Pod Insights Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks Punch the Lonely Monkey and Other Recent Animal Encounter News Stories About this episode The guys talk about a few of the more notable recent animal attack and encounter stories, including the first mountain lion fatality in Colorado since at least 1999, a macaque in a Japanese zoo whose story will pull on your heartstrings, an odd case of the poison from a frog being used in an assassination, and more.
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Transcript 13,135 words · 4 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.
1:36 Jeff Larson? Hello everybody. This is Tooth and Claw Podcast. I am Jeff Larson. I'm the wildlife biologist's brother, Wes Larson.
1:51 Mike Smith? Almost had us there.
1:53 Wes Larson? You see the restraint I had there?
1:54 Jeff Larson? Yeah. And we also have Mike Smith with us. I had something that was gonna make Mike mad and I just forgot it.
2:03 Mike Smith? Most things do, so just take a shot in the dark and it'll work.
2:06 Wes Larson? The sun, was it the sun? Was it human contact?
2:10 Jeff Larson? He came over and met my dog yesterday.
2:13 Wes Larson? What'd you think, Mike?
2:14 Mike Smith? Great dog. Love, loved that dog. He was great.
2:17 Wes Larson? Did it look like Pennywise when you saw it, or did it look very cute, like normal?
2:21 Mike Smith? It looked abnormally cute. I'm a pretty objective judge of pet cuteness. I'm not, I'll tell you straight up if your baby or your dog is ugly.
2:31 Wes Larson? Yeah.
2:31 Mike Smith? This dog is a good looking dog.
2:33 Wes Larson? It's very, a very cute dog. It's like one out of 50 photos that I see of it, though, I'm like, oh, it looks a little bit like Pennywise there.
2:41 Mike Smith? Oh, interesting. Yeah, I didn't get that at all.
2:43 Jeff Larson? Yeah. I mean, Pennywise needs to be a little cute to get all those kids.
2:47 Wes Larson? He's kinda cute.
2:50 Wes Larson? He is kinda cute.
2:52 Jeff Larson? He can take a lot of forms, too. That's like saying he looks like anything.
2:56 Wes Larson? That's true. And he can be little cute forms, too, sometimes.
2:59 Jeff Larson? Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
3:01 Wes Larson? That's fair.
3:01 Jeff Larson? Nah, he's, phew, man, I don't think there's a dog in the world that more people comment or ask to pet or whatever. And he loves it.
3:11 Wes Larson? Cause not only is he cute, but he only has three legs, so it's like...
3:14 Jeff Larson? And guess what? They never ask to pet me.
3:19 Wes Larson? That's probably for the best.
3:21 Jeff Larson? I always have to be like, oh yeah, where's mine?
3:25 Wes Larson? No pets for Jock.
3:26 Mike Smith? You gotta offer.
3:27 Jeff Larson? Only if they're attractive, though.
3:32 Wes Larson? Steering into some dangerous territory here. Uh, I got nothing, guys.
3:38 Jeff Larson? Dang.
3:38 Wes Larson? Been a boring week for me.
3:39 Jeff Larson? I had something good.
3:40 Wes Larson? Yeah.
3:41 Jeff Larson? Messed up.
3:42 Mike Smith? Well, if you remember, just interrupt me.
3:45 Jeff Larson? Okay.
3:48 Wes Larson? He's gonna see that as carte blanche for the rest of his life.
3:51 Jeff Larson? You know what's weird with me right now? Well, kinda weird is I'm on, I'm back on my anti-anxiety meds. I've been off them for a while. I just had like back pain and I thought it was contributing to everything. So I was gonna, I was like, I'm gonna get rid of this pain and then reassess. And that's where I'm at. But the reason I started taking them was because I was so anxious about having a dog that I was going crazy. I was just like, I can't believe I got a dog and he was, wouldn't let me sleep the first night. So it was just like out of control anxiety. So I took some of my old anxiety meds. And when I first got shanks, my face was getting really tickly and my eyes were burning a bit.
4:34 Jeff Larson? And then I took anxiety meds and that went away. And then I stopped taking them and my eyes started burning really bad. And I was trying to figure out what was different. And I was like, maybe it's those anxiety meds. And I am taking them again and I'm not reacting to shanks. So it's really weird. My anxiety gives me allergies to something.
4:57 Wes Larson? I also thought like, as someone who's had pet allergies my whole life, I've never heard those symptoms for pet allergies.
5:04 Jeff Larson? Just my eyes, like I don't have any sinus.
5:08 Wes Larson? Yeah, like, but eyes burning too. Like the way you described it to me, what, I, my eyes get really itchy. When I'm around out, like pets that I'm allergic to, but they don't like hurt. And you said it felt like yours had been in like smoke. So I wonder if it was like your anxiety was making that happen, you know?
5:26 Jeff Larson? I don't think, well, kinda, but it was the same thing we, when me and Mike had a cat.
5:31 Wes Larson? Okay, huh.
5:33 Jeff Larson? Well, it was just my eyes were bugging me and I thought it was because there's fires. And I was like, eh, maybe it's because we have a cat with the longest hair in the world.
5:41 Mike Smith? That was interesting that that happened because usually it takes a man and a woman and they have a human child together. But Jeff and I had a cat.
5:50 Wes Larson? That's true. Yeah.
5:53 Jeff Larson? I didn't say that weird. You made it weird.
5:55 Wes Larson? You had a cat together.
5:57 Mike Smith? You're starting to say things that are making me mad, Jeff.
6:01 Wes Larson? You're getting there.
6:03 Wes Larson? He backdoored it. Uh, all right. Well, should we talk about these animal stories?
6:08 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
6:08 Wes Larson? I think we ought to.
6:09 Jeff Larson? Okay. This is a news episode. We didn't say that. It probably got in the title.
6:14 Wes Larson? So if you're, if you're new to this podcast, this is like an episode we do every like four or five episodes where we just go into recent animal news, often attack related. And it's just a way for us to get some of those smaller stories that don't necessarily necessitate a full episode story. And, you know, we like to have a little fun with these episodes. They're a little bit more off kilter and, uh, yeah, we hope you guys have a little bit of fun with it.
6:42 Jeff Larson? I don't know if our YouTube people are gonna know what's going on with you right now, Wes.
6:49 Wes Larson? What do you mean?
6:52 Jeff Larson? All right.
6:53 Wes Larson? Oh, I got a little bear here to tell me, it tells me, whispers to me if I'm doing wrong.
6:59 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
6:59 Wes Larson? It's like a little angel on my shoulder.
7:01 Jeff Larson? Canada and the Olympics, just cheating.
7:04 Wes Larson? Just cheating.
7:06 Wes Larson? I have a little ear. Oh, man. That's actually really useful. Cheating is useful to do when you get away with it, it turns out.
7:12 Jeff Larson? Bill Belichick.
7:15 Wes Larson? That's a good quote, Mike. You know, one of our brands is looking for a quote from us that we sponsor. So maybe that should be it. Cheating is pretty useful when you know what to do. Is that what you said?
7:26 Mike Smith? Something like that.
7:27 Wes Larson? I already, I already lost it. All right. Well, I'll go first since no one's volunteering. My first one's kind of a sad one. And I think it was one of the bigger stories that got reported to us over the last month and a half. But, um, in November, so this actually, this story takes place in January, but there's some precursor in November. And in November of 2025, Gary Messina was trail running on the Crozier Mountain Trail, which is a trail that's not far from Fort Collins, Colorado. He was trail running in the early morning. It was really dark. And as he ran down the trail, he caught reflective eyes shine from his headlamp under some trees near the trail. So we've talked about this a bit on the, on the show, but some animals have that,
8:11 Wes Larson? I think it's called a tapetum lucidum or something like that, but it's a reflective surface at the back of their eyeballs that will reflect back light. So we've on our trips shown like you can go spotlighting at night. It's a good way to find animals at night is by shining your light back and forth. And it's only certain animals that have it. And in this case, it happened to be a mountain lion that had flashback. So he stopped running, he turned his headlamp near this spot, and he was shocked to see a mountain lion beneath the tree, crouched and staring directly at him. And he managed to take a quick photo with his phone. And I will say, looking at this photo, this isn't a mountain lion that looks like it's crouched, like it's waiting for him to run by so it can resume whatever it was doing. It looks like it's crouched, like it's ready to pounce
8:56 Wes Larson? on him. It looks like a predatory lion. And sure enough, right after he took his photo, this lion lunged forward, rushed him, he threw his phone at the cat, which I wouldn't recommend. You might want your phone, kicked dirt, yelled, did whatever he could as this lion circled him. And then it would like jump at him and he would back up and they were kind of doing this back and forth thing until he realized he's in a really bad situation. So he snaps a baseball bat sized branch off a dead tree. And when the cat came in close again, he managed to swing it with all his might and connects, hits the lion in the head and it runs off. So this is in November, he reports this incident to the local authorities.
