Danny Jones Podcast - #231 - World's #1 Wildlife Survival Expert is Only Afraid of THIS Animal | Andrew Ucles
Aired: 2024-04-01
Duration: 02:53:37


=== Instinctual Bird Catching (14:17) ===

[00:00:00]  What's up everybody?
[00:00:01]  Hope you enjoy this beautiful Florida skyline behind me.
[00:00:05]  So lately, you probably noticed I've had to record these awkward little videos that roll before the podcast plays because essentially I need to start begging you guys to subscribe to the YouTube channel.
[00:00:15]  People don't typically subscribe when they discover podcasts or discover videos on YouTube for the first time.
[00:00:22]  And when people do subscribe, YouTube knows to put us in front of more and more people so we can keep growing the show.
[00:00:28]  It's just the best way to do it.
[00:00:30]  That being said, the following podcast is with Andrew Eukels.
[00:00:34]  He has been to the deadliest places on earth, hand catching, man eating beasts.
[00:00:41]  And I really believe that you guys are going to love it.
[00:00:43]  Thank you to everyone who's been supporting and subscribing to the show.
[00:00:47]  I can't thank you enough.
[00:00:49]  It's thanks to you guys.
[00:00:50]  I'm not sleeping back here.
[00:00:52]  So without further ado, please enjoy this conversation with Andrew Eukels.
[00:00:57]  Mwah.
[00:01:04]  The most dangerous things I've been exposed to have been the diseases.
[00:01:07]  I've caught so many.
[00:01:08]  But no, as of yet.
[00:01:11]  That's good.
[00:01:13]  It's never too late.
[00:01:16]  Still early.
[00:01:17]  You're still young.
[00:01:17]  Exactly.
[00:01:18]  How old are you?
[00:01:19]  Just turned 36.
[00:01:20]  We're at the same age.
[00:01:22]  Happy birthday, bro.
[00:01:23]  Beauty.
[00:01:24]  How did you become an Australian survivalist, crazy wildlife person?
[00:01:31]  I guess I was just born in the right.
[00:01:34]  Location.
[00:01:35]  And I think anyone from the area that I'm born in, Dapto, we've got some interesting characters.
[00:01:40]  You don't even have to tell us we can hear your accent.
[00:01:42]  Yeah, 100%.
[00:01:43]  It's a giveaway.
[00:01:44]  You know, it's been interesting, though.
[00:01:46]  I think coming here to the US, pending on which state that I go to, I feel like my accent's clear, right?
[00:01:53]  I feel like it's clear and it's quite understandable as an English accent.
[00:01:56]  I'll go to a lot of places in the US and they'll just say, slow down, I can't understand you.
[00:02:01]  And it's like, well, hold on one second.
[00:02:02]  What am I doing that's wrong?
[00:02:03]  But you can understand me.
[00:02:04]  So, Florida must be like a Florida thing.
[00:02:06]  You can understand the Australian accent.
[00:02:08]  Yeah.
[00:02:08]  Well, you've said off camera just a minute ago.
[00:02:11]  Can you say that again, what you said about Florida?
[00:02:12]  I want to make sure we have that on record.
[00:02:13]  100%.
[00:02:14]  So, I think having traveled to about 20 different states here in the US, Florida represents a state that if I was going to come and live in, it would be here.
[00:02:24]  And I think because of the climate, because of the wildlife, I think even when you're flying over it, like I was saying before, just like the vegetation structure and the matrix and all that kind of stuff, it looks wild.
[00:02:32]  Well, it is wild.
[00:02:34]  So, yeah, Florida will definitely be number one.
[00:02:35]  Yeah.
[00:02:36]  We got everything here.
[00:02:37]  Yeah.
[00:02:37]  Coastline, we got the Gulf of Mexico, we got the Atlantic Ocean, we got the Florida Keys, we got the swamplands, we got tons of forestry, all kinds of hunting you can do, all kinds of fish.
[00:02:47]  You catch every fish.
[00:02:48]  I had a girl, you know, I had a girl in here, Louisa.
[00:02:51]  Louisa was, she's Australian.
[00:02:53]  Right.
[00:02:54]  She was in here and I was talking to her.
[00:02:55]  We were talking, she's like a health person.
[00:02:58]  She's like a neurophysiologist, right?
[00:02:59]  So she's all into diet and all this stuff.
[00:03:01]  So we were talking about fish and she's like, she's like, you got to make sure you're eating the right fish.
[00:03:06]  I'm like, well, yeah, we live in Florida.
[00:03:07]  I'm like, we'll catch, I eat fish.
[00:03:09]  Fresh fish all the time.
[00:03:10]  She's like, Yeah, but you know where you're getting it from?
[00:03:11]  I'm like, Yeah, it's the Gulf of Mexico.
[00:03:13]  We literally catch it.
[00:03:14]  I go on a boat and I catch it.
[00:03:14]  She's like, Yeah, but it's not as good as the fish you get in Australia.
[00:03:18]  I'm like, What?
[00:03:19]  Do you think Australian fish is better?
[00:03:20]  Well, I don't know about that.
[00:03:22]  Just recently, I went out on a fishing trawler.
[00:03:24]  And essentially, this is in the northern part of Queensland where they do like a lot of like coral trout fishing.
[00:03:29]  And I think what's interesting is when you're fishing for coral trout, you're also going to be catching a lot of like byproduct species as well.
[00:03:36]  So you've got like the Wahoo, you've got like the Barramundi cod, you've got these like giant emperor cods as well.
[00:03:45]  But what's interesting is a lot of the fish species there actually have what's called like the sigateratoxin that they acquire through like bioaccumulation from consuming.
[00:03:51]  I just ate some barracuda the other day.
[00:03:52]  Yeah, well, there you go.
[00:03:54]  So you've got to be incredibly careful.
[00:03:55]  Even in Australia, very careful about what species of fish that you consume in.
[00:04:01]  Yes.
[00:04:02]  So I know the barracuda, I think it's the barracuda in the warmer climates are the ones that have the sig, and the ones that are in like up north and the colder climates don't necessarily always have it.
[00:04:14]  But yeah, my dad made some barracuda fish bread the other day.
[00:04:16]  He didn't even tell me.
[00:04:17]  He just brought it to me.
[00:04:18]  He's like, hey, try this fish bread I made.
[00:04:19]  I'm like, oh, goddamn, it's delicious.
[00:04:20]  He cut up some jalapenos, put it in there.
[00:04:22]  I was scarfing it down.
[00:04:24]  He's like, yeah, it's barracuda.
[00:04:24]  I was like, oh, shit.
[00:04:26]  Well, I'm still alive.
[00:04:28]  I don't, I mean, Another friend of mine, Manny Puig, he's the guy, you know who Manny?
[00:04:33]  I love him.
[00:04:35]  Didn't we all grow up watching him on Jackass?
[00:04:39]  Yeah.
[00:04:40]  Apart from Steve, who was, I think, a little bit before that, I think Manny was one of those people that was relatable.
[00:04:48]  It was almost like that crazy next door neighbor, the guy that's swearing at the lawnmower kind of guy, that just had something relatable.
[00:04:55]  And I think he had an amazing skill set.
[00:04:59]  He spent so much time.
[00:05:00]  Time out there in the wilderness, he had a you know a real special connection.
[00:05:04]  And when I walked in, I saw these and I was just like, that's definitely um, Manning's signature right there.
[00:05:10]  Manning was the one who taught, who um, told me he was the one who got me interested in the ability to eat barracuda, yeah.
[00:05:18]  So he was saying he eats barracuda all the time and he catches them with these things.
[00:05:21]  And he catches, he he uh, there's videos of him catching barracuda just with a knife swimming, right?
[00:05:26]  Right?
[00:05:26]  He just like swims up to him and stabs him and catches him.
[00:05:29]  But um, but yeah, man, Manny is a very unique mother.
[00:05:35]  He and he grew up in Cuba during the revolution, like right after the revolution.
[00:05:41]  Wow.
[00:05:41]  He was the one who introduced me to Felix Rodriguez, the guy in that podcast we were just talking about.
[00:05:44]  Right, gotcha.
[00:05:45]  And Manny's dad fought with him in Cuba during the revolution for the CIA.
[00:05:53]  And Manny's dad actually got caught and executed.
[00:05:56]  Oh, no way.
[00:05:57]  Yeah, Felix is his godfather.
[00:05:58]  From a very young age?
[00:06:00]  I think after he was, I think Manny was around five years old when his dad got executed.
[00:06:05]  You know what I find interesting?
[00:06:08]  For the majority of the people that I've met within this industry that have a real deep, okay, so you can have a skill set, right?
[00:06:14]  But then there's this next kind of level that you get to.
[00:06:18]  And that next level is to do with understanding animal behavior.
[00:06:21]  What I've noticed for a lot of people in the industry that just have that edge or just have that extra skill set, that extra talent, is generally there's been trauma in their life.
[00:06:32]  And I know for a lot of the people that I've talked to who have had bad relationships or even maybe no father in their life, they often.
[00:06:42]  Find a relationship in nature that they'd normally like a normal adult son would find a relationship with their father.
[00:06:49]  They find a relationship in nature.
[00:06:51]  And for me, that was the case.
[00:06:54]  Interesting.
[00:06:54]  Because I didn't get along with my father at all.
[00:06:57]  I think, and it's look, he was the most supportive father in the world and loving, but we just didn't get along.
[00:07:04]  We couldn't stand each other.
[00:07:05]  We just couldn't, even until today, we couldn't stand each other.
[00:07:07]  And I think what's interesting is having seen a lot of guys in this industry which are really good, that next level good.
[00:07:14]  We all have a very similar kind of thing.
[00:07:18]  And I think that's probably something that's probably happened with Manny at that age he found a relationship with nature and that fearlessness in nature as well that gives you a sense of control.
[00:07:28]  Yeah, man.
[00:07:29]  The most interesting people I think have had to deal with a lot of trauma, most likely early in life.
[00:07:36]  So, like what you were saying with Manny, and that's interesting too, the similarity between you and him.
[00:07:41]  He talked about how when he came to the US and he moved to Florida, And he went to college.
[00:07:48]  He was just basically skipping school and going on solo treks in the panhandle by himself, just like wandering through the woods for weeks with just a knife and a backpack, like catching and killing stuff and eating it and just surviving on his own by himself for weeks.
[00:08:04]  That's all he wanted to do.
[00:08:05]  Well, that's empowerment.
[00:08:07]  You know what I mean?
[00:08:08]  That's self identification, that's empowerment.
[00:08:10]  And I think that's something that, you know, that's obviously character building.
[00:08:13]  You can see that in someone.
[00:08:15]  And I know for the guys that I've met in the industry, which are really good in the survival realm, we're all self taught.
[00:08:22]  And I think a lot of the times we will try and reflect and say, oh, we've spent a lot of time with the indigenous people and all that kind of stuff.
[00:08:31]  And retrospectively, yes, there's a lot of skill sets that can come from that.
[00:08:36]  The best skills are the ones which are self taught.
[00:08:38]  That's time in the field, it's through mistakes, it's through failures.
[00:08:41]  I can tell you what, I've gone through a lot of failures on almost every continent.
[00:08:46]  But that's where your knowledge, that's where your understanding comes from, that's where your ability comes from.
[00:08:51]  How many continents have you been to?
[00:08:52]  I think most of them, eh?
[00:08:54]  Except Antarctica.
[00:08:56]  Really?
[00:08:57]  So, look, I've spent so obviously from Australia, but I've spent time in Southeast Asia, a whole bunch of countries there, like for Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Indonesia, Myanmar.
[00:09:08]  That's where the previous discussion with Forrest, where we'd done filming there in Myanmar.
[00:09:13]  Is Myanmar where the crocodile massacre was?
[00:09:15]  That's correct, yeah.
[00:09:15]  Okay.
[00:09:16]  Yeah, in northern parts there.
[00:09:17]  Spent time in Africa.
[00:09:19]  I've been to Africa twice now.
[00:09:21]  South America, well, obviously, I've just flown in from Colombia.
[00:09:24]  But look, every single environment that you go to is going to have different challenges, you know.
[00:09:28]  And I think there's an old saying, I'm just trying to remember who said it.
[00:09:33]  And it goes into the philosophy of this whole life that I've had of catching animals around the world.
[00:09:41]  But an animal is only dumb to a man's dull perception.
[00:09:45]  I'm just trying to think who said that quote.
[00:09:47]  But it makes so much sense because for every environment that I've went into and I've looked at an animal, I thought to myself, oh, this is going to be real easy to catch.
[00:09:53]  Doesn't he send me on a spiral?
[00:09:55]  You know what I mean?
[00:09:56]  Like, quite literally.
[00:09:58]  It doesn't matter if it's beavers.
[00:09:59]  This is all stuff like catching by hand.
[00:10:01]  You know what I mean?
[00:10:02]  This is not, you know, this is mano y mano, one on one, level playing field.
[00:10:08]  I'm going to try and catch and I'm going to do anything that I can to do it.
[00:10:11]  And I guess there's got to be a persistence, Gene.
[00:10:13]  I think that's probably one of my big mental problems is my persistence.
[00:10:17]  Is there'll be something and I'll be like, I'm not leaving until I catch it or I'm going to die doing it.
[00:10:22]  I don't know where that comes from.
[00:10:24]  But, and I'll take it personal.
[00:10:25]  Like, Yeah, I'll spend months trying to catch something.
[00:10:27]  Yeah, that's what Forrest was trying to explain the difference between the major difference between you two.
[00:10:32]  And he was saying that you just have this insatiable appetite for adrenaline, or you're an adrenaline junkie and you just cannot stop chasing and trying to catch the most deadliest animals on earth.
[00:10:46]  Well, it just doesn't, you know, I think over the years.
[00:10:51]  So the story starts at about five or six years old.
[00:10:55]  And I used to go out into the back of West Apto with a bucket.
[00:10:58]  And go and catch snakes.
[00:11:00]  Now, we're not talking like the average kind of garter snake.
[00:11:02]  We're talking about highly venomous snake species.
[00:11:05]  You know, we've got the brown snake, we've got the, you know, tiger snakes and black snakes.
[00:11:08]  You know, we're talking like within the top 20, quite literally.
[00:11:12]  And, you know, I wasn't stupid to the fact that I knew this thing could kill me, but it gave me like an immense control of being able to capture something like that and actually, you know, have it in my possession.
[00:11:22]  And so that's where I believe the curiosity started.
[00:11:25]  And we all have natural curiosity when we start off.
[00:11:28]  I think that's something which is innate and somewhat instinctual.
[00:11:31]  And I guess that's probably where it started.
[00:11:32]  From just going around catching snakes.
[00:11:35]  And then from catching snakes, it went to like other animals.
[00:11:37]  And then I'd be like watching birds.
[00:11:38]  I'd be like, right, I'm going to try and, you know, figure out different ways of catching birds.
[00:11:42]  And so, I think the more time that you spend out there, you become quite what's the word? Incredibly observant because all that you're doing is you're studying animal behavior.
[00:11:54]  And within that, you're looking for flaws within animal behavior.
[00:11:56]  And you're probably thinking, well, what do you mean, flaws?
[00:11:59]  Well, there's definitely dissection points, you know, particularly, you know, if you're trying to capture like mammals or birds, you've got to find the weakness within that animal's pattern or path that enables you to be able to capture him.
[00:12:08]  So, let me give you an example.
[00:12:10]  When I was 14 years of age, I went through.
[00:12:13]  This whole thing of catching like birds.
[00:12:16]  Fucking loved it.
[00:12:17]  Like, I'd wag school and just go out and try and catch birds.
[00:12:19]  He'd poke me out.
[00:12:20]  Like, you're going to catch birds.
[00:12:21]  Yeah, how the hell do you catch a bird?
[00:12:23]  Mate, this got me in a lot of trouble with the authorities.
[00:12:25]  This was like my first introduction because everything when I was young, like, there was the law and it just went over my head.
[00:12:32]  I just, like, I've had to change now, but I just, I gave not one, can I swear on this podcast?
[00:12:37]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:12:37]  Not one about those wildlife laws.
[00:12:40]  I just didn't care.
[00:12:41]  It just didn't register in me because it didn't.
[00:12:44]  So, I would go out and be like, all right, well, what animals am I going to go and catch today?
[00:12:48]  So, you know, go and catch like wombats and echidnas and that kind of stuff.
[00:12:51]  And then I remember watching these birds thinking, like, I really want to get into catching birds.
[00:12:56]  And so what I did was, and I went through like a lot of failures, but I soon realised, like, you know, the cockatoo species, like sulfur cresteds and galahs and lorikeets and rosellas, like all the parrot species.
[00:13:05]  Okay.
[00:13:05]  So what they do is they will actually reside in tree hollows, like when they're doing either nesting or even at nighttime, they'll reside in tree hollows.
[00:13:13]  And I soon realised, and I had to keep distance on these birds, that if you got Too close to where they were nesting up in the trees, then essentially they would identify you as a predator and they wouldn't go in hollow in these retreats.
[00:13:26]  But late at night, if you stayed at a distance just before sundown, you could actually watch these birds go into the hollows, and essentially this would be the same retreat site.
[00:13:36]  So we've got our first intersection point there.
[00:13:38]  I know where this guy's going at night time.
[00:13:40]  Okay, so that's tick box number one.
[00:13:42]  Now, tick box number two is well, how the hell do I get up the tree?
[00:13:45]  And so you'd get there to the tree, and you'd soon realize that if you made noise, even at night time, if you made noise, Trying to get up into the tree, well, the bird would hear you and then it would take off.
[00:13:55]  And that's probably like a natural instinct with the bird of like, you know, the goannas, the monitors climbing up the trees and hearing the scratchings and stuff.
[00:14:00]  And then, like, oh, there's a predator.
[00:14:02]  I've got to evacuate.
[00:14:02]  Right.
[00:14:03]  So, what I'd do is when the birds were out feeding, I used to go, I used to cut these like Rio, you know, like the still Rio bars, like reinforcing bars.
[00:14:12]  And so, what I would do is I'd take like a handful of them and I'd nail them up into the tree to where the hollow was.

