. It's good information. They do some great safety messaging. I just think they're really a great resource for people that want to learn more about bears, especially people that recreate a lot outside. So check it out.
6:03 Jeff Larson? All right. I'll read it.
6:05 Wes Larson? Well, I doubt they thought we would do a sloth bear for one of our Bear Month episodes, but that's what we're gonna do. It's been a long time coming. We've been talking about doing sloth bears for a while. They're one of the bear species I've worked with.
6:18 Jeff Larson? I can't wait.
6:19 Wes Larson? And they're probably the most dangerous bear in the world.
6:22 Jeff Larson? What?
6:23 Wes Larson? No, no.
6:24 Jeff Larson? Not with that, not with that name.
6:26 Wes Larson? I know, it's a bad name. We're gonna talk about that too. But they probably are, as far as numbers go, at least, they definitely attack the most people. And I kind of think they're probably the most aggressive bear, too. So we'll get into that in a bit.
6:41 Jeff Larson? Those things?
6:42 Wes Larson? Those things. We've seen one in the wild. Jeff, you've seen two.
6:45 Jeff Larson? Sure.
6:46 Wes Larson? Yeah, you've seen double the wild, completely wild sloth bears that I have.
6:50 Jeff Larson? They never once even got close to attacking me. So from personal, if you're going off personal experience, you're wrong.
6:58 Wes Larson? They're the least dangerous bear in the world. I would describe it as being unaggressive, in fact.
7:04 Wes Larson? All right. Well, they do attack a lot of people. And because of that, there were a lot of options when it came to talking about attacks from these bears. But since it's our first episode, that's completely dedicated to them. I wanted to talk about the most famous sloth bear in history, which is the sloth bear of Mysore. If you look up a list of the biggest, like the most deadly man eaters in history, often you'll find the sloth bear of Mysore on that list. This is one of those animals in India that kind of went on a rampage. And of course, there's like these great white hunters that have written stories about them. And that's what we're going to talk about today. It's a fun episode. All right. So in
7:44 Wes Larson? 1957, in the southern Indian state of Mysore, people were living in fear. But they weren't living in fear from the typical culprit that you would think in India wasn't tigers with the taste for humans, or a leopard that was breaking into homes to kill human prey in the dead of the night. It was a sloth bear. And that sloth bear was on a rampage. By the time word of this bear had reached big game hunter Kenneth Anderson, at least 12 people have been killed by the bear, and at least 24 had been injured. Geez. People in the area knew that sloth bears could be dangerous, but this particular bear was acting especially aggressively, and attacking people at any provocation. There were stories that people
8:25 Wes Larson? would see it at a distance, and it would actually come charging at a distance to come attack these people. It was so pissed off. Wow. Yeah, it's impressive. Yeah, you get in moods like that sometimes, Mike. Just that mad. I see you guys from like, two miles away, and just come running.
8:42 Jeff Larson? It is interesting, though. Like, humans, you really don't see too many distance attacks from anything. Like, even like, fight videos, like, they're always in close proximity. If someone's like, Running from afar, two blocks away, like you know there's something wrong with them.
9:00 Wes Larson? Yeah, yep. And there very well could have been something wrong with this bear.
9:04 Mike Smith? I like those stories that you read about online where some guy challenges a guy from like two towns over to a fight and they drive to meet each other. That's kind of a dis- long distance fight.
9:16 Jeff Larson? It's like you didn't calm down at all, like during that whole process.
9:22 Mike Smith? Eighteen mile drive, just still getting heated.
9:25 Wes Larson? Well, I remember in high school when that would happen, when you'd hear there's gonna be like a fight after school. And ever, there was just like an electricity in the air all day when you knew there was gonna be a good fight. So, anyway, I love a good fight. When word reached Kenneth Anderson, this hunter, he had heard some of the prevailing theories about the bear. The most common was that this bear was just crazy or somehow afflicted, like maybe it had rapies. Some people also said that this bear had had her cub stolen and was getting revenge. So kind of like a, like a John Wick bear. Or others had said that the bear-
9:58 Mike Smith? More like a Liam Neeson, like a Taken bear.
10:00 Wes Larson? Yeah, that's true.
10:01 Jeff Larson? Oh, nice, yeah.
10:02 Wes Larson? Yeah, with John Wick, it would have like killed one of the cubs or something.
10:06 Mike Smith? I see very few similarities between John Wick and this bear, to be honest, Wes.
10:10 Wes Larson? All right. You're right. I got owned by you there. Other people said that the bear had taken a human girl as a mate and had taken this girl to her cave. But when the village came and saved this girl, the bear started attacking people in retribution.
10:27 Jeff Larson? You got a reference for that, Mike?
10:30 Mike Smith? I wasn't listening. I was still thinking about how bad I just owned Wes.
10:34 Wes Larson? This last theory for me seems like one that could have been easily disproven, like, did you ever go pull a girl out of its cave? But I didn't, I couldn't find anything about that.
10:46 Jeff Larson? Yeah, and why would it be so mad?
10:48 Wes Larson? Yeah. You know, I loved that girl and they took her, took her from it.
10:52 Jeff Larson? They, oh, they took, so it took the girl-
10:54 Wes Larson? It took the girl as a mate.
10:56 Jeff Larson? It voluntarily and the people took the girl back?
11:00 Wes Larson? It like stole the girl and was keeping her in its cave and not letting her leave. And the villagers came and rescued her. And then the bear started attacking because it wanted its girl back.
11:10 Jeff Larson? I like that theory because it's just like the villagers saying what would make them the most mad. And they're just like putting anthropomorphizing it to the bear.
11:23 Wes Larson? Yeah. All right. So Anderson went over the details he received. He learned that the bear had attacked the face and the head of most of the victims. And he describes those attacks in his memoir, Man-eaters and Jungle Killers. And I'm gonna read just a quick thing from him. He said, "Like all bears, he invariably attacked the face of the victim, which he commenced to tear apart with his tremendously long and powerful claws. In addition to biting viciously with deliberate intent to ensure the success of his handiwork, quite half the injured had lost one or both eyes. Some had lost their noses, while others had their cheeks bitten through. Those who'd been killed had died with their faces almost torn from their heads. Local rumors had it the bear had also taken to eating his victims,
12:08 Wes Larson? the last three of whom had been partially devoured."
12:11 Mike Smith? Hmm, go for the eyes. It's low, it's low, but it's effective.
12:16 Wes Larson? I will say, at this point, I've read a lot of these different accounts of man-eaters from different hunters. You know, we had like the Lions of Sava. We had the Leopard of Rudrapayag. We've done a few of these stories. Anderson seems to know his quarry the best compared to a lot of these people. Like him even saying that this bear attacked the face like all bears do. It's true. And we've learned that like they often go for the head. And I do think he had a pretty good knowledge about sloth bear behavior and bear behavior in general.
12:48 Mike Smith? Yeah, I was gonna ask if that, that's a strange way to preface it by saying like most or like all bears.
12:54 Wes Larson? Yeah, he actually loved bears and we'll get it to that in a second. But he knew enough about sloth bears to know that the fact that this bear had been feeding on people with strange behavior. He was told that this bear had begun its reign of terror in the Nagvara Hills, near the large town of Arsekiri, which is about 105 miles northwest of Bangalore, which is one of the bigger cities in, in southern India. In these hills, this bear had attacked its first victims, and then it had become increasingly more and more confident. And it started spending more time in agricultural fields at dawn and dusk. And more and more of these attacks were occurring. So Anderson would hear about this bear on and off for about a year, but he mostly ignored
13:35 Wes Larson? the stories. He felt as though they're probably being exaggerated and he actually really loved bears. So he didn't want to kill one. He's just kind of like, no, I like bears. I'm not going to go hunt this bear.
13:46 Jeff Larson? I like that.
13:47 Wes Larson? Yeah. But then something finally happened.
13:49 Jeff Larson? That's how I feel, you know? Like even when you're like, you know what? It's probably smart that killed that bear. I'm kind of like, I went to kill it.
13:59 Wes Larson? Yeah.
13:59 Jeff Larson? If I was in charge.
14:01 Wes Larson? People are constantly writing you and saying, Jeff, come kill this bear for us. And you're like, absolutely not.
14:06 Jeff Larson? I wouldn't do it.
14:07 Wes Larson? You're our gun guy too. So who else is going to do it? Yeah. What do you use your gun on, Jeff?
14:15 Wes Larson? He just stares at it sometimes.
14:18 Jeff Larson? Cause it's not a good like self-defense weapon and I don't use it and I don't have it like out. That's a good, I guess it's just like.
14:26 Wes Larson? Just in case.
14:27 Jeff Larson? Yeah. Just for like my mental, you know?
14:31 Wes Larson? That's.
14:35 Wes Larson? Yeah. Hopefully that keeps your mental state strong because that's a dangerous thing to be relying on for your mental health. All right. Finally, something happened though, that did make Anderson get involved. He had a friend in Mysore, an elderly Muslim man named Alan Bucks. Alan was a caretaker to a shrine for a Muslim saint along a forest roadway in Mysore. And he basically lived with his family near the shrine and took care of it. And each night he would go out and light a lamp over the shrine that would burn all night. So essentially just picture like a really rural forest road and there's this one shrine on the road and there's a house next to that shrine. And this guy lives there with his family and his job is just to take care of the shrine. That's what he does like 24/7.
15:16 Wes Larson? Yeah. So one night Anderson was on that road during a tiger hunt and the rear wheel of his Studebaker flew off and his brake drum hit the ground. And it's the middle of the night. He's all alone. But he was lucky that this wheel had fallen off almost directly opposite of the shrine. And Alan Bux came out to inspect the commotion. And then he spent hours helping Anderson jack up the vehicle and replace the wheel. And he even gave him a bowl of hot tea to kind of send him on his way.
15:45 Jeff Larson? That's nice.
15:46 Wes Larson? Yeah.
15:47 Jeff Larson? It's a long time to change a tire, though.
15:51 Wes Larson? Yeah, it wasn't a tire, though. It was like the entire wheel came off, I think. So it was, it was a little bit more than, I guess that's just a tire, but. Yeah, you're right.
16:00 Mike Smith? What? When exactly was this all happening again? Sorry, I must have missed that.
16:04 Wes Larson? This is in the 50s.
16:05 Mike Smith? Okay.
16:06 Wes Larson? Yeah.
16:07 Jeff Larson? Maybe their jacks were like pretty hard to get.
16:10 Wes Larson? They didn't have it. Yeah. So when I read the whole story, they like just had to keep sticking rocks under and then lifting the car a little bit more and then putting another rock.
16:18 Jeff Larson? That'd take a while.
16:19 Wes Larson? Yeah, it took a while and it was a whole undertaking and this guy really went out of his way to help him.