9:39 Wes Larson? They put up some signs warning of a potentially aggressive mountain lion on that trail. And a few weeks later, those signs get taken down, which is pretty standard practice for wildlife incidents. So like in Yellowstone, if we had a bear that was acting strangely or aggressively, we'd put up warning signs. And then if we didn't get any reports for a little bit, those signs would come down. Wouldn't it be wise just to keep a general warning up for the public, in your opinion? No, because I think if you do that, what happens is you kind of dull. If you, if every time you go on a hike and you see a warning sign and like, say you do it for years and that trailhead always has that warning sign, you start to kind of not put any kind of credence into those signs. They just start to become meaningless. So you
10:23 Wes Larson? don't just want to leave them up. So I do understand why they pulled it. But they perhaps did pull it a little early because on January 1st, 2026, Kristin Marie Kovach of Fort Collins was hiking on this very same trail when she disappeared. Later that day, a group of hikers noticed a female body that had been pulled off the trail about 100 yards and a cougar was standing nearby. They threw rocks at this cat to scare it away and they checked the woman for a pulse, but couldn't find one. So they called law enforcement and wildlife officials were sent to the scene alongside a local biologist. They managed to track down and kill two different mountain lions in that area. And again, mountain lions, cougar, puma, these are all the same animal.
11:07 Wes Larson? And those animals were sent to a local lab for testing. An autopsy was done on the victim and it was established that she had died from asphyxiation from neck compression. And a couple of days later, it was confirmed that a mountain lion was responsible. And this would be the first fatal mountain lion attack in Colorado since at least 1999. And I say at least because in 1999, a boy disappeared. And when they found his body, it looked like he had been predated. So they're pretty sure it was a mountain lion, but not like positive it was a mountain lion.
11:39 Jeff Larson? Hmm, okay.
11:40 Wes Larson? Um, so I think when you hear this story, one of the first things that people might think is why did they kill two mountain lions? You know, why did two mountain lions have to die? And in fact, I have a friend who works near this area in Colorado in wildlife. And she said that their office received so many threats from people that they had to close their office.
12:04 Jeff Larson? And for killing two lions?
12:06 Wes Larson? Even like death threats they were getting. Yeah, for killing two lions. And the thing, I mean, we've talked about this a lot on the show.
12:14 Jeff Larson? Even it back out.
12:16 Wes Larson? One more person.
12:18 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
12:18 Wes Larson? Do you guys remember from talking about this with, with mountain lions, with other species, why it's important that they make sure they get the right animal in these kinds of situations?
12:30 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
12:30 Wes Larson? Why Jeff?
12:31 Jeff Larson? Because if the same mountain lion kills another person later, the state can get sued.
12:37 Wes Larson? Yes. The state can get sued, individuals can get sued. There's a lot. Of of stuff that can happen. And so that's kind of the legal reasoning behind it, which is a very, I mean, that's like very compelling and it totally makes sense then that you kind of have to make sure you have your bases covered. And then just from a human safety perspective, too, you want to just make sure you get rid of this mountain lion. It showed that it that it'll kill people. It has attacked two people, killing one of them. It sucks that you maybe have to kill a couple to make sure you got the right one. But it also, a lot more harm is done to these species with negative press than with a couple of them leaving the population. So you don't want any more negative press.
13:23 Mike Smith? So is there any school of thought that maybe rehabilitation for animals is something that could work? Or is that just too much of like?
13:31 Wes Larson? It's not rehabilitation, no, but what you can do is pull them out of the wild and put them in zoos or something. Which we, you know, we've have examples of that from the podcast and that's also more common in other countries. And you know, there's other countries too, where they just let these animals continue living out in the wild. Because often it's like Bengal tigers. Yeah, with Bengal tigers, it's like, well, that's kind of like part of their natural behavior. But in a really populated area of Colorado like this, a popular hiking trail, this was the right decision and people can get mad at me about that if they want, but it was like, you need to protect people because when you're protecting people, you're also protecting wildlife.
14:15 Wes Larson? Because if another person died, say a month later, another person got killed by a mountain lion, then suddenly there's a huge fear of mountain lions in Colorado. Everyone wants to kill mountain lions. Then it turns in, you know, the pendulum swings really hard in the other direction. So you just have to maintain that positive public perception of these animals. And that's why they made this decision, that and litigation. So.
14:40 Mike Smith? That makes sense.
14:40 Jeff Larson? Maybe, maybe that second mountain lion too, that they killed, maybe is gonna kill the first woman president of the United States if we didn't kill it.
14:50 Mike Smith? It's very possible. Next Einstein.
14:53 Wes Larson? This could have been like a dead zone situation where someone touched that mountain lion.
14:58 Jeff Larson? AOC lives there.
15:00 Wes Larson? Yeah, she lives in Colorado.
15:02 Jeff Larson? Isn't she Colorado's rep?
15:04 Wes Larson? No, she's in New York.
15:07 Wes Larson? She's, she's the Bronx.
15:08 Jeff Larson? She's out of Colorado, right?
15:10 Wes Larson? No, AOC's in New York.
15:11 Jeff Larson? She represents Colorado.
15:13 Wes Larson? No, you're thinking of Lauren Boebert, I think.
15:15 Jeff Larson? No.
15:16 Wes Larson? AOC represents a borough of New York.
15:20 Mike Smith? Yeah, fact check us on that one, Jeff.
15:23 Wes Larson? I'll bet a thousand dollars.
15:24 Mike Smith? That's, I, so, obviously terrible thing that happened, really tragic.
15:31 Mike Smith? My takeaway is don't ever go trail running.
15:33 Wes Larson? Yeah, that little, you just heard from Jeff was him realizing that I'm right.
15:38 Mike Smith? Uh oh.
15:39 Jeff Larson? Yeah, she did a rally in Colorado.
15:42 Wes Larson? Okay, that's sure.
15:44 Jeff Larson? So got you there.
15:45 Wes Larson? You can, you can go trail running, but I, you bring up a good point there, Mike, is like, early morning, like this first guy especially, if it's too dark to even see, it is, you are higher risk, for sure, you know? So you do need to be careful.
16:00 Mike Smith? My two least favorite things maybe to do in this world is wake up early and run. Why you gotta do both of those at the same time?
16:07 Wes Larson? Is my question. Yeah, make Mike talk on the phone while he's also doing it.
16:12 Mike Smith? Oh my gosh.
16:14 Wes Larson? That's terrible.
16:16 Mike Smith? Talking on the phone is so, it's so bad.
16:18 Wes Larson? Yeah, I also hate it. All right, that's my first story, and I'm done with it.
16:23 Jeff Larson? I like talking on the phone.
16:25 Wes Larson? You do?
16:25 Jeff Larson? To your guys' chagrin.
16:27 Wes Larson? You're good at it. You're one of the only people, I, I feel like you're pretty easy to talk to on the phone, Jeff.
16:33 Mike Smith? Easy to talk to, but hard to hang up on.
16:36 Wes Larson? Yeah.
16:38 Jeff Larson? I'll just like be saying bye and then think of like five more things.
16:43 Wes Larson? Yeah. Mike will just stop talking at the end of a conversation and not say anything else, and then you'll be like, okay.
16:50 Mike Smith? That's it.
16:51 Wes Larson? Bye.
16:54 Jeff Larson? All right, I'll go next. I'm gonna be talking about viral sensation, Punch the Monkey.
17:02 Jeff Larson? You guys know about Punch? Sure do.
17:05 Wes Larson? I don't.
17:06 Jeff Larson? Really?
17:07 Wes Larson? I'm, this is completely over my head.
17:09 Jeff Larson? Dude, he's like the new Mudang of the world right now.
17:14 Wes Larson? Oh, fun.
17:15 Jeff Larson? Yeah, so it's a Japanese kinda, not so fun. It's a little sadder than Mudang.
17:21 Wes Larson? Yeah.
17:21 Jeff Larson? Japanese baby macaque, born in July twenty twenty five in Incho- Incho Kawa precinct at their zoo, right, in Japan. So Punch was abandoned at birth by his mother. They don't really know why, but his mom had him, didn't like him, said, you know what? I'm not gonna take ca- I'm not gonna waste energy on you. But the zookeepers decided Punch was worth wasting some energy on. So they bottle fed him and um, ended up, you know, raising him for a few months, for about
18:01 Jeff Larson? half a year, and then like mid-January, they decided it's time to put him back with all these other macaques. I, I've seen videos that's like at least thirty macaques in this enclosure. Um, so they put him back in and all these other macaques are just rejecting him, pushing him away. He's like going up to him, trying to like hug him, and they'll just like shove him away.
18:26 Wes Larson? Oh, it's very sad.
18:27 Jeff Larson? It's hard to watch. And then like he'll just wait by the door for the zookeepers who like him, and then just like hold on to their legs while the other macaques are like getting the actual food they're throwing, you know?
18:38 Wes Larson? He's a very cute little baby macaque, too. He's like, very cute.