=== Early YouTube Days (07:30) ===

[00:14:17]  And I'd do it in the daytime whilst the bird was gone.
[00:14:20]  And so, at nighttime, I'd come back and I'd even put like, go.
[00:14:24]  To the effort to put like socks over my shoes so I wouldn't make a noise.
[00:14:28]  And so I'd climb up the tree at nighttime and I'd have a net and I'd get up there to the hole and I'd put it over the hole and bang on the trunk.
[00:14:35]  And then these cockatoos would fly out and then boom, I'd have my cockatoos.
[00:14:39]  Loved it.
[00:14:40]  And what would you do with it?
[00:14:41]  What'd you call it?
[00:14:41]  I'll tell you what happened.
[00:14:42]  So my dad, my dad, as much as we had conflict, somehow he supported my antics, you know, throughout the years.
[00:14:51]  And I'd just bring all these birds home.
[00:14:52]  So he built this big Avery in the backyard and I had like all these.
[00:14:56]  Different animal species, and I had like kookaburras and king parrots, and like all these really highly protected bird species.
[00:15:03]  But it was entertaining, it was fun, you know.
[00:15:06]  And I'd have friends come over and all that kind of stuff.
[00:15:09]  Anyway, sooner or later, the authorities cracked onto me, right?
[00:15:13]  And I remember it was like a Thursday, I just finished school, and I remember this knock on the door.
[00:15:22]  I've opened up the door, and there's this ranger.
[00:15:26]  Hi, how are you going?
[00:15:26]  We're just doing.
[00:15:27]  Routine inspections on aviaries in people's backyard.
[00:15:31]  Do you have an aviary in your backyard?
[00:15:33]  And he was from like the New South Wales, what was it?
[00:15:36]  The New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service.
[00:15:39]  And them to me was like the enemy.
[00:15:41]  Like they were like, you know, like Darth Vader to me.
[00:15:44]  And I just thought to myself, yeah, I've got a bad neighbor in the backyard.
[00:15:49]  And I thought to myself at this point in time, like, I'm like, I was like 15.
[00:15:53]  I'm like, I'm.
[00:15:55]  And he went into the backyard and like all these birds are going in blistic.
[00:15:59]  I would have had about 30 birds in there.
[00:16:02]  And he was there with like another person there taking pictures and all this kind of stuff.
[00:16:05]  And he goes, where have you gotten these birds from?
[00:16:08]  I said, what do you mean, where have I got them from?
[00:16:10]  I've caught them.
[00:16:11]  He goes, who's been catching them?
[00:16:14]  I said, I've been catching them.
[00:16:16]  And he says, All right, well, you know, what traps have you been using?
[00:16:19]  I said, I don't use traps.
[00:16:20]  I said, Essentially, I use my hands.
[00:16:23]  And he's just like, and he's taken all notes of this.
[00:16:24]  And he goes, Can you sit down for a second?
[00:16:28]  He sits me down, right?
[00:16:31]  And he goes, How have you been catching these birds?
[00:16:34]  Honestly, you need to tell me.
[00:16:35]  And so I sat down.
[00:16:36]  I told him the process of how I was catching these birds.
[00:16:39]  And I remember he was looking at his partner, just thinking to himself, Where the fuck has this guy come from?
[00:16:44]  You know, like literally.
[00:16:46]  And, Anyway, long story short, because I was a minor, they gave me like a warning.
[00:16:53]  And then they had like another lady come in from like the animal services and like, you know, take all the birds and stuff, which I was completely devastated.
[00:16:59]  They let me keep my favorite bird, which was a Galah.
[00:17:02]  So I kind of felt like a net.
[00:17:04]  Did you have like a net?
[00:17:06]  Did you have something over the top of the backyard so they couldn't get out?
[00:17:08]  Yeah, no, it's like, it's called like an aviary.
[00:17:10]  So like a mesh aviary.
[00:17:12]  Oh, okay.
[00:17:12]  Imagine like a big arched chicken pen.
[00:17:14]  Got it.
[00:17:14]  Right?
[00:17:15]  Okay.
[00:17:15]  And so, yeah, so that was my first introduction.
[00:17:20]  To the law, and it was a warning.
[00:17:22]  And then I guess since then, you know, I went through my escapades of going around and catching animals around the world and like docking and ducking and dodging all the laws, you know what I mean?
[00:17:36]  And jumping through loopholes and all that kind of stuff.
[00:17:39]  And that can be stressful.
[00:17:40]  You know, I was getting pulled up at airports, you know, interrogated, investigated.
[00:17:44]  What footage do you have?
[00:17:45]  Show us your phone, this and that.
[00:17:47]  It got to that point quite literally.
[00:17:48]  Yeah, 100%.
[00:17:50]  We got to points where I was sending hard drives and SD cards back home because I didn't want anyone to see what I was up to.
[00:17:54]  Wow.
[00:17:55]  Oh, yeah, 100%.
[00:17:57]  Yeah.
[00:17:57]  But it was all in the love of doing what I was doing.
[00:17:59]  I loved catching animals.
[00:18:00]  I can't explain it.
[00:18:02]  I can't explain it.
[00:18:03]  I just recently went to Columbia to South, you know, to Central America.
[00:18:06]  And even there, I'm trying to go on holiday.
[00:18:08]  I can't help it because I'm watching monkeys and coyotes and all these animals just thinking, like.
[00:18:12]  You just have something in you that's just like, you need to catch animals.
[00:18:14]  I don't know what it is.
[00:18:15]  When something's evading me, I just want to chase it down.
[00:18:18]  I just want to catch it.
[00:18:20]  I haven't been as.
[00:18:21]  As successful with women, unfortunately.
[00:18:24]  That's what I was going to say.
[00:18:27]  I said, you got to be careful with the.
[00:18:28]  You got to be careful in the States.
[00:18:30]  Yeah.
[00:18:30]  But it's just been something so instinctual within me, you know.
[00:18:34]  And I think as it's come through now and I've developed this skill set and this ability, I've had to turn my ways into a way which is more legalized and doing things the right way.
[00:18:47]  And only recently has the government essentially started to open it up and say, all right, we'll give you permits to do this and this and this.
[00:18:54]  But, you know, we're.
[00:18:55]  You play by the rules, Andrew.
[00:18:57]  So I've always kind of been that.
[00:19:00]  So after you started catching birds, what did you move on to?
[00:19:04]  Just anything and everything.
[00:19:05]  By the time I was 19, I went to Africa and I thought I'm just going to go after everything.
[00:19:09]  And my parents literally thought I wasn't coming back.
[00:19:12]  Yeah, 100%.
[00:19:13]  Yeah, it was tough, eh?
[00:19:14]  I was there for like four months from Kenya to Zambia, Zimbabwe.
[00:19:18]  And I just went there catching everything, all like highly venomous snakes.
[00:19:20]  And this is like in the early days of YouTube.
[00:19:23]  This is the early days of YouTube.
[00:19:24]  Yeah, you started your YouTube channel a long time ago.
[00:19:26]  Yeah, a very long time ago.
[00:19:27]  And For that, it was different.
[00:19:31]  For me, it was a lot of comedy, but teaching people.
[00:19:35]  It wasn't about being.
[00:19:36]  Now it's changed.
[00:19:37]  It's about being famous.
[00:19:39]  It's about creating a bronze statue of yourself, like a marto of yourself.
[00:19:42]  A lot of it is.
[00:19:43]  You know what I mean?
[00:19:44]  And I think when I started out, it was very organic.
[00:19:48]  It was real.
[00:19:49]  It was genuine.
[00:19:49]  And people saw that, you know.
[00:19:52]  And that's exactly what it was.
[00:19:55]  And look, I think it definitely had its time and period.
[00:19:57]  You know, there were video uploads that I was doing and getting, you know, a quarter of a million views in a week.
[00:20:02]  And it was just going dun And at that point in time, I was kind of like, well, where's this all leading to?
[00:20:08]  Right.
[00:20:09]  And then I went and done a number of documentaries.
[00:20:11]  So I'd done three documentaries, which they're on Netflix, not in the US, don't know why, but it's in the UK, Ireland, Australia.
[00:20:17]  Oh, is it going to get a VPN?
[00:20:20]  Yeah.
[00:20:20]  So I got a series called Born to Be Wild, which follows like my escapades of when I was doing freelance documentary work.
[00:20:24]  And those were some tough yards, man, like we were talking about before, like proper tough blood, sweat, tears.
[00:20:31]  You know, I went through hell.
[00:20:33]  And then it got to a point where I was watching, I won't name them, but I was watching other wildlife presenters on YouTube, on Instagram, just getting an accumulation of.
[00:20:45]  Of resources and viewerships and all that kind of stuff.
[00:20:48]  But I was watching their stuff and saying, it's scripted, it's staged, it's phony, it's fake, and it's not real.
[00:20:56]  And these individuals were developing just these very cartoonish characters.
[00:21:00]  And they went in with a business plan, they went in with a production company, and they just took over.
[00:21:09]  But I didn't want to sell out.
[00:21:10]  I never wanted to sell out.
[00:21:11]  I wanted to stay genuine.
[00:21:13]  I really wanted to stay genuine.
[00:21:14]  I think for people in the industry that know me, they know that as well.
[00:21:18]  Yeah, man, it's an unfortunate part of media and show business and YouTube and all of it is that whenever any sort of, whenever anything becomes popular, whether it be a niche, like the wild, like the things that you're doing with wildlife or whatever it might be, a whole new format of media, like podcasting, there's always going to be people that, that just like latch on to it and try to,

=== Staying Genuine in Media (05:25) ===

[00:21:48]  Monopolize it and monetize it as much as they possibly can.
[00:21:51]  So they'll take whatever it is like you've been doing for your whole life because you're passionate about it and uploading content.
[00:21:58]  You were one of the first people to do it.
[00:22:00]  Once people see success, they smell blood, they smell money.
[00:22:04]  And they're like, how can I reverse engineer what this guy is doing?
[00:22:07]  Look what he's doing.
[00:22:08]  Okay, we got to go to Africa.
[00:22:09]  We got to get in front of these animals.
[00:22:10]  I got to wear this hat.
[00:22:11]  We're going to name the YouTube channel this.
[00:22:14]  What color should we use?
[00:22:15]  I'll change my name.
[00:22:16]  Exactly.
[00:22:17]  They changed their names.
[00:22:18]  This is the story of Cody Peterson.
[00:22:21]  Oh, fuck.
[00:22:21]  I hate that guy.
[00:22:22]  Who is he?
[00:22:23]  If you can ever set up like an MMA ring or whatever, get this guy there because I want to flog him.
[00:22:29]  Because he did exactly that.
[00:22:32]  He watched what I'd done and he was like, how do we capitalize on this guy?
[00:22:36]  Even seeing him, I want to punch him.
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[00:24:05]  Now, back to the show.
[00:24:06]  If this guy in ABC News, I can't stand him, Coyote Peterson.
[00:24:10]  I can't even look at him.
[00:24:11]  So, it's like some Hollywood agents get together and they're like, Okay, we need a wildlife show, we're going to sell it to AE.
[00:24:18]  Who could we get?
[00:24:19]  They give a bunch of auditions and they get this guy to come in and they teach him how to handle animals.
[00:24:24]  I think what there is is there's two different types of people in this industry there are those that have a genuine skill set and ability.
[00:24:30]  And there are those that see an opportunity and know the business structure of how to move forward.
[00:24:36]  And he'd done that and he'd done it well.
[00:24:39]  I think the problem is when you go into something and you're like, right, we're going to create a brand, we're going to create an image, we're going to create a bronze statue, which is exactly what he's done.
[00:24:48]  I think where the failure comes into play is this they try to relate what they're doing, their motivations, and everything else to other people previously.
[00:24:57]  And I think Steve Irwin in Australia, right, was.
[00:25:01]  One of the most brilliant, one of the most passionate conservationists on earth.
[00:25:07]  An incredibly lovable person.
[00:25:09]  Do you want to know why?
[00:25:12]  Because he was genuine.
[00:25:15]  There was nothing fake about him.
[00:25:16]  Right.
[00:25:16]  He was genuine.
[00:25:18]  Right.
[00:25:18]  He was genuine.
[00:25:19]  He did what he did because he was a true identity and he'd done things from a different place.
[00:25:28]  When I watch people like that, he does it from a place of how can I make a brand into myself?
[00:25:32]  Yeah.
[00:25:32]  You know what I mean?
[00:25:34]  I am DB page wearing a goofy hat.
[00:25:37]  I want to flog him.
[00:25:41]  I want to flog him.
[00:25:44]  I can't stand him.
[00:25:45]  Anyway, maybe that's just like the Australian in me.
[00:25:50]  Like, what's in this drink?
[00:25:52]  It's called, it's called, it's crab.
[00:25:54]  You got right.
[00:25:55]  There's rum in this drink.
[00:25:56]  I saw there's rum in this drink.
[00:25:57]  But look, at the end of the day, one thing I do respect, regardless of who it is in the industry, is I respect hard work.
[00:26:04]  Because regardless if you're a phony or a fake or whatever, there's got to be some hard work that gets put into that.
[00:26:10]  So let me try and reverse engineer that conversation into saying you've got to respect people for the hard work that they put in.
[00:26:16]  You know what I mean?
[00:26:17]  And I think ultimately, you know, we've come to a time where we've got some big environmental problems which are happening and we need people out there to be advocates for the environment in whatever format or retrospect, you know.
[00:26:28]  I think, and that's something that's probably innate and comes from, I know for myself from my childhood, because that was me being connected.
[00:26:37]  To the environment.
[00:26:40]  It was like because that connection was there and I felt empowered by the environment.
[00:26:49]  You want to protect something that, you know, like if I'm stressed or upset or down or whatever, where do you think I go?
[00:26:55]  You think I go into the city?
[00:26:57]  You think I go into, no, I go into the bush by myself.
[00:27:00]  That's where I have my power.
[00:27:02]  That's where I have my connection.
[00:27:05]  You know what I mean?
[00:27:05]  And I think when you have that, You want to protect it.
[00:27:09]  I think that's where it comes from, real deep, real deep, you know.

=== Protecting Inner Power (07:16) ===

[00:27:13]  At what age were you when you figured out how to turn this fascination with wildlife and catching deadly animals into a job?
[00:27:22]  Like, how did you, when did that happen?
[00:27:25]  So, I went to university.
[00:27:27]  I did a degree in environmental science.
[00:27:29]  And then after that, I had done a master's in wildlife conservation.
[00:27:33]  But still, whilst all this was going on, I was still doing my antics of catching animals.
[00:27:37]  And it wasn't until I started posting on YouTube, I started seeing like a big following that was coming in and watching.
[00:27:41]  I thought to myself, maybe I can actually keep doing what I'm doing with this love and go around the world and do this.
[00:27:47]  And essentially, that's what I did.
[00:27:48]  I just went around the world with my camera and done this.
[00:27:51]  And then I had a really good friend of mine, which just joined me in Medellin, Colombia, my mate Dave.
[00:27:58]  He taught me how to do the very basics of video editing using Adobe, you know, obviously with a cracked format because I couldn't afford the real one.
[00:28:04]  Right, right, right.
[00:28:05]  And essentially just taught me the basics of this.
[00:28:07]  But a lot of it was to do with I wanted to have like a sense of humor that ran through it as well, and like real thick humor as well.
[00:28:14]  And yeah, and then I had another big thing that happened, and I haven't really opened up too much about it.
[00:28:21]  I know Forrest knows a bit more about it.
[00:28:24]  So, Bear Grylls had come through.
[00:28:28]  And he had done a very successful job of building the brand of survival and getting a lot of people involved in that and kids and all that kind of stuff.
[00:28:35]  And I think that was absolutely amazing how he opened up that niche and that genre.
[00:28:41]  And then essentially, what had happened was he had left the network, and the network at Discovery was trying to find the next person to essentially come in and start their own genre.
[00:28:52]  And they reached out to me, and this was back in 2015.
[00:28:55]  So I got into contract with ITV America.
[00:28:58]  I don't know how much of this I can say because it was probably NDAs I had to sign.
[00:29:03]  I forget, it was over 10 years ago.
[00:29:04]  You're good?
[00:29:04]  Yep.
[00:29:05]  And so I went in with probably out of the entire crew of 12 people, I dare say 10 of them were the greatest cunts he ever met.
[00:29:14]  Yeah.
[00:29:15]  Like cunts.
[00:29:16]  Oh, yeah.
[00:29:16]  And then there was only two that represented to be people that, you know, were generally had my back.
[00:29:23]  I remember, so I'd done all this work, I'd created this entire platform and everything that I was doing with the footage and all that kind of stuff.
[00:29:31]  And the first series, and this went on for ages because I know they'll have their new CEOs of Discovery come through.
[00:29:36]  And essentially, I just said, I want to come in and do something that's never been done before.
[00:29:40]  I don't want to do what other people have done.
[00:29:42]  It doesn't interest me.
[00:29:43]  I want to take things to a whole new level.
[00:29:44]  And I'm like, okay, this sounds great.
[00:29:47]  So I remember our first episode that we shot was actually in Thailand.
[00:29:54]  And I remember there was a dinner that we had, and everyone had been brought in, and there was about 12 people sitting down.
[00:30:01]  And I finally thought to myself, I worked so hard to be here.
[00:30:05]  Like the amount of times I've almost died to be sitting here at this.
[00:30:09]  And now, you know, finally my career is about to take off.
[00:30:12]  And anyway, this guy stands up.
[00:30:16]  I don't know who he was.
[00:30:16]  I think it was the executive director.
[00:30:18]  He stands up and, you know, he gives this speech for like 10 minutes about everyone, you know, how hard they've worked to be here and da da da and this and that.
[00:30:27]  And, you know, starts, you know, telling me about the projects that he's worked on and this and that.
[00:30:32]  And then he takes a seat.
[00:30:34]  And there's a guy sitting across from me who's ex British Special Forces, right?
[00:30:40]  He's a consultant, survival consultant.
[00:30:44]  He's done multiple networks and multiple, you know, he's always in the background.
[00:30:48]  He's the background guy to make sure everything's going safe.
[00:30:51]  He's the first aider.
[00:30:52]  This guy's like the real, what is it, the Mac Ivor, right?
[00:30:55]  His name's Kieran O'Donnell, right?
[00:30:57]  He's actually, I think that Mr. Beast guy, he's now his, you know, survival security agent.
[00:31:04]  Oh, wow.
[00:31:06]  He's next level.
[00:31:08]  And so, Kieran.
[00:31:12]  Kieran's got an amazing ability to just read a room, right?
[00:31:15]  I guess that's why he's trained the way he is.
[00:31:17]  And he looks at me and he sees the look on my face and he goes, Oh, can I just say something?
[00:31:22]  We're actually all here because of this young man.
[00:31:25]  And that was the first time that I thought to myself, this is someone that's actually got my best interests at play.
[00:31:30]  And it was just, I don't know, it was one of the most disheartening introductions to American television or American productions that I didn't even know existed.
[00:31:41]  You know, it was just, yeah, this guy was just like, you know, we're here because of me.
[00:31:47]  And it's just like, man, like I've just worked my entire life to get here and he hasn't even acknowledged me.
[00:31:52]  You know, and that was, I think that was the start of.
[00:31:55]  The whole thing just going downhill.
[00:31:57]  We got three episodes in.
[00:31:58]  They ended up cancelling the entire fucking production.
[00:32:01]  It was a multi million dollar production.
[00:32:03]  Why did they cancel three episodes in?
[00:32:05]  I think for one of three reasons.
[00:32:06]  One was I almost died twice.
[00:32:09]  You almost died twice?
[00:32:10]  Yes, that's correct.
[00:32:11]  Yeah.
[00:32:12]  Okay, what's the other reason?
[00:32:13]  The thing was, I said to the network, is this is no, this is no around.
[00:32:18]  If we're going to go in and do this, there's no, you know, the fakery and all that kind of stuff.
[00:32:25]  I really want to go in and do this and take things to the whole.
[00:32:28]  Whole new level, which ended up me being in hospital twice.
[00:32:31]  I almost died once.
[00:32:33]  That was bad.
[00:32:33]  That was a bad time.
[00:32:36]  The other part of the other reason was not going to say who it was, but I had a co host that had been brought into it and we just didn't get along on camera.
[00:32:47]  Being a c.
[00:32:49]  I wouldn't use that word, but yeah, we just, yeah, we just, we didn't get along.
[00:32:55]  Look, I think I respect that person.
[00:32:57]  Okay.
[00:32:58]  And, But yeah, we didn't get along and yeah, the show never went to air.
[00:33:04]  That was a slight indoor opportunity and it got burnt in front of me.
[00:33:08]  And I still don't even think I've ever recovered from that because I knew that was my shot.
[00:33:13]  And I remember talking to Forrest about that.
[00:33:15]  And he was like, don't worry, man, that was the wrong time.
[00:33:17]  You know, there will be another time, da da da, this and that.
[00:33:19]  And then he ended up getting us on a show called Face the Beast, which was for history because he goes, we know you've got this talent, we know you've got this ability.
[00:33:28]  And he's actually just Put me forward for another pitch of a show on Animal Planet.
[00:33:31]  It's just like, you've just got to get your dumbbell.
[00:33:34]  Yeah, you're like this.
[00:33:36]  You'll get your dumbbell.
[00:33:38]  I can pull it up a little bit too.
[00:33:39]  Just keep it like this far.
[00:33:40]  Yeah.
[00:33:42]  So, you know, Forrester's always had my back because, you know, he knows what I'm like.
[00:33:46]  But yeah, so I think I've had a bit of a, everyone has a, I guess, everyone has a rough road coming in, you know, and there is, regardless of how hard you work or the talent that you've got, you know what you need?
[00:33:59]  Man, you need luck too.
[00:34:01]  Yeah, man.
[00:34:03]  The drudge and the reality of Hollywood and old television is just so soulless and it sucks the goddamn life out of you.
[00:34:16]  And I was telling you off camera, that's how I got into this, like the whole documentary stuff.
[00:34:20]  But prior to me doing the documentary stuff, I was doing documentary stuff for television and trying to sell it to television.
[00:34:25]  And after years of that, that's when I quit and decided to go 100% onto YouTube.