16:24 Mike Smith? I saw, I think Triple T once in WWE, he lifted a car up like that, like the two sides. He pushed a car up onto the side of its two wheels. That would have been useful to have, maybe someone like him.
16:38 Wes Larson? Sure. I don't know if Alan Bux is doing much professional wrestling, but.
16:44 Jeff Larson? Would have saved a lot of time.
16:46 Wes Larson? Yeah, yeah. Triple H, right?
16:48 Mike Smith? Triple H, yeah.
16:49 Jeff Larson? Mr. Mr. T.
16:51 Wes Larson? Booker T, yeah. Yeah, whatever. There's probably a Triple T, too.
16:58 Mike Smith? Anyway, it was, it was the start of a nice friendship.
17:00 Wes Larson? I think that's actually my HVAC, like come over and fix my toilets for me sometime. They're Triple T. Shout out Triple T. Thanks. Doing a lot of work. Will they pile drive you when they come over?
17:11 Wes Larson? All right.
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20:17 Wes Larson? So this was the start of nice friendship, and Anderson would actually stop at the shrine whenever he was in the area to visit with his friend, Alum Bucks. He liked that honey tea. Yep, he loved that tea. He lives in Bangalore, and he was like a hunter, so he would pass through there a lot. Alright, not far from the shrine, there were a lot of fields where farmers grew ground nuts. And in the middle of those fields, about 400 yards from the shrine, was a hill of boulders that was perfect denning habitat for a sloth bear. And sure enough, this marauding bear took up residence in those boulders near the shrine. He would come out in the dawn and dust to search for nuts and ants and termites. But this kept the bear mostly in these fields and away from
20:59 Wes Larson? the shrine. So even though they knew this bear was around, it was spending almost all of its time in these agricultural fields and then in its den. But then something changed. The fig trees surrounding the shrine started to bear and drop fruit. And suddenly, this bear is now daily visiting this area right around the shrine. And one day, disaster struck. So Alum Bucks's son, who is 22, lived with his father, his mother, and his sister in that little house by the shrine. One night, after eating a nice dinner with his parents, this young man decided to go outside around 10:00 PM. And no one really knows why he was going outside or what he was doing. But as he walked under these fig trees in the dark, he almost immediately surprised this bear, who was busy eating the fallen
21:44 Wes Larson? fruit under the tree. This encounter was so quick and unexpected, that he really had no time to even react, and he was immediately knocked to the ground by the bear, which had charged the second it saw the shape of a person. He fell to the ground screaming and in a flash the bear tore into his throat with oversized canine teeth, ripping a large gash that blood poured out of. The man tried in vain to fight against the bear, he quickly lost a lot of blood. He tried to scream for help, but he wasn't able to, maybe because the bear had essentially ripped his throat out. And it continued to bite this 22-year-old in the struggle. His teeth went through the nose and the eye of this man, and the claws tore across his chest, his shoulders, and his back. So he got, he got pretty worked, pretty quickly.
22:29 Wes Larson? His throat got ripped out, his nose got ripped off, his eye got punctured. This is all in a matter of seconds. Triple T, that's kinda his wrestling move. Yeah, just poking out eyes and ripping out, biting through
22:42 Mike Smith? Jugglers.
22:43 Wes Larson? Through necks.
22:44 Mike Smith? That's interesting because, well, I guess it's maybe not interesting, it is interesting. Don't get me wrong, Wes, you're telling a very interesting story here. But I guess the fact that it's like got all this food around it, it's probably more just of like a defensive move.
22:59 Wes Larson? Hundred percent.
23:00 Mike Smith? Yeah.
23:01 Wes Larson? And we're gonna get to that, but a hundred percent. Yeah. As quickly as it started, it was over. The bear ran away, plunged into the darkness, and the sun managed to crawl his way back to the house and stumbled into this really small abode. His blood is pouring out all over his body and onto the floor where he collapsed. The family did their best to put pressure on the wounds with some rags they had in the house, but his jugular vein had been punctured and he bled out on the floor and died.
23:27 Mike Smith? Yeehaw.
23:28 Wes Larson? So Alum Buck. Not good. His name is Alum Buck, just so everyone knows, it's kind of a weird name, but I'm gonna keep saying it. He sent Anderson a tear-stained postcard with the details of the attack. Anderson, who lived in Bangalore, left three hours after receiving this postcard. So he got it, he read it, and he was like, okay, I'm going.
23:51 Mike Smith? It's personal now, now that he's got someone that helped him out, he's gotta go get revenge.
23:56 Wes Larson? Got a little John Wick in there.
24:01 Mike Smith? You brought me back around, Wes.
24:02 Wes Larson? All right. He was armed with his 405 Winchester rifle, a flashlight, and a single change of clothes. He figured it would only take him a couple hours to find and kill this bear. Boy, was he wrong, guys. It would take him a lot longer than that.
24:17 Jeff Larson? You see, Mike, that's why I have a gun. If someone like wrote you a message, you wouldn't be three hours from being able to grab your gun and go.
24:26 Mike Smith? True. I bet I could get a gun in three hours. I don't know. I've never tried, actually.
24:31 Jeff Larson? Go to the gas station.
24:32 Mike Smith? That's America, right?
24:33 Wes Larson? Yeah. Well, Anderson was Johnny on the spot with his gun, his flashlight, and one change of clothes. So he arrived at Alan's house in that evening, and after catching up with his friend and kind of seeing just how grief-stricken the whole family was, they came up with a plan, and it was a pretty simple one. They figured the bear would be out at night again. It'd probably be in those same fig trees, and that Anderson could simply walk out and shoot it. So about 8:00 PM that night, he got his rifle, his flashlight. He walked out into the dark and along the road, and he was kind of just swinging the rifle and the flashlight back and forth on both sides of the road as he walked.
25:12 Jeff Larson? Sketchy.
25:13 Mike Smith? Do you think this is where that band got their name from, Simple Plan, from this story?
25:18 Wes Larson? I do. Yeah, I think this is exactly where it came from.
25:22 Mike Smith? I've always wanted.
25:22 Jeff Larson? I'm just a kid.
25:26 Jeff Larson? It's a sketchy plan. Like, that seems scary to like be out in the dark with just a flashlight.
25:32 Wes Larson? He's pretty brave. The whole time I read his book about, he does some pretty crazy stuff, and the whole time he never was like, I was very scared. He just seems very calm about all of this. It's a dark night. He walks several miles in both directions from the shrine, but never sees the bear. He goes to these fields with the groundnuts, and he sees lots of jackals and rabbits and wild pigs, but no bear.
25:55 Jeff Larson? It's also tiger country, too, right?
25:58 Wes Larson? Uh, it is, yeah. I think it's not like prime tiger country, though. I think, I don't think he's too worried about tigers.
26:05 Jeff Larson? Maybe.
26:06 Wes Larson? It's possible, yeah. And definitely leopard country, too. So he goes to this hill of boulders and he shines his flashlight all over, still doesn't see anything. And as he's doing this, he almost steps on a Russell's viper, which actually strikes out at him and just barely misses his foot. And for him, that's enough to kind of break the spell and convince him he wasn't being smart. And he decides to go back to the shrine and kind of regroup. And he goes out a total of four times that night, but never even sees a single fresh bear track.
26:39 Mike Smith? Oh, phantom bear.
26:41 Wes Larson? Yeah. So the next day, him and Alum Bucks hike up the rocks in the middle of the day. And they go to the cave where Alum knew sometimes the bear would sleep off the heat of the day. Often sloth bears will just pick kind of these day dens that are in rocks. And they'll go into the den when it's really hot or when they just kind of want to rest. And Alum Bucks had seen this bear come back and forth from these rocks. So he knew it had a den in there.
27:06 Mike Smith? They're, they're fluffy. I'm sure we'll get into biology, but they always strike me as an extra warm bear. So it makes sense to me.
27:13 Wes Larson? Like they overheat easily.
27:15 Mike Smith? Yeah. Oh, yeah. We will talk about that a little bit, but.
27:18 Wes Larson? They got too much hair. So he found this cave. Anderson listened for snoring noises because bears often make some kind of snoring noises when they're sleeping. He didn't hear any. And then he chucked some rocks into this cave to try and wake this bear, which again is like much braver than probably I would be willing. It's also like when you prefer to sleep if you're trying to kill it. Yeah, maybe.
27:41 Wes Larson? Just fire some shots down in there. But you might hit its girl that it's kidnapped too.
27:49 Wes Larson? Anyway, nothing happens. There's no bear. They're both a bit discouraged. They're hot. They're tired. And Anderson tells Alum Bucks that he had to go back home to Bangalore, but that he would come back if the bear showed up again. And it would be a month before there were new victims. Okay. So let's talk a bit about sloth bears. We have a lot to talk about. Cause we haven't ever really brought up this animal. They're an animal that's very near and dear to my heart. And biologically, I think they're one of the more fascinating bears. First thing we should probably talk about is why are these bears named sloth bears? They aren't slow, they aren't particularly arboreal, so they do go in trees, but they're not like
28:29 Wes Larson? always in trees like some bears are, and they really don't look much like sloths to most people. But George Shaw might disagree with most people. He was a European biologist that was working in India in the late 1700s. And in 1791, he described the bears that he had seen in India and he gave them the name sloth bear. He chose that name because of their long claws, kind of like a sloth has long claws, and missing front teeth kind of gave them the appearance of a sloth to him. Plus, he had seen bears in trees during his travels, so he just kind of thought, oh, it's like a sloth. Makes me wonder if he only knew of like two animals, you know?
29:10 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
29:11 Wes Larson? Bears and sloths.
29:12 Jeff Larson? Or like he had just seen a sloth.
29:14 Wes Larson? Yeah.
29:15 Jeff Larson? The day before.
29:17 Wes Larson? Yeah, which would be crazy because he's in India and sloths are like new world animals.
29:21 Jeff Larson? Pet sloth or something. Like they're doing a lot of animal trading.
29:25 Wes Larson? Yeah.
29:26 Jeff Larson? He had sloths on the mind for sure.
29:28 Wes Larson? He must have, yeah. It's a bad name. We're gonna come up with some alternative names for them later, but for me, I don't think it's a great name. In Hindi, they call them balu, which is the word for bear. It doesn't necessarily mean sloth bear, but it's used in parts of India where the only bears are sloth bears, so it's kind of become the name for sloth bears, balu. There are some other local names for them. Birmendi, Pani Karudi, Rinch, Baluka, Walhalla, and Karadi are all some local names for this bear.
30:01 Jeff Larson? Walhalla.
30:02 Wes Larson? Great names. Walhalla.
30:03 Jeff Larson? That's good.