18:43 Jeff Larson? So then, to make him even cuter, the zookeepers feel bad, so they put uh, an orangutan. I couldn't tell if they used this orangutan while they were nursing him as well, but they put this like, big stuffed orangutan into the enclosure for him, and he latched on to it like it's his mom. So like everywhere he goes, he's just dragging this orangutan with him. And like, like he'll always run away from other macaques unless they go after his orangutan. And then he'll like stick up for it and like fight him off. And he's like runs around everywhere with this orangutan.
19:23 Jeff Larson? He has recently made a few friends, but then he's still getting rejected quite often as well. I think the orangutan stuffed animal might be like a double edged sword. Where he's like the only one with like a really cool toy in there too. So they might have some resentment towards that. I don't know. That's just me thinking out loud. But he's become a sensation. People are traveling to Japan to see him. They, I saw the line today is longer than Swig's one dollar drinks in Orem, Utah.
19:57 Wes Larson? What?
19:57 Mike Smith? Wow.
19:58 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
19:58 Wes Larson? Long.
19:59 Mike Smith? Holy cow.
20:00 Jeff Larson? It was honestly like thousands of people waiting to go see him. And it kind of makes sense because like it'd be like, it's just interesting because at the zoo, it's like, there's cooler animals than a baby macaque. There's a lot of macaques. They've seen a bunch of baby macaques. There's other baby macaques in there. But once you get a storyline behind it, everyone is interested in that, you know?
20:25 Wes Larson? He's insanely cute. So.
20:27 Jeff Larson? He's very cute.
20:28 Wes Larson? And it's very sad. You just want to reach in there and give him a hug. Cause yeah, it's really, he just wants friends so badly.
20:35 Jeff Larson? Don't feel too bad because uh,
20:37 Wes Larson? Okay.
20:38 Jeff Larson? Internet good guy, Andrew Tate,
20:40 Wes Larson? I saw it.
20:41 Jeff Larson? Offered $250,000 when he saw that Punch was getting bullied.
20:47 Wes Larson? Him and his brother.
20:48 Jeff Larson? Punch out and like, if anyone knows how to have friends, it's Andrew Tate.
20:54 Wes Larson? Yeah. Money is really what it comes down to. He decided he's gonna start trafficking animals now alongside with humans.
21:02 Jeff Larson? Like, I mean, think of all his friends. His brother?
21:06 Wes Larson? Yeah.
21:06 Mike Smith? Yeah. Um, that one streamer guy that smelled his chair.
21:11 Jeff Larson? Is that his friend though?
21:14 Mike Smith? That's, yeah, I don't know.
21:15 Jeff Larson? I think it's just his brother.
21:17 Mike Smith? Yeah. Oh, man. Japan's really good at having tragic animal figures, aren't they? Remember Grape Koon, the penguin that fell in love with a little, like, anime cutout girl?
21:28 Wes Larson? Yeah.
21:29 Mike Smith? That's the little stand-up.
21:32 Mike Smith? Shoot.
21:32 Wes Larson? All those bears that are mauling everyone.
21:34 Mike Smith? Please be have be be friends with. Yeah, punch, everyone.
21:38 Wes Larson? Punch. By all means, do not let Andrew Tate adopt you. Please don't let that happen.
21:46 Jeff Larson? It's like, how much worse can we feel for him?
21:49 Wes Larson? Yeah. Ugh. All right. Yeah. Well, I hope he does better. I hope he makes some friends. We should have. We should have him on the show.
21:59 Jeff Larson? Yeah, I was thinking there's a lot like me growing up where I was just rejected by my entire family, including Wes right away.
22:09 Wes Larson? I love Jeff. I put me and Jeff. Me and Cyrus used to fight over who got to play with Jeff. But he did have a hard time with friends, especially in like middle school. I always felt bad for you.
22:21 Mike Smith? Well, let's get some. Let's get some punch updates in the future.
22:26 Wes Larson? Yeah.
22:26 Jeff Larson? That's why I like beanie babies.
22:28 Mike Smith? Yeah. Did you ever have an orangutan beanie baby?
22:32 Jeff Larson? Nah.
22:33 Wes Larson? Those are a bit of a bit of a double edged sword for you two.
22:36 Jeff Larson? Kix was my all timer. Yeah.
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24:17 Mike Smith? I've got two stories that are a little similar to each other. This first one, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be a little bit of a poison boy today. This first one comes from Times of India, also People Magazine reported on it. A bunch of different outlets were talking about this one. This one's really interesting to me, though, but not as interesting as my next story. You like that? That's listener retention right there. You got a tease there, right? When village leaders, this is happening in the Philippines, about a couple weeks ago in Puerto Princesa in the Philippines, when village leaders visited the Filipino food influencer Emma Amet's house earlier this February, guess what they found, Wes?
24:55 Wes Larson? Poison.
24:56 Mike Smith? Kinda. They found a handful. So, there's an unmistakable crab that all of the locals know, basically, that live in and around this town. They found the unmistakable red and brown shells of crab scattered in and around her garbage can. Just a few days earlier, Emma, she's actually kind of a big deal on Instagram, 200,000-plus followers on her Instagram account. She was filming herself foraging around these mangroves, finding a bunch of snails, a bunch of crabs, shellfish all over the place. And after catching a few... Wes has more than that. I don't. I mean, Wes is... Well, hers are bots. I probably have my fair share of bots.
25:37 Mike Smith? I mean, I'm one of his followers and I don't, I barely count. Yeah.
25:40 Jeff Larson? You think you're a bot?
25:42 Mike Smith? Almost. A little bit, right? Yeah.
25:45 Mike Smith? So she caught a few crabs. She holds them up to the camera to show off to her followers. And then she drops it into a pot of simmering coconut milk. After a little bit, she dips into the pot for a little taste test. She's pretty satisfied with how it's tasting and she just dipped back in for more. She and a friend were eating some of this crab stew that they got all boiled up. But not long after, she lost consciousness and was afterwards rushed to the hospital, obviously. So unfortunately for her, the crab was a Zosimus aeneus, better known locally as the devil crab. It's a reef dwelling species whose flesh contains a mix of potent neurotoxins. And cooking them actually does nothing to neutralize this danger. So you eat one of these, you're ingesting poison, basically.
26:29 Mike Smith? And most marine, well, all marine biologists, by, from what I could see, they consider it among the most poisonous crabs in the Indo-Pacific. And very obviously something you probably shouldn't be eating, right? And what's really curious about this story is that she and her husband were actually really experienced fishers. And it prompted in an interview later on, the village chief was quoted as saying, "This is really saddening because they should have known." So consuming these devil crabs can paralyze muscles, shut down breathing, and often kill, sometimes within even just hours of eating. Health officials say roughly half of known severe cases in the Philippines prove fatal. And sure enough, two days later, after she arrived at the hospital,
27:11 Mike Smith? she and her friend unfortunately both passed away. So.
27:15 Jeff Larson? Damn.
27:16 Mike Smith? Yeah.
27:16 Jeff Larson? Well, now everyone knows for sure not to eat those crabs.
27:21 Mike Smith? Yeah, well, you know, you gotta crack a couple of eggs to make an omelet, right?
27:27 Wes Larson? Wait, did she die?
27:28 Mike Smith? Crap.
27:29 Wes Larson? She did.
27:29 Mike Smith? Yeah, she did.
27:30 Wes Larson? Oh, shoot. Never mind.
27:31 Mike Smith? Her.
27:31 Wes Larson? Yes. Uh, that's awful. Yeah, I thought she just got sick.
27:36 Mike Smith? Way to bring that back around, Wes.
27:37 Jeff Larson? You distracted by me.
27:39 Mike Smith? Totally saved it. Um, no, it's, it's kind of like an interesting twist on, I mean, you gave that subscriber episode a while ago about taking selfies with dangerous animals. It's kind of like a social media driven animal encounter. I mean, it's not like an attack. We can't say that at all, but like doing it for internet clout.
27:59 Wes Larson? Yeah.
28:00 Mike Smith? I, I guess I can't say that either, that that's what she was specifically doing. Maybe she was just like trying to make a little snack to eat and show her audience, but.
28:07 Jeff Larson? She wasn't eating poison for internet clout, but she was trying to get creative and like, be like, look, I caught this myself type of thing. Yeah.
28:15 Wes Larson? Yeah, right. I, and this obviously like I, this has, someone shouldn't die because of this, but I kind of have a really hard time watching videos of live crustaceans being thrown into boiling, boiling water. I always just kind of feel like we view them as too lesser, you know, that like, we shouldn't do that to anything. And I'm like, I'm a meat eater. I'm someone that eats meat, but I just kind of, I don't know, putting live animals through torture is always a little hard for me. And I know it doesn't compare to like what we do to animals in food farms and stuff, but before all of you guys get at me, but I do, that still is just kind of a knee jerk. Like, ugh, do we really have to boil these guys alive? You know, can we not?