=== Surviving Rabies and Lepto (09:38) ===

[00:34:30]  But that.
[00:34:32]  It sucks.
[00:34:32]  There's no creativity in it.
[00:34:34]  It just turns into numbers and money and a PL sheet and lawyers.
[00:34:40]  And it's just, there's no creativity and it's not fun.
[00:34:44]  When you're just waking up and following a call sheet schedule, being a certain place at a certain time, make sure you get the shot and then you're gone.
[00:34:52]  When you do it yourself, like when you're doing YouTube, you can just fly by the seat of your pants and go have fun and film cool shit and not have to worry about any of that, that horse shit.
[00:35:02]  But I meant to ask you.
[00:35:06]  When you were there, how did you almost die twice?
[00:35:12]  Do you remember that first discussion about the lipospirosis?
[00:35:17]  Oh, were we recording for that, by the way?
[00:35:19]  Gosh, I had no idea.
[00:35:21]  Tell that story.
[00:35:21]  Yeah, tell that story.
[00:35:23]  Is that one of the reasons you almost died?
[00:35:24]  Lepto.
[00:35:25]  Oh, shit.
[00:35:26]  Almost got me.
[00:35:27]  Yeah.
[00:35:28]  So, look, I've had a number of diseases over time.
[00:35:32]  Yeah.
[00:35:32]  No STDs, but I've had a number of diseases over time, right?
[00:35:38]  And so, look, I've caught dengue.
[00:35:40]  I've had malaria.
[00:35:41]  I've had schistomoniasis.
[00:35:43]  I've had leptospirosis.
[00:35:45]  I've had micro marinum.
[00:35:47]  I've had.
[00:35:47]  Fucking hell.
[00:35:51]  Yeah, I've had a lot.
[00:35:52]  From nature.
[00:35:53]  So the one that I almost died in, and this was with the film shoot with Discovery, was leptospirosis.
[00:35:59]  And the way I believe I'd got that, I was going for those, it's called like a water monitor, those big Asian water monitors.
[00:36:06]  And we were all on like the back end of like a farming kind of area.
[00:36:10]  And the water was, you know, essentially that grey water, you know, where there's a lot of effluent and all that kind of stuff.
[00:36:18]  Once again, I was just that immortality kind of like nothing can kill me kind of phase.
[00:36:22]  How old were you?
[00:36:23]  24.
[00:36:24]  Oh, 25 at the time.
[00:36:26]  And so here I was duck diving, you know, in and out of the weeds and all that kind of stuff, you know, trying to get these water monitors and, you know, going underwater and all that sort of thing.
[00:36:35]  And I must have accidentally ingested some of that water.
[00:36:39]  And it was, you know, like most of your zoonotic diseases, it's going to take, you know, an incubation period of four or five days until it kicks in.
[00:36:47]  And I remember when it kicked in.
[00:36:50]  So the guy, Kieran O'Donnell, he was there with me and he just sensed it.
[00:36:53]  He goes, Is something not right about you?
[00:36:55]  I said, No, man.
[00:36:56]  I said, I'm feeling pretty.
[00:36:57]  Pretty ill, pretty sick.
[00:36:59]  He goes, Yeah, maybe you're dehydrated.
[00:37:01]  So we went to a Vietnamese hospital.
[00:37:04]  You know, the doctors are walking around with like no shoes.
[00:37:06]  It's like blood on the ground.
[00:37:08]  It's just, no, it's bad.
[00:37:09]  You ever been to a Vietnam hospital in the north?
[00:37:12]  I have.
[00:37:12]  It's bad.
[00:37:13]  Proper bad.
[00:37:14]  It's like cats walking through the surgery room and stuff.
[00:37:17]  I'm like, fucking, you know.
[00:37:18]  Jesus Christ.
[00:37:19]  Pass me the scalpel and it's like a monkey that's doing that.
[00:37:22]  Oh, God.
[00:37:23]  No, it's bad.
[00:37:24]  And so I, I ended up in the hospital there.
[00:37:29]  I remember I went through two bags of IV, and then Kieran was like, Oh, well, that should do the trick.
[00:37:34]  I went back there to the hostel, and all of a sudden, my body just dropped again and dropped again and dropped again.
[00:37:41]  And essentially, my body was just shutting down.
[00:37:45]  Ended up going to the hospital, was there for, I think, three or four days, and they were just giving me what's called like shotgun therapy, which is essentially they're just giving you every kind of antibiotic under the sun and trying to get your body up.
[00:37:58]  And it did, I think, for about a week.
[00:38:00]  It done it, and I was fine.
[00:38:01]  Finished off the shoot.
[00:38:02]  Got to Australia, uh, well, in Arnhem Land, which is a really remote part of Australia.
[00:38:07]  And the first day of filming was me going out and trying to catch a donkey.
[00:38:10]  And I remember I'm running after this because there's plenty of wild donkeys out there.
[00:38:13]  I'm running after this donkey, and I just collapsed.
[00:38:16]  And then Kieran, once again, was like, What the is going on?
[00:38:19]  There's something going on, there's something like more sinister going on here.
[00:38:22]  And I remember he literally like picked me up and carried me to the buggy and was like, We need to get him to the hospital now.
[00:38:28]  And I remained in the hospital for just over a week there, right?
[00:38:32]  Fighting leptospirosis.
[00:38:33]  I don't know what antibiotic they ended up.
[00:38:35]  Giving me, it was all obviously IV.
[00:38:36]  Jesus Christ.
[00:38:38]  I remember shutting down.
[00:38:39]  The scariest part about this was they didn't know what it was, and they ended up flying a specialist doctor from the CDC from Darwin down because they had actually suspected that I'd caught rabies.
[00:38:51]  Oh, really?
[00:38:52]  Yep.
[00:38:52]  Yep.
[00:38:53]  Because I was catching all these weird, wonderful animals through Asia, getting scratched, bitten up, and all that kind of stuff.
[00:38:58]  And the doctor there was like, hey, this guy's had some interactions, his signs and symptoms are very, you know, it was like, Almost like zombification, like rabies is, and ended up flying down a doctor.
[00:39:10]  You know what's scary about this, Annie?
[00:39:12]  Imagine this.
[00:39:13]  You're on the bed, you're dying, and you're in a dark room, and the buyer has a room, and a lady walks in.
[00:39:21]  The first thing she says is, Is it okay if I can turn on the lights?
[00:39:26]  And I just nodded.
[00:39:27]  I was fed.
[00:39:29]  She turned the light on, and she goes, Andrew, I'm just going to pour you a glass of water.
[00:39:34]  Can you have a drink?
[00:39:35]  And in the smallest amount of energy that I had, I said, You've just tested for two things.
[00:39:41]  And she stopped and looked at me.
[00:39:42]  I said, You've just tested for my reaction to light, and now you're testing my reaction to drink water.
[00:39:48]  I said, These are the two things that you test for when someone's going through the early stages of rabies.
[00:39:52]  I said to her, If you're telling me I've got rabies, I said, We both know I'm dying on this bed.
[00:39:58]  She didn't say anything.
[00:40:01]  Oh, wow.
[00:40:01]  Dude, the survival rate of rabies is like very low, right?
[00:40:04]  It's like 99.9% death rate.
[00:40:06]  And I think there's one lady that survived it here in the US, and the only way they were able to bring her back.
[00:40:13]  Was they put her into an induced coma and let her body ride it out.
[00:40:16]  But even then, I think she had ongoing problems.
[00:40:21]  I think she might have made a full recovery now, but I think there's only been, yeah, like one or two people in the world to have survived rabies.
[00:40:28]  I will mention that I had pre exposure, my prophylaxis.
[00:40:31]  I did have pre exposure, but when I got bitten and scratched by these animals, I didn't have the post exposure, which you're supposed to have.
[00:40:37]  Post exposure essentially being that once you've been bitten or scratched, it's on day zero that you've been bitten.
[00:40:41]  You have an injection at day seven and day 21.
[00:40:44]  I believe there's three injections that you have.
[00:40:46]  And then, You know, then that counters any kind of infection of like rabies.
[00:40:51]  So, as long as you get the injection right away, that's correct.
[00:40:54]  If you've never had the injection, and I believe it's six injections right there, all in one.
[00:40:58]  So, you know, they're obviously a very effective vaccine for it, but you just need to make sure that you take the right procedures in that protocol of how to take a medication.
[00:41:07]  But yeah, that was, yeah, that was, people say with the animals, you know, the fear of the animals, fear of the animals, not the fear of the animals, the animals, you can deal with it.
[00:41:18]  It's the shit that you can't see.
[00:41:19]  The microbes.
[00:41:20]  That's terrifying.
[00:41:21]  So, tell the story about what you caught from the can.
[00:41:25]  Oh, no.
[00:41:25]  So, that was the story that I was saying.
[00:41:26]  So, there was a story in America many years ago where a rat had actually pissed over a bunch of cans and she'd drunk it and she was able to get leptospirosis.
[00:41:34]  Oh, that's not how you actually caught it.
[00:41:36]  No, I got it from duck diving.
[00:41:38]  Right.
[00:41:38]  So, when I was in the rivers in that murky water, that's how I'd caught lepto.
[00:41:43]  But your dad always told you to wipe off the can.
[00:41:45]  Right, exactly.
[00:41:46]  Because the rats piss on it.
[00:41:47]  Right.
[00:41:48]  But, you know, have you heard of toxoplasmosis?
[00:41:51]  Yes, I have.
[00:41:51]  Yeah.
[00:41:52]  That's another thing that rats have.
[00:41:53]  Yes.
[00:41:54]  Weird disease.
[00:41:56]  Bad.
[00:41:57]  Weird as fuck.
[00:41:57]  That's why pregnant people can't go around kitty litter.
[00:42:00]  Oh, really?
[00:42:00]  Yeah, because they're afraid they'll get toxo.
[00:42:03]  There was another story in Australia.
[00:42:04]  I thought this was an interesting one where it's like a typical Australian thing, you know, to be, you know, bet to do something stupid.
[00:42:12]  And these guys were having a bit of a barbecue and there was a slug.
[00:42:17]  And he said to his mate, he goes, Oh, I'll give you 10 bucks if you swallow that slug.
[00:42:23]  As you do, right?
[00:42:24]  And so, anyway, so he's put this slug in his mouth and, you know, he's probably got like a corona and like swallowed it down and they all had a good laugh.
[00:42:30]  Anyway, a couple of days later, he ends up in hospital and they're trying to track down what's happened to this young man.
[00:42:37]  And, you know, they're obviously calling his mates and being like, you know, has he been taking any drugs?
[00:42:40]  Is there anything out of the normal?
[00:42:42]  And da da da.
[00:42:43]  Eventually, one of the guys said, fuck.
[00:42:45]  Well, he did swallow a slug a couple of days ago and then all of a sudden, like, bing.
[00:42:52]  So, slugs can carry.
[00:42:54]  Particularly if they've, I think it's once again fruit rats, I think like that's just the main vector.
[00:42:59]  If they've been feasting on like rat feces, there's a parasite that they can ingest which is called, it's like a type of, well, the name of it's called rat lungworm.
[00:43:10]  Okay, it's a parasite.
[00:43:12]  And essentially, once that parasite starts developing in you, once again, it's like an automatic shutdown on the body.
[00:43:18]  And he died.
[00:43:20]  He died from this.
[00:43:21]  No.
[00:43:22]  That's another scoop.
[00:43:23]  Yeah, rat lung.
[00:43:23]  Yeah, is that it there?
[00:43:25]  Angiost.
[00:43:26]  Oh, sorry, clicked off of me.
[00:43:28]  That's the one.
[00:43:29]  Angiostrongulus cantonensis.
[00:43:35]  Wow, rat lungworm.
[00:43:37]  Also known, yeah, that word I just said.
[00:43:40]  Disease that affects the brain and spinal cord.
[00:43:42]  Ooh, that's.
[00:43:43]  Terrifying man?
[00:43:44]  Oh yeah, there's so, and even in Australia we've got a form of rabies which is called I just lost my mind um oh geez um, what's it called Alisavirus, which is essentially like a strain of like rabies that we have in Australia and that's spread through bats, and so that's another thing.
[00:44:02]  I won't touch bats, really any other animal.
[00:44:05]  Yeah okay, let's go bat.