30:04 Wes Larson? Their scientific name has actually changed quite a bit throughout time, but the current scientific name is Melursus ursinus, which pretty much means honey bear. And like all bears, they really do love the honey.
30:16 Jeff Larson? They do. They love honey.
30:20 Wes Larson? A long time ago, this is a little quick aside. Jeff was like hanging out with this girl who's Korean. And we had driven to Arizona and Jeff had like fallen asleep in the backseat and she was sitting shotgun with me. And we were having a very.
30:33 Jeff Larson? But I was.
30:34 Wes Larson? Okay, you were quiet in the backseat.
30:36 Jeff Larson? I wasn't talking, yeah.
30:37 Wes Larson? Me and her, she was very cute, like she was, I just loved Myunghee. And we were having this kind of awkward conversation and it had gotten quiet. And then just out of the blue, she goes, do bears really love the honey?
30:51 Wes Larson? And it was just like really cute and I think about it all the time. Yeah, and I was like.
30:55 Jeff Larson? It was, I did a lot of groundwork behind, or like before that question.
31:01 Wes Larson? Yeah, he's the right thing to ask.
31:02 Jeff Larson? Talking about bears and honey like every time we were together.
31:08 Wes Larson? Oh, that's great. All right, anyway, these bears are found in India, Nepal, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka. But the vast majority of sloth bears live in India. They're the third smallest bear in the world on average. But there really isn't a ton of difference between them and like spectacled bears or Andean bears and Asiatic black bears. They're all kind of in the same size category. The one that we saw in India, the three of us, was a pretty large sloth bear. Like that was a big bear. I would guess it's on the other side.
31:39 Jeff Larson? That is nothing.
31:42 Wes Larson? Average weights for these bears really vary between populations, but in India, they average about 207 pounds or about 94 kilograms for males and about 185 pounds or 83 kilograms for females. So there is some sexual dimorphism at play, but not anything too drastic when we're talking about size.
32:01 Jeff Larson? Yeah, I've seen bigger bears.
32:03 Wes Larson? Oh, you've seen bigger dude.
32:04 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
32:07 Wes Larson? All right, they're typically black with really shaggy long fur that we just talked about. It's particularly long around their head and shoulders, which kind of gives them a bit of a mane. And then they also have a long patch of fur on their mid to lower back, which we'll talk about that purpose in a bit. They have a white or cream colored U or kind of Y shaped pattern on their chest. And that's thought to be a warning system for potential predators. And when you see a tiger or something approach a sloth bear, they often get up on their hind legs and show their chest and that big white U is on full display. It's kind of like a look how big I am.
32:44 Jeff Larson? Mike?
32:45 Wes Larson? What's up?
32:46 Jeff Larson? Kind of like Superman showing his ass off?
32:50 Wes Larson? Does he do that? Is Superman like, check this out? Yeah.
32:53 Mike Smith? Usually Superman's going around on all fours, but when he's threatened, he stands up and shows his ass off.
33:02 Jeff Larson? See, I didn't even know that. You know so much about him.
33:07 Wes Larson? You guys brought up earlier that they have really long, thick fur for an animal that lives in
33:13 Jeff Larson? Yeah, why is that?
33:15 Wes Larson? Hot part of the world. I don't totally understand it, but apparently the way that their fur is actually helps to like cool them off.
33:25 Jeff Larson? It's like that thing in like Latin America where the hottest days of the year, they give you like hot soup.
33:32 Wes Larson? Sure. I don't think that's exactly it.
33:35 Jeff Larson? Yeah, that's the thing they do. They like on really hot days, they give you like hot food and they say it cools you down. Maybe sloth bears, it's like, oh, actually having all this hair makes me cooler. It's like, I don't know, dude. It's, I bet you'd like it if someone shaved you.
33:52 Wes Larson? Yeah. And they don't, the, the main thing though, too, is
33:55 Mike Smith? Give them like one of those poodle haircuts where you shave their whole body, but leave their head.
33:59 Jeff Larson? So nice, I bet.
34:00 Mike Smith? Oh, they would love that.
34:01 Wes Larson? The main reason though, that they don't overheat as much as you would expect is they don't have an undercoat like a lot of other bears do. So like polar bears, for example, have a very thick undercoat. And then they have those long guard hairs that come out. And that's what keeps them very warm and sloth bears don't have that. But it's actually really important that they have that long hair because as they're feeding on their favorite food, if they weren't covered in that fur, they'd probably get bit a lot and they don't because of that.
34:30 Jeff Larson? So. Bit by what?
34:31 Wes Larson? We're going to talk about that when we get there in just one second.
34:34 Mike Smith? Humans, probably.
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38:55 Wes Larson? They have long muzzles and really floppy lips. Uh, one of the proposed names for sloth bears was actually lip bear because their lips are so big. They did. One of the scientific names was like labius, Ursus labius or something. That was, that's what I think we should start.
39:13 Wes Larson? They're also missing their incisor teeth. So these little teeth here, they are missing them. They have the canines, but not the incisors. And that gives them an advantage for eating their preferred food, which is ants and termites. So sloth bears are myrmecophagus. Can you guys tell me some other animals that are myrmecophagus?
39:32 Jeff Larson? Ooh, um, maybe manatees?
39:37 Wes Larson? Mermaids? No.
39:39 Wes Larson? Anteaters, pangolins, aardvarks are all myrmecophagus animals. What myrmecophagus means is they're eating primarily termites and ants for their food source.
39:50 Jeff Larson? Oh.
39:50 Wes Larson? So when you see a sloth bear in the wild, what you often see them doing.
39:54 Jeff Larson? Anteaters eat ants?
39:56 Wes Larson? Uh, anteaters do eat ants, yes.
40:01 Wes Larson? When we saw the sloth bear.
40:04 Wes Larson? Yeah, I think those two are related, their name and what they eat.
40:08 Jeff Larson? It's a coincidence.
40:14 Wes Larson? When we saw our sloth bear, do you guys remember what it was doing?
40:17 Jeff Larson? Uh, it was just like looking at the ground, wandering around.
40:20 Wes Larson? Yeah. And that's not usually what you see other bears doing. Like other bears will be grazing, but then as they're walking around, they're picking their head up. They're testing the air. They're kind of constantly checking for scents. Whereas a sloth bear has its nose right on the ground because it's looking for termites and ants almost all the time. And they can actually detect insects up to three feet underground with their sense of smell. And then they use those big, powerful four inch claws to tear through often rock hard colonies of termites and ants.
40:51 Jeff Larson? Nice.
40:52 Wes Larson? Once they, yeah.
40:55 Wes Larson? Once they disturb them and they get all those ants kind of and termites like
40:59 Mike Smith? Disturbed.
41:00 Wes Larson? Disturbed.
41:03 Wes Larson? I can't do it.
41:06 Wes Larson? They, they like kind of do a huffing thing to clear some of the dust away. And then they, without those front teeth and those big lips, they can form kind of almost like a vacuum seal over termites and ants and they just suck them up.
41:21 Mike Smith? Whoa, cool.
41:22 Wes Larson? Their teeth are effing in really bad shape because when they're sucking up termites and ants, they're also sucking up a lot of dust and rocks. It's just kind of, you know, that's the price of doing business.
41:32 Mike Smith? For the course.
41:33 Wes Larson? Yeah. They can actually too actively open and close their nostrils, which prevents termites and ants from getting sucked up into their nose. So, pretty cool. A lot of really cool adaptations and, and evolution for just eating that one food source mostly.
41:49 Mike Smith? If there is one trait I could take from a wild animal, it would be that. I think that sounds like the coolest.
41:54 Wes Larson? Yeah.
41:55 Mike Smith? Yeah.
41:56 Wes Larson? Try it.
41:57 Mike Smith? I'd rather be able to do that than like fly or breathe underwater, I think.
42:00 Wes Larson? Yeah.
42:01 Mike Smith? What, what would you use that for?
42:03 Wes Larson? I wouldn't.
42:04 Mike Smith? If something smells bad, I wouldn't even have to pinch my nose. What you would just breathe out, you can breathe out your mouth right now when it's stuff. I know, but you don't want any, anything getting up there causing boogers to happen. Sure.
42:18 Wes Larson? Listen, if you were like jumping off something high, you don't have to pinch your nose, you can just.
42:22 Mike Smith? It's a watertight opinion. Oh yeah, swimming for sure.
42:25 Wes Larson? Yep. All right.
42:28 Wes Larson? Like all bears, like all bears, they are very opportunistic though, and they will eat a wide variety of foods, including fruits, honey, nuts, plants, carrion, or sometimes even fresh meat. Some of their favorite.
42:42 Mike Smith? They'd probably love honey nut Cheerios, dude.
42:45 Wes Larson? They would.
42:45 Mike Smith? Oh.
42:46 Wes Larson? Honey and nuts, dude.
42:48 Mike Smith? Two in one convenient ring shaped snack. You think it'd be good for their heart?
42:55 Wes Larson? Cholesterol levels, yeah.
42:57 Mike Smith? That's what they always say in the commercials.
42:59 Wes Larson? Some of their favorite non-insect foods are mangoes, jackfruit, corn, sugarcane, melons, and pods of the golden shower tree.
43:12 Jeff Larson? That sounds awesome.
43:13 Wes Larson? We've all been to that tree.
43:15 Jeff Larson? All right.
43:16 Wes Larson? Visit that one a little more often. All right. They do not hibernate, but they will often find caves to sleep in. They're crepuscular, which means active dawn or dusk, but they can be quite active during the day. And then sometimes they switch to a very nocturnal activity pattern when they're living closer to humans. Female sloth bears gestate for a total of around 210 days, but like other bear species, they do have delayed implantation. So that fertilized egg is not going to implant in her uterus until her body knows that she's healthy enough to have a cub. When that happens, she'll enter a maternal den, she'll give birth and stay in the den for about three to six weeks. Those cubs are born altricial, which means they're completely dependent on their mom.
44:00 Wes Larson? They're blind, but they develop faster than a lot of other bear species and they're typically walking within a month of being born. When they leave the den, they'll ride on that patch of fur that we talked about. So both male and female sloth bears do tend to have that patch of fur. But it's for holding babies and the babies will climb up there and they ride on their mom's back.
44:21 Jeff Larson? It's really cute.
44:22 Wes Larson? It's very cute and it's thought to be a tactic for protecting cubs as well as transporting them to different termite and ant colonies. Cause when you think about it, if she has to constantly be checking out new ant and termites, it's like a really effective way just to move her cubs back and forth.
44:39 Jeff Larson? Yeah. Yeah. What, why do the males have it?
44:42 Wes Larson? I don't know. And you know, I should probably double check, but I'm pretty sure they both have it. And I think it's just.