28:59 Mike Smith? We have plenty of other really good things to eat. I don't know if we need to. No, I'm with you there. I think Wes.
29:05 Jeff Larson? Should we? No.
29:09 Jeff Larson? Okay. Boil the food farm animals?
29:12 Wes Larson? No, we shouldn't do that either.
29:15 Jeff Larson? He said it wasn't as bad as what we do to them, so.
29:18 Wes Larson? Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think the food farm animals, like the factory farmed ones get a, often get a more humane death. But their life is pretty horrible, you know? Yeah, I think you're probably right.
29:32 Jeff Larson? Being dumb.
29:33 Wes Larson? Yeah, just playing around. You're just joshing.
29:35 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
29:37 Wes Larson? All right. Well, so my next story is more of kind of a study that I think is really interesting that I just read about. Uh, and this study came out recently and it's about animal related deaths in the U.S. Which I thought, that's right up our alley here at Tooth and Claw. You know, we gotta talk about this. This study looked at data between 2018 and 2023, but it was published, uh, late last year. And during that time period, the authors learned that a total of 1,604 animal-related deaths were reported in the U.S. Which is about 267 deaths annually, and they pulled some really interesting trends out of that study.
30:18 Wes Larson? So 267 animal-related deaths annually in the U.S. What groups of animals do you guys think are most responsible for those deaths?
30:31 Wes Larson? Uh, devil crabs. Number one, devil crabs. Snakes are in there, but think about, this is just any animal. It's not wild animal specific. Dogs. Dogs are very high. So the number one category was actually hornets, wasps and bees. Thirty-one percent of the deaths came from hornets, wasps and bees. And I think they were including people that got stung that had allergic reactions.
30:58 Jeff Larson? I don't know if you can group all those together.
31:01 Wes Larson? You, hymenoptera is the group, so you kinda can. Um, the next. Got you there, Jeff.
31:07 Jeff Larson? As a biologist, I don't like bees and hornets.
31:10 Wes Larson? Brother of a biologist.
31:12 Jeff Larson? Species.
31:12 Wes Larson? They're all in the same group though. Uh, the next. You got him on AOC, he got you on the bees. You're not gonna like this grouping then either. The next largest was other mammals. So this doesn't include dogs. But it was other mammals and mostly what this group was, was horses and cows. Um, from what I read, like a lot of people, farmers getting kicked by livestock or whatever else. But other mammals was the other largest number of deaths that was 28.6%. Dogs, you guys got that one, was the third biggest, 26.2. And then some of the other animals that are featured in this are going to be venomous snakes and lizards. There's seven deaths in this six-year period. Marine animals.
31:57 Jeff Larson? Lizards are getting thrown in there.
31:59 Wes Larson? Yeah.
31:59 Jeff Larson? Not really doing numbers.
32:01 Wes Larson? What the hell?
32:02 Jeff Larson? We didn't kill anyone.
32:04 Wes Larson? Like Mario Chalmers on the 2013 heat.
32:09 Wes Larson? Venomous snakes was 30 deaths. I was looking at the wrong chart there. But yeah, lizards did get thrown in with them. Marine animals, there was 11 deaths. Unspecified venomous animal, 13. And then there was some other ones that they had like data deficient, but there was probably some deaths like alligators. Anyway, it did point at things that most of us live nearby as being the most dangerous animals that we come into contact with. So dogs, wasps, bees, non venomous arthropods, which would can like contain mosquitoes and some other animals that can kill us. And as far as like demographics, most of the people that died were male, 67.6%.
32:54 Wes Larson? Most of them were white, 87.2%. And most of them were between 55 and 64 years old at 22.8%. So I think this, we're talking about a lot of farmers and ranchers here.
33:06 Jeff Larson? You know what I always say.
33:08 Wes Larson? What?
33:09 Jeff Larson? Nothing harder than being a white male.
33:13 Wes Larson? An old white man. Yeah. Old white boomers sure have had it hard their whole lives.
33:21 Wes Larson? It's dangerous out there for them. But non venomous animals encountered, encounters had a much greater proportion of fatalities than venomous ones. With 943 non venomous deaths and 644 deaths from venomous animals, including those wasps and bees. So the overall death rate for animal related fatalities from this study was about 0.8 people per 1 million people. So you have like a roughly one in 1 million chance of dying from an animal if you live in the US.
33:54 Jeff Larson? And Mike's still afraid of horses.
33:57 Wes Larson? Yeah.
33:57 Mike Smith? Oh my gosh. I'm a white male, Jeff. You, I mean, you know what it's like out there for us.
34:02 Jeff Larson? Probably one in a million.
34:07 Wes Larson? Uh, if you live in the south, you have a higher chance. Texas was the state that had the most, but then Florida and Georgia also had high concentrations of fatalities. The next most at risk group in the US was the Midwest, then the West, and the Northeast was the least most represented.
34:25 Mike Smith? The least most.
34:26 Wes Larson? Yeah.
34:27 Mike Smith? That's a bad way to say that.
34:29 Wes Larson? The least represented. So Northeast, like Maine, New York, Vermont, Virginia, or not Virginia. What's that other state by Vermont? New Hampshire.
34:42 Mike Smith? Oh, that's great.
34:43 Wes Larson? Yeah.
34:43 Mike Smith? Yeah, I'm familiar with those states.
34:45 Jeff Larson? They don't know how to like, record keep very well up there, though.
34:49 Wes Larson? That's true.
34:51 Jeff Larson? She's out in the woods, so I don't know. Could be higher.
34:57 Mike Smith? I think, I mean, you've been to Maine. I think they're pretty civilized up there, right?
35:01 Jeff Larson? Oh, my God. It's crazy. You know how many moose and bears they have there? So many. There's no way they haven't killed more than that.
35:09 Wes Larson? Anyway, I thought it was an interesting study. It's available online if you want to check it out, but.
35:16 Mike Smith? Bees and dogs.
35:17 Wes Larson? Bees and dogs.
35:18 Mike Smith? And mammals.
35:19 Wes Larson? Yeah, I still don't, it's like, sure, if you group like four different types of mammals together, they're gonna have more fatality than dogs. But, yeah, I do have some issues with this study. I'm gonna say that, but it was interesting.
35:34 Jeff Larson? Did you guys know that 40% of people say they would save their dog over a human stranger? Two weeks ago, I would have thought that was crazy. But now that I adopted Shanks, I just love him so much. I completely get it. I remember getting some flack when I saw a video of some lady pushing a black bear off her porch because it is attacking her two dogs. And I was like, why'd she risk her life for that? I get it now. Dogs are the best. I love Shanks so much. And that's why I want Shanks to have the best food. I just adopted him a week and a half ago. I came home with the food they gave me and he would just kinda stare at it, not too excited.
36:14 Jeff Larson? But then Ollie gave me a welcome package and let me tell you, he is so excited to eat food now and it makes me so happy. You need to get your dog, Ollie. Ollie's fresh recipes are developed by real chefs and backed by the vet nutritionists. They're obsessed with making the best meals with the highest quality ingredients. And I've noticed that Shanks is so much more obsessed with food now. So get ready for both you and your pup to be obsessed. Head to Ollie.com/tooth. Tell them all about your dog and use code TOOTH to get 60% off your welcome kit when you subscribe today. Plus, they offer an obsession guarantee.
36:57 Jeff Larson? If you're not completely obsessed, you'll get your money back. That's O-L-L-I-E.com/tooth and enter code TOOTH to get 60% off your first box. Ollie, feed the obsession.
37:12 Wes Larson? If you walked into a store lately, you know that there are a billion different options for drinks and it's really important that you pick the right ones. And you can stay hydrated without all of the sugar, the food dyes, all the crazy ingredients that are found in popular electrolyte and sports drinks. That's why we love Element. Element is a zero-sugar electrolyte drink mix and sparkling electrolyte drink born from the growing body of research revealing that optimal health outcomes occur at sodium levels two to three times government recommendations. It's formulated for anyone on a mission to restore their health through hydration. And Element is really suited for athletes, folks who are fasting, those who follow keto, low carb, whole food, or paleo diets.
37:54 Wes Larson? Plus, I think Element tastes much better than any of the other sports or electrolyte drinks that I've tasted. And one of the flavors that I'm really into is lemonade salt. Lemonade salt is only available for a limited time only. It's one of my favorite flavors. I think it just goes really well with everything. I just absolutely love it. It's the one that I always claim when we get our boxes of Element. Jesse really likes orange salt, so we get along because we both like our own flavors. Anyway, you can get a free eight-count sample pack of Element's most popular drink mix flavors with any purchase at drinklmnt.com/tooth. That's drink L M N T dot com slash tooth. You can find your favorite Element flavor or share with
38:36 Wes Larson? a friend. And a great thing about Element is you can try it totally risk-free. If you don't like it, give it away and they'll give you your money back, no questions asked. They have a very low return rate and a very high reorder rate.
38:49 Wes Larson? Who's up next?
38:50 Mike Smith? I want Jeff to go again. I loved his last one was so good.