=== Terrifying Rat Lungworm (15:07) ===

[00:44:08]  No, so those are the only animals that you're afraid of.
[00:44:10]  I will not the parasites that you can't see, because i've seen it.
[00:44:15]  Like I said, I've gone through that process.
[00:44:19]  There could be a fruit bat flying around in here, and I'll say, Danny, is all yours?
[00:44:23]  Go for it.
[00:44:24]  Watch the wings.
[00:44:25]  Make sure it doesn't bite you.
[00:44:27]  Yeah.
[00:44:27]  Scary, scary stuff.
[00:44:31]  You and Forrest were talking about the honey badger.
[00:44:34]  I had no clue that the honey badger was a dangerous or scary animal at all.
[00:44:39]  I mean, I guess I don't know jack shit about the honey badger.
[00:44:42]  Definitely.
[00:44:42]  But can you explain why the honey badger is so scary?
[00:44:46]  I can.
[00:44:47]  Did you actually catch one?
[00:44:48]  I caught one.
[00:44:49]  And I can tell you the original, original story when I was in Africa the first time.
[00:44:53]  So, generally, when I go into a country, I go into a country with like an objectives list, whether it be Peru or Bolivia or Thailand.
[00:45:03]  I'll literally have a list of animals that I want to go in there and capture.
[00:45:07]  And once again, I undergo a process of identifying where the animals are, how they utilize that environment, and then trying to break down a pattern on how to catch that animal.
[00:45:16]  The first time when I was in Africa, I was in the western province of Zambia.
[00:45:20]  And it was hard because obviously I can't speak the tongue there.
[00:45:24]  So you've got to get quite creative on trying to explain what you're after.
[00:45:29]  So I remember there, I was with a tribe of African guys and I was trying to explain this animal that I was after being the honey badger.
[00:45:36]  The porcupine got him, okay.
[00:45:38]  Yeah.
[00:45:39]  Well, he got the porcupine, but yeah, he paid the price.
[00:45:45]  And so I remember, you know, I had all these African guys behind me and I was drawing out this.
[00:45:51]  This image of this animal.
[00:45:54]  And then I explained to them, like, you know, this part's black and this part's white.
[00:45:58]  And one of the guys from behind said its name.
[00:46:01]  And then everyone just started laughing because they're like, you want to catch one.
[00:46:05]  And they're just like, you could see that.
[00:46:08]  And they're fearless out there and they're all just looking at each other, being like, how are we going to try and catch one?
[00:46:12]  He's like, all right, yeah, maybe we can figure this out.
[00:46:15]  So this is actually the same time we went out there catching the baboons because we were doing like hunting on the baboons with the dogs.
[00:46:20]  And that's a pretty vicious.
[00:46:22]  Thing to be part of, but I watched how they did that and ate baboons with them, all that kind of stuff, which I should have known better because you know they're known to carry all sorts of things like Ebola and everything else.
[00:46:31]  But anyway, that's another story.
[00:46:34]  But anyway, went out there for five days into the savannah trying to track down a honey badger.
[00:46:39]  Oh, we found one.
[00:46:40]  This thing went into a hole, and all the dogs were barking and all this kind of stuff.
[00:46:44]  And he's like, He's in there.
[00:46:46]  I said, Right.
[00:46:47]  Between five of us and two machetes, I said, We'll get him out.
[00:46:51]  We started digging a hole and digging and digging and digging and digging to the point that we're digging a trench.
[00:46:56]  Literally, like a trench that you can walk through, and we're all taking turns.
[00:47:00]  And it's funny because as we're digging, noticing, and I can hear that this animal's digging as well.
[00:47:05]  And even between six of us digging, this thing's digging faster than us.
[00:47:08]  And I'm thinking, like, fuck, how the fuck are we going to get to this animal?
[00:47:11]  So I'm like, right, what we'll do is we'll dig a trench at the back, right?
[00:47:15]  So where he's heading, we're going to dig a trench all the way down, you know, three meters down or two meters down, and we'll corner him out that way, right?
[00:47:21]  I was thinking of all sorts of things smoke him out, put water down there, all the different tricks.
[00:47:25]  Maybe if we put like some rags of diesel, we can roll that down there, you know, the fumes and get him out.
[00:47:30]  I was trying to think of all these little tricks that I did in Australia, like, you know, trying to get Australian animals out of holes.
[00:47:35]  None of it worked.
[00:47:37]  And I thought, right, let's dig this trench.
[00:47:39]  And by that time, we'd been working on this hole for a while.
[00:47:41]  Several hours, and we didn't have a shovel.
[00:47:42]  We had machetes.
[00:47:43]  Were you filming this?
[00:47:45]  No, I wasn't.
[00:47:45]  Oh, you weren't?
[00:47:46]  No.
[00:47:46]  So, I think there's probably two biggest regrets with filming this is one, and another story, which is the baboon attack.
[00:47:53]  Okay.
[00:47:54]  We'll go to that next.
[00:47:55]  Yeah.
[00:47:55]  So, digging, digging, digging, digging.
[00:47:58]  And essentially, what this animal had done is because he knew that we were digging from a certain height, he just started digging down low.
[00:48:04]  And so, essentially, he just went under our trench.
[00:48:06]  So, you already think, so we've already dug like six feet, and then this thing has just dug like an extra three feet below that and just kept on digging.
[00:48:12]  Wow.
[00:48:12]  So, these guys essentially gave up on him.
[00:48:14]  I said, no.
[00:48:15]  I'm going to wait here until he comes out.
[00:48:17]  I ended up spending two days there at the hole and he never came out.
[00:48:21]  He knew I was outside.
[00:48:22]  And that's where it started.
[00:48:24]  And you weren't filming it?
[00:48:25]  No.
[00:48:25]  You just stayed there for two days because you genuinely wanted to catch this dog?
[00:48:29]  I wanted to catch it.
[00:48:29]  It became personal, very personal.
[00:48:31]  And it represented the one animal at that point in time that I had challenged myself to capture and I wasn't able to capture him.
[00:48:37]  And that just stuck with me.
[00:48:38]  I remember I cried when I got back on that plane.
[00:48:42]  And then 10 years later, I got the opportunity to go there and try and catch one again.
[00:48:45]  And I said to myself at that point in time, I'll come and I'll become a citizen here.
[00:48:49]  Just so I can catch one.
[00:48:51]  And yeah, I did end up catching one in the end.
[00:48:54]  You became a citizen?
[00:48:55]  No, exactly.
[00:48:58]  I'm now South African.
[00:49:01]  They are.
[00:49:02]  So, how did you end up catching it?
[00:49:03]  Well, interesting story.
[00:49:06]  So, I'd spent a couple of months in Zimbabwe and I'd went high and low trying to catch one.
[00:49:13]  I didn't talk to a whole bunch of people, experts in the field, the best of the best.
[00:49:17]  And I was being sent to all these different locations.
[00:49:20]  The problem about this animal is.
[00:49:24]  Unlike Yava Muslidae, which is like the family group they come under, most of them have like a retreat site that they go into, like a hole, and they occupy that hole consistently.
[00:49:35]  Unless, you know, they're breeding and they're going back to pups, this animal here is probably one of the most nomadic animals you'll ever meet.
[00:49:41]  He can move 20 kilometers in a night, he'll utilize different holes.
[00:49:44]  So trying to actually define a pattern, it's like trying to work out where a butterfly is going to land.
[00:49:52]  You don't know.
[00:49:53]  And that was one of the biggest difficulties in trying to catch this animal.
[00:49:56]  Not to mention that they're an animal which is predominantly nocturnal, which is very difficult as well.
[00:50:02]  Not to mention that if you're in a landscape which is a 3D landscape, so like there's escarpments and a lot of rock formations and there's like a matrix of vegetation and fawns and all that kind of stuff, good luck because you'll see them and then it'll disappear.
[00:50:15]  I don't care how quick you're after the bushes, you're not going to catch one.
[00:50:18]  So the only way that they've been caught in the past is in what we refer to as a 2D environment, which is like open desert.
[00:50:24]  Like in the Kalahari and all that kind.
[00:50:26]  So we can see them from a distance and you can run them down, right?
[00:50:29]  That's essentially the only way they can be caught, right?
[00:50:33]  But they also represent a big issue to a lot of the farmers, particularly like the bee farmers because they get into like the honey.
[00:50:39]  But because they are a carnivore and a scavenger and an opportunist, essentially anyone that has like a chicken farm.
[00:50:47]  And that was the location that I ended up getting one was on a chicken farm.
[00:50:50]  We set a trap.
[00:50:51]  A chicken farm.
[00:50:51]  Yeah, we set up a trap.
[00:50:52]  And this was in South Africa.
[00:50:55]  We ended up setting a trap and we got one in an aviary.
[00:50:58]  And I got a call that morning, and the guy was like, Hey, man, yep, we've got one here.
[00:51:03]  Don't know how you're going to go about this, but to be honest, I would not get in there with it.
[00:51:09]  And it was funny because when I went there and actually saw this animal, I said, for one of the first times, I really started feeling the fear because there's no 100% yet.
[00:51:17]  Can you play that video, that honey badger, Steve, the 25 second video on the right?
[00:51:22]  Is that real?
[00:51:23]  I don't think that's real.
[00:51:24]  Press play.
[00:51:28]  Oh, this is a commercial.
[00:51:29]  Never mind.
[00:51:30]  I haven't seen this.
[00:51:31]  There you go.
[00:51:31]  There's a badger.
[00:51:33]  Wow.
[00:51:34]  Those are way scarier than I thought.
[00:51:37]  He's got hands like a sloth.
[00:51:39]  See if you can find a real video of a honey badger.
[00:51:41]  Anyways, sorry to interrupt.
[00:51:44]  So it was in there and he didn't want to go in there.
[00:51:46]  You said you're going in.
[00:51:47]  The guy's like, I'm going to stay on the outside.
[00:51:48]  I'm going to film you.
[00:51:49]  And he goes, How are you going to do this?
[00:51:51]  I said, I'll get in there and just work it out.
[00:51:52]  And he goes, Okay, good luck.
[00:51:55]  And so he literally opened this door, closed it behind, and this badger, as I was explaining to Forrest, he didn't give a fuck.
[00:52:03]  He was trying to get out through one of the corners and he was just walking backwards and forth, backwards and forth.
[00:52:07]  And it's kind of stopped and just like looked over its shoulder, you know, that slow rolling look that like Chucky would give.
[00:52:14]  He's done that one.
[00:52:15]  He's just like acknowledged me.
[00:52:16]  He's thought, okay, right.
[00:52:17]  I'm just going to keep working out this hole.
[00:52:19]  He's doing this.
[00:52:19]  And anyway, I've moved to the side and started moving towards him.
[00:52:23]  And at this point in time, he's went right.
[00:52:25]  So he's went along the side of the cage and actually walked to where the door was.
[00:52:29]  So he knew my entry point.
[00:52:31]  Think about that for a split second.
[00:52:33]  If you're after, if you want to kill someone, right, and they're in this room, where's the exit?
[00:52:37]  You've got that exit door there.
[00:52:39]  Right.
[00:52:39]  So, what are you going to do?
[00:52:40]  Well, you're going to approach them from a line that you're going to come in a direct line from that exit door.
[00:52:44]  Right.
[00:52:45]  So they can't get past you.
[00:52:46]  And that's exactly what he did.
[00:52:48]  He had lined me up and he said, I'm going to get you if it's the last thing I do.
[00:52:55]  That's a line.
[00:52:57]  He's got the opportunity to walk away, you know?
[00:53:00]  Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[00:53:01]  But he doesn't because he's just got this territorial, you know, this is my area, back out kind of area.
[00:53:10]  And I don't know what it is.
[00:53:11]  I don't know if it's something to do with hormones, something to do with the way that they're wired, but they just don't have a fear.
[00:53:17]  They just continue.
[00:53:21]  Fucking vicious little animal.
[00:53:24]  More than the inspiration to catch one, it became an animal to me that I completely love.
[00:53:32]  I love it.
[00:53:34]  There it goes.
[00:53:36]  Holy shit, dude.
[00:53:37]  It is such an amazing animal.
[00:53:39]  Like, I.
[00:53:40]  I love this animal so much.
[00:53:42]  And there's no way of, I think in America, I think there's a couple of guys that have them as like captive pets and all that kind of stuff.
[00:53:49]  But in Australia, we don't have the ability to bring in like an exotic animal like this as a pet.
[00:53:54]  I would do anything to sit down with whoever's in charge and be like, listen, can we please just bring in like a breeding pair?
[00:54:00]  Like, I love this animal.
[00:54:02]  I really love this animal.
[00:54:04]  So when it got in front of the door at your entrance to the room, what happened?
[00:54:08]  Well, he came straight at me.
[00:54:09]  He lined me up.
[00:54:10]  And they're fast.
[00:54:11]  And I mean, look, I'm fast.
[00:54:12]  But this animal, he's got agility and speed.
[00:54:15]  And so he chased me around.
[00:54:16]  So I was like, he chased you around.
[00:54:18]  Yeah, I was essentially like screaming, yelling, trying to like hold on to the fucking mesh, trying to get my legs off the ground.
[00:54:22]  This thing was just fucking after me.
[00:54:25]  How big was it?
[00:54:25]  And I mean, and so what they do is the name of the honey badger, it's also got another name, which is called the rattle, right?
[00:54:32]  Essentially, rattle.
[00:54:33]  The rattle.
[00:54:35]  So when they're coming at you, they're growling.
[00:54:37]  And that growl goes straight through your body.
[00:54:39]  And look, I've had animals charge me before, and you feel the noise that they make, and you can kind of.
[00:54:45]  You can compartmentize that noise and put it into your brain where it's like, yeah, I know you're coming after me and da da da, but you're not mocking me.
[00:54:51]  You're not, you know what I mean?
[00:54:53]  Like, you're not putting fear into me.
[00:54:56]  When that animal comes at you with that noise, he puts fear straight into a part of your body you've never even felt before.
[00:55:00]  Wow.
[00:55:02]  Straight out.
[00:55:06]  I can't do it.
[00:55:07]  Yeah, he puts fear straight into your body.
[00:55:09]  And you know, you're not in control.
[00:55:10]  He is.
[00:55:11]  What would have happened if that thing would have caught you?
[00:55:13]  Oh, fuck, he would have.
[00:55:14]  Look, it's not like he's going to kill me.
[00:55:15]  Unless, like, if I tripped over and got me on the neck, different story.
[00:55:18]  But he's going to just.
[00:55:21]  The same way of probably being mauled by, like, a small pit bull, I'd say.
[00:55:24]  Really?
[00:55:25]  Yeah.
[00:55:25]  So you're going to be screaming and yelling a lot.
[00:55:27]  Yeah.
[00:55:28]  And not just that, like, this animal is the way that it flexes, its ability to flex and maneuver and all that kind of stuff, very difficult to handle.
[00:55:36]  So, I ended up having to get him into a net.
[00:55:38]  And even then, because of the looseness of the skin, it was very hard to handle an animal like this.
[00:55:43]  Incredibly difficult.
[00:55:45]  But truly, it's.
[00:55:46]  I think in all my escapades and having to deal with different animals around the world, each one's unique.
[00:55:53]  Can you find a regular video, not like a vertical one?
[00:55:57]  Do you have any videos on your channel of one?
[00:56:00]  No.
[00:56:01]  So, what I've done is I've done a complete documentary on this quest for a honey badger.
[00:56:06]  And until.
[00:56:08]  I have the right production company until I have the right network, the right opportunity to release this.
[00:56:14]  I'm just going to hold on to content.
[00:56:16]  Holy shit, man.
[00:56:17]  Everything is afraid of a honey badger.
[00:56:19]  Oh, that's a big ass lion.
[00:56:23]  Do they have anything in particular that they like to eat, or do they just go for it?
[00:56:28]  You said they're scavengers, so they'll just eat anything.
[00:56:30]  They're a scavenger, they're an opportunist.
[00:56:32]  So you can see what's he eating there, like a small crocodile.
[00:56:34]  Here he's got a snake.
[00:56:35]  So yeah, they're a snake specialist.
[00:56:36]  And I think, holy shit, he just attacked a cheetah.
[00:56:38]  They're such an intelligent animal.
[00:56:40]  And I think part of that intelligence has probably got something to do with the fact that they've got such a diverse range of species that they consume.
[00:56:47]  You've got to think, you've got to work out a tactic to catch all those different species of animals.
[00:56:51]  You've got to have an amazing ingenuity.
[00:56:52]  You've got to be like a problem solver, quite literally.
[00:56:56]  And that's what I think is really unique about this animal they are completely a problem solver.
[00:57:02]  I think, yeah, look, that animal there literally should be the.
[00:57:06]  They are kind of cute too.
[00:57:07]  They are.
[00:57:08]  They really are.
[00:57:09]  When they're not showing their teeth.
[00:57:10]  Yeah, they're gorgeous.
[00:57:11]  They really are gorgeous.
[00:57:14]  So, what was the story with the baboons?
[00:57:17]  Right.
[00:57:19]  So, this is the first time in Kenya.
[00:57:21]  And, like, in Australia, I'd never had any kind of experience with baboons.
[00:57:25]  We don't have primates in Australia.
[00:57:26]  Right.
[00:57:26]  And it's funny because, you know, a stone far away, like Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, we've got primates.
[00:57:31]  But Australia, the Australian continent, is quite unique in the fact that we don't.
[00:57:34]  The closest thing probably to a primate would be, I don't know, maybe like a possum that we've got.
[00:57:39]  You know, I think that would probably be the closest thing.
[00:57:41]  So, essentially, I went to Africa and had like a list of all these animals that I wanted to catch.
[00:57:46]  This was the first time I was there.
[00:57:48]  And a savannah baboon was one of them.
[00:57:51]  And I remember going into a wildlife, it was like a dingy wildlife park.
[00:57:56]  And I met up with two young guys there.
[00:57:58]  And I said, Oh, look, I'd like to learn how to handle a wild baboon.
[00:58:04]  And these two African guys look at each other and they're like, Okay, we can help.
[00:58:08]  This is a life lesson.
[00:58:10]  Is that something people typically would want to do is catch baboons?
[00:58:13]  No.
[00:58:14]  We have no interest in catching baboons.
[00:58:15]  No.
[00:58:16]  This is a good life lesson.
[00:58:17]  And I think for anyone traveling to Africa, I think they'll hear this analogy, or people who live in Africa will hear this analogy and they'll just laugh.
[00:58:23]  They'll just get it.
[00:58:25]  So I was with these two very enthusiastic African young men, and they're like, Oh, we've got some baboons here.
[00:58:34]  We can show you.
[00:58:35]  I said, Okay.
[00:58:35]  So I went into the zoo, and anyway, it was like kind of this dingy menagerie where they had these baboons, and they were somewhat habituated.
[00:58:44]  And I said, Oh, yeah, cool.
[00:58:45]  I said, Oh, you guys know how to handle it.
[00:58:46]  Oh, yeah.
[00:58:47]  You know, we do a lot of the handling here, and you know, I've caught hundreds of them before.
[00:58:52]  And you know, gave me the whole spill on its professionalism of handling baboons and stuff.
[00:58:56]  And I said, Okay, I go, is there any way that we can like try and catch like a wild one?
[00:58:59]  He goes, Yeah, sure.
[00:59:01]  He goes, actually, at the back of the zoo, we've got like a bit of like a cage trap that we can set up.
[00:59:06]  And I remember, so we go down the back of the zoo, and I had another guy that was with me that was filming, and I employed just like a street kid to film.
[00:59:13]  Actually, this was one of the documentaries that I got up on Netflix.

=== Rocket Money Subscriptions (02:47) ===

[00:59:15]  Oh, really?
[00:59:16]  Yes.
[00:59:16]  It was like a 14 year old street kid, and I taught him how to use a camera.
[00:59:20]  He filmed the entire thing.
[00:59:21]  He filmed the entire thing.
[00:59:23]  He filmed the entire thing, and this kid was fearless.
[00:59:25]  Like, whenever I was like, right, elephant charging, I need you behind me filming, he'd be like, yep.
[00:59:30]  That's sick.
[00:59:30]  He was a yes man.
[00:59:31]  That's cool.
[00:59:32]  He was a yes man.
[00:59:33]  So, anyway.
[00:59:35]  And he's a local.
[00:59:35]  And he was a local.
[00:59:37]  So he could speak the tongue.
[00:59:39]  So, anyway, I felt like he should have been my first cue because he was kind of smirking a bit suspicious about all this whole ordeal.
[00:59:49]  And anyway, went down there to the back of the zoo, and there's this big cage trap that's set up there.
[00:59:54]  And anyway, we bait it with like pumpkin and everything else.
[00:59:57]  And the guy's like, okay, we'll catch you, we'll give you a call.
[01:00:02]  And we're only about 20 minutes out of town.
[01:00:03]  I remember that morning, it was like 5 30 in the morning.
[01:00:07]  Early sunrise, I get a call.
[01:00:10]  Andrew, we have a baboon.
[01:00:13]  That was literally the thing.
[01:00:14]  I said, Oh, great, fantastic.
[01:00:16]  I said, We'll be down there.
[01:00:19]  And anyway, so I remember getting there and early morning, and this thing is going wild.
[01:00:26]  As soon as it spots eyes with us, this thing is like shaking the cage.
[01:00:29]  And I'm talking like a cage, not much bigger than this table, right?
[01:00:33]  About a meter off the ground.
[01:00:35]  And it's going absolutely wild.
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[01:02:02]  Now back to the show.

=== Controlling the Animal (05:59) ===

[01:02:03]  And my heart starts racing, a bit like the honey badger starts racing something.
[01:02:06]  And how the f are we going to get control of this animal?
[01:02:11]  How much do you think it weighed?
[01:02:13]  Maybe about 14 kilos?
[01:02:15]  Kilos.
[01:02:16]  14, 15 kilos.
[01:02:17]  Oh, what do you guys use?
[01:02:17]  God damn it.
[01:02:18]  We use pounds.
[01:02:19]  Yeah.
[01:02:20]  How?
[01:02:21]  Yeah, I don't understand the metric system.
[01:02:23]  Like a small child?
[01:02:24]  Okay.
[01:02:24]  Yeah, like, you know, like a.
[01:02:26]  How many kilos are in a pound?
[01:02:27]  Like a two year old?
[01:02:29]  Oh, man, I don't know.
[01:02:30]  You're going back to my science, though.
[01:02:31]  Is he really going to get me here, right?
[01:02:33]  Oh, God, do we really have to Google this?
[01:02:36]  Steve, you don't know the answer?
[01:02:38]  No.
[01:02:38]  One pound is 0.4 kilos.
[01:02:41]  So 14 kilos, six pounds?
[01:02:43]  So six pounds.
[01:02:44]  Okay, got it.
[01:02:45]  16 pounds.
[01:02:45]  Six pounds.
[01:02:46]  That's like a newborn.
[01:02:47]  Yeah.
[01:02:48]  Oh, well, just, yeah, about a two year old kid.
[01:02:51]  Okay.
[01:02:52]  This was a decent animal.
[01:02:53]  And so, Savannah baboon, you know, muzzle like a dog.
[01:02:56]  I'm not sure if you've seen the Savannah baboons.
[01:02:59]  So, yeah, if you type Savannah baboons, yeah, that's a Savannah baboon.
[01:03:03]  Oh, okay.
[01:03:04]  Yeah.
[01:03:05]  Yeah, that interesting individual right there.
[01:03:09]  And so, this baboon's going absolutely wild.
[01:03:13]  And, you know, the birds are flying and all this kind of stuff.
[01:03:15]  And they start talking in their own tongue.
[01:03:18]  And I'm like, hmm, what's going on here?
[01:03:21]  And the guy's like, oh, going to use it.
[01:03:22]  It's like a stick with kind of like a fork kind of thing.
[01:03:26]  And I said to myself, oh, What we're going to do is this.
[01:03:30]  I want you to teach me how to handle this.
[01:03:32]  I was about 24, 25 years old.
[01:03:34]  I want to teach you, teach me how to handle this.
[01:03:36]  But then we're going to put it back in the cage trap and then I'm going to do it by myself.
[01:03:41]  The worst mistake, this has come into the two times that I didn't film, is the worst mistake that I made was not recording him teaching me how to handle the baboon.
[01:03:50]  Because I'm supposed to be, you know, this guy that's a know it all and I'm going to come in, I'm going to show how it's done and da da da.
[01:03:55]  So you wanted to pretend like you knew what you were doing.
[01:03:57]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:03:58]  100%.
[01:04:00]  Which I do a lot of the time.
[01:04:02]  And anyway, so I remember I set up the camera, set it on the tripod, and the guy's like, right, get up there on top of the cage and lift up the cage door.
[01:04:10]  I said, okay.
[01:04:12]  So as soon as I do that, now I remember there were only gaps on the mesh, like so.
[01:04:15]  And this thing straight away was trying to grab my feet, it was trying to bite me through the cage.
[01:04:20]  And like, they've got some teeth on them.
[01:04:22]  Oh, yeah.
[01:04:23]  This is a gnarly, gnarly animal.
[01:04:26]  And anyway, it's trying to psych me out.
[01:04:28]  It's making all these crazy noises and all that kind of stuff.
[01:04:32]  And I.
[01:04:33]  I eventually managed to get the cage door up and the guy grabs it by the tail.
[01:04:38]  And I remember just watching it grab the sides of the cage door and the cage doors are like flexing in and out, just based on the power of the animal.
[01:04:47]  At this point in time, I'm thinking, there's no way, there's no humanly way possible.
[01:04:53]  We're going to get control of this animal.
[01:04:55]  It's just not even, and I was paying them for this.
[01:04:58]  Right?
[01:04:59]  Yeah.
[01:05:00]  So anyway, they've got this thing by the tail.
[01:05:02]  They're pulling out.
[01:05:02]  This thing is screaming and going off.
[01:05:05]  And anyway, they eventually pull it out.
[01:05:07]  And I'm thinking to myself at that point in time, like, these animals are ambidextrous and they can probably use their tail the same way as their feet, you know, as like a leverage point, you know, like a primate does.
[01:05:15]  So, anyway, I've almost got to like explain it.
[01:05:18]  So, he's like, he's got it by the tail and he's holding it like this and this thing's going crazy and it's like trying to grab him.
[01:05:23]  And then he's saying to his mate, quick, like, try and pin it down with a stick, pin it down with a stick.
[01:05:27]  Anyway, in all this craziness, it's kind of worked out that because of the sheer weight of this animal, it can't pull itself up by its tail.
[01:05:35]  So, he's got it by the tail and it's trying to pull itself up.
[01:05:38]  Like gravity is working against.
[01:05:39]  So I'm thinking to myself, oh, well, maybe we've got a bit of a chance here.
[01:05:43]  Anyway, I'm still on the cage at this point in time and I've jumped down and I'm saying to him, like, what can I do?
[01:05:47]  How can I help?
[01:05:47]  How can I help?
[01:05:48]  And as he's trying to maneuver into position, what it does is it grabs the sides of the cage and goes, right, well, if I can't get you that way, I know how I'm going to get you.
[01:05:57]  And it pulls itself towards the cage and then just goes, like, jumps off the cage back onto him.
[01:06:04]  And I mean, it happened like that.
[01:06:07]  And so automatically it's went for his face.
[01:06:10]  And what he's done is he's put his arm like that straight in front.
[01:06:13]  And so the baboon's grabbed him and it's bitten him on the arm.
[01:06:16]  But as it's bitten him, he's turned to me.
[01:06:18]  So all I'm seeing now is the back of a baboon in front of me.
[01:06:22]  And my instinct straight away is like, I've got to help this.
[01:06:25]  The guy's screaming, the baboon's screaming.
[01:06:27]  There's just the worst energy in the world.
[01:06:30]  And I've grabbed this thing by the tail and I've started pulling as hard as I could to rip this thing off.
[01:06:35]  And I just remember the sheer strength of that animal holding on to him.
[01:06:39]  Once again, I thought to myself, there was no way we were going to get this animal under control.
[01:06:44]  Impossible.
[01:06:45]  It was just too powerful.
[01:06:46]  The power in this animal, you know, quite literally.
[01:06:49]  Anyway, pull in, pull in, pull in, and then finally the animal's released, and as it's released, it's hit the ground and tried to go for me, right?
[01:06:56]  And I reckon I was maybe inches from being bitten as well.
[01:06:58]  Anyway, it's took off the tree.
[01:07:01]  And his went off in shock, screaming.
[01:07:03]  I said, Turn around, show me, show me how bad it is.
[01:07:06]  I need to see how bad it is.
[01:07:07]  And he's gone like this.
[01:07:09]  And he's done like a real slow like that.
[01:07:11]  And you know, like when you take a bite out of an apple, but it's not like a complete bite and it's like a flap kind of hanging?
[01:07:17]  Yes.
[01:07:19]  Just dangling off and just like bleeding.
[01:07:22]  So I took my shirt straight off.
[01:07:24]  I'm like trying to stop the bleeding and stuff.
[01:07:26]  And I said to my guy, Quick run up to the car and get the first aid kit.
[01:07:30]  We need to get into hospital.
[01:07:31]  Right, right.
[01:07:31]  Anyway, yeah, so we end up getting into hospital.
[01:07:35]  He ends up getting, you know, and then this is how the story unfolds.
[01:07:40]  Okay, first of which, he was only volunteering at the park.
[01:07:45]  He'd never handled the baboon before.
[01:07:47]  He had no inoculations whatsoever.
[01:07:50]  He had no money, obviously.
[01:07:53]  It was a life lesson going to Africa because I feel, have you heard of what they call the African promise?