44:48 Jeff Larson? Yeah. You made a point of saying they both have it.
44:52 Wes Larson? But I think they do. Check now. I, I really do think they do. I will check later and if I got that wrong, I will do a.
45:00 Jeff Larson? Don't carry the babies around, right?
45:03 Wes Larson? Yeah, I just don't. I think both of them have it though. Wait, I'm just going to check real quick.
45:06 Jeff Larson? It just like pulls up Wes's paper he wrote on sloth bears.
45:11 Wes Larson? You should know this. See, this says no, but I honestly think they do.
45:15 Mike Smith? Uh oh.
45:16 Jeff Larson? Oh, shoot.
45:19 Wes Larson? Yeah, I think they do. I honestly, because I remember working at the center that I worked at and you couldn't tell them apart because of a saddle like that. So that was just the AI result that said that, which I wish I could turn off. I'm pretty sure they both have it. I'm gonna look into it, though. I'm gonna double check on that. Everyone just put a little pin in there. But I'm pretty sure they both have that saddle.
45:40 Jeff Larson? When like the first three responses were just ads.
45:43 Wes Larson? Yeah.
45:45 Wes Larson? I'd hate the AI responses. Alright, but you guys know me, I'm not a big AI fan. Okay, sometimes females will eat and regurgitate a mixture of half digested jackfruit, wood apples and pieces of honeycomb. It's a sticky substance that hardens into a dark yellow circular bread-like mass, which is then fed to the cubs. And this bear's bread is considered a delicacy by some of the native people of India. Wow. I would love to try it. Sounds delicious.
46:14 Jeff Larson? Really?
46:15 Wes Larson? Yeah. Some jackfruit, honey and apples mixed together that a bear was regurgitated.
46:21 Jeff Larson? Yeah, that's the part.
46:22 Wes Larson? You wouldn't want to try it at least? I'd love to try it.
46:25 Jeff Larson? I don't, I'm not as excited about it as you. The regurgitated part is like, I'd be a little, I don't think I like this.
46:32 Mike Smith? Well, isn't all honey just regurgitated bee vomit?
46:36 Wes Larson? Yeah, pretty much.
46:37 Mike Smith? We all love vomit. I like vomit just fine, if I'm being honest. If it's that kind.
46:44 Wes Larson? Honey vomit?
46:45 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
46:46 Wes Larson? Alright, cubs leave their mom between two and three years of age. Tigers present a very real threat for sloth bears. One study on a population of Bengal tigers found that about 2% of tiger droppings within that population had sloth bear in them. So they aren't a major food source for tigers, but they do sometimes opportunistically kill and eat sloth bears. We're gonna get more into that here in a second. We're gonna talk about attacks first. This is probably the most dangerous bear species in the world when it comes to the sheer number of attacks. There isn't great reporting for the species as a whole, but one study looked at attacks just in one Indian state, Madhya Pradesh, between the years of 1989 and 1994, so a total of six years.
47:31 Wes Larson? And they found 687 maulings and 48 deaths.
47:36 Wes Larson? So just for those six years in one Indian state, there's an average of 115 maulings and eight deaths per year, which is much, much higher than you would see with any other bear. So why are these attack numbers so high? A big part is definitely that there are a ton of people in India, they're rapidly spreading into prime sloth bear habitat. But even when you adjust for population size, encroachment and whatnot, the attack numbers are still really high. So the other main reason for so many attacks is just that this is a very, very defensive animal and they need to be so defensive to survive. So I co-authored a paper last year with Thomas Sharp of Wildlife SOS and Dave Garchellis
48:19 Wes Larson? of the International Bear Specialist Group. And we looked at interactions between Bengal tigers and sloth bears. And the idea behind this paper was that sloth bears have co-evolved with large feline predators during a lot of their evolution. It's like saber-toothed cats, tigers, there was a jaguar species, actually. Yeah, leopards now. They've co-evolved with all these different big cats. And that has led to a very strong defensive reaction when they're approached by a predator. This combo of them constantly having their heads on the ground looking for food and then them not being really great tree climbers means they have to sometimes just scare a tiger off with a very explosive defense that convinces the tiger that they're not worth the trouble.
49:04 Wes Larson? So tiger can kill a sloth bear, like they're capable, but for a tiger, is it worth it? If like you go to kill that sloth bear and then you realize you're kind of going to get your ass kicked while you're killing it, you know? Is it worth it?
49:18 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
49:19 Wes Larson? And that's kind of the, the purpose behind this big defensive display.
49:23 Jeff Larson? It's a good strategy.
49:25 Wes Larson? It is. It's really effective.
49:27 Jeff Larson? Like in humans, if even like a really good fighter, I feel like if someone just is like full on crazy, like strip their clothes, get naked, throw dirt in the air. Like that fighter's going to be like, I don't know if this is worth it anymore, you know?
49:43 Wes Larson? Yeah. Well, and it's, it's true. Like, we talk about grizzly bears a lot. The thing about grizzlies is they constantly are testing the air again and like listening and smelling. And so they often hear us or smell us coming long before we see them. And it gives them plenty of time to get out of there. But with an animal where its head is always on the ground, some of the videos I looked at in my paper.
50:05 Jeff Larson? Underground.
50:06 Wes Larson? Yeah, the tiger like pretty much bumps into them before they even know it's there. And, and they don't have then the space to get away anymore. So they have to switch to this offense of like, I'm, I'm big and dangerous.
50:20 Jeff Larson? To bring up our personal experience when we were watching the sloth bear is like, we were there because there was a tiger mom with three cubs or two cubs. And they were like right next to each other. They were like within.
50:33 Wes Larson? I was crossing my fingers. Yeah.
50:35 Jeff Larson? I, at like some points, I think they were within like a hundred, 200 yards of each other.
50:40 Wes Larson? For sure.
50:41 Jeff Larson? So then like, the bear had no idea.
50:44 Wes Larson? Yeah.
50:45 Jeff Larson? Like the bear was just sniffing the ground, just like walking around. It had no idea that there was a tiger close.
50:51 Wes Larson? Yeah, they, they run into each other a lot. And especially in India where like water sources are frequented by a lot of different animals. Sometimes these interactions happen in water holes. And every once in a while, the tiger does decide to kill a sloth bear. But sloth bears can do a lot of damage with their claws and with their oversized canines. They have really long canine teeth. And unfortunately for humans, they often use the same strategy on us. When a sloth bear feels threatened by a human, they often launch a defensive attack and the outcome can be really devastating for humans. Basically, every sloth bear attack is defensive. As far as I know, there have been no recorded attacks. They were thought to be initiated as predatory attacks.
51:35 Jeff Larson? Uh huh.
51:36 Wes Larson? There have been ones where they have attacked people and then fed on them after they've killed them. But they don't think that those were started as predatory attacks. They're all defensive.
51:46 Jeff Larson? Wow.
51:46 Mike Smith? So in the story, Alum's son, he wasn't, there was no signs of the bear feeding on that body.
51:53 Wes Larson? Wow, it took off. Yeah. As soon as it neutralized him, it was out of there.
51:56 Jeff Larson? That one, he startled it. It was just like reaction. Like, let's neutralize this threat. That's what I've evolved to react to threats, you know?
52:06 Wes Larson? Exactly.
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54:05 Jeff Larson? It'd be interesting if one went into the Shire, because they would be bonking their head more than Gandalf, I bet.
54:13 Mike Smith? It'd be interesting, yeah.
54:16 Wes Larson? I don't think they're tall enough, though.
54:19 Jeff Larson? But like the walls and stuff, they'd be bonking their, they'd be sniffing the ground bonking their heads.
54:25 Wes Larson? I think you're right.
54:27 Wes Larson? What's, what sound would they make when they bonked their head?
54:31 Jeff Larson? You don't think they bonked? You don't think they had bonked their head if they were in a, right, house?
54:37 Wes Larson? Are you talking to me?
54:38 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
54:38 Wes Larson? I, I guess I haven't really thought about it, but yeah, I guess they would.
54:43 Jeff Larson? It feels like they bonked their head on trees all the time.
54:47 Wes Larson? I don't know. Why do you think that?
54:50 Jeff Larson? Because they're always sniffing the ground.
54:52 Wes Larson? Yeah, they might.
54:52 Mike Smith? Yeah, they're not looking.
54:53 Jeff Larson? They're not looking up.
54:55 Wes Larson? You're probably right.
54:56 Mike Smith? All day.
54:57 Wes Larson? Okay.
54:57 Jeff Larson? Yeah. Just a theory.
54:59 Wes Larson? All right, so.
54:59 Mike Smith? I think from the fig's perspective, almost every bear, sloth bear attack is predatory. Like, if you were to talk to a fig, they'd be like, yeah, all of them.
55:08 Wes Larson? These guys are very predatory.
55:10 Mike Smith? Yeah.
55:11 Wes Larson? Or a termite.
55:12 Jeff Larson? I think I'll write a paper on sloth bear head box.
55:16 Wes Larson? Yeah, it's easy. I did it.
55:19 Wes Larson? So, yeah, I'm gonna link the details to, to our paper in the show notes. It's open access. Anyone can read it. I do think it's an interesting paper when it comes to like, two really interesting animals interacting with each other. That's a lot of biology. It's a new bear species. It's an animal I've done a fair amount of work with. Outside of this paper even, I did some work with them. I definitely wanted to talk about them. I may even do a short bonus episode that goes over my research with sloth bears and release it for our subscribers. But for now, we're gonna leave the biology and go back to our story.
55:53 Jeff Larson? Now it feels like you have to do that.
55:55 Wes Larson? Yeah, maybe I will. We'll see. I don't have to do anything, dude.
55:59 Jeff Larson? It just feels like a big tease if you don't.
56:02 Mike Smith? You should just read your paper and record it and just throw that up.
56:07 Wes Larson? Yeah. All right. When Anderson heard that the bear was attacking people again, it was in a forested area about 20 miles away from Allen Buck's shrine. Again, this is about a month later. This is in the small jungle town of Sakrapotna. The bear had mauled two men in the area that were cutting wood, and it had killed one of these men. And then one of the forestry officials had written to Anderson to ask for his help. He thought it was very possible this was the same bear, and he remembered his promise to his friend. So he said that he wanted to help, but he wrote back and said, "Get as much like information as possible about the whereabouts of this bear, its daily habits, and then I'll be there soon." And about 10 days later,
56:49 Wes Larson? he got word of where the bear was thought to have a cave, and he was told that in the meantime, a forest guard had been mauled by the animal. So he left. He thought, you know, I gotta go kill this bear. It's still attacking people. So he left for this Sakrapotna place. And the day after he arrived, the bear struck again. There's a man who was with his brother, and his brother was grazing cattle in the forest near the hill where the bear was living, when suddenly this man heard screams coming from his brother in this deep forest, mixed with the growls of a bear. The brother was too afraid to go and confront the bear that he knew was mauling his brother, but he ran to the bungalow where he knew Anderson was staying
57:28 Wes Larson? to tell him about this attack. It was 4:30 PM, and Anderson got his rifle, his flashlight, three or four helpers, and they started off into the jungle to find this guy. The only problem was that this brother had really undersold how far the attack site was. And Anderson thinks they walked for about six miles through the jungle before getting close to this area where the man had been attacked. And at this point, when they get close, they're surrounded by dense jungle, these big bamboo groves. By the time they got there, it's getting dark, and the men that had accompanied Anderson weren't about to chase a bear into this dense brush in the dark. And they just said, we're going home and you should go home too.