38:54 Jeff Larson? I'm gonna do three.
38:56 Mike Smith? All right.
38:56 Jeff Larson? This one's older, but I wanted to talk about it. Not that old. In early 2025, a yellow-footed tortoise was discovered alive under the floorboards of a home in Inkaja, Brazil. It was trapped there for 10 to 13 years in their floorboards.
39:18 Mike Smith? That is crazy.
39:19 Jeff Larson? The tortoise survived by entering a state of estivation. Is that how you say it was?
39:24 Mike Smith? Estivation?
39:25 Jeff Larson? Uh, yeah. No, estivation.
39:27 Mike Smith? Huh, yeah, never heard that.
39:29 Jeff Larson? Maybe like ate a few termites and were like some condensation stuff, but it's crazy photo, like its shell is all warped on the side from like growing into a board. And then as soon as it got out, it was like ready to eat and they fed it and it's just like eating lettuce like a normal tortoise.
39:51 Mike Smith? What the heck? That's crazy.
39:55 Jeff Larson? So some animals are just like, like when you hear about that with like a fricking bug, it's like, okay, yeah, sure, I guess. But fricking like 50 pound tortoise, it's like, what? Yeah, yeah.
40:09 Wes Larson? Just lodged in their ears of being like, well, I guess I'll just chill here.
40:13 Mike Smith? I mean, Tim Rob- Tim Robbins in Shawshank Redemption, what was it like three weeks? And he was like going insane?
40:21 Wes Larson? Tim Robbins.
40:22 Jeff Larson? Yeah. Tim, yeah.
40:23 Wes Larson? Robbins, right? It's not Robbins.
40:25 Jeff Larson? Tim Robinson's the, I think you should leave friendship guy.
40:29 Wes Larson? I think it's Tim Robbins. Yeah. You said Robinson to start. Yeah.
40:33 Mike Smith? Oh, we're gonna, I'm gonna check that. I'm gonna replay the tape so many times.
40:37 Wes Larson? Oh, hell yeah, dude.
40:38 Mike Smith? You guys are gonna be so freaking wrong.
40:40 Jeff Larson? You promise?
40:41 Mike Smith? I promise. I will. Yeah, let's do it. Tim Robbins in Shawshank Redemption. Tim Robbins in Shawshank Redemption.
40:49 Speaker 03 Tim Robbins in Shawshank Redemption.
40:52 Wes Larson? What do you want to bet?
40:53 Mike Smith? A hundred trillion dollars.
40:55 Wes Larson? No, let's bet. Let's make a real bet.
40:57 Mike Smith? A hundred dollars.
40:58 Wes Larson? Cause I'm positive you said Tim Robinson. Okay.
41:00 Mike Smith? Okay, yeah. Oh, that's a lot of money.
41:02 Wes Larson? Do you want to know why I'm smiling right now, Mike? Cause you owe me a hundred dollars.
41:06 Mike Smith? So I think I know how you misunderstood me. I said Tim Robbins in Shawshank Redemption. Tim Robbins in Shawshank Redemption. I think that's probably how I-
41:17 Jeff Larson? You said Robinson.
41:18 Mike Smith? I would never mistake Tim Robbins as, I love that guy. Dude, are you kidding me?
41:22 Wes Larson? If you, if you, if you can show me like good evidence that you said Tim Robbins in Shawshank, I will pay you the money.
41:30 Mike Smith? Okay.
41:30 Wes Larson? But if it's Tim Robinson, then-
41:32 Mike Smith? This is so exciting.
41:32 Wes Larson? But there is a, I, that does put a shred of doubt into my mind. I want the hundred bucks.
41:38 Jeff Larson? Fox. That's what I titled this one.
41:42 Mike Smith? Fox.
41:43 Wes Larson? Okay.
41:44 Jeff Larson? Wes, what would you do if you saw a fox attacking one of your chickens?
41:48 Wes Larson? I'd run out and chase it.
41:50 Jeff Larson? What if you lived in Australia?
41:52 Wes Larson? I'd run out and chase it.
41:53 Jeff Larson? All right, well, a 50 year old man was hospitalized from doing just that. So it's 6 a.m. on January 19th. And one of his, oh, these are cute, a baby alpaca.
42:07 Wes Larson? Alpaca.
42:08 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
42:08 Wes Larson? Alpaca?
42:10 Jeff Larson? Yeah. Baby alpaca, pretty cute, right?
42:14 Wes Larson? Yeah, you're right.
42:16 Jeff Larson? So he hears one of his baby alpacas just roaring. For help.
42:23 Wes Larson? Okay.
42:24 Jeff Larson? And he looks out the window and sees a fox attacking it. So he does what Wes says, our wildlife biologist says, go out there and scare it away. That's what Wes says to do.
42:36 Wes Larson? I've done it.
42:37 Jeff Larson? That's what this guy does.
42:38 Wes Larson? I've done it in my underwear.
42:40 Jeff Larson? He goes out there, fox runs up, bites him as hard as it can in the thigh. Dives deep in there and he's got like a lot of blood flowing and has to go to a hospital.
42:53 Wes Larson? Is it rabid?
42:53 Jeff Larson? And, well, that's what's most interesting, Wes. Australia doesn't have rabies, much like Hawaii.
43:01 Wes Larson? What?
43:01 Jeff Larson? In the movie Primate.
43:03 Wes Larson? Huh.
43:04 Jeff Larson? So that's why.
43:05 Wes Larson? What the heck?
43:05 Jeff Larson? Wildlife biologists are like, what the heck?
43:09 Wes Larson? Yeah, me too.
43:11 Jeff Larson? Why is this fox biting people so hard?
43:14 Wes Larson? Yeah. Yeah, that's not normal behavior for a fox. You know, rabies is like the first thing we tend to think of when an animal like a fox or raccoon or something like this is acting that way. But there are lots of other viruses, uh, mental illnesses, other things that can happen with animals that can cause them to act aggressively. So I just want to say this isn't.
43:37 Jeff Larson? Conditioned.
43:38 Wes Larson? Yeah, this isn't typical fox behavior.
43:41 Jeff Larson? Well, you. If that guy could probably sue you. Uh, one last one I titled elephant from the Bangkok post. Yeah, I hope this involves an elephant. You talked about this a little. Have you guys ever established a workout routine like as soon as you wake up? Like wake up early and workout? No. Yeah, I regret it. I only did on my like Mormon mission because it's part of our rules.
44:11 Jeff Larson? But I would wake up, roll out of bed and start doing pushups and situps. Yeah. Well, this guy Jirathachai Jirapabunya Thorne. Uh, from the Muang district of Luuburi. Was sixty-nine years old and he loved waking up an hour before sunrise and doing his same little exercise routine, right? Yeah. So he's out camping and little does he know, there's a bull elephant nearby who's already in its life, killed two people. Kind of, you know? And I think had he known that, maybe he'd be a little more. Yeah, careful.
44:56 Jeff Larson? But he's doing his workout when this bull elephant just at five thirty AM. Um, he's like walking around a little, he's by his tent. And then this bull elephant runs up, grabs him with his trunk, slams him to the ground and stomps on him until he dies. Whoa. And it's out of campsite, other campers are just like, kind of started, this wakes him up for sure. That's a crazy thing to wake up to. And they all stay kind of where they're at, not trying not to be the next victim.
45:27 Jeff Larson? It's not much you can do, yeah. Uh, the rangers eventually come and scared the elephant off and they say that they're either going to relocate it or try to change its behavior, which they did not comment further on.
45:45 Jeff Larson? Huh, give it a stern talking to. Yeah. Man, that's crazy. I, I can't. The trunk to stomp. No, it throw, threw him down with the trunk and then stomped on him. Right, trunk to stomp. Oh, I thought you were saying he stomped him with his trunk. Wombo combo. Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's wild.
46:08 Wes Larson? We really, you know, we have yet to do on the main feed a full episode elephant or full episode elephant, Wes, elephant episode. But they're just like, whenever we talk about them on these news episodes or subscriber episodes, they just seem like the one animal where there's just nothing, like nothing you can do unless you have like an elephant gun, like extremely high caliber weapon that you just can't stop them if they're angry or upset or anything, you know? I just, I don't know, they're just different than anything else.
46:43 Jeff Larson? It's crazy, this one's killed three people now.
46:46 Wes Larson? Yeah.
46:46 Jeff Larson? And they're still like, I don't know.
46:50 Wes Larson? Maybe we just need to put them in jail.
46:53 Jeff Larson? It's like Yahoo News reached out too and they're just like, yeah, we don't know.
46:57 Wes Larson? Yeah. I kind of though, like in a way I respect that where it's just like, this is their, you know, this is where they live and sometimes they can be incredibly aggressive animal. So we just kind of have to accept that people might die sometimes.
47:12 Jeff Larson? We're weird weirdos where it's like, that would make me more likely to camp in that place.
47:19 Wes Larson? I would really want to see this elephant, yeah.