=== War Between Poachers and Rangers (04:23) ===

[01:08:02]  They'll promise you the world.
[01:08:04]  Oh, no, the African promise?
[01:08:05]  No, I haven't heard it.
[01:08:10]  It's like, yeah.
[01:08:11]  If you ask one of those street kids, can you help me?
[01:08:14]  Can you do something for me?
[01:08:16]  It doesn't matter what it is, they can do it.
[01:08:17]  It's yes, it's 100% I can do it.
[01:08:20]  And I thought what was absolutely comical there could be a jet sitting outside, and I could be like, hey, man, I need to take a flight to Copenhagen.
[01:08:28]  Can you fly the jet?
[01:08:29]  And you look at the jet and be like, yes, I can fly the jet.
[01:08:31]  I'll figure it out.
[01:08:32]  And all this, he's only watched like a trailer of Top Gun.
[01:08:35]  But no, he's a professional.
[01:08:37]  You know what I mean?
[01:08:38]  And yeah, so it was one of those learning curves that you just be very careful when asking people for help in Africa because a lot of the times people will tell you that they're an instant expert and it can get you into a lot of trouble.
[01:08:50]  Because they want to make money.
[01:08:51]  Of course.
[01:08:52]  Right.
[01:08:52]  Yeah.
[01:08:53]  So I thought that was definitely a big learning curve, particularly for the second time that I went there again.
[01:09:00]  But look, some beautiful people, beautiful culture.
[01:09:04]  Some of the happiest people I've ever seen have been.
[01:09:08]  You know, some of the African tribal people that I've seen, there's a completely different way of life.
[01:09:12]  Yeah.
[01:09:13]  And really, you know, I think it's a different reality for them, the way that they look at the world and through their lens, you know.
[01:09:21]  And I think I just come from Colombia and I've seen a whole other reality over there.
[01:09:27]  Yeah.
[01:09:28]  The world's a big place.
[01:09:29]  Yeah.
[01:09:29]  I had this guy, this guy, Ryan Tate on the show.
[01:09:31]  He's a, he's a, he was in, fought in the Iraq War and he's a veteran and he started a company called Vetpaw where military veterans who suffer from, you know, a lot of veterans come over and, Come back from war and they can't just find meaning to their life anymore, right?
[01:09:46]  Like, after doing something like that, they come back and they have this just trauma, either trauma, PTSD, or like this hyper vigilance where they're always looking over their shoulder because they're used to being in war zones and it's tough.
[01:09:57]  And getting just a normal working a nine to five job just doesn't fulfill you like doing something like that does.
[01:10:03]  So, they need something more in their life.
[01:10:05]  So, what he's done is created this organization of these veterans that go over there and they try to protect endangered species and fight off the poachers over.
[01:10:16]  All the poaching that's going on with like the elephants and the rhinos and all that.
[01:10:19]  And he was explaining to me basically like this civil war that's going on between the poachers and the rangers running the national parks over there, like trying to fight against the poachers.
[01:10:33]  And the problem is these people are so poor.
[01:10:38]  Historically, there's, you know, obviously there's way more money for the poachers and there's for getting the ivory and all that stuff.
[01:10:47]  These guys have an opportunity to make a ton of money and like.
[01:10:49]  Change their lives.
[01:10:50]  So, a lot of these guys will go from being poachers to then working for the rangers, trying to protect the rhinos and protect the elephants.
[01:10:58]  And they'll go back and forth.
[01:11:00]  So, these guys have like jumped over this bridge multiple times, being on both sides of this fight.
[01:11:06]  And it's crazy some of the stuff they go through.
[01:11:12]  And he was explaining to me they literally like they use their military training to like go into these poachers' houses at night and kidnap them and like arrest them.
[01:11:21]  And it's just like, I can't fathom what it would be like growing up in a place like that where you literally have to do terrible things to feed your family.
[01:11:37]  If I was in the shoes of these poachers and I had to go kill an elephant to feed my kid, I would do it.
[01:11:43]  But it's a horrible thing to do.
[01:11:45]  You don't need to do that.
[01:11:48]  There's other ways if you can teach these people and bring in new New jobs, or if you could even fund those rangers that are protecting those people or protecting those animals even more, you know, it would make Africa a much better place and save the animals.
[01:12:05]  So, yeah, look, part of the when I went in there doing this documentary, part of it was doing the black market trade.
[01:12:11]  And I saw quite a bit, particularly to do with the ivory products which had been sold.
[01:12:15]  And I went to a couple of market places where you could buy absolutely anything and everything.
[01:12:19]  And actually, you know, two people within this industry which I really respect is Paul Rosalie.

=== Shark Industry Trauma (15:58) ===

[01:12:25]  Which you've had Paul on.
[01:12:27]  Paul's done some amazing work in the conservation space and I think also has worked under the umbrella of VetPoor as well.
[01:12:33]  And another friend of mine, a beautiful person, is Harry Turner.
[01:12:37]  He released a documentary last year that won a Grammy called, actually, he'd be a great person to get on the podcast, called Wildcat.
[01:12:46]  And essentially, he was a British soldier and had gone to Iraq.
[01:12:54]  I think he'd done a tour in Iraq and some pretty bad stuff had happened to him over there.
[01:13:00]  And he was medically discharged.
[01:13:02]  And I don't want to tell too much of his story because I think he's got a really interesting story to tell.
[01:13:08]  But he ended up going to.
[01:13:11]  There's Harry.
[01:13:13]  Oh, wow.
[01:13:14]  Recent documentary.
[01:13:15]  Yeah.
[01:13:17]  So I was in the jungle with Harry for quite a period of time.
[01:13:20]  And we know each other's antics quite well.
[01:13:24]  And he'd done a documentary on.
[01:13:27]  Oh, wow.
[01:13:28]  Look at that guy.
[01:13:29]  On his connection with an ocelot cat.
[01:13:31]  Could have that top left photo of him like nose to nose with him.
[01:13:34]  Oh, he's looking sexy there.
[01:13:35]  Don't worry.
[01:13:35]  I've seen him naked.
[01:13:37]  Oh, yeah.
[01:13:38]  Wow.
[01:13:40]  So he was actually with Paul as well in the jungle.
[01:13:43]  Oh, no shit.
[01:13:43]  And yeah, so look, he's got a heart of gold, but, you know, he's obviously been exposed and seen some stuff as well.
[01:13:50]  Yeah.
[01:13:51]  You know, and that, once again, that's his story to tell, you know, what he's been through.
[01:13:57]  But like I said, you know, going back to the original thing, it, it, it, This industry has a lot of interesting individuals which come from different places, and sometimes a person's connection to nature happens through trauma.
[01:14:13]  You know, generally there's trauma in the background.
[01:14:16]  Right.
[01:14:16]  You know, I think it's, you know, what was funny is actually when I was doing the introduction to Discovery Channel there at the network, they actually asked me the question.
[01:14:29]  I said, you know, this connection that you got with animals and all that kind of stuff, like, where does that come from?
[01:14:33]  It's because they know that sometimes there is.
[01:14:36]  Inherent psychological traits that force people to just want to be with animals and not with people.
[01:14:43]  Right.
[01:14:43]  You know what I mean?
[01:14:44]  Like the horse lady, like the horse woman.
[01:14:46]  You know, you stay away, you don't date those horse women.
[01:14:49]  Yeah.
[01:14:50]  Yeah.
[01:14:50]  Everyone knows that.
[01:14:53]  Get away from them.
[01:14:54]  If you see that on the Tinder profile and they're a horse and they're a horse girl, stay away from them.
[01:14:58]  No, I'm just joking.
[01:14:59]  I'm mucking around.
[01:15:00]  But yeah, there's definitely some traits in people, psychological traits that connect them to animals because sometimes they find a hard ability to get along with people and all that kind of stuff.
[01:15:12]  But, you know, they're also the same people which write some pretty impressive PhD papers on, you know, animal behavior because they can just sink into that wavelength.
[01:15:20]  You know, they really get to understand the animal.
[01:15:23]  Do you feel this way about even like the most dangerous beasts?
[01:15:29]  Like, I know you deal with crocs a lot and you've been around hippopotamuses.
[01:15:34]  Do you feel any fear when you're dealing with those kind of animals?
[01:15:38]  And how do you approach an animal like that?
[01:15:40]  So, in this industry, I get casted out a lot as in, you know, I even talked with Forrest.
[01:15:45]  People call me insane.
[01:15:45]  People call me the lunatic and all that kind of stuff.
[01:15:47]  Yeah.
[01:15:48]  That's how Forrest describes you.
[01:15:49]  Yeah.
[01:15:50]  But I think, in a jokingly sense, because a true lunatic or someone that's crazy, I'd have died years ago.
[01:15:56]  You have to have a really good understanding of your physical limitations and where that red line sits, and that can be incredibly difficult.
[01:16:03]  A lot of people in the industry get caught out.
[01:16:06]  What I will say is this the advantage of being self taught and being young and having those experiences in the wild and being raw with the animals is very different to, and I see this all the time, is a lot of people and the experiences that they have is from the zoological industry.
[01:16:22]  So dealing with animals, well, wild animals, but in a captive state, and using that as their underlying.
[01:16:28]  You know, skill set or ability in connection with animals.
[01:16:32]  They're a very dangerous person to deal with because dealing with that animal in a captive state is not the same as dealing with that animal in a wild state.
[01:16:40]  And I see it all the time.
[01:16:41]  And I think a lot of those people in the zoos, they have a, you know, like the animal's my friend.
[01:16:49]  You know what I mean?
[01:16:50]  And a lot of those individuals, they develop these mystical relationships with the animal where they actually believe that there's a closer connection between you and the animal, right?
[01:16:59]  This is where it can get very, very dangerous because you hear it.
[01:17:02]  From time to time.
[01:17:02]  You know, the girl that's been working with a lion for six years and then is like, you know what?
[01:17:06]  I'm going to go into the enclosure with it.
[01:17:08]  It understands me.
[01:17:09]  And she gets fucking pulled apart.
[01:17:10]  Right.
[01:17:10]  And they've literally got to put her body into like three different bags to identify.
[01:17:13]  Right.
[01:17:14]  Right.
[01:17:14]  You hear that all the time.
[01:17:17]  And I think.
[01:17:18]  The orca that drowned them.
[01:17:20]  Exactly.
[01:17:20]  I was just thinking about.
[01:17:20]  Yeah.
[01:17:21]  Tillicum.
[01:17:21]  Yeah.
[01:17:21]  I was just thinking about that one.
[01:17:23]  The interesting thing is, and I think what makes a professional in this industry is being able to draw that line.
[01:17:28]  And there's a quote.
[01:17:29]  There's a quote from the movie Life of Pi.
[01:17:33]  Yes.
[01:17:34]  And you know the scene where the young boy goes over to the tiger and he's trying to feed it.
[01:17:41]  And the father, his entire life, had told him, you know, stay away from the animal, stay away from the animal.
[01:17:45]  And he goes, no, like this animal, there's something about it.
[01:17:48]  Like it can see my spirit, it can see my soul, and all that kind of stuff.
[01:17:51]  And anyway, he goes to feed the tiger.
[01:17:53]  And the tiger runs at the cage.
[01:17:55]  And then all of a sudden, the father grabs him and pulls him back and starts screaming, What are you doing?
[01:17:59]  What are you doing?
[01:18:00]  He goes, I was just trying to be its friend.
[01:18:03]  And the father says, That animal.
[01:18:06]  Is not your friend, and he says a quote.
[01:18:09]  This is deep.
[01:18:11]  He says, When you look into that animal's eyes, all you're seeing is your own reflection.
[01:18:24]  The big issue about a lot of people that work in the zoological industry is they look into those animals and they think that they're seeing themselves in that animal or personality or characters within those animals and within those traits, and that's how their connection is drawn.
[01:18:36]  It's a very deep psychological.
[01:18:38]  Way of thinking.
[01:18:39]  But I've studied those people in that industry, and a lot of them have this kind of like, that animal's my friend, and I'm the only person that can do this.
[01:18:47]  And sure, you know, there's relationships that you build with animals and that kind of sense of connection.
[01:18:52]  But there's also a red line there as well.
[01:18:54]  And I've seen it come undone plenty of times before.
[01:18:58]  You see that a lot.
[01:18:59]  There's particularly one lady on Instagram.
[01:19:02]  I think she's in Hawaii.
[01:19:03]  And she does all of these videos swimming with tiger sharks.
[01:19:08]  And she talks about, like, she's literally swimming with these fat, well fed tiger sharks, right?
[01:19:13]  And she's talking about how beautiful they are and, like, swimming up next to them, riding them, touching their noses, and, like, explaining, like, oh, these are just very beautiful creatures, you know they're, they don't.
[01:19:24]  They're not man eaters.
[01:19:25]  And she, like she paints this picture of this, of this harmless, loving creature, and when, in reality, people don't understand, like it goes right to what you said, like maybe, maybe she's seeing herself in this animal and they don't realize that, like Manny pointed out when he came in here, these are man eating beasts that are very, very well fed when she's swimming with them.
[01:19:47]  If you run into one that in in the wild that is not well fed, It's not going to be that story.
[01:19:52]  I think there's two ways to look at it.
[01:19:55]  Her name's Ocean Ramsey.
[01:19:56]  Yes.
[01:19:57]  And she's done amazing things for the conservation of sharks.
[01:20:01]  She's done amazing things to draw awareness and all that kind of stuff.
[01:20:09]  The biggest issue is that, however, when you're dealing with these animals, they are habituated animals.
[01:20:13]  And it's not just as easy as go on your back and swim towards them.
[01:20:17]  And if it comes at you, push its nose away.
[01:20:20]  I can almost guarantee you that if you try and do that with a wild tiger shark in Australia, I don't care what your skill level has been there off the coast of Hawaii, that animal's going to fucking pull you apart and pull you apart fast.
[01:20:31]  It makes a great, the footage looks amazing.
[01:20:33]  The footage that she does is beautiful.
[01:20:35]  It is.
[01:20:35]  It's incredible.
[01:20:36]  And she's very aesthetic.
[01:20:37]  Like she looks, you know, amazing in the water.
[01:20:39]  Her name's Ocean Ramsey.
[01:20:40]  Yeah.
[01:20:41]  Actually, she'd be a good person to get on the podcast because I'm sure she'd give you her side of the story.
[01:20:46]  Yeah.
[01:20:47]  But I. Have you seen the video of the fucking tiger shark eating the guy in Egypt?
[01:20:51]  Yes, I have.
[01:20:52]  Just for a second.
[01:20:53]  Hey, man.
[01:20:54]  I've never seen anything that terrible.
[01:20:57]  Brutally terrifying.
[01:20:58]  I think the part that we can all kind of emote to there is, you know, I think where he's screaming out to his father.
[01:21:09]  Yeah.
[01:21:10]  Yeah.
[01:21:10]  That's the one.
[01:21:11]  And look, like I said, I think this is all amazing.
[01:21:15]  And I think she's, you know, her heart's definitely in the right place.
[01:21:17]  I think where this would, I think for the normal viewer that just watches her stuff and then goes, oh, wow, that's, you know, that's really interesting without, you know, because I'm sure that she sends a very strong educational.
[01:21:29]  Warning out there that you know you can't do this with all sharks, but to the average person which is just coming across Instagram or YouTube or whatever that sees this, it's just like maybe I can do this, you know, maybe I can do this off like the Neptune Islands with a great white shark.
[01:21:45]  Um, maybe not, yeah.
[01:21:48]  Um, but yeah, she's definitely got a skill set and she definitely understands these animals' behavior, that's 100%.
[01:21:54]  But um, yeah, my concern wouldn't be for her, it'd probably be for other individuals which might.
[01:22:00]  Want to try and you know do these tricks, and I can be honest, I think even for myself, when I go out and catch highly venomous snakes and I make it look easy, it's not, and there is a skill set.
[01:22:09]  And if you don't know what you're doing, you can probably get hurt.
[01:22:13]  Um, Forrest said you almost got eaten by a bull shark, yeah, I did.
[01:22:17]  It's half his fault, the bastard.
[01:22:21]  Where were you guys when that was probably my fault?
[01:22:24]  Um, so we were filming off the coast of Florida there, and I was there with a guy by the name of he's passed away now, he was another beautiful person that was Michael Dornellis.
[01:22:36]  He used to do a lot.
[01:22:37]  Actually, I think Michael Ocean and I think her husband's name is Juan or Juan or something.
[01:22:42]  I think they used to work together.
[01:22:43]  Juan Sharks.
[01:22:43]  Juan, yeah.
[01:22:45]  So, I think they used to do work together, but he was helping film this documentary for History Channel.
[01:22:53]  And essentially, what they wanted to do was they wanted to do a scene where there was like a bit of a bait ball, bull sharks, and they wanted me to like swim around and all that kind of stuff.
[01:23:02]  And look, when it comes to sharks, yeah, look, I swim with sharks in Australia, but it's more spearfishing.
[01:23:09]  You see it from a distance.
[01:23:10]  You know, I'll do my thing, you do your thing.
[01:23:13]  And essentially, I tried to swim through a bait ball, which I thought was a good idea.
[01:23:17]  Which is an incredibly stupid idea.
[01:23:19]  Anyone will tell you that, you know?
[01:23:21]  And I remember Forrest yelling out to me, being like, What are you doing?
[01:23:26]  I'm like, What do you mean?
[01:23:27]  I said, You wanted me a shot in the middle of him.
[01:23:29]  He's like, Not like that.
[01:23:30]  And there's literally like a blood like meatball.
[01:23:33]  I'm like swimming through the middle of it, like, Yeah, one like tried to take my flipper.
[01:23:37]  Yeah, that was pretty intense.
[01:23:38]  Yeah.
[01:23:39]  Jesus Christ.
[01:23:40]  Maybe I'll stick to the land animals.
[01:23:42]  Are there a lot of bull sharks in Australia?
[01:23:43]  There are.
[01:23:44]  Yeah, there are.
[01:23:44]  I do.
[01:23:45]  So I'm involved with the DPI.
[01:23:48]  Which is a Department of Primary Industries, and they run a shark tagging program.
[01:23:53]  So, essentially, in the Northern Territory.
[01:23:54]  So, I run a tourist business where I take people out and I teach them how they engage with nature and very survival focused as well.
[01:24:02]  I haven't talked about that yet, but yeah.
[01:24:04]  So, I'll take clients out to go catch these bull sharks in the rivers, and essentially, we tag them.
[01:24:08]  And it's all part of a program to understand the spatial distribution of these animals and how they're moving.
[01:24:14]  Right, right.
[01:24:15]  So, yeah, obviously, a big advocate for that as well.
[01:24:17]  But yeah, look, we've got a lot of bull sharks, and particularly in the rivers as well, they travel very high up into the rivers.
[01:24:23]  But look, they are involved in a number of attacks as well.
[01:24:28]  You know, there's another guy by the name of Paul de Gelder, and he was attacked by a shark in Sydney Harbour, I believe, back in the day.
[01:24:37]  And now he's a huge advocate for shark conservation.
[01:24:41]  And, you know, he spends a bit of time in the water with them and stuff.
[01:24:43]  He's doing some amazing work.
[01:24:44]  But yeah, he got nailed.
[01:24:46]  And I think he lost his leg and his arm.
[01:24:49]  I think he lost.
[01:24:49]  He got hit by a big bull shark.
[01:24:52]  But, um, Sharks are getting crazy in Florida right now, man.
[01:24:55]  I've heard it.
[01:24:56]  It's like getting, it's really fucking bad.
[01:24:58]  They're literally everywhere.
[01:25:00]  And it, I think Forrest, I don't know if Forrest, maybe it was Manny was telling me like, now if you go off the East Coast and you just, all you got, all these guys got to do to bring in bull sharks is they just jump in the water and start popping the bands on their spear guns and these things fucking show up.
[01:25:12]  Yeah.
[01:25:14]  And even in like surf, like up in Daytona Beach, you can't go, you can't go surf for 30 minutes without seeing a fucking shark.
[01:25:21]  Black tip, spinner sharks, bull sharks, they're just everywhere, man.
[01:25:24]  And they're, and like, it's a, Real problem with spear fishermen now.
[01:25:27]  Like, they are everywhere.
[01:25:31]  Well, the question is this this is the big question.
[01:25:33]  I think this is a question that's been highlighted in Australia, particularly to do with the crocodiles and the booming population of the crocodiles.
[01:25:39]  Is at the end of the day, it's their environment.
[01:25:42]  Yes, it's their environment.
[01:25:43]  It's true.
[01:25:44]  Ultimately.
[01:25:45]  Yeah.
[01:25:45]  You know, because even in Australia, it's been questioned about, you know, the shark culls and the culls with crocodiles and all that kind of stuff as well.
[01:25:51]  And that's been a big one, a big issue in Australia has been, you know, what to do with this increasing crocodile population.
[01:25:57]  But I think there has to be a.
[01:25:59]  Very intelligent respect for the fact that, you know, these animals occupy that land space.
[01:26:03]  They've occupied that land space for millions of years before us.
[01:26:06]  And essentially, that's their environment.
[01:26:07]  So it's not so much of how do we manage them, it's how do we manage ourselves.
[01:26:13]  Right.
[01:26:13]  But sharks are really protected here.
[01:26:17]  Like, you're not even allowed to kill sharks.
[01:26:19]  You're not allowed to catch sharks for sport.
[01:26:20]  Like, you're not allowed to have tournaments where you catch sharks.
[01:26:22]  So Mandy's thing was like, he believes that, you know, they should bring those back.
[01:26:27]  Like, it's not going to hurt to.
[01:26:29]  Sharks are so overpopulated right now.
[01:26:31]  It's, it's, it would be fair to kill some of the sharks.
[01:26:37]  Like, they're, it's not a problem.
[01:26:38]  They're not, there's not too, they're, they're not like endangered.
[01:26:41]  They're not, there's not a problem with too few sharks reproducing or whatever.
[01:26:45]  There's, if there's anything, there's like more and more sharks than there have ever been.
[01:26:48]  But it is a cycle at the same time, right?
[01:26:50]  Like, it back in the 90s and the 80s, there was a very, very low shark population.
[01:26:55]  And then it ramped up again and went back down again.
[01:26:57]  And now it's at its peak.
[01:26:59]  Right.
[01:26:59]  Well, I think.
[01:27:02]  The biggest difference between, I think, I've seen, like, you know, even when I was in Africa, is you have what they call carrying capacity.
[01:27:09]  And even here in the States, you know, with the hunting of deer and the hunting of all these other animals, you know, the ducks and so forth, is there's a respected amount of animals that can be essentially hunted, which won't prevent the population at hand.
[01:27:25]  You know, obviously, this is, you know, looked at, the data is looked at by ecologists and by, you know, wildlife experts and all that kind of stuff.
[01:27:31]  And there's different modeling systems to identify that.
[01:27:35]  How that works for sharks and shark populations, I'm not an expert in that.
[01:27:40]  I don't know.
[01:27:42]  But look, in Australia, I know we've definitely got that in play to do with your target species and even the size and even the gender and all that kind of stuff.
[01:27:52]  Can it work?
[01:27:52]  Yes, it can work.
[01:27:54]  But is it one of those things where people like to talk about what's called the trophic cascade effect, where you take out a large predator and then you've got this unbalancing effect that happens in the environment and the ecosystem?
[01:28:06]  I think that's probably where the big concern is.
[01:28:08]  And that's where you have more of a conservative approach rather than a.
[01:28:12]  Yeah.
[01:28:12]  There's this dude who lives down on the East Coast, Southeast Coast of Florida.
[01:28:17]  He goes by the name of Python Cowboy.
[01:28:18]  Have you heard of him?
[01:28:19]  I think I have heard.
[01:28:20]  Yeah.
[01:28:21]  So he hunts iguanas.