58:08 Wes Larson? So everyone leaves aside from this guy's brother, the guy that had been attacked, his brother and Anderson. And the brother is getting pretty spooked out too. And so he just stands where he is and he's like, listen, we're close to where this happened, but I'm not going any further. I'll stay here and wait, but I'm not gonna like go into this jungle with you.
58:27 Jeff Larson? Hmm. Which didn't quite have that revenge. He didn't, he didn't have that need for revenge for his brother.
58:35 Wes Larson? No, I would do it. I'd go kill this bear if it had attacked you.
58:39 Jeff Larson? I'd tell you not to.
58:41 Wes Larson? Okay. Mike, would you do it for your brothers?
58:43 Mike Smith? No, sir.
58:44 Jeff Larson? Would you get someone close to it though? So they could do it?
58:49 Mike Smith? My brothers wouldn't lose to that bear. They would win. They would have beat the bear. I would need revenge.
58:55 Wes Larson? Basically this guy though, he just kinda waved his arm in the direction of where the attack was and he said it was over there. So Anderson picks up his rifle and his flashlight and he walks in that direction and into this thick brush. He's yelling for this victim, this attack victim, whose name was Thima. And he's not getting a response. The jungle's getting thicker and thicker. He's about to turn around and he calls out one more time and just barely hears a tiny moan in the valley below him.
59:21 Jeff Larson? Wow.
59:22 Wes Larson? So he works his way down into this valley.
59:24 Jeff Larson? It's the girl the bear has in his den.
59:30 Wes Larson? He's still yelling this man's name and the moans and cries are gradually getting stronger and stronger. Until he finally found Thima. And I want to read this part straight from his memoir about what this guy looked like when he found him. Forcing my way through the thickets, I struggled down the decline, slipping on rocks and loose stones, catching myself every now and then on the thorns. After a couple hundred yards of such progress, I called again. After some time, I heard a moaning answer somewhere to my right. I proceeded in this fashion, following the cry until I eventually found Thima, lying at the foot of a tree in a puddle of his own blood. His face was a mass of raw flesh and broken bones.
1:00:10 Wes Larson? The only way of distinguishing that he was breathing was by the bubbles of air that forced themselves through the clotting blood. In addition, the bear had raked across him the stomach with his claws, tearing open the outer flesh so the loop of intestine protruded. He was hardly conscious when I found him, and I soon realized that what I had taken to be a moaning reply to my calls were just the groans he was making every now and then in his delirium.
1:00:35 Jeff Larson? Oh, like he wasn't trying to respond, he was just making-
1:00:38 Wes Larson? He was just moaning.
1:00:39 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:00:39 Wes Larson? Just moaning for the love of moaning, dude.
1:00:42 Jeff Larson? Have you ever had it where like the only noise you could make was just a moan?
1:00:47 Wes Larson? Like when you get punched in the stomach and you just go, "Ooh, ooh." Like, I feel like I've done that before.
1:00:52 Mike Smith? It's one- In the morning, that's kind of how it is.
1:00:56 Jeff Larson? That's the only noise you could make?
1:00:58 Wes Larson? You just moan?
1:00:59 Jeff Larson? Yeah. Oh, yeah, I guess like if you really have to be. There's one rope swing where a branch grabbed, or like I tried to swing on the rope swing and a branch like hooked the rope. So it like flung me more than like swinging, it's normal.
1:01:18 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:01:18 Jeff Larson? There's a high rope swing, it's like thirty feet. So it just like flung me and I had no control over my body and I belly flopped. And I came out of the water, it's just like a, "Ooh." Like, that's like the only way I could get air out. And I got like made fun of by the people in the boat for like the rest of high school for their doing that.
1:01:43 Wes Larson? That's pretty funny. All right, so pretty much this guy, from his description, his face is just hamburger. He couldn't even really tell it was a face, but then he could see these bubbles coming out where he was trying to breathe. And then the bear had also ripped his intestines out. So just like one loop of his intestine was sticking out.
1:02:03 Jeff Larson? Just like when I belly flopped.
1:02:05 Wes Larson? Yeah, it's pretty much the exact same thing. I'm glad you brought that up. Anderson knew that Thimma was gonna die if he didn't do something right then and there. The night was quickly approaching, so he lifted him on his back, which isn't easy in the thick jungle. Yeah. Apparently, Thimma was kind of a beefy boy, too. He was pretty heavy. It'd be easier if he had all that hair. Latch him on there. Yeah. But he used his rifle as a walking stick. He climbed slowly up the hill with the mangled Thimma on his back. He was almost to the top of the ridge when he stepped poorly on some rocks. His left foot slipped and caught between two boulders and searing pain ripped through his body. Oh, no. Yeah. And Thimma fell to the ground.
1:02:49 Wes Larson? He's gonna be like a 127 hours guy, start drinking his own pee and stuff. He's got Thimma to eat if he needs to. Oh, that's a good point. He sprained his ankle and he's unable to walk. Ouch. 10 ouchies. Yeah, we've all been there. It's terrible. It's crazy to me that that part of the story is like the most squeamish I got. Yeah, I know. We've all, we've all done that enough. I just, ugh. I hate when someone does it on like the NBA or something and they keep replaying it. Like, I can't watch it. So he yelled for about an hour for the brother, but he never got a response. Uh, and he realized he was gonna have to spend the night here with Thimma, who was dying.
1:03:29 Wes Larson? He stayed up the whole night, listening to Thimma's groans and gurgles get fainter and fainter until he died around 5 a.m. He wasn't able to support himself on his foot, so he tried crawling through these thorny bushes. But it was so thick that he didn't make it very far before he gave up. He knew he would just have to wait for rescue. And around noon, a large group of people led by Thimma's brother showed up and rescued him and recovered Thimma's body. Anderson was taken to the hospital. His recovery would take weeks. And he decided at that point, he was gonna kill this bear at any cost. Now it's like, you messed with me. Now it's personal. Yep. All right. So, in the couple of weeks that it took him to recover, the bear mauled two more people.
1:04:13 Wes Larson? I'd go shoot that rock, personally.
1:04:18 Wes Larson? That's the, that's the thing I'd be most angry at.
1:04:24 Wes Larson? Anderson learned that had been seen regularly in a field with some Borum trees. And when he was able to walk, he went to this field in the evening and he picked a large tree. And he just decided to sit at the base of this tree with his back to the stump and just wait for this bear. Sure enough, around 11:00 PM, he heard the noise of the bears that woofed and grunted and shuffled toward him. Took about an hour for this bear to finally come close enough to Anderson. And when it did, he shined his flashlight on the bear and it immediately stood up in this light. Showed that large white shaped U pattern to Anderson. He fired and planted a bullet right in the middle of that U, killing the bear instantly. And in his book, he says, and that was the end of that really bad bear.
1:05:10 Wes Larson? That's a good way to end that story. So was this really a bad bear? Or was it actually a number of different bears that just happened to be mauling a slightly larger number of people than average that year? I personally think it was probably two or more bears that were responsible for these maulings. Because the first ones took place like 20 miles from the second group that we were talking about. And they described that first spot as being really good for a bear. Like there was all these different food sources. There was a little lake. There was denning habitat. There's really no good reason for that bear to move 20 miles away. And they actually have one of the smaller home ranges of different bear species.
1:05:52 Wes Larson? So, um, one of my colleagues, Thomas Sharp, wrote a paper on the sloth bear Mysore. And he kind of thinks the same thing, that it was probably multiple bears involved in these attacks. But it's impossible to say, and it could have been one. In the 50s, they did have that mindset a lot too of just like an animal being evil and like. Yep. And, and I don't, I don't blame Anderson for sticking to that narrative because it makes for a better story. And it's kind of a bigger win when you kill the animal. Cause you can kind of say it's over, you know, like this reign of terror is over. I did it. Yeah. No more bear attacks in India. They're done.
1:06:32 Wes Larson? So yeah, it, there is a lot of kind of debate over whether or not this was multiple bears. I think it probably was, but um, it's still a really interesting story regardless.
1:06:44 Mike Smith? Yeah, for sure.
1:06:44 Wes Larson? It's possible as one. Yes, it is possible, for sure.
1:06:48 Mike Smith? Maybe it's kind of like the noble lie. Old Plato always used to talk about the noble lie about how it's probably better for that society over there to think that it was just a single bear. Now the problem was gone and now they're all living comfortably again.
1:07:01 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:07:02 Mike Smith? Plato.
1:07:02 Wes Larson? I would agree with you.
1:07:03 Mike Smith? He's a wise old man.
1:07:05 Wes Larson? Yeah.
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1:07:36 Wes Larson? Tooth and Claws brought to you by Element. You guys know we love Element. I'm sitting next to a big pile of Element packets right now. I'm in Salt Lake and I don't go anywhere without it. Uh, I always put it in my water. I think it makes it taste better and I just feel better after I drink it. And the reason for that is because healthy hydration isn't just about drinking water. It's about water and electrolytes and that makes a lot of sense because you lose both water and sodium when you sweat. And both of them need to be replaced to prevent muscle cramps, headaches, energy dips. And a big reason that most people just replace the water is because since the 40s, we've been told just to drink eight glasses of water every day, whether or not you're thirsty.
1:08:17 Wes Larson? And that's not necessarily the right thing to do. Drinking that much water can dilute your blood electrolyte levels, which leads to a lot of those problems we talked about earlier. So the solution isn't just to stop drinking water, it's to drink water plus electrolytes. Enter Element. Element has enough sodium, potassium, and magnesium to get you feeling and performing your best. Plus, there's zero sugar, no artificial colors, or no other weird ingredients that are gonna hold you back. You're also guaranteed to find an Element flavor you love. I really love the new lemonade flavor. I think it's so good. I also really like raspberry. I like watermelon. Jesse loves orange. All the flavors are great, but I tend to kind of like
1:08:58 Wes Larson? the fruity, more citrusy ones. But yeah, try the new lemonade one. I think it's totally delicious. And Element came up with a fantastic offer just for us. You can get your free sample pack with any Element purchase at drinkelement.com/tooth. Be sure to try the new Element sparkling, which is a bold 16-ounce can of sparkling electrolyte water. So again, that's drink L-M-N-T.com/tooth. All right, you guys have any questions about the sloth bear of Mysore, or sloth bears in general, before we go to our categories?