47:21 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
47:22 Wes Larson? I don't want to get killed by it though.
47:24 Jeff Larson? No, obviously, but like the element, like we like camping in grizzly bear country. Like we like an element of danger to like
47:32 Wes Larson? Yeah.
47:33 Jeff Larson? what we do in the outdoors.
47:35 Wes Larson? You said this one was in Bangladesh?
47:37 Jeff Larson? It's in Thailand.
47:41 Wes Larson? Thailand.
47:42 Jeff Larson? Let's see, the elephant's name was Phila Oan.
47:48 Wes Larson? That narrows it down.
47:50 Jeff Larson? Uh huh.
47:53 Wes Larson? What if I was like, oh, so was Thailand.
47:57 Jeff Larson? Klang Pla Kang National Park Conservation.
48:00 Wes Larson? What country is that in?
48:01 Jeff Larson? In Tom Bong Weng Mi of Weng Nam Kao District. It's in Thailand.
48:08 Wes Larson? Okay, there we go. We got there. All right.
48:13 Jeff Larson? And the guy's name again.
48:15 Wes Larson? Yeah, do the whole name.
48:18 Jeff Larson? Giratha Chai, and that's his first name, and then Girafa Tabunya Thorn from Moon District of Luuburi Nakon Ratschasima.
48:34 Wes Larson? Great. Glad we got to experience that again.
48:36 Mike Smith? Thank you.
48:37 Wes Larson? Mike, do you have any other stories?
48:40 Mike Smith? I do. So this is, this is part two of the poison duology that I have here to present to you all. This one's really interesting. We're about, we try not to get super political all the time here on Tooth and Claw. This one, just by nature of the story, we're gonna get political, not involving the United States, though, so don't worry too much about that. So got all this information primarily from the BBC and Sky News.
49:04 Jeff Larson? Yeah, I want to correct what you said a little bit. We get political, but specific to animals. We try to keep it in animals. Yeah.
49:13 Mike Smith? And each of us.
49:13 Jeff Larson? Because we're not, we're not scared.
49:15 Mike Smith? No, we're not.
49:16 Wes Larson? Yeah. And I'm very political, but it's more on my private or my personal social media.
49:21 Jeff Larson? You just want a voice for animals, you know?
49:23 Mike Smith? Exactly. So I got this from primarily the BBC. I think I said that, a bunch of other news sources. This just was revealed recently, but the UK, Sweden, France, Germany, and the Netherlands all just released a joint statement stating that after two years of investigation, the assassination of political dissident Alexei Navalny in the remote Siberian prison colony was caused by a lethal dose of a neurotoxin called epibididine. This is really crazy. So epibididine, it turns out, it's the same substance that is only naturally found on the skin of a few different species of Ecuadorian poison dart frogs, such as the phantasmal poison frog. So it's like, how did, how'd this stuff get into Siberia? You know?
50:07 Wes Larson? Yeah.
50:07 Mike Smith? So the Kremlin has since denied all the allegations. They called it, quote, "a ridiculous circus performance by the media", just like trying to divert our attention away from, you know, whatever is going on in the world. And they had already dismissed Navalny's death in 2024 as a result of a combination of diseases. But even though authorities haven't provided an exact method or theory as to how it was administered to Alexei, they're now confident that this is what ultimately killed him.
50:33 Wes Larson? Huh.
50:33 Jeff Larson? Wow.
50:34 Mike Smith? So.
50:35 Wes Larson? That's fascinating.
50:36 Mike Smith? It's really, so here's the wrinkle that makes it maybe a little less like of a crazy story. So experts, they did note that it's possible to basically recreate this neurotoxin in a lab, rather than like having to actually literally scrape it off the skin of a frog. But like, I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, if this is how neurotoxins work, but no matter the method of administration, once it hits the bloodstream and it breaks through that, the blood-brain barrier, it doesn't really matter where these toxins come from or how they're administered, right?
51:07 Wes Larson? Yeah. And something we've learned recently, and this was a bit of a, like a paradigm shift for me, is that it's not often the bloodstream so much as the lymphatic system that they're entering. We, we tend to think of it traveling through the bloodstream, but it's often other systems within the body that they use for transportation. So mostly the lymphatic system. But yeah, it's like, once they're in there, there's nothing you can do to really stop it.
51:33 Mike Smith? Yeah. There, so Professor of Environmental Toxicology at the University of Leeds, he basically said what you just said, like, once it's introduced to the system, it's too late, basically. And apparently it's said to be approximately 200 times stronger than morphine, as far as like similar doses go. That's just crazy, you know, that like- Sounds fun. Yeah, it does sound fun. Like, it might be kinda nice after-
52:00 Wes Larson? First thing that popped in my head is licking a frog.
52:05 Mike Smith? No, that's like- So this guy, was he murdered? That's basically what this report is saying, is that somehow, quote unquote, somehow, this neurotoxin was brought into the prison, the penal colony where Navalny was being held. And like, how else is that gonna happen other than, you know, the state introducing it into the, yeah.
52:26 Wes Larson? It doesn't necessarily have to be the state.
52:28 Mike Smith? Again, allegedly, this is the modus operandi of the Russian government. I'm like, I'm so unschooled in all of this stuff, but just hearing these stories, like, this is not the first time that these rumors have been swirling around of like poisoning political opponents for- Yeah, Russia seems to have a lot of poison incidents.
52:49 Wes Larson? Yeah. It's interesting, you know, we, we talked about, like, we talk about venom and poison and the difference a lot, and how venom's injected and poison's ingested. But I guess it's true that sometimes poison can be injected, too. Like with these poison dart frogs where they'd put it on darts and blow them into animals and stuff. It does, it can work that way too. No, but like venom, if you were to ingest venom, like say you were to drink some Cobra venom, you might get a stomach ache or something, but it's not going to kill you. But with poison, if you inject it, it can kill you still, certain poisons. So that is interesting. I also like, this one's fascinating to me because I feel like if I'm an assassin, I wouldn't use poison dart frogs.
53:34 Wes Larson? Because there's so little data on that, like how effective it is for killing people.
53:39 Jeff Larson? Star Wars where the assassin puts the worms in to kill Adam.
53:45 Wes Larson? But yeah, I, you would think that you would use something that's like tried and true, you know?
53:50 Mike Smith? Yeah, or maybe they knew somehow toxicology reports would get out and that'd be like a hard one to identify or something. I'm not sure, but yeah.
54:00 Wes Larson? Huh. Interesting. Those crazy Russians, you know?
54:05 Mike Smith? Hmm. It's a wild world out there.
54:07 Wes Larson? Yeah. All right.
54:09 Jeff Larson? It makes sense. It's like, it's a good alibi. You can be like, that we don't have poison dart frogs here. Couldn't be that.
54:18 Wes Larson? Yeah. I, I have a really brief one, actually. I don't really want to go too into it because I think it's really sad and it just happened too. And my other one was a fatality as well. But there's a woman in Minnesota, Arlene Lilis, who was in the Virgin Islands on vacation and was bitten by a shark. And the shark took off her arm below her elbow and she actually died from, from her injuries. Uh, she bled to death. So the reason, I don't like, I'm not going to go into all of it, but the reason I did think it was interesting is we've done a lot of shark stories and most of the stories that we end up picking are stories of survival. Where people have these really massive injuries from a shark and then they managed
55:00 Wes Larson? to get to a tourniquet in time, or you know, someone manages to do whatever. And you know, we always say like, oh, the doctor said if they had lost a little bit more blood, they would have, you know, died. And it does happen too, like where a person doesn't gets a bite that isn't necessarily immediately going to kill them. But if they don't get help soon enough, it will. And that's what happened unfortunately to this woman in the Virgin Islands. So as with always with all our victims, you know, our hearts go out to them. But yeah.
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57:54 Wes Larson? Should we go into our categories?
57:56 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
57:57 Wes Larson? Let's do it. First category, what am I gonna use the hundred dollars for I'm about to win? Oh my gosh, I'm so excited.
58:04 Jeff Larson? I was one hundred percent confident until you said the Robinson, Robins Inn, and then I was like, that is possible that you said that, but I'm still pretty confident you said Tim Robbins.
58:18 Wes Larson? I'm gonna be living like a king. This is crazy. I'm gonna buy so much candy.
58:23 Jeff Larson? All right, first up, because of punch, uh, best pop culture bully line?
58:29 Wes Larson? I had to pull mine from Nelson Montz in The Simpsons, cuz he's like, the classic pop culture bully for me. And the one I picked from him is shoplifting is a victimless crime, like punching someone in the dark.
58:47 Jeff Larson? That's actually really good.
58:49 Wes Larson? I'm pretty sure that's from the episode where Bart steals a video game for Chris, like around Christmas time.
58:55 Jeff Larson? Uh, yeah.
58:56 Wes Larson? Yeah, but I'm not sure.