=== Managing Invasive Kangaroos (10:52) ===

[01:28:23]  Yes.
[01:28:23]  And I guess iguanas are a huge problem.
[01:28:25]  They're a big time invasive species around here.
[01:28:28]  And he does these incredible expeditions where they go out and they hunt these iguanas.
[01:28:34]  And he'll ride around the rivers and through the Everglades on these airboats.
[01:28:38]  Yep.
[01:28:38]  And they'll pop iguanas with these, uh, these like little pellet guns.
[01:28:41]  I've seen this, yes.
[01:28:44]  I'm not sure what they do with the iguana because I was going to say because I know I've just come from Central America and, um, they're everywhere there, really.
[01:28:51]  And I know that they got introduced here, didn't they?
[01:28:54]  Yes, yeah, yeah.
[01:28:56]  They get brought here to sort of like call us a different species, and then the iguanas eventually get out of control and they're killing everything.
[01:29:04]  Sounds like the Australian story, yeah, exactly.
[01:29:09]  Um, yeah, because uh, over there, um, You know, some of the indigenous people, they eat them actually taste pretty good like chicken.
[01:29:16]  You know what I mean?
[01:29:17]  Really?
[01:29:17]  Yeah.
[01:29:18]  So, you know, if they're an invasive species, then, yeah, I wonder if there'd be any kind of market to actually sell the meat as an exotic meat, as a jerky, as, you know?
[01:29:28]  Yeah.
[01:29:28]  Because in Australia, look, we've got a lot of invasive, a lot of feral species there.
[01:29:31]  We've got a lot of prime production ones.
[01:29:35]  So we've got pigs, we've got goats, we've got wild horses, wild donkeys, we've got water buffalo, we've got rabbits, we've got hares, we've got foxes.
[01:29:44]  Mate, the list goes on.
[01:29:45]  We've had some of the worst invasive species come into Australia.
[01:29:48]  Like, Australia has essentially been identified as an ecological disaster zone, literally.
[01:29:54]  And I think that's probably why the Australian continent, and we have to be, the Australian continent has become so conservative with our environment.
[01:30:01]  Like, if you try to get into Australia, there's like a natural box that says, Do you have any soil on your shoes?
[01:30:05]  Because of the concern of bringing in any kind of like soil bacteriums.
[01:30:08]  Like, have you been working on a farm?
[01:30:10]  You know?
[01:30:10]  So I think Australia is very proactive in terms of having all these security layers which are in play to prevent.
[01:30:17]  These problems.
[01:30:18]  And it's not just in the space of the introduction of an animal species, but also zoonotic diseases as well.
[01:30:26]  So, we've got huge concerns of, you know, like brucellosis or tuberculosis, foot and mouth disease.
[01:30:31]  And that's only a stone throw away, you know, Indonesia.
[01:30:34]  This is a whole other topic, which is a huge concern to Australia.
[01:30:38]  And that's why, you know, our biosecurity and all that kind of stuff, we have to have such a strict thing in play because Australia was separated as an island for such a period of time.
[01:30:46]  This island is completely unique.
[01:30:48]  It really is.
[01:30:49]  The environment, the ecosystem, the animals which inhabit these areas have done so for millions and millions of years and adapted so without the intrusion of invasive species.
[01:30:58]  Right.
[01:30:59]  And so.
[01:31:01]  Unlike America, where you can go and get a tag or a license or a permit to go and shoot native animals under that whole carrying capacity approach, in Australia, you can't really.
[01:31:14]  I know in the Northern Territory, we've got the ability to hunt the magpie geese and all that kind of stuff, but throughout all the other states, you can't go and shoot kangaroos unless you've got what's called a commercial harvest license.
[01:31:25]  So essentially, you're only shooting kangaroos to supply for the marketplace, right?
[01:31:31]  Okay.
[01:31:31]  But in terms of like recreation, you can't go out there and shoot like a wombat.
[01:31:34]  You can't go and shoot like, you know, it's just, it's completely illegal.
[01:31:37]  You can't do it.
[01:31:39]  But we do have the novelty of being able to go and hunt feral animals because we've got so many.
[01:31:43]  Like you can spend time in Western Queensland, Western New South Wales, and Northern Territory, and you'll probably come across more invasive animals, what we call them invasive animals, than you will native animals, quite literally.
[01:31:53]  Wow.
[01:31:54]  And the big problem about these invasive animals is they are reservoirs for a lot of dangerous, dangerous diseases.
[01:32:00]  So, for example, like the feral pigs, feral pigs, like in Florida, are reservoirs for, Leptospirosis, like tuberculosis, like Japanese encephalitis, like a real bad one.
[01:32:11]  Right.
[01:32:12]  Same as the water buffalo as well.
[01:32:13]  So we've introduced these management plans, not just in the government sector, but in the private sector where people can actually go out and harvest these animals and consume them.
[01:32:21]  There's nothing wrong with consuming the meat if it's prepared the right way.
[01:32:24]  Right.
[01:32:24]  So I've got a lot of friends that, you know, they'll go and shoot pigs and eat the pigs as well.
[01:32:31]  But yeah.
[01:32:32]  I didn't know people killed kangaroos.
[01:32:34]  Yeah.
[01:32:34]  So we've got them on the shelf at Woolworths.
[01:32:36]  You're equivalent to.
[01:32:37]  Walmart?
[01:32:38]  Yeah, like the Woolworths.
[01:32:39]  Really?
[01:32:39]  Is it any good?
[01:32:41]  Look, kangaroo meat's probably one of the best meats that you can get.
[01:32:44]  Really?
[01:32:44]  Yeah, very high protein base.
[01:32:46]  I do have it from time to time.
[01:32:48]  It's done in a very sustainable way.
[01:32:50]  Is there a problem with kangaroos?
[01:32:51]  Is there too many of them?
[01:32:56]  When I think about the word too many, I think, what have we done wrong?
[01:33:00]  Exactly.
[01:33:02]  We think that we can just come in and play guard and try to fix the balance of the ecosystem.
[01:33:08]  Well, I think what happened was this.
[01:33:10]  Mate, this drink's making me high.
[01:33:12]  Have you put anything in this drink?
[01:33:13]  How do you feel?
[01:33:14]  I feel like I'm about to do a backflip out of the sea.
[01:33:16]  This shit's great, man.
[01:33:17]  Are you being serious?
[01:33:18]  Like, fuck.
[01:33:19]  I've really just started to feel it.
[01:33:21]  It's kratom, bro.
[01:33:22]  It's amazing.
[01:33:23]  It's like magical.
[01:33:24]  This is not like an advertisement, but I'm being serious.
[01:33:26]  Like, I'm feeling like I'm about to fucking start moving.
[01:33:28]  I'm walking on this table or something.
[01:33:29]  You drink two of them and you're taking a nap.
[01:33:31]  Mate.
[01:33:31]  Oh, really?
[01:33:32]  Yeah.
[01:33:32]  Woo.
[01:33:33]  Yeah, it's good.
[01:33:35]  So in Australia, what happened was there was a lot of areas which was.
[01:33:41]  That they manipulated or manufactured for the production of like cereal grains, like your oats, your barley, your wheat.
[01:33:47]  And so, with that, they've had to introduce like a lot of big irrigation dams and all that sort of stuff.
[01:33:52]  So, when you introduce a resource, it's like we've got water and now we've got grain, all of a sudden you can actually sustain a lot of native animal species, right?
[01:34:00]  Particularly like kangaroos, emus, right?
[01:34:02]  So, what happened was like for a lot of like central Queensland and out through New South Wales, where the population probably many years ago was actually quite low because there was no resources or the availability of such good resources.
[01:34:14]  Quality resources, all of a sudden now we've supplied that.
[01:34:17]  What are you going to have?
[01:34:18]  You're going to have population booms, which we had.
[01:34:20]  And it's not just the native animals, but like a lot of like rats, there's been like rat plagues.
[01:34:24]  And with the rat plagues, there'll be like, you know, snakes, like, you know, it's all like a follow on kind of effect.
[01:34:31]  So, kangaroos also can get managed as a pest to primary production.
[01:34:39]  So, like, if you're all like a wheat owner or oats or whatever, and you identify an area which has been impacted by the kangaroos, I believe you can acquire a permit to go and shoot them.
[01:34:49]  So, these animals, you're just going to be shot for probably dog meat or whatever.
[01:34:52]  This is quite contentious in Australia because.
[01:34:54]  You know, the kangaroo is a beautiful animal.
[01:34:57]  We love our kangaroos, but at the same time, it's been turned into a commodity.
[01:35:01]  So there can be, you know, a lot of friction between the conservationists and people who, you know, take the other side of the spectrum, which is just like, well, hold on, we have a commodity here that can be utilized.
[01:35:11]  And the same goes for crocodiles as well.
[01:35:14]  You know, there's a lot of speculation about the use of crocodile meat because, like the alligators here, we have a farming system in play.
[01:35:25]  Where you can actually farm crocodiles and sell the meats and the skins and all that kind of stuff, which goes for levers.
[01:35:30]  But the difference is with kangaroos, we don't farm kangaroos.
[01:35:32]  It's called like a wildlife harvest.
[01:35:35]  So you'll go out into the field, these people that have these licenses, it's got to be a specific area.
[01:35:40]  You can only shoot a specific amount.
[01:35:42]  And not just that, the size of the kangaroo is very important as well.
[01:35:46]  And I'll tell you what happened.
[01:35:47]  This is really interesting.
[01:35:48]  I think this was back in the 90s, and they were doing estimations, like population estimates on kangaroos.
[01:35:56]  And essentially, They went into one area and they said, right, we're going to go in here and we're going to shoot out, let's just say there was 10,000 kangaroos.
[01:36:03]  We're going to go out and shoot 1,000 kangaroos and see, you know, what this does to the population over time.
[01:36:10]  And I believe it was the CSIRO that was doing this population study.
[01:36:15]  And they went in and these guys went out shooting.
[01:36:17]  Obviously, they went and shot the, you know, the bigger, larger males.
[01:36:21]  And a couple of years later, they went back and they'd done like a population study.
[01:36:24]  And I think it had quadrupled.
[01:36:25]  And they were trying to figure out what the f.
[01:36:27]  Had happened, and this is why nature's nature, and it's so important to know the depths of how animals interact in their own communities and their social hierarchies.
[01:36:39]  So, essentially, the larger males prevent the smaller males from breeding.
[01:36:43]  So, all of a sudden, when you start shooting out all your larger males, it then gives the opportunity for the smaller males to breed, you know, because the larger ones are essentially preventing the right, which I thought was really interesting.
[01:36:56]  And I think when this comes to light, and you kind of make sense, you kind of go, Oh, yeah, I can see that now.
[01:37:02]  This is the concern about going in and managing any kind of wild animal population.
[01:37:07]  You just don't know what the confounding effects are going to be.
[01:37:10]  And we've got some big examples.
[01:37:12]  We've got the cane toad in Australia, and that was probably the dumbest thing that anyone could have done.
[01:37:16]  The what?
[01:37:17]  The cane toad.
[01:37:18]  The cane toad.
[01:37:19]  Actually, isn't it here in Florida?
[01:37:21]  Isn't it introduced into Florida as well?
[01:37:23]  It was introduced originally into Hawaii, then from Hawaii into Australia.
[01:37:27]  This thing has caused.
[01:37:30]  This creature has caused.
[01:37:34]  You know, the almost extinction of many native species of animals.
[01:37:37]  It's a poisonous toad.
[01:37:40]  What's the fact sheet?
[01:37:41]  Originally coming from South America, it was introduced into Australia as a form of what we call biological control because at the time of the sugarcane industry in Australia, I believe this was back in the 1950s, early 1950s, or could have been 1930s, 1950s, I think it was, they introduced this cane toad to eliminate the cane beetle.
[01:38:01]  But the problem was the cane beetle existed at the top of the stalk.
[01:38:04]  The cane toad is a terrestrial species that can only go along the ground.
[01:38:09]  Right?
[01:38:09]  So that was the first flaw.
[01:38:10]  We didn't think that one through.
[01:38:11]  No, we didn't think that one through.
[01:38:12]  The second one that they didn't think through is it's got a toxin that it releases from what's called the partoid gland at the back of the neck.
[01:38:19]  And essentially, this milky substance, when it's consumed, particularly by any other reptile species, is almost instant death.
[01:38:26]  So, and even for like a large crocodile, for example, like a saltwater crocodile or a freshwater crocodile, it consuming this, you know, it can kill it, even like small mammals, like your quolls and all that kind of stuff.
[01:38:35]  Right.
[01:38:35]  You know, all these species were essentially being affected, and the population numbers were dropping.
[01:38:41]  Huge concern, particularly the monitor lizards as well, you know, the large monitor lizards.
[01:38:45]  Their population was being declined.
[01:38:47]  So, And the reproduction rate of these animals is just, it's unbelievable.
[01:38:53]  You know, one female can spawn up to 20,000 eggs or 30,000 eggs or whatever it is.
[01:38:57]  So trying to control this species in a physical format is just not possible.
[01:39:01]  And the only way forward would be, you know, the release of a virus and what's that going to lead on to that?
[01:39:06]  Right.
[01:39:06]  You know, so yeah, Australia has definitely been a place of experiments and a place that probably a lot of the world has looked at and been like, well, we're not going to do that.