1:09:30 Mike Smith? I always think of Plato being just like out of the womb, bald with a big white beard. Like, he was never a young man, right? Plato? Yeah.
1:09:38 Jeff Larson? Maybe like a sloth bear in one of those like mirror houses at the fair. It would bonk its head.
1:09:47 Mike Smith? Dude, especially like, because they can stand up. They're gonna be hitting their head all the time, Wes.
1:09:54 Wes Larson? It'd probably be charging those mirrors a lot, too.
1:09:56 Mike Smith? This didn't come up like a single time in that paper you wrote?
1:10:00 Wes Larson? No, there was nothing about mirror houses or the Shire.
1:10:03 Mike Smith? That's weird.
1:10:04 Wes Larson? Or Plato.
1:10:06 Jeff Larson? Do they have pretty thick skulls?
1:10:09 Wes Larson? Uh, yeah, I mean, they're like other bears. They have a pretty robust skull. Yeah.
1:10:16 Jeff Larson? Interesting.
1:10:16 Wes Larson? You should do a paper, Jeff. You should write a paper on sloth bears bonking their heads. All right, so if there's no real questions, we're gonna move on to categories. Our favorite sloth bear is our first one. Favorite sloth bear from pop culture. There's not many, so... Or just favorite sloth bear in general. It can be the one you saw in India. It can be whatever you want.
1:10:37 Mike Smith? So we're pretty sure Winnie is a black bear, right? Is that what we decided?
1:10:42 Wes Larson? Winnie was based off of a black bear initially.
1:10:45 Mike Smith? Okay, so even though he's a honey bear, more or less.
1:10:48 Jeff Larson? Wes just left.
1:10:50 Wes Larson? Now we're directionless here.
1:10:52 Jeff Larson? You know, I'll take one, I'll take one that...
1:10:57 Jeff Larson? I'll leave the obvious one and I'll take from the movie RRR. I just really like how they gather up all the jungle animals in India and then release them on like the English nobles. And I was glad they got a bear in there. So I'll go with the sloth bear they got in RRR.
1:11:16 Mike Smith? I'd forgotten about that. That was great. That's a fun movie.
1:11:21 Jeff Larson? Really enjoyed that. The scene where they like save the boy. Then there's just like a 15 minute. Um, monologue of like best montage of like them becoming best friends is just amazing.
1:11:39 Wes Larson? It's like three and a half hours long too, and it's just good throughout the entire runtime. It like never slows down.
1:11:45 Mike Smith? Yeah. Mike, do you have a favorite sloth bear?
1:11:48 Wes Larson? Paddington? Is he a sloth bear? Dude, what a spectacle. He's an Andean bear.
1:11:52 Mike Smith? So I can really only think of one.
1:11:54 Wes Larson? Bears Baloo.
1:11:55 Mike Smith? That's the only one I could think of. So I guess that one.
1:11:58 Wes Larson? Uh, I'm going to pick this little one that I, I have this little metal statue of a sloth bear that I bought my first time I was in India. And I bought it from this guy who had a really kind of shady looking little shop. And it was below all this other stuff and it had kind of a menacing feel to it. And I, this was like right before COVID started. And so I kind of blame me buying this car, this sloth bear for starting COVID. I think that might've been what did it.
1:12:26 Mike Smith? Your patient zero?
1:12:28 Wes Larson? Yeah, I just, well, I think it wasn't supposed to be bought and that was my punishment for buying it.
1:12:34 Mike Smith? I see.
1:12:35 Wes Larson? So sorry guys. Yeah.
1:12:37 Jeff Larson? All right.
1:12:39 Wes Larson? Okay. So next we are going to do, um, another poorly named animal. I asked you guys to come up with another example of an animal that just really isn't named very well.
1:12:51 Jeff Larson? Yeah, I have, I have one. I think I'm going to get some pushback on. Cause it's a good name.
1:12:56 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:12:56 Jeff Larson? But I just don't think it works for the animal. Wallabies.
1:13:00 Wes Larson? Okay.
1:13:01 Jeff Larson? I think because like every time I hear wallabies, I think of a rodent. I don't think of like a mini kangaroo. Yeah. And like, I think kangaroo is the perfect name for kangaroos. And I think wallabies needs to have like a name closer to kangaroo, like.
1:13:19 Mike Smith? What about that name?
1:13:20 Jeff Larson? Kangarides.
1:13:21 Wes Larson? Think of like something small.
1:13:25 Jeff Larson? Kangarines.
1:13:26 Wes Larson? It could be like a big rodent.
1:13:28 Jeff Larson? I don't know, that just sounds like a rodent to me, like something, it doesn't sound like a mini kangaroo.
1:13:36 Wes Larson? Okay.
1:13:36 Jeff Larson? I can't get it out of my brain. So maybe it's just a personal thing, but like to me, it needs to sound more like kangaroo.
1:13:44 Wes Larson? Okay. Yeah.
1:13:46 Jeff Larson? Alright, you guys don't feel that way at all?
1:13:48 Wes Larson? No, wallaby doesn't make me think of something small, but I don't, I don't know.
1:13:53 Jeff Larson? Well, I didn't say small.
1:13:54 Wes Larson? You didn't? I thought you said it makes you think of a rodent.
1:13:57 Mike Smith? Rodents can be big.
1:13:59 Wes Larson? Sure.
1:13:59 Mike Smith? Right?
1:14:00 Wes Larson? Yeah, like capybara is the biggest rodent.
1:14:02 Mike Smith? Huge.
1:14:03 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:14:04 Mike Smith? Okay. I think of licorice when I think of wallaby. That's like a weird association I've got in my brain. So I'm kind of on your side on this one, Jeff, I guess.
1:14:14 Wes Larson? I think I really like the way it sounds.
1:14:17 Jeff Larson? I just don't think of wallabies when I hear wallaby. I think of like a, yeah, like a pika type of animal.
1:14:24 Wes Larson? Something small.
1:14:26 Jeff Larson? You think they're small?
1:14:27 Wes Larson? I think when you say rodent.
1:14:29 Jeff Larson? Than an ant.
1:14:29 Wes Larson? If someone says rodent, you think of a small animal. You don't think of like a big animal. You think of something small.
1:14:35 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:14:36 Wes Larson? Alright.
1:14:37 Mike Smith? Okay.
1:14:38 Wes Larson? Good job.
1:14:38 Jeff Larson? I think they should have roo in their name.
1:14:41 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:14:42 Jeff Larson? Okay. Like a wallaroo?
1:14:43 Wes Larson? Wallaroo. Ooh, I do like that. Wallaroo. Yeah. Alright. Get on it, Australia. Mike, do you have an answer?
1:14:51 Mike Smith? Yeah, I'm gonna go with guinea pig. That's always been a curious one to me. I don't really understand. I'm sure there's some taxonomical reason why that makes sense, but it just doesn't to me. Cause in my mind, pigs are pigs and guinea pigs aren't, aren't.
1:15:05 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:15:06 Mike Smith? Pigs. Does that make sense? I don't know. They're like little fuzzy rodents. I don't know. It just doesn't strike me as a pig at all.
1:15:14 Wes Larson? They're not pigs. Yeah.
1:15:15 Jeff Larson? So they don't really look very pigish either.
1:15:19 Mike Smith? No.
1:15:19 Wes Larson? I picked, um, I picked whale shark. And
1:15:22 Jeff Larson? Yeah, I had that as a backup.
1:15:24 Wes Larson? I feel like I've done a lot of trips to see whale sharks with friends and my friends just cannot get it straight and they'll constantly be like, those whales, those whales. And I'll be like, oh, they're sharks and they're, I know they're sharks. And it's like, well, then don't call them whales, you know? So it's kind of, I don't know. I, and I know I can be a little bit of a stickler about that kind of thing. But I just wish they weren't called whale sharks because it is confusing for people.
1:15:51 Jeff Larson? I like that idea of like having something that describes them as big before shark. Just whale is confusing.
1:15:59 Wes Larson? Yeah. And I get it.
1:16:00 Mike Smith? A shark.
1:16:01 Jeff Larson? Yeah, Giga shark would be a good one. Yeah.
1:16:04 Mike Smith? Jumbo, jumbo. Uh, there's gotta be a better one.
1:16:07 Wes Larson? The name makes sense because they're gentle, they're massive, but it is confusing for a lot of people. And they're not, they're not whales, they're sharks.
1:16:15 Jeff Larson? You could do like spotted shark.
1:16:18 Wes Larson? Yeah, giant spotted shark. Sure.
1:16:20 Mike Smith? Oh, there you go.
1:16:22 Wes Larson? Constellation shark.
1:16:23 Mike Smith? See if we can get that moving.
1:16:24 Wes Larson? Stars to Jeff.
1:16:26 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:16:27 Wes Larson? All right.
1:16:27 Jeff Larson? I like that.
1:16:28 Wes Larson? What would you guys?
1:16:29 Jeff Larson? Constellations are big.
1:16:30 Mike Smith? They're huge.
1:16:31 Jeff Larson? Wait, my backup was
1:16:32 Wes Larson? Galaxy shark.
1:16:33 Jeff Larson? King Cobra is a confusing one to me because they're not cobras.
1:16:38 Wes Larson? Yeah. Oh, is that true?
1:16:39 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:16:39 Jeff Larson? And I've just always thought they're cobras because it's the king of cobras.
1:16:43 Wes Larson? They're not true cobras, but they're, you can still call them a cobra.
1:16:47 Mike Smith? What the freaking heck?
1:16:48 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:16:49 Jeff Larson? You can call them cobras? Why?
1:16:51 Wes Larson? Yeah, you can call them cobras like, because there's, there's like two groups. There's true cobras, which are like nausea species. N A J A. And then there's snakes like king cobras that aren't true cobras, but they still have the characteristics of what we know as a cobra. So it's not wrong to call it a cobra still.
1:17:09 Jeff Larson? So they're like on the fringe of a cobra.
1:17:12 Wes Larson? Yeah. Yeah. So I don't think anyone's losing sleep over people calling them cobras.
1:17:16 Jeff Larson? I'm fine with it.
1:17:18 Wes Larson? Okay. What would you guys name a sloth bear if you were responsible for naming them?
1:17:23 Jeff Larson? Hair bear.
1:17:24 Mike Smith? That's like that came to mind.