58:57 Jeff Larson? There's one that I've been seeing on social media from Dennis the Menace, where he's at a carnival and he's like too short to ride the ride, and then there's this really big adult who just goes... Oh, is the little baby too small to ride the ride? Then he just like starts laughing and does like a backward spin kick and like breaks the head off of this like wooden.
59:25 Wes Larson? Measuring thing?
59:27 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
59:28 Wes Larson? What?
59:30 Wes Larson? This is from the movie Dennis the Menace?
59:32 Jeff Larson? Yeah. Or either that or problem child. It's one of the two.
59:37 Wes Larson? That sounds more like problem child to me. Yeah. Was it a redheaded kid or a blonde kid?
59:43 Jeff Larson? Redheaded.
59:44 Wes Larson? It's problem child.
59:45 Jeff Larson? Okay.
59:47 Wes Larson? I've got, I needed to shout out Gary from Pokemon or Blue, I guess he is in the games. He always says smell you later. That's classic. Smell you later, which is like, kind of weird. Like it's almost like I wouldn't want him to do that. I don't want anyone smelling me now or later.
1:00:02 Jeff Larson? I like Cobra Kai to put him in a body bag.
1:00:06 Wes Larson? My, so my go to, just like yours is Nelson West. I always think of Chet and Bill Paxton's character from Weird Science. And his best line is you two donkey dicks couldn't get laid in a morgue. This is just incredible, incredible screenplay dialogue. Oh my gosh. That movie is, he's got some issues, but Chet's not one of them.
1:00:27 Jeff Larson? It's kind of a compliment at the start.
1:00:29 Wes Larson? Donkey dick. Yeah.
1:00:33 Wes Larson? That's true.
1:00:34 Jeff Larson? Most evil bully.
1:00:36 Wes Larson? So my, like my quintessential evil bully, I always think of Henry Bowers from the It movies and the It book. Because he like carves into them with knives and then he comes back in his adult years after he's like Pennywise's friend pretty much. But I was doing some research on him and I remembered the guy in his group, Patrick Hockstetter or Hoffstetter. If you've, or Hockstetter, if you read the book, It. He is, he's a bully and he's like, I, I, you know, we have our qualms with Stephen King. We have our things we love about Stephen King. One thing I think he is really good at is writing bullies. And Patrick Hockstetter isn't just a bully.
1:01:20 Wes Larson? He like transcends it into like a psychopath. Like he kills his infant baby brother because he's crying too loud. He does a bunch of other stuff that I don't even want to talk about on the show because it's so dark. So I, for me, it's like, okay, if the category is evil bullies, he's kind of hard to beat. So that's who I picked, Patrick Hockstetter, from specifically the book It.
1:01:44 Mike Smith? Yeah, that's pretty extreme bullying, killing a baby.
1:01:48 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:01:49 Mike Smith? Kidding me?
1:01:50 Wes Larson? Fairly extreme and very evil. So, yeah.
1:01:53 Mike Smith? I went with Kiefer Sutherland's character in Stand By Me. I forget his character's name, but like at the, at the beginning of the movie, he's just kind of like the cool older kid in the neighborhood who is doing some light bullying. And then by the end, he's just like a murderous vampire. It gets pretty gruesome by the end with, with him, but.
1:02:11 Wes Larson? Also Stephen King bully.
1:02:13 Mike Smith? Yeah, true. Shawshank Redemption, Clancy Brown, Tim Robinson.
1:02:19 Jeff Larson? Even though I asked this one, I would go not quite the most evil I can think of, but just the most evil scene was with Johnny Lawrence in Karate Kid again. But there's a scene where Daniel LaRusso is like kind of dating Johnny's ex-girlfriend, right? And Johnny wants her back now. And there's like a rich people dance that Daniel couldn't go to. And Johnny like forces her to dance with him. And then as they're dancing, he sees Daniel like snuck in and is spying on him from the kitchen. So he decides to kiss her.
1:02:59 Jeff Larson? And then Daniel doesn't see the reaction. He just like burst through the door and this waiter spills this entire giant bowl of spaghetti on his head and all, every adult, hundreds of people instantly start laughing at him. It's the most hilarious thing.
1:03:19 Jeff Larson? It's just so mean.
1:03:22 Mike Smith? I forgot about that scene.
1:03:23 Wes Larson? Sixties and seventies laughing at this kid that just got spaghetti spilled all over him. So.
1:03:29 Jeff Larson? Just steaming hot spaghetti spill all over him and everyone immediately is just laughing their heads off.
1:03:37 Wes Larson? Yeah, that is a great scene.
1:03:38 Jeff Larson? Uh, I want to add because Mike did two poison ones. Can you guys think of a good poisoning scene? Cause I just watched a clip again that of one I liked where Arya Stark gets revenge for the red wedding.
1:03:52 Wes Larson? Yeah. I mean, my all time favorite is also a Game of Thrones and it's Joffrey being poisoned. Cause you're just like waiting. You, you want him to die so badly. And then when it finally does, it's really, I mean, it packs a punch. It's fun to watch him like choke and die.
1:04:10 Mike Smith? I'll go with, uh, Princess Bride. Um, never get into a battle of wits with a Sicilian or whatever his line is. That's a great scene when he's just immune to both cups of poison.
1:04:20 Wes Larson? Wow. It is great.
1:04:21 Jeff Larson? Wow.
1:04:21 Mike Smith? Classic. Wow.
1:04:23 Jeff Larson? All right. Favorite non-animal news headline?
1:04:28 Jeff Larson? Maybe you don't need to favorite. You can just do one you want to shout out.
1:04:32 Wes Larson? Yeah. I found one that I liked. Um, there's so much news happening all the time. So I was kind of having a hard time finding something that wasn't like overtly political, but I did found one that's political, but it's, it's interesting. So one thing that's been happening with the current administration is they're trying to do a lot of redistricting. So, uh, different places are trying to redefine their boundaries to favor. One political party over another. And in Missouri, there's been this battle to do that. And typically in Missouri, they only do that after a census. But now there's a
1:05:10 Wes Larson? big push to do it right now. And they're using Air Bud, the movie Air Bud, as their justification for doing it right now. And the way that they're using it is that line where they say, there ain't no rule that says a dog can't play basketball. When people are saying like, you know, a dog can't play basketball, they're saying, well, there isn't a rule that says they can't. And they're pretty much saying, calling this the Air Bud rule in Missouri, saying that while typically they do a redistricting right after a census, there isn't a rule that says you can't do it at another time. And they keep quoting Air Bud in that decision.
1:05:51 Wes Larson? So, pretty wild, weird times that we're living through. I hope everyone is getting outside and smelling some fresh air from time to time.
1:06:01 Jeff Larson? Yeah, they're essentially saying like, dogs can play basketball.
1:06:06 Wes Larson? Right.
1:06:06 Jeff Larson? I'll do a shout out animal one that's feel good is Guatemala's putting conservation efforts towards their jaguar population. Uh, jaguar.
1:06:17 Wes Larson? I think you're flying a little close to the sun with the jaguar.
1:06:21 Jeff Larson? But my, my article is that the person who like, found a planet with water on it, he like, lives super like solitary area was assassinated recently.
1:06:37 Wes Larson? What? Oh, yeah, I heard about that. And he's like an MIT, like genius, right? What the heck? Yeah.
1:06:43 Jeff Larson? So, I don't know, it just seems like maybe there was. Some more meat on that bone that might may or may not come out.
1:06:52 Wes Larson? It was like the guy that recently was working with fission, energy creation from fission and was like making huge.
1:06:59 Jeff Larson? Well, I think that's a different guy.
1:07:01 Wes Larson? Cold fusion. I know, I'm saying it's like the same thing. It was like, he was very close to discovering new energy sources and then, oh, he wound up dead. That's pretty weird.
1:07:10 Mike Smith? Can't do that. I forgot to prepare for this one, but I am remembering a headline I saw recently. I don't know if this is true, so take it with a grain of salt. Uh, but apparently the company that runs Pokemon Go had to remove a Pokéstop that was on Epstein Island.
1:07:24 Wes Larson? Yeah, yeah, I saw that.
1:07:26 Mike Smith? So, so I don't, that's a, that probably good to do if that's indeed true.
1:07:32 Wes Larson? I was gonna say, nuclear power, I think, is starting to gain some popularity again, and I'm, I'm all on board for that because the more I learn about it, how clean it is, how efficient it is, and how like, better they've gotten about safeguards. We should be like fully investing in nuclear, in my opinion. So.
1:07:50 Mike Smith? Let's go.
1:07:51 Wes Larson? Anyway. All right. What's the next category, JRF?
1:07:55 Jeff Larson? I got more.
1:07:56 Wes Larson? I don't know, that might be it.
1:07:58 Jeff Larson? Oh, yeah. Uh, what's your best advice for someone going on a first date?