=== Aboriginal Land Concerns (15:04) ===

[01:39:16]  You know what I mean?
[01:39:17]  So, but we've dealt with that.
[01:39:20]  But, you know, I think in time, you know, I think technology, Is going to come to a point in time where we may be able to reverse a lot of these effects.
[01:39:29]  Coyotes are a huge problem in the states.
[01:39:31]  They're everywhere.
[01:39:32]  They're in every neighborhood, every city.
[01:39:34]  Don't care what city you want to mention, they're there.
[01:39:37]  They're literally running around this neighborhood all the time.
[01:39:40]  And that's a similar thing to what you were explaining with the kangaroos, but not quite.
[01:39:44]  I guess what happens when you kill them, the females realize when another coyote has died or a part of their little pack.
[01:39:56]  Has gotten smaller, they do some sort of crazy mating call where and they start reproducing more.
[01:40:02]  They start like reproducing more pups.
[01:40:05]  I don't know if it's a specific mating call, but what they do, like somehow biologically, when they know that a part of their pack has died off, they automatically just produce like more and more pups than they normally had.
[01:40:18]  Gotcha.
[01:40:19]  So it's like a reverse effect of if you're killing more of them, they're just reproducing like triple what they would have normally, which is really.
[01:40:29]  Crazy, interesting, yeah, similar to the uh, the kangaroo thing, right?
[01:40:34]  Um, uh, I wanted to ask you also, I wanted to ask you about your uh, your crazy quest you did through what's it called, like Annam Arnhem Land, Arnhem Land, yeah.
[01:40:46]  What was that about, and where is Arnhem Land?
[01:40:49]  Okay, so Arnhem Land is in the northern frontier of the Northern Territory.
[01:40:54]  Uh, it spans, uh, have you seen the Northern Territory before?
[01:40:57]  Like maybe if you get it up on a map, it'll put things into the Northern Territory of Australia, Northern Territory of Australia.
[01:41:02]  Um, but even if you type in Arnhem Land.
[01:41:04]  Which is spelled A R N H E M.
[01:41:12]  So, yeah, A R N H E M. Arnhem Land.
[01:41:14]  Yep, there you go.
[01:41:18]  Click on the map, pull her up.
[01:41:22]  And I guess this is almost like my tourism plug that I'll put in now.
[01:41:26]  So, is this this big national park?
[01:41:28]  So, that's Kakadu National Park.
[01:41:30]  Okay.
[01:41:30]  But if you type in, it might pop up.
[01:41:33]  So, it kind of spans all this land through here.
[01:41:36]  Okay, got it.
[01:41:37]  Yep.
[01:41:39]  So, the Northern Territory in the northern part of Australia is probably one of the most wildest places on earth.
[01:41:46]  Like, it's literally probably the last wild frontier in Australia.
[01:41:51]  It is a place that has some of our biggest predators.
[01:41:54]  You know, obviously, a lot of the crocodiles there.
[01:41:57]  Amazing bird life.
[01:42:00]  The wildlife and the diversity of wildlife and the diversity of habitats in different bioregions there is unbelievable.
[01:42:06]  It really is.
[01:42:07]  And I guess that's why it attracts a lot of people, even from like the US.
[01:42:10]  We've got like a lot of.
[01:42:12]  US clients to go to.
[01:42:15]  Yeah, so that's actually where I started.
[01:42:17]  Oh, wow.
[01:42:18]  Where it says Numbawa, yeah, on the coast, that's where I started the walk.
[01:42:23]  Um, and essentially, I walked from there all the way into Catherine, which was about 700 and something kilometers.
[01:42:31]  Holy, yeah, so I walked directly across it.
[01:42:34]  What's that, 500 miles, something like that?
[01:42:36]  Something like that, yeah.
[01:42:36]  So it'd never been accomplished before, uh, yeah.
[01:42:39]  What, what, by a solo person, and there's Catherine just there, just below Nipmuk Gorge, so um, yeah, Catherine, and I'd like to stay.
[01:42:49]  You know, I walked it as a crow flies, but that's impossible because it's such a treacherous landscape.
[01:42:54]  I was actually told by a lot of people that just wasn't possible, couldn't be done.
[01:42:57]  And that to me, I feel like that's where I'm at in my life now, Daniel.
[01:43:00]  When someone says, when something can't be done, and I mean a proper, like, you know, that can't be done or whatever, that's where I really go.
[01:43:09]  I feel like I've saturated myself with like a lot of things, but if there's something like that's what really caught me laughing, Forrest is probably going to say, don't you dare.
[01:43:17]  But that Tasmanian tiger, if there is.
[01:43:21]  A good confirmed sighting of that thing in Western Papua New Guinea, I'll drop everything now and I'll spend the next six months there trying to hunt that thing down to find it.
[01:43:29]  Talk about the thylacine?
[01:43:30]  Thylacine.
[01:43:31]  Tasmanian tiger.
[01:43:33]  Yep.
[01:43:33]  Is there any evidence that that thing's still around or is it any of them left?
[01:43:38]  I think there's a very small circle of people that know a bit of information about it.
[01:43:42]  There may potentially be a location out there in Western Papua New Guinea.
[01:43:49]  Really?
[01:43:50]  There may be.
[01:43:51]  Definitely not in Tasmania.
[01:43:53]  Or on the Australian mainland.
[01:43:54]  You really think you could catch this thing?
[01:43:56]  Oh, look, I wouldn't want to catch it.
[01:43:58]  That would be the last thing on my list.
[01:43:59]  Okay.
[01:43:59]  I don't want to.
[01:44:00]  You don't want to even touch it?
[01:44:02]  No.
[01:44:02]  I would love to take a picture of it.
[01:44:04]  I would love to film it doing its thing.
[01:44:06]  You know, that would.
[01:44:07]  I think, and maybe even to be honest, and I'll be completely honest here.
[01:44:11]  I might as well just catch it.
[01:44:14]  No, I think it's too precious.
[01:44:16]  And this is, I think this is to the deeper core of me, I think, as my connection with nature.
[01:44:24]  You know what?
[01:44:25]  I don't even think I'd want to take a picture of it or film it.
[01:44:29]  Because what am I doing there?
[01:44:31]  Yeah.
[01:44:32]  What am I doing?
[01:44:33]  Right.
[01:44:33]  I'm doing the very thing that I just said at the original start of the podcast that I'm against.
[01:44:37]  It's that whole exploitation of, you know, it's trying to make a name for myself.
[01:44:44]  You know what I mean?
[01:44:45]  Like, I think if nature.
[01:44:48]  I don't think you're hurting anything by taking a photo of a thylacine.
[01:44:51]  You're not giving up its location.
[01:44:55]  I think the concern would be.
[01:44:56]  If I did something like that, the amount of people that would jump on the bandwagon and try and go out there, and that's where my concern would be for that animal.
[01:45:03]  And I think the depths of where I'm at, I think now in my life would be if I did see something like that, maybe what I'd do is I'd show a couple of very select few people and say, This is the picture, this is the footage, this doesn't go anywhere else, but it's there.
[01:45:21]  But it is there.
[01:45:22]  You know, who those people would be, I'd show Forrest, definitely.
[01:45:25]  Right.
[01:45:26]  And just so he could say, Yeah, he's.
[01:45:28]  Definitely found one.
[01:45:29]  Um, there'd probably be a small handful of people, but I don't think I would release it to the world and say, you know, um, yeah, I just think it's personal, it's really personal, I feel only because it represents such an internationally hot topic.
[01:45:47]  This animal that they it's been questioned so much.
[01:45:51]  This animal's been extinct and now it's alive, and there's sightings and all that kind of stuff.
[01:45:55]  And I think a lot of that's been debunked, but if it was out there in Papua New Guinea, I think, um, Oh, it would be unbelievable.
[01:46:03]  It really would.
[01:46:04]  Do you think if they found it, they would try to bring it back and try to increase its population?
[01:46:11]  I think the first thing that would happen is this.
[01:46:18]  If it's still there, it's essentially saying one thing that's been undisturbed.
[01:46:21]  And there's probably nothing wrong with the population there, right?
[01:46:24]  That's probably the first thing where my mind would go.
[01:46:26]  The second thing is if someone did come across it, I'm just trying to think look, I don't know what Papua New Guinea is like of the government, but if a place knows that it's got something, if it's got a white unicorn, I would be concerned that they might.
[01:46:47]  Fund an internal project to capture some specimens and say, We want an investment to create a zoo or whatever, to bring the world to Papua New Guinea to show them.
[01:47:02]  And they would wrap it into a very conservation, zoological featured thing.
[01:47:06]  And from an economic point of view, it would be a huge.
[01:47:11]  We do what human beings do.
[01:47:13]  We fucking.
[01:47:14]  We get something and we manipulate it.
[01:47:16]  Yes.
[01:47:16]  And I think that's probably.
[01:47:18]  We monetize it.
[01:47:19]  That would be my gut instinct to what the government would do.
[01:47:23]  That would be my gut instinct.
[01:47:24]  You're probably right.
[01:47:26]  I think you're right about that.
[01:47:27]  Yeah.
[01:47:27]  Because, you know, Papua New Guinea, I think, is quite, you know, it's a developing country.
[01:47:31]  And if they had that unicorn, that golden card, they're definitely going to use it to their advantage.
[01:47:37]  You know, I think it's probably the smartest idea, no matter what species it is and whether there's too many of them or too little of them.
[01:47:44]  It's probably, I mean, look, I'm sure there's nuance in here.
[01:47:48]  There's probably, you know, it's probably not just black and white, but.
[01:47:51]  By and large, we probably shouldn't try to fuck with it.
[01:47:54]  100%.
[01:47:55]  Yep.
[01:47:57]  Well, look, they are going to bring, you know, I think Forrest follows that laboratory group quite well.
[01:48:03]  They are going to try and bring one back, you know, and I think in our lifetime we will see one.
[01:48:08]  But whether or not there are still living specimens today, and I went through that whole thing with him, you know, as why I believe there's not any in Tasmania, you know, this is imagine like a honey, a big form of honey badger here.
[01:48:19]  You know, this is, you know, it was a scavenger animal, it was an opportunist.
[01:48:24]  It used to move vast distances.
[01:48:26]  It had a huge home range.
[01:48:28]  It would have popped up in someone's backyard.
[01:48:30]  It would have popped up at a campsite.
[01:48:32]  It wasn't necessarily a fearless animal of people because that's why it was such an easy animal to hunt.
[01:48:39]  I think that if there was a small population in Tasmania, it would have popped up with the amount of game cameras, with the amount of solo people which went in there trying to explore to take that golden picture.
[01:48:52]  I think even the Times Magazine back in the day said, They were going to give a billion dollars.
[01:48:57]  It was like $1 billion for live footage of Tasmanian tiger.
[01:49:02]  I think they had something like that back in the day.
[01:49:05]  Look, no one's.
[01:49:06]  I think the last reported sighting was in 86, I think, or 88, by a guy by the name of Nick Mooney, who was a parks and wildlife ranger.
[01:49:15]  And Forrester's actually done that interview with him.
[01:49:18]  And he said, Look, I don't think there was a tourism plug.
[01:49:21]  I genuinely believe he saw one.
[01:49:23]  Or one of the last ones.
[01:49:24]  Yeah, one of my last ones.
[01:49:26]  But, you know, it's a shame what happened.
[01:49:28]  And it just goes to show that, you know, when humans come in and we try to manage things in a way that we think is right for our best interests, this is what happens.
[01:49:37]  We lose a beautiful species like this from the earth.
[01:49:40]  Yeah, man.
[01:49:41]  But yeah, I would love to catch one.
[01:49:42]  Fuck it.
[01:49:43]  They're going to go for it.
[01:49:45]  They're going to get him.
[01:49:46]  Hey, hold on.
[01:49:49]  I'd be hated, but I don't care because I'd have my Tasmanian tiger.
[01:49:52]  Yeah, right.
[01:49:54]  But yeah.
[01:49:54]  But Arnhem Land.
[01:49:56]  Arnhem Land.
[01:49:58]  Yeah.
[01:49:58]  So, what made you decide you wanted to trek 800 kilometers across this fucking barren landscape?
[01:50:07]  What is it made of?
[01:50:08]  What is it?
[01:50:08]  Is it all forest or swamps?
[01:50:10]  Like, what does it consist of?
[01:50:13]  Well, to answer the question, what made me do it?
[01:50:14]  I think one word fear.
[01:50:17]  Fear.
[01:50:18]  Fear.
[01:50:20]  Were you aware of anyone else who had done it?
[01:50:22]  I am sure I'm not going to take anything away from the Aboriginal people.
[01:50:25]  The Aboriginal people are unbelievable, really.
[01:50:29]  Our Indigenous Australians and what they can do.
[01:50:32]  I'm sure they traversed it back and forth and back and forth and up and down and all that kind of stuff.
[01:50:36]  And they've done it as a group.
[01:50:37]  I think I'm the first white man to have done it solo.
[01:50:41]  I do believe, however, that indigenous people walked, they walked that continent backwards and forth.
[01:50:48]  You know what I mean?
[01:50:51]  Part of the reason why I wanted to do it was there was a lot of fear about walking that place.
[01:50:55]  And to answer that question of what does it comprise of, Arnhem Land comprises of floodplains, it comprises of swamps, billabongs, escarpments.
[01:51:04]  It is so diverse in the habitat features which are there, which is what brings a lot of tourism into the area because it's such a wild space.
[01:51:13]  It's also a space.
[01:51:15]  Which is perishable.
[01:51:16]  You get lost out there.
[01:51:17]  And if you get lost out there, you don't know what you're doing, you'll die pretty fast.
[01:51:21]  It's remote, it's a very remote land.
[01:51:24]  And there are Aboriginal communities that exist all throughout it.
[01:51:28]  I think there's a population up to like 20,000 Aboriginal people that still sustain themselves.
[01:51:32]  Are they friendly?
[01:51:33]  Yeah.
[01:51:33]  Look.
[01:51:34]  They're not like these uncontacted tribes that'll shoot you with six foot arrows.
[01:51:37]  No.
[01:51:37]  Look, I think in general, you know, the Aboriginal people out there definitely want their privacy.
[01:51:43]  And to go into these areas, you need a special permit.
[01:51:46]  To do so, to go into those areas.
[01:51:49]  But, you know, Aboriginal people are very welcoming.
[01:51:51]  I think there's probably, you know, to the outside people from the US that don't know much about the Aboriginal people in Australia, very welcoming.
[01:51:58]  They're very fun to hang out with in the bush as well.
[01:52:00]  Their ingenuity is unbelievable.
[01:52:03]  Actually, part of my job working with the Australian Defence Force, that's something I do as well part time, is we do a lot of recruiting with Indigenous Australians.
[01:52:12]  And they're amazing because they know all those places, like the back of their hands.
[01:52:18]  They're almost like the security guards of the bush.
[01:52:21]  So, we call it like the human terrain model where we try to understand more about what's happening in those remote areas where we don't have surveillance because the indigenous people out there, they are our eyes and ears and we get a lot of our intel from them.
[01:52:34]  So, particularly in a lot of our remote coastal areas where there might be drug importation coming in, you know, illegal fishing and all that kind of stuff.
[01:52:42]  Really?
[01:52:42]  The indigenous people, yeah.
[01:52:44]  Oh, they'll see tracks walking down the road and they'll know whose footsteps they are within the community.
[01:52:49]  If the footsteps don't look right, they'll be like, Okay, something's going on here.
[01:52:53]  So, yeah, we've got the best surveillance system.
[01:52:55]  It's called the Australian Defence Force?
[01:52:57]  We have the best surveillance system in the world in the northern parts of Australia, and that's the Aboriginal people.
[01:53:03]  Wow, that's incredible.
[01:53:04]  What sort of people are you guys looking for up there?
[01:53:09]  You said drug trafficking?
[01:53:11]  Essentially, yeah, from Indonesia.
[01:53:13]  Yeah, so we do get quite a lot from that pathway that comes in because Indonesia is not too far from Australia.
[01:53:22]  And there's a lot of archipelagos, like little islands in between.
[01:53:25]  And so, yeah, that's definitely a transit route for drugs.
[01:53:30]  But yeah, so it's actually called Norforce.
[01:53:33]  So it's a division, sorry, a squadron that I'm in part time.
[01:53:40]  Is that Norforce?
[01:53:41]  So N O R F O R C E.
[01:53:46]  Okay, Norforce.
[01:53:47]  Norforce.
[01:53:47]  Yeah.
[01:53:50]  Wow, at least some of the natives are.
[01:53:52]  Yeah.
[01:53:53]  Oh, wow.
[01:53:54]  So, no, look, it's.
[01:53:56]  It's an amazing place and it's full of so many different skill sets.
[01:54:00]  You know, when we're out there and we're doing operations on the coastline, you're always learning something from the indigenous people there, you know, whether it's like different types of bush tucker or how to navigate through the bush.
[01:54:13]  Yeah, it's an amazing thing to become part of.
[01:54:16]  That's wild.
[01:54:16]  So I've been doing that for a couple of years now.
[01:54:19]  So when you did this trek, how.