1:17:26 Wes Larson? Rhymes too. Okay.
1:17:28 Mike Smith? I thought mained bear would be maybe an appropriate name.
1:17:32 Wes Larson? Oh, yeah.
1:17:32 Mike Smith? Shaggy bear.
1:17:33 Wes Larson? Shaggy bear is good.
1:17:34 Mike Smith? I think the one I want them to be, the one that we saw, it kind of waddled out into the middle of the little dirt road we were on. Kind of like a sumo wrestler. So I thought of sumo bear would be a fun.
1:17:45 Jeff Larson? Oh, I like that.
1:17:47 Wes Larson? I would probably name them ant bear or termite bear because I think that's kind of it's what they eat. It's descriptive. I like the name honey bear for them, but I would probably name them ant bear.
1:17:58 Jeff Larson? Ant bear. I'd think they'd be like the smallest bear then.
1:18:01 Wes Larson? Yeah, that's true. Yeah.
1:18:05 Jeff Larson? What about Gandalf bear?
1:18:11 Wes Larson? All right. What's his name? Mithrandil? Can't remember all of a sudden his real name.
1:18:16 Mike Smith? Mithrandir.
1:18:17 Wes Larson? Yeah, Mithrandir.
1:18:20 Wes Larson? Okay, we're gonna do what would Mike and Jeff do? Let's say your best friend's son is attacked by, or you pick any part of the story that you want and do a what would Mike and Jeff do?
1:18:31 Mike Smith? I would immediately start drinking my pee after I rolled my ankle. That's for sure.
1:18:38 Mike Smith? That's as much as I've got, though.
1:18:39 Jeff Larson? If I was, was his name Anderson?
1:18:42 Wes Larson? Yeah, Kenneth Anderson.
1:18:43 Jeff Larson? I wouldn't have gone back after that first trip. I would have stayed out there till the job's done, you know?
1:18:50 Mike Smith? Job's not done.
1:18:51 Wes Larson? Quitter.
1:18:51 Jeff Larson? Job's not done. Lots of lives at stake here. That bear's gonna get someone else.
1:18:56 Wes Larson? It's a good point.
1:18:57 Jeff Larson? You know, there's ripe figs to eat.
1:19:01 Wes Larson? Exactly.
1:19:01 Mike Smith? What's his face? Corbett lived in Rudra Pragya for like four years while he's trying to kill that leopard.
1:19:06 Jeff Larson? This guy's job is a hunter, right?
1:19:08 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:19:09 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:19:10 Wes Larson? It's a good point.
1:19:10 Mike Smith? Did a bad job.
1:19:11 Wes Larson? It's a good point.
1:19:12 Jeff Larson? It's like, what do you need to go back for? Your job is literally a hunter.
1:19:17 Wes Larson? What's that?
1:19:17 Jeff Larson? This is your job.
1:19:19 Wes Larson? That died. Thima? Thima's blood is on his hands.
1:19:22 Mike Smith? Rolling a grenade into that cave would have been a good idea.
1:19:29 Wes Larson? All right.
1:19:30 Mike Smith? Listen, maybe the girl's in there, maybe, but you know, it's for the greater good kind of thing, you know?
1:19:35 Wes Larson? All right, let's do what you actually should do. A big part of this is prevention. So if you are in India and you're not, you know, protected by a car or whatever, you're out in the brush, making a fair amount of noise as you're moving around is really important because this is an animal that you could surprise. And if you surprise them at close range, they'll probably attack. If you surprise them at a long distance, it's a good chance it's just gonna run away. So making noise to avoid them, avoiding moving around in brush during like dawn and dusk when they're most active. But this is actually a really interesting bear because there's not a great consensus yet on the right messaging for what you should do. Thomas Sharp, my co-author on my sloth bear paper, wrote a paper with Tom Smith,
1:20:19 Wes Larson? my mentor, on sloth bear attacks. And there's some other authors in that paper as well. What they found is that it's kind of a tricky bear. Sometimes playing dead actually works-
1:20:31 Mike Smith? That's a good name for it.
1:20:32 Wes Larson? Tricky bear.
1:20:33 Mike Smith? Tricky bear.
1:20:33 Wes Larson? Yeah. Sometimes playing dead actually works pretty well with this bear because it just kind of wants the threat to be gone. And if you're suddenly not a threat anymore. But they did find that people that played dead often had more serious injuries than people that ran or people that fought back. But people that ran or fought back died at a higher average than people that played dead. So it's kind of tricky. You don't want to run. You don't want to fight back necessarily. But playing dead also, you might get pretty beat up when you do that. So the best, like the best advice I can give people is make plenty of noise. If you see a sloth bear and it hasn't seen or heard you yet,
1:21:15 Wes Larson? you want to quietly just leave that area so it doesn't even hear you or know that you're there. And if you're being charged by a sloth bear, I would try and slowly back away. But if it makes contact with you, play dead. Go into the fetal position. Protect your neck, protect your face, protect your stomach, and hope that it stops that attack. And hopefully someday India will have access to bear spray and these other tools that would be really good deterrents for sloth bears.
1:21:41 Mike Smith? Yeah. India. I thought we'd been talking about Indiana this whole time.
1:21:47 Wes Larson? Okay. Um, that's a really interesting paper, though. If you want to read it, it's with Tom Smith and Tom Sharp and- You thought we were talking about like Gary, Indiana?
1:21:58 Mike Smith? Yeah. Gary, Indiana, Gary, Indiana, Gary, Indiana.
1:22:01 Wes Larson? All right. Uh, next category.
1:22:04 Mike Smith? That's like often cited as one of the most dangerous cities in the country. So it makes sense why I would think that.
1:22:10 Wes Larson? Yeah. Gary, Indiana?
1:22:12 Mike Smith? Yep. Look it up. Look up the stats for the bear attacks, probably.
1:22:18 Wes Larson? Alright, next category is I wanted you guys to give me a hot take on Baloo the Bear, a beloved children's-
1:22:26 Jeff Larson? I think, I think you're both more opinionated than me on this, so I'm gonna let you guys cook.
1:22:32 Wes Larson? I'm gonna let Mike go first, cuz I think he's the most upset about it.
1:22:35 Mike Smith? I have never, I hate this bear. I've never liked him. The biggest offense in the whole movie, and I think this is like, it's pretty messed up how he kinda tries to hijack King Louie's song by the end. He comes in with a little like, leaf dress and starts dancing and singing like it's his song. You already had your song, Baloo. Let King Louie cook for a bit, but no, he has to get out there and steal center stage. That always bothered me so much.
1:23:00 Wes Larson? And King Louie's song is like, the best song-
1:23:03 Mike Smith? It's the best song in the whole movie, yeah. But I think even in his song-
1:23:07 Jeff Larson? You don't think he was just vibing in the, it's the cameraman's fault for going on Baloo?
1:23:12 Mike Smith? No, he, he takes over dude. He does like the, the Kool-Aid Man thing through like a rock wall. He bursts onto the scene, he's like, now it's my turn to sing. It's like dude-
1:23:24 Mike Smith? He probably took over that song though, cuz his song sucks. The Bear Necessity is terrible song. I think he takes minimalism to kind of an extreme and he's talking about how to pick the prickly pears and the pawpaw fruits. It's like, maybe get like a fork or a tool. You don't have to have like absolutely nothing. I hate dude-
1:23:44 Wes Larson? I didn't realize when I came up with this category that you had such strong feelings.
1:23:48 Mike Smith? It bothers me dude, cuz he's all about like taking it easy, but then he's like, just, just steal from the bees. They're working hard and like, they can sustain our lazy lifestyle. It's like, well, the bees are trying to take care of themselves. Why don't you do like a modicum of work for yourself? Yeah, I think Baloo's a real, I think he's a fraud and I think he's, I don't know. I think he was happy to see Mowgli leave by the end, cuz he was like, now I have one last thing to worry about.
1:24:12 Wes Larson? I can just take care of myself again. Yeah, you're probably right. I don't have nearly as strong feelings, but I'm glad I picked this category.
1:24:20 Mike Smith? Such an attention hog dude.
1:24:22 Wes Larson? This is my favorite Disney movie Jungle Book, the original animated one.
1:24:27 Jeff Larson? More than Pirates of the Caribbean, huh?
1:24:29 Wes Larson? Yeah, and Baloo was like pretty consistently one of my favorite characters. But it was actually when me and Jeff recently had our lions versus tigers discussion. It made me look at Shere Khan differently where I was like, Shere Khan was just trying to get rid of Mowgli, who he saw as a threat to like the jungle, like he was the only one really protecting the jungle. And Baloo was trying to like make him part of their whole world and everything. And I think that was pretty dumb. I think Baloo should have killed Mowgli immediately. Instead of trying to like float on a river with him, so.
1:25:03 Jeff Larson? No, that was mine too. Baloo's kind of the actual villain. Because what Mowgli burns down the whole jungle.
1:25:14 Jeff Larson? And Baloo enables that, you know?
1:25:16 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:25:16 Jeff Larson? Shere Khan's just trying to like get rid of the threat to their whole ecosystem.
1:25:21 Wes Larson? Yeah, the second Mowgli sees a hot girl, he's just like, I'm out of here. I don't care about you guys at all. And he's just gone.
1:25:28 Jeff Larson? See, that one, that one I don't blame Mowgli.
1:25:35 Wes Larson? Alright, uh, we're gonna move on to our anaconda scale, bringing that back for this episode.
1:25:40 Mike Smith? That's true dude. He sees a girl from like a mile away and he's like, well, I guess I'm forsaking all of my friends and family.
1:25:47 Wes Larson? My lifetime friends that have risked your life to save me over and over and over again. Man, see ya. Anaconda scale, Kenneth Anderson.
1:25:56 Jeff Larson? You want to have sex with a wolf?
1:25:57 Wes Larson? I would prefer that, yeah.
1:26:02 Wes Larson? Can we, are we good? Can we move on to anaconda scale?
1:26:05 Jeff Larson? I don't know. Alright. You can try.
1:26:08 Wes Larson? Baloo. Who do you guys think from the movie Anaconda? Who do you think Kenneth Anderson most is aligned with? Curious about this one, because I think you could go a lot of directions here.
1:26:22 Jeff Larson? Yeah, I would say from the Jungle Book, he's most like Shere Khan. Trying to get Shere Khan, try and get rid of a threat to his way of life.
1:26:32 Wes Larson? All right, uh, we're gonna do our cage match next. This is a new animal, so we're gonna plug it into our cage match. This is kind of like a mid-sized bear. So I think for its weight class, we're looking at like American black bears, leopards, mountain lions, wolves.
1:26:51 Jeff Larson? Bears, where do you think it places?