1:08:03 Mike Smith? I got one. And this one's actually kind of funny if you think about it a lot, but I always say, listen more than you talk, which is, I think that's still probably really good advice. But if both of those, both of the people on the date were given that same piece of advice, it kind of turns into a Mexican standoff to see who can like, talk less. So it turns into a kind of a competition, which I think is just really funny to think about.
1:08:25 Wes Larson? It sounds like it could either go great or be a very awkward date.
1:08:30 Mike Smith? Right. No one talks at all, is how I'm envisioning that going. Just listen.
1:08:35 Wes Larson? That's kind of your perfect date.
1:08:37 Mike Smith? It sounds amazing to me. Yeah.
1:08:39 Wes Larson? My advice I always tell people, but I've been out, I haven't been dating for eight years. But when I used to be on the dating scene, I would always say, and what I would do is just like, just plan dinner. Go to dinner. And if you're getting like great vibes and things are going great during dinner, then maybe plan a second thing like go see a movie or go to the bar or do whatever else. But don't force people to do more than just dinner if you're meeting for the first time, because if it doesn't go well, then you have this like other thing you have to do. And it just sucks for everyone. So just plan dinner on your first date.
1:09:15 Jeff Larson? Sure.
1:09:15 Wes Larson? I you know, when I was dating, there's plenty of those dinners that that we would do more, but like it didn't have to be that way. I'm not saying that in a sexual way. As I said that it came off that way, I meant we would like go get a drink or we would go for a walk or whatever else afterward, but like it doesn't, if you plan multiple things, then it feels like too much to me.
1:09:39 Jeff Larson? No, that's good advice. I like keeping it short. I'd say go to the duck pond, though. Bring some bread. Go to the duck pond. Throw some bread to the ducks.
1:09:49 Wes Larson? Don't do that.
1:09:51 Jeff Larson? Yeah, don't throw bread to ducks, though. Throw some bread to them. Don't. They're not, they can't digest it.
1:09:58 Wes Larson? Who am I gonna throw all my bread at? I guess just humans.
1:10:02 Jeff Larson? Yeah. And then, I don't know, maybe a dessert, but keep it short, like Wes said, and then afterwards, you know, you gotta play it cool with texting. You can't do too many texting, bro. Yeah. Yeah. One. Okay. One is enough.
1:10:22 Jeff Larson? All right. Do we want to do worst advice you've been given for dating? Sure. All right.
1:10:27 Wes Larson? The one I had was like that dating is a way, is a pathway to marriage, like that that's what dating is for is to get married. Cause that's what I grew up believing is like you date to marry. And I think if that's, yeah, if that's your like view. Then you're not getting a lot of good things out of these people that you don't want to marry. And by going on dates with people that maybe you're not like supposed to marry that person, but there's like some good things you can learn from that person or gain as a human being. Uh, that's also very valuable. So to me, it shouldn't be like your goal is I have to get married.
1:11:06 Jeff Larson? It's why I cut a lot of like cool budding relationships off early was I was just like, I'm not ready to get married.
1:11:15 Wes Larson? Right. I know. It's a bad way to look at it. Yeah.
1:11:18 Mike Smith? I was once told it's actually kind of a smart move to ask your date for some money because it shows that you're comfortable enough around her to ask her for a favor. And it's just like, even in the moment, I was like, well, that's terrible. Terrible advice.
1:11:33 Wes Larson? Bad advice.
1:11:35 Mike Smith? I kind of see where they're approaching that from. But yeah, if I'm like you're especially on like a first date, if you're just like, hey, could you spot me 10 bucks? It's like, oh, yeah.
1:11:45 Jeff Larson? It's crazy.
1:11:46 Wes Larson? It's a real weird piece of advice.
1:11:48 Jeff Larson? One of Wes's college friends told me to never get the door for a girl.
1:11:53 Wes Larson? I, I know who you're talking about right now and I'm so embarrassed that I was even friends with him.
1:12:02 Wes Larson? He was also into like nagging too, which is also terrible advice. Don't nag people. Don't be mean to people for any reason. Ugh.
1:12:10 Jeff Larson? All right. I have a few listener questions if we want.
1:12:12 Wes Larson? Great. Yeah.
1:12:14 Jeff Larson? Katie Hoffer says, best programs to support Montana wilderness wildlife?
1:12:21 Wes Larson? Uh, I really like Swan Valley Connections. They are like focused on doing really good wildlife work in between the Swan and Mission Valley. Uh, I really like Vital Ground. They're a grizzly bear nonprofit does really good work with connecting grizzly bear populations. I really like.
1:12:44 Wes Larson? Who else? You know, let's just stick with those two for now, just to not like muddy the water too much, but those are two that I I really do like a lot. Oh, MPG Ranch is another one. We'll put them in the mix, too.
1:12:55 Jeff Larson? Uh, do any of us have, or this is from Fancy Full Fairy Beads. Do any of you have a favorite new animal fact that you just recently learned?
1:13:07 Wes Larson? I can't think of one off the top of my head.
1:13:09 Jeff Larson? Yeah, I thought it's interesting. They spotted a grizzly in Yellowstone like earlier than they have in forever. It's not really quite a fact, but more of a stat.
1:13:21 Wes Larson? It's been such a warm winter.
1:13:23 Mike Smith? Pufferfish do a really elaborate art installation on the bottom of the ocean to impress potential suitors. Like they do a, I don't exactly know what it looks like, but it can take up to a week for them to finish, which is, you would think the water would kind of disrupt it or something. I don't know how it works, but I thought that was.
1:13:41 Jeff Larson? Probably why it takes a week.
1:13:43 Wes Larson? Yeah, there was one of those BBC like blue chip documentary series that showed that. And it like blew my mind almost more than anything ever has, like seeing the display that the fish made to attract a mate. It was so cool. Yeah.
1:13:57 Jeff Larson? Uh, Rara Sose asks cowboy boots, yes or no?
1:14:03 Wes Larson? It's a no for me, but yes for other people.
1:14:05 Jeff Larson? I think they're cool, but I think, I think they're cool when they're not trying to be cool. If you like are trying to be cool with them sometimes.
1:14:16 Wes Larson? Sometimes they're cool.
1:14:17 Jeff Larson? That's more for men.
1:14:19 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:14:19 Jeff Larson? Like I like when girls go for it with them. I don't know.
1:14:23 Wes Larson? They just don't look good on me, but I think they look good on a lot of people.
1:14:26 Mike Smith? Mexicans have a 100% batting average when wearing cowboy boots. I'm always just like, yeah, you're doing, you're doing it. You're pulling it off.
1:14:35 Jeff Larson? Uh, Rory Smith nine 11. Oh, dude, pray for Mexico right now.
1:14:40 Mike Smith? I, yeah, I will. Sure. Why?
1:14:43 Jeff Larson? Did you not see all the Mexico stuff?
1:14:45 Mike Smith? No, is something bad happening?
1:14:47 Jeff Larson? They killed like the head cartel person and now the cartel's like in Puerto Vallarta and the different cities like taking hostages, killing people like flights are canceled. I know a girl stuck in Puerto Vallarta right now.
1:15:04 Wes Larson? Yeah, me too.
1:15:05 Mike Smith? I can't keep up with all the trouble. Jeez.
1:15:08 Jeff Larson? Anyways, off of that note, Rory Smith nine eleven asks, can fish drown it?
1:15:16 Wes Larson? Can fish drown it? Uh, yeah, we actually talked about this in our.
1:15:22 Jeff Larson? I want to answer this one because I have a story that I feel bad about.
1:15:27 Wes Larson? Sure.
1:15:27 Jeff Larson? I gotta confess, people are gonna maybe think a little less of me, but when I was just a dumb college kid, I didn't realize fish could drown, right? And my friend had two goldfish and I thought it'd be funny to buy thirty more goldfish and put them all in the same tank as his two goldfish. So I went to the pet store and I bought thirty goldfish and I put them all in his little fish tank. And then they all started drowning. And it's because they didn't have enough oxygen in the water. They were all having the same oxygen.
1:16:07 Jeff Larson? So I learned the hard way and I felt really bad and my roommate got really sad and like a different two goldfish ended up living, but then he didn't like those two.
1:16:18 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:16:19 Jeff Larson? So I'm sorry, Brett.
1:16:21 Wes Larson? Shoot. Yeah, I mean, and that's like them running out of oxygen in another way that we just talked about they can drown is like in our bull shark episode where we talked about how if you put fish in the wrong environment, then all the water like rushes into it and they.
1:16:37 Mike Smith? Like salt and fresh water, fresh and saltwater. Yeah.
1:16:39 Wes Larson? And I forget which way it was, but if you, you know, in there's one way where they pretty much dehydrate underwater and the other way where they essentially drown underwater because all their cells become overwhelmed with water. So that's another way that they can drown.
1:16:54 Jeff Larson? Yeah. All right.
1:16:56 Wes Larson? Cool.
1:16:57 Jeff Larson? All right. Well, thanks, guys.
1:17:00 Jeff Larson? We'll talk to you later. We love you. Love you, guys. Bye. See ya.
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