1:26:54 Wes Larson? I think it probably is beating American black bears, even though they're bigger on average.
1:27:00 Jeff Larson? So it's like the third best bear after grizzlies and polar bears in a cage match?
1:27:05 Wes Larson? Yeah, if I had to like have one on my team.
1:27:08 Jeff Larson? No, I think I'd agree with that.
1:27:09 Wes Larson? I'd pick it after those two bears, yeah. Unless you're picking the biggest of each species, then I would probably still go with an American black bear. But if you're doing average size, I think I'd pick a sloth bear just because they're, they're little brawlers, you know? They know how to fight. They do sometimes have interactions with leopards where they've fought. Um, they've killed leopards, leopards have killed them. So I think that's a really good fight between those two species. But yeah, I think for our bears, I'd rank it third. And then I, I'd probably take it over a leopard and I'd take it over a wolf, too.
1:27:41 Jeff Larson? Okay, interesting.
1:27:42 Wes Larson? So that's kind of where I'd put them. All right.
1:27:45 Jeff Larson? Jaguar?
1:27:46 Wes Larson? I was about to ask Jaguar. I think I would take the Jaguar.
1:27:49 Jeff Larson? Nice.
1:27:50 Wes Larson? Yeah. Um, how about you guys? Who are you putting your money on?
1:27:54 Jeff Larson? For Jaguar? Yeah, I think I'd go Jaguar.
1:27:57 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:27:58 Jeff Larson? I honestly think the one I'd be most interested in is like versus an American black bear.
1:28:03 Wes Larson? Me too. Same. Yeah. Okay, um, we're gonna do a little bit about conservation. They're IUCN vulnerable, they're protected under Indian law. Uh, there's likely about 10,000 sloth bears left in the wild, but they're rapidly losing their habitat to a growing population in the Indian subcontinent. Some of their other threats involve poaching for traditional medicine and then bears being killed in direct conflicts with farmers or other people. So kind of like this bear that was killed by Kenneth Anderson, you know, but sometimes people just shoot them if they're like in their field or whatever. So luckily, more and more people are seeing the value in conservation in this Indian subcontinent. So when you say Indian subcontinent, it's like Nepal,
1:28:46 Wes Larson? India, Bhutan, kind of all those countries. And sloth bears like tigers have strongholds now in different national parks that have been set aside by local governments. So they are doing better in those places.
1:28:59 Jeff Larson? Yeah. Shout out to like, I know there's for sure problems, but shout out to India for at least like conserving some wildlife, setting aside some like national parks and like, you know, we went there, we saw sloth bears. Like that's
1:29:14 Wes Larson? For sure.
1:29:15 Jeff Larson? Something to give them credit for.
1:29:17 Wes Larson? Yeah, it's great. And I think sometimes with ecotourism, you kind of like think, man, like this is kind of messed up that there's all these cars watching this tiger or whatever. But when you think about the alternative of that tiger being forced to live in a habitat that's rapidly being degraded by, you know, expansion and people building things and agricultural stuff, it's better that people have realized the value of tourism. Yeah.
1:29:42 Jeff Larson? If the ecotourism didn't exist, that land might not be the way it is.
1:29:48 Wes Larson? All right. Briefly, I want to talk a little bit about the wildlife organization I worked with when I was doing sloth bear work and their efforts to save dancing bears. So this organization is Wildlife SOS. They started their work with sloth bears in the 90s. And it's, I'm going to just like preface this with a quick trigger warning. It's a hard story to hear the way that some of these bears were treated, but I do think it's important to see how big of a difference just one organization can really make when it comes to animal welfare. So basically, there's this nomadic tribe of people in India called the Kholadar people. And about 400 years ago, they started this practice where they would kill a mother sloth bear,
1:30:30 Wes Larson? kidnap her babies. And when the cub was about six months or older, they would put a red hot poker through the muzzle of the bear, through its nose, that would create a hole in the muzzle, and they would run a rope or a chain through that hole. And they would essentially then have this bear on this chain in its nose. And it's so painful for the bear that the bear would immediately kind of follow whatever pressure they would put on that rope. So they could then take these bears. Initially, it was for like royalty. They would take them and they would make them dance. So they're pulling on this rope and the bear's dancing, but really, it's kind of like reacting to this really painful stimulus. It's really terrible. After this left more royalty,
1:31:14 Wes Larson? they just started doing it in the street where they would have these dancing bears for tourists. People could come see a dancing bear, they'd give these people money. And this continued for a really long time, and it affected hundreds and hundreds of bears. And Wildlife SOS launched this program to rescue dancing bears and replace this lost income for these people with something else. So basically, they would go take a bear from one of these Kholadar tribespeople, and they would replace it with like a little corner kiosk or some kind of shop that they could then still make money, but they wouldn't have to exploit these animals anymore. And it worked really well. And all these bears that were rescued were placed in sanctuaries. They're treated really well. I worked in one of those sanctuaries, and I honestly don't know if I've
1:31:59 Wes Larson? ever seen happier bears. They had this terrible life, and then they get to go live with a bunch of other bears. They're fed amazing food. They're just really, really happy animals. And it's really beautiful. Yeah. Over time, Wildlife SOS essentially took every single dancing bear off the street. I think it was over 600 animals that they rescued in total. And the practice is now essentially eliminated in India. There really aren't dancing bears anymore. It's a huge win for animal welfare and for sloth bears. Super inspirational to me. Sometime, we might have Kartik on the show. Kartik is one of the founders of Wildlife SOS and helped start this whole project. And he's just really an interesting person.
1:32:42 Jeff Larson? Yeah, that'd be great. Yeah, no, that's amazing.
1:32:45 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:32:45 Jeff Larson? And I'd just say it's easy to like see something like that on social media and like just give it like a like because you like bears and it's someone with a bear.
1:32:55 Wes Larson? Or whatever else, yeah.
1:32:56 Jeff Larson? And it's like, good to know that that's a bad practice and not to like, I don't know, I feel like the more public opinion changes on those things too, it's helpful. Just like not being impressed by bears that have been trained to do things that's not natural.
1:33:14 Wes Larson? For sure.
1:33:14 Jeff Larson? Unless they're on a motorcycle.
1:33:16 Wes Larson? Yeah. Wildlife SOS, I'm gonna like that. I can't help myself.
1:33:23 Wes Larson? Wildlife SOS has gone on now to they're rescuing elephants that have been tortured. They even rescue like cobras that you know, like the snake charmer people often violently like alter cobras to be able to do that. And they're rescuing cobras. They're doing all these different things to rescue animals, wild animals that have been essentially tortured their whole lives. So they're a great organization. They do a lot of research too. I really have liked working with them.
1:33:49 Jeff Larson? Well, let's donate some money.
1:33:51 Wes Larson? Let's donate some money. Yep.
1:33:52 Jeff Larson? And we'll match up to 2,000 if listeners donate money.
1:33:57 Wes Larson? Okay, we'll set up a way for, yeah, to track that. That's a good idea though. Mike, what were you gonna say? Oh, I was gonna just say that same thing, but now Jeff looks like the good guy. Now he looks like the magnanimous bear lover. No, I like that. I know, it's my bad. It's on me. Maybe, let's do it through our Instagram. I know Instagram has like a way to raise money for different causes. So I think we'll do it on there. And yeah, like Jeff said, if we raise $2,000, we'll match that donation. So we'll put a little bit more fanfare into it when we launch it, but we'll let you guys know when that's gonna be.
1:34:34 Jeff Larson? Cool.
1:34:34 Wes Larson? All right. Well, that's it.
1:34:36 Jeff Larson? We're gonna do our clause. One other question.
1:34:38 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:34:39 Jeff Larson? What other countries besides India have sloth bears?
1:34:42 Wes Larson? Uh, Bhutan. Bhutan. Nepal. And what was the other one I said? Indiana.
1:34:49 Mike Smith? Nepal and Sri Lanka.
1:34:50 Wes Larson? That's right.
1:34:51 Jeff Larson? Did you say it in the episode?
1:34:53 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:34:53 Jeff Larson? Oh, that's on me. My bad.
1:34:55 Mike Smith? That's on you, dog. Yeah.
1:34:56 Jeff Larson? Shoot.
1:34:57 Wes Larson? Uh, let's do our claw ratings for this animal. It's a new animal. I'll go first because mine's not a surprise. 10 claw animal. It's a bear. It's a bear I've worked with. I think they're like one of the weirdly most cute bears. But then just like so fascinating and interesting. So yeah, for me, it's a 10 out of 10. 10 claw animal.
1:35:16 Mike Smith? One claw. I hate blue. Uh, in actuality, seeing the bear was a real special experience in India. I'd give it eight claws. Yeah, I don't know. I just, I guess I haven't thought about it a whole lot since.
1:35:29 Wes Larson? Do you have any bears that are higher than that?
1:35:31 Mike Smith? I like polar bears and pandas. I think are both nine claw, nine claw bears.
1:35:36 Jeff Larson? Yeah, I'm going to give it a nine just because I have four bears ahead of it. So I feel like it deserves a 10, but also I can't have five 10 claw bear animals. So I'm giving it a nine and it's, uh, number 62 overall.
1:35:56 Wes Larson? What are your, well, I guess you're doing a video for Backpacker where you're going to rank your bears.
1:36:01 Jeff Larson? I, I can do, I think this will come out after though. So.
1:36:04 Wes Larson? Okay.
1:36:05 Jeff Larson? Well, yeah.
1:36:06 Wes Larson? It might not. Give us a tease. Tease us, Jeff.
1:36:10 Jeff Larson? Tease you?
1:36:11 Wes Larson? I guess you just did, kind of.
1:36:13 Jeff Larson? Let's say.
1:36:14 Wes Larson? I'm teased.
1:36:14 Jeff Larson? Sun bears are not in the top four.
1:36:18 Wes Larson? Okay.
1:36:20 Wes Larson? I gotta watch the rest of that now. That'll be coming out on our Instagram as well as theirs, I believe. But yeah, thanks, guys, for listening. I'm glad we finally did sloth bears. We'll do them again. There's a lot of attacks out there. They're a really interesting species. Uh, kind of been saving them for a while. So I'm glad we finally talked about them. Uh, we will link my paper in our show notes and then also, um, some info about Backpacker's Bear Month. So you guys can learn more about bears this month. It's gonna be fun.
1:36:50 Mike Smith? Sweet.
1:36:50 Jeff Larson? I like that.
1:36:52 Wes Larson? Alright.
1:36:52 Jeff Larson? Idea.
1:36:53 Wes Larson? Okay. We'll see you guys later. Love you.
1:36:56 Jeff Larson? We'll see you. Love you.
1:36:57 Wes Larson? Bye.
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