=== Persistence Hunting Energy (17:39) ===

[01:54:21]  Okay, sorry, go ahead.
[01:54:22]  Yep.
[01:54:22]  So, yeah, so Arnhem Land, so it was 700 kilometers.
[01:54:24]  It was a fear of mine, all different types of landscape through there.
[01:54:29]  And I took a horse, which was essentially a green horse.
[01:54:32]  Like, I was, mate, Danny, I was a fucking idiot.
[01:54:35]  I'm not a horse person, though.
[01:54:38]  First thing, like, you know, the original idea?
[01:54:40]  The original idea was I picked up a donkey from a fucking property owner.
[01:54:44]  I thought I'm going to do the trek with a donkey.
[01:54:46]  This donkey was the biggest cunt you ever met, right?
[01:54:49]  He had a character, but he was a proper, you know, he definitely wasn't a stallion.
[01:54:53]  But yeah, originally I was going to do it with a donkey.
[01:54:57]  And then it worked out to be a bad idea, not because we didn't have an amazing connection relationship.
[01:55:01]  This donkey was like my best friend.
[01:55:03]  It's like, you know, like Shrek's donkey, like that.
[01:55:05]  What about a mule?
[01:55:05]  Do you think about getting a mule?
[01:55:06]  A mule would be good.
[01:55:07]  Yeah, they're a hardy animal.
[01:55:09]  But this donkey, so he was loyal to the fact that he would follow me everywhere and all that kind of stuff.
[01:55:14]  But as soon as I put a rope around him, he was like, Well, hold on one second.
[01:55:17]  You putting a rope around me, we're not on the same level now, are we?
[01:55:21]  Like, I'm like subservient to you.
[01:55:24]  He didn't like that.
[01:55:24]  No, he did not like that.
[01:55:25]  And he was smart.
[01:55:26]  Like, I was trying to train him and I'd like cross like a bit of a river and I'd like try and lead him and he'd be like, I'm not going.
[01:55:33]  But he was smart.
[01:55:34]  He'd wait for me to cross the river first, almost like look out for crocodiles.
[01:55:38]  He'd be like, Oh, he made it safe to the other side.
[01:55:39]  Now I'll go.
[01:55:41]  If you're going to put yourself in a situation where you're going to be relying on an animal for your survival because he was carrying my water, he was carrying my food, don't pick an animal which is a liability.
[01:55:51]  Right.
[01:55:52]  Okay.
[01:55:52]  So I went with a green horse.
[01:55:54]  Even after that lesson had been learned, I took a horse that had never had a pack saddle on it.
[01:55:59]  Yes.
[01:56:00]  And in four days, I was trying to teach this animal to have weight on its back.
[01:56:03]  Oh, it was a disaster.
[01:56:05]  Stupid, I know.
[01:56:06]  Look, I've done some dumb things.
[01:56:07]  But you know what they say?
[01:56:08]  You know what they say?
[01:56:09]  What do they say?
[01:56:11]  Of ideas make for the greatest of memories.
[01:56:13]  That's a good one.
[01:56:14]  That's very true.
[01:56:15]  But it was, oh, look, it was a challenging, challenging experience.
[01:56:19]  And I was completely living off the land.
[01:56:20]  I was hunting there, anything and everything I could find out there, running down water buffaloes.
[01:56:24]  This is another Netflix episode.
[01:56:25]  How much food and water did you bring with you?
[01:56:28]  So, water provisions.
[01:56:29]  I believe I was using the camelback bladders.
[01:56:31]  And I think I had up to about 12 liters of water.
[01:56:33]  Okay.
[01:56:34]  Right.
[01:56:34]  So that's 12 kilos.
[01:56:35]  Was that enough to last you, you think?
[01:56:37]  No, no, no.
[01:56:39]  So, in this route that I was transiting, I was actually going through river systems and going through billabongs where I'd had to.
[01:56:44]  You know, get water, boil it, prepare it, and all that kind of stuff.
[01:56:48]  There were obviously places I could drink like straight from the river because of how, you know, clean it is.
[01:56:51]  You are running risks there of getting, you know, waterborne, you know, bacterium and all that kind of stuff.
[01:56:56]  But I feel over the years, my gut's become pretty hardened to that sort of stuff.
[01:57:00]  But yeah, look, in a survival sense, prepare your water.
[01:57:04]  Okay.
[01:57:04]  That's my first advice.
[01:57:06]  Okay.
[01:57:06]  But yeah, look, I was running down pigs, I was catching water buffaloes and all that kind of stuff, and, you know, Barramundi and Spear and Barramundi, and yeah, essentially just living off the land.
[01:57:15]  But I went in at, I think 74 kilos and walked out at like 52 kilos.
[01:57:20]  I took rations of rice and like the shortbreads, but that didn't last long.
[01:57:25]  And then my body just essentially went into a form of ketosis because I was just eating all, you know, meat products.
[01:57:30]  And I became very wiry and my instinct was so sharp, so sharp.
[01:57:37]  And you have all these innate instincts inside of you, right?
[01:57:39]  So you'll be, for example, because it was such a period of time that I was going without sugar, my body instinctively was making me look up.
[01:57:48]  I think, why is my body?
[01:57:50]  Why is it making me look up?
[01:57:52]  And what's interesting is when you're in the bush, I feel like your body, your brain, is downloading information, right?
[01:57:58]  And so there must have been, as a child, me getting honey from a beehive, you know, up high.
[01:58:05]  And that's an instinctive clue, you know, glucose, honey, look up high.
[01:58:11]  You know, all these little innate kind of things which are just sinking in, you know.
[01:58:14]  And it's just funny, even things of, you know, the animal tracks, you know, animal tracks leading you to water.
[01:58:20]  This is all subconscious things that would be going through my mind that your brain just taps into.
[01:58:23]  You're not even consciously even thinking about this, but it's like a little.
[01:58:25]  This is just like evolution boiling up to the surface.
[01:58:28]  Yes, 100%.
[01:58:29]  And we all have it inside of us.
[01:58:30]  I think that's been one of my biggest messages everyone.
[01:58:32]  On this earth, you're living on this earth.
[01:58:35]  We've come from this earth.
[01:58:36]  We didn't come from anywhere else.
[01:58:37]  We've evolved from this earth.
[01:58:39]  We have the skills, the ability, we have the biology, we have everything inside of us to sustain us in any kind of environment.
[01:58:45]  And we do.
[01:58:45]  We've got that ability.
[01:58:46]  But we need to train ourselves to get back there.
[01:58:48]  That's so fast.
[01:58:50]  We are losing it.
[01:58:51]  That blew my mind because Paul Rosalie explained that really concisely when he was in here.
[01:58:56]  How when he first went down to the Amazon and he was wearing his shoes, they were all laughing at him, like, look at this gringo with the shoes on.
[01:59:03]  And then eventually he took them off.
[01:59:04]  And after like a couple of days walking through the jungle, like, The jungle, the birds, the monkeys, the way the wind blows, it all communicates to you in a way where you understand what's going on.
[01:59:17]  You understand where danger is.
[01:59:19]  You understand where you need to go.
[01:59:20]  And it's just like this crazy network.
[01:59:24]  It's this network that just connects to you.
[01:59:26]  And these innate traits that we have and these signals or antennas that we have inside of us that are buried from technology come to the surface.
[01:59:38]  And now, We are communicating with the forest and with nature.
[01:59:42]  And it's fucking fascinating.
[01:59:44]  I think, well, it's generational as well.
[01:59:46]  Like, if you think about it, like our ancestors and all this information, there's got to be genetic material which is being passed on.
[01:59:53]  Whether it could be the fear of snakes, for example.
[01:59:55]  You know, if your grandfather's grandfather had a bad experience with a snake, this is kind of information which is being passed down the lines.
[02:00:01]  And I really believe in that kind of information.
[02:00:04]  You know, even like character traits, for example, you know, when someone turns and says, oh, you're just like your uncle, you're just as stubborn as your uncle, or you're just as stubborn as your father, or whatever it might be.
[02:00:12]  I believe it's true because we see this same downloading of information in nature.
[02:00:17]  And they've actually seen it with, you know, when I was talking about with the cane toads?
[02:00:21]  Yeah.
[02:00:21]  Okay.
[02:00:21]  So, what's happened now is monitor lizards, now the generation of monitor lizards in Australia, do not consume cane toads.
[02:00:28]  They've learnt not to.
[02:00:29]  You know why?
[02:00:30]  Because through the process of this species adapting to the cane toads, there have been selective decisions which have been made, probably by individuals, not to consume it based on smell.
[02:00:44]  Or the way it looks, or whatever.
[02:00:45]  And that genetic information is now being passed through.
[02:00:50]  And I've watched it.
[02:00:50]  I've watched a monotelizard go up to a cane toad and just completely avoid it.
[02:00:54]  And it's got nothing to do with the fact that it's learnt it as a species on this earth now, as an individual.
[02:01:01]  This has been information which has just been hardwired through.
[02:01:04]  It's not like they can have a conversation.
[02:01:05]  It's the same way about the turtles, how the turtles will navigate for islands that they've never been to.
[02:01:12]  Or a crocodile, for example, will leave from one place and go to an island where the turtles will be simultaneously hatching.
[02:01:19]  How do they even know that information?
[02:01:21]  This is all information which is being passed on.
[02:01:23]  So, we're not too different from the animals as well.
[02:01:26]  I believe there's a lot of information which is inside of us at a very deeper level that can only come to the surface if you put yourself in those situations.
[02:01:35]  And I believe it 100%, I believe it.
[02:01:37]  We are animals.
[02:01:38]  Only a couple hundred years ago, our ancestors were out there living off the land.
[02:01:41]  Right.
[02:01:42]  Literally, it's not far.
[02:01:44]  So, what were some of the biggest things you noticed?
[02:01:49]  In your body, or things that changed in you after you went so many days without eating any carbs or rice or anything, and you were only eating what you killed?
[02:01:58]  Like, other than the fact you said you were always looking up, but was there anything else?
[02:02:02]  I realize how much I miss fucking Subway.
[02:02:07]  You do get cravings.
[02:02:08]  My biggest cravings is always Froot Loops and Snickers.
[02:02:12]  Just high sugar.
[02:02:13]  It's like my older Infanta.
[02:02:15]  Don't know why.
[02:02:16]  So you're just fantasizing about junk food when you're out there.
[02:02:18]  A lot of times you are.
[02:02:19]  Yep.
[02:02:20]  I think that's like an evolutionary thing where it's just like, you know, it keeps you enticed to, you know, keep hunting or trapping people.
[02:02:27]  In that situation, you become very calculated at how much energy that you use up and what you're chasing.
[02:02:33]  Like, for example, I'd see like a group of pigs and just by watching them, I'd be like, right, I can see the weakest link there.
[02:02:39]  And I'd be working out in my head strategically, I'd be calculating how much energy it's going to take to acquire that animal because I do what's called persistence hunting where I chase that animal down.
[02:02:48]  You know what I mean?
[02:02:49]  So if I know that I'm going to be running like two or three kilometers, how much energy do I have in me?
[02:02:53]  To get me that distance, and how much energy am I going to get back from that animal?
[02:02:58]  Does that make sense?
[02:02:58]  So it's like using an energy system sort of thing.
[02:03:03]  That can only work so long because running your body just off eating meat and organs and all that kind of stuff.
[02:03:09]  Yeah, although nutritional, in terms of energy, though, you need your carbs.
[02:03:14]  And that was something that I was lacking.
[02:03:15]  So yeah, my body was slowly deteriorating.
[02:03:18]  Really?
[02:03:18]  Yes.
[02:03:19]  Yep.
[02:03:20]  What I do think is interesting is actually after this, and this is actually.
[02:03:24]  Part of the reason of joining Norforce was I had one of the high commanders got in contact with us after I'd done this expedition from Arnhem Land and said, Did you know that the Australian Defence Force, we run a survival course?
[02:03:38]  And then that's what actually got me involved in the Australian Defence Force.
[02:03:40]  Oh, no, sure.
[02:03:41]  Being a survival instructor.
[02:03:42]  Yeah.
[02:03:42]  But they had heard of my antics and catching animals and all that kind of stuff.
[02:03:46]  And, you know, when you have these self taught abilities and skill sets, they're priceless.
[02:03:51]  You can't read them in a book, you know.
[02:03:53]  So, yeah, it was a way of me being able to teach.
[02:03:56]  Some of my skills, abilities, and techniques to soldiers in any kind of situation where they'd have to survive for like a period of time.
[02:04:05]  How many days total did that track take?
[02:04:07]  It was 42.
[02:04:09]  42 days.
[02:04:10]  Did you have any sort of like lifeline in case you got really in trouble?
[02:04:14]  Did you have like a sat phone or anything?
[02:04:16]  I did.
[02:04:17]  So I did have it sorted out in that way.
[02:04:20]  There was a time where I got lost and I thought, I'm in some big trouble now.
[02:04:25]  So batteries all out, all gone because I was running off like solar, like solar.
[02:04:28]  Power sort of thing.
[02:04:29]  But I did work out that if I kept, if I essentially kept walking in a westerly format, I was going to hit river systems.
[02:04:36]  And so when hitting river systems, yeah, essentially, look, you can sustain yourself for a period of time.
[02:04:40]  There's a lot of food out there.
[02:04:42]  Right.
[02:04:42]  At any given time, I knew that I could get out of that situation.
[02:04:46]  But look, a lot of people go missing in the Northern Territory and generally they will cast, this is rescue services, they will cast a three day window or a four day window with searches.
[02:04:55]  Reason being is, and now actually, there's actually a guy, I think, in South Australia, he's a doctor.
[02:05:01]  And when they do a rescue on someone, let's just say it's you, they'll go, right?
[02:05:04]  They'll get in contact with your local doctor.
[02:05:05]  Can I get all his health records?
[02:05:07]  Okay.
[02:05:08]  Is he asthmatic?
[02:05:09]  Does he have, you know, blood glucose problems and da da da?
[02:05:13]  How old is he?
[02:05:13]  How fit he is?
[02:05:14]  What's his BMI and all that kind of stuff?
[02:05:16]  And strategically, they'll just develop like a biological format around you to see how long you'll last.
[02:05:21]  No shit.
[02:05:22]  Based on layers.
[02:05:23]  So whether you're in the cold, whether you're in this climate, whether you're in the Northern Territory.
[02:05:28]  If you're in the Northern Territory, don't know what it is in Fahrenheit, but.
[02:05:32]  35, 38 degree days, you go out there without water, you're probably going to last.
[02:05:36]  We call it the rule of three.
[02:05:38]  So, you know, three days without water, three weeks without food, you know, three minutes without oxygen, three hours exposed to the environment, you know, whether in the cold or in the heat and all that kind of stuff.
[02:05:50]  It's just like a general format that they use.
[02:05:52]  But yeah, we'll generally cast about a three day window for people, you know, between three and five days to survive out there in the outback.
[02:06:00]  If you've got no real understandable skill set, you've got to be careful.
[02:06:04]  You perish, you perish fast out there.
[02:06:06]  The crows, the crows will be your friend.
[02:06:08]  Even when I was walking on them, the crows would be hanging around.
[02:06:11]  Really?
[02:06:11]  Watching me 100%.
[02:06:12]  Yeah.
[02:06:12]  But they started, you know, they actually realized, I think, they actually realized because I was so successful with what I was doing in terms of hunting food.
[02:06:19]  I reckon I had these pair of crows follow me all the way from the coast of fucking Numbawa into Caffron.
[02:06:24]  They follow me because every single time I was catching food or pigs or whatever, I'll just find the scraps that I eat.
[02:06:28]  The scraps that I'll just follow me like a beacon.
[02:06:30]  And you were just building fires to cook the pigs?
[02:06:32]  Yeah, 100%.
[02:06:33]  Yeah, of course.
[02:06:34]  Yeah, everything.
[02:06:35]  What were you afraid of?
[02:06:37]  What would have been the number one way?
[02:06:38]  You know what you're afraid of?
[02:06:39]  You're afraid of your own isolation.
[02:06:41]  You're afraid of yourself and your own, you know, whatever.
[02:06:43]  I've never.
[02:06:44]  What was the biggest threat to you out there?
[02:06:48]  So, I rolled my ankle actually trying to catch a water buffalo.
[02:06:52]  And so that was bad because then I had to strap it.
[02:06:57]  Look, I've always told people this would be my advice, and this is in a psychological format.
[02:07:04]  Don't look at it like you've got to walk 700 kilometers because that's really going to mentally get to you.
[02:07:08]  The way that you've got to be able to undertake any kind of expedition, you know, like a long term expedition, you've got to break it down.
[02:07:15]  So, the way that you've got to say to yourself is, right, break down that 700 kilometers into like, 10 kilometer journeys or 15 kilometer days.
[02:07:22]  So, and your mind frame that morning when you wake up isn't, I've got to go 700 kilometers.
[02:07:26]  No, no, keep that in the back of your mind.
[02:07:28]  When you wake up, you objectify that you need to walk 15 kilometers to the next billabong.
[02:07:33]  That's where your day is ending.
[02:07:34]  And tomorrow will be a new day.
[02:07:36]  That is the way that you undertake those expeditions.
[02:07:38]  Whether you're walking the fucking Amazon River or whatever you're doing, you need to be able to break down and compartment size the journey.
[02:07:44]  Because if you're thinking as a thing as a whole, you're mentally going to fry yourself out.
[02:07:48]  There's a saying from a book.
[02:07:51]  And It goes, and this almost always hits an emotional part of me because me and that horse went through fucking a lot, man.
[02:08:03]  Fuck, we went through fucking hell.
[02:08:05]  And I remember there was a day out there for two days where I went without water.
[02:08:10]  That was tough.
[02:08:11]  48 hours with no water.
[02:08:13]  Whilst walking, that was a bad one.
[02:08:18]  And so at the start of the trip, me and this horse, like, We couldn't have been any further apart of you know, uh, human and horse.
[02:08:28]  And as the trip went along, obviously the connection just built and built and built to the point that we were able to actually do this thing together.
[02:08:36]  I didn't even need a rope on him, really.
[02:08:39]  No, he just followed me.
[02:08:40]  In fact, he was actually helping me catch the.
[02:08:41]  I don't know if you got, yeah, so that one down there, that's a water buffalo, Asiatic water buffalo.
[02:08:46]  Which picture?
[02:08:47]  So down here to the right, go right, bottom right, yeah, that one, yeah.
[02:08:51]  Um, you're like the ones we have, dude, that's a big, oh, they are, you can catch them.
[02:08:55]  I was telling Forrest how to catch them, you were going to eat one.
[02:08:58]  Well, I took down three when I was there.
[02:09:00]  What?
[02:09:01]  Yeah.
[02:09:02]  The shit thing was, I only had a small knife, a K bar.
[02:09:05]  I only had like a four inch blade.
[02:09:06]  So that was.
[02:09:08]  Yeah.
[02:09:08]  So when I tied them up and brought them down, and then I had to kill it with that knife, that was.
[02:09:15]  How did you do that?
[02:09:17]  It's.
[02:09:18]  I can explain it.
[02:09:19]  It's quite graphic.
[02:09:20]  I just want to let people know that when you are in a situation, a survival situation, yes, keep your morals about you.
[02:09:28]  Yes, keep your ethics about you.
[02:09:30]  But the only way to survive is you need to be a savage.
[02:09:35]  The same Publix, the same fucking, you're not shopping at the grocery store.
[02:09:38]  You're literally life or death.
[02:09:39]  You have to be a, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[02:09:40]  You become a savage.
[02:09:41]  Yeah.
[02:09:42]  Okay.
[02:09:42]  But, you know, yes, you try and keep your morals and ethics about you.
[02:09:46]  How I had to kill him?
[02:09:47]  You bring him down to the ground, tie him up so he can't move.
[02:09:51]  So, first of all, when you spotted him, where was he?
[02:09:55]  What do you mean he was on land?
[02:09:57]  So he wasn't in the water?
[02:09:59]  Because usually they're in the water?
[02:10:00]  Yeah, so normally they do hang around with water, the water buffalo, and you can find it in around the billabongs, particularly in the early mornings and later in the afternoons.
[02:10:09]  That's when I come to drink.
[02:10:12]  But during the day, you'll just see him out in the floodplain, see him out walking, and then you pick your match.
[02:10:18]  Generally, you're going for an older bull, like an older male bull.
[02:10:22]  Right, right, right.
[02:10:24]  And yeah, you stick to him, you make that commitment, you just keep your home for him.
[02:10:27]  So I had a lasso.
[02:10:28]  So, I'd run him.
[02:10:30]  So, persistence hunting.
[02:10:30]  So, I'm running behind, running behind, running behind.
[02:10:33]  And, um, are we talking sprinting or jogging?
[02:10:36]  How fast?
[02:10:36]  So, I'm not talking David Rudish, 800 meter sprinter.
[02:10:40]  You know, you say bolt.
[02:10:42]  No, no, you keep an average speed on him.
[02:10:43]  You keep pressure on him.
[02:10:44]  And those older bulls, yeah, they'll run for a good distance, but I normally just keep behind them.
[02:10:50]  What you want is you want that animal to turn back on you.
[02:10:52]  Any animal that turns back on you, I said, now you're laughing because that animal's made a decision that it's went from flight into.
[02:11:00]  Right.
[02:11:01]  And now it's like, okay, well, now it's mano y mano.
[02:11:04]  So, what I would do is I'd run with these animals and then I would get a lasso around him and then I'd run with him with the lasso.
[02:11:10]  Now, you're talking about a one ton animal.
[02:11:12]  The only way to hold up a one ton animal is what I would do is as I was chasing behind him, he would go to one side of the tree.
[02:11:21]  Like, imagine as I'm running, you need to pick your trees good too because your tree is going to be your anchor point.
[02:11:26]  So, you've got about 25 meters of rope.
[02:11:28]  You run with this buffalo and all of a sudden you see a tree up ahead.
[02:11:32]  And you chase him in such a way that he goes to the left or to the right, either way.
[02:11:35]  But in that point, you put the sprint on him.
[02:11:38]  So you're right up his back end.
[02:11:40]  Because what you're now going to time is as soon as he goes past that tree, you've got to run.
[02:11:45]  It's like you're fucking sliding.
[02:11:46]  You know, with the baseball how they do their slides?
[02:11:48]  You've got to slide and get one rope in to anchor.
[02:11:51]  Does that make sense?
[02:11:52]  So as he goes down one side of the tree, you go the other and you get that first anchor in.
[02:11:57]  Now, mate, that can be very dangerous because you can lose your hands very fast.

=== Discipline Around the Tree (04:21) ===

[02:12:01]  Your hands get caught up in that rope.
[02:12:02]  I said, he'll pull your fucking arms out.
[02:12:06]  Get him anchored.
[02:12:07]  Once he's anchored and you tie that off, then it's about him going into fight mode.
[02:12:12]  So he's there, he's fighting this lasso, and then all of a sudden you walk towards him, and they're smart.
[02:12:17]  They're a smart animal, very calculated.
[02:12:19]  I get him to charge me, but as I'm getting them to charge me, I just keep running around the tree.
[02:12:24]  So what I'm doing is I'm just lowering the rope, you know what I mean?
[02:12:27]  Like I'm getting to a point where he almost wraps himself around the tree.
[02:12:31]  Then I get a back leg, right?
[02:12:33]  Another bit of rope, back leg, and then I essentially just.
[02:12:36]  Use his motion against him to get that back leg up.
[02:12:39]  As soon as I get that back leg up, he'll roll, he'll tip.
[02:12:42]  And then you've got to be fast because then you've got to get in there and you've got to tie their back legs up.
[02:12:46]  So, animals now on the ground, back legs are tied.
[02:12:49]  You've got to be careful because they can still move their horns and all that kind of stuff.
[02:12:52]  So, yeah, you're trying to essentially get him entangled.
[02:12:56]  At that point in time, you know, you've definitely got to have your connection with your animal.
[02:13:01]  And I, you know, I talked to him, I told him everything's going to be okay, everything's going to be fine.
[02:13:07]  Take your shirt off, wrap it around his eyes.
[02:13:09]  And then I would, because the skin of a buffalo is so thick and I've only got a four inch blade, what I'd have to do is I would literally cut.
[02:13:18]  It's going to sound real fucked up.
[02:13:20]  I'd have to cut almost like a patch.
[02:13:24]  Cut a patch, pull the skin, and then get the blade in, and then literally try and get my hands inside so then I can start cutting.
[02:13:33]  Because trying to get to your artery, it's actually quite deep.
[02:13:36]  Wow.
[02:13:37]  You have to get like fist deep in there just to get to the artery.
[02:13:41]  Wow.
[02:13:42]  Holy shit, bro.
[02:13:43]  Yeah, so it's pretty, like I said, it can be a pretty deep sort of thing going on there.
[02:13:53]  But look, I can't fucking even imagine, dude.
[02:13:57]  I think, did you just figure this out?
[02:13:59]  Or did you sort of know or understand or talk to people who have caught water buffalo before?
[02:14:04]  Nobody catches them like that.
[02:14:06]  People do it in the you just made this up as you were going.
[02:14:10]  Yeah, but that's what I've done.
[02:14:12]  I go and I catch animals.
[02:14:13]  I figure out different ways of doing it, different methodologies of doing it.
[02:14:15]  You just, yeah, just, I love it.
[02:14:17]  And actually, the catching water buffaloes is probably the one thing I actually enjoy doing in the Northern Territory because it represents the biggest danger and the biggest challenge.
[02:14:26]  But I love it, man.
[02:14:27]  I really, I get kicks for it.
[02:14:28]  I love it.
[02:14:29]  You are a fucking savage.
[02:14:31]  But I don't kill, no, I don't kill all of them, you know, I'll catch and release and all that kind of stuff.
[02:14:35]  But when I was doing this trek, I was catching the, of course, I was catching the kill.
[02:14:38]  Yeah.
[02:14:41]  Um, That is so intense.
[02:14:44]  Yeah, I don't.
[02:14:44]  Yeah, see, I've never really opened up, talked about this too much because this would make a lot of people feel uncomfortable and they'd probably look at me different and be like, man, this guy's real fucked up.
[02:14:52]  I don't think so.
[02:14:52]  No, I think the respect that I have and what I've had to do, I think people would be very surprised.
[02:14:58]  And I think there's got to be a lot of discipline.
[02:15:01]  There's got to be a lot of discipline in what I do.
[02:15:04]  And I think, you know, your connection with the animal, you know, the welfare of the animal and all that kind of stuff that needs to play a big part in it.
[02:15:14]  You know, someone that's not of that mind space, you know, they've, yeah, they're a bit different.
[02:15:22]  I think there's a lot that goes through my mind when I'm doing that consciously.
[02:15:28]  Yeah, man, you're doing it with your bare hands and a rope and a four inch blade.
[02:15:33]  I mean, it doesn't get any more intimate than that.
[02:15:36]  No.
[02:15:39]  There's one thing I'll say, and this is important.
[02:15:42]  I think it's probably worthwhile I say this.
[02:15:50]  The old quote that I was getting to is: it actually starts off as there's a boy and a horse, and they're in the forest.
[02:16:00]  And the boy says to the horse, I can't see a way through.
[02:16:09]  And the horse says to the boy, Can you see your next step?
[02:16:15]  And the boy says, Yes.
[02:16:18]  And then the horse replies will then just take that.

=== Taking the Next Step (14:32) ===

[02:16:22]  And I think that's a huge analogy out there.
[02:16:24]  I think for anyone that's listening, if you find yourself in life where you're in a situation, you don't know what to do and all that kind of stuff, as long as you just keep moving forwards, that is the way to go about it.
[02:16:34]  And things can look dark and deep and bad.
[02:16:37]  And I've definitely faced that when I've been out in the bush and I've done expeditions and all that kind of thing.
[02:16:42]  But as long as you keep pushing forward and you keep positive, I was prepared to fucking crawl out of there.
[02:16:48]  I was prepared to finish that thing by fucking crawling 100%.
[02:16:52]  You know, and I think everyone that has a deep motivation inside of them, and I dare say probably 99% of people on this earth never really get to tap into that deepest part of their motivation, that survival motivation.
[02:17:04]  You know, and that stays with you because I can still remember.
[02:17:07]  I can still remember the mindset.
[02:17:09]  I can still remember every single animal's eyes that I've, you know, I've had to look into to kill.
[02:17:14]  You know, you collect all that.
[02:17:17]  You collect all that information.
[02:17:19]  You know, you never lose that.
[02:17:22]  You hold on to that.
[02:17:25]  Wow, man.
[02:17:26]  That's fucking heavy, dude.
[02:17:30]  Yeah, you're probably right.
[02:17:33]  There are.
[02:17:34]  It's got to be, you know, less than 0.01% of the population who has ever experienced anything like this.
[02:17:40]  And it's scary to think, like, you know, how much farther are we away from completely losing it altogether with like the development of technology and artificial intelligence and all these phones?
[02:17:53]  Now we have fucking Apple goggles that people are wearing walking down the street, fucking doing conference calls on.
[02:18:01]  And it's interesting to think how human beings are going to look in.
[02:18:07]  50, 100, 500 years the way we're going right now, and how far away we are from what you experienced on that fucking quest you went through, man.
[02:18:17]  It seems like we are losing a lot of the senses that you talk about that you regain when you go there and stuff like that Paul talks about when he's in the rainforest.
[02:18:27]  Well, Paul, you know, Paul, Paul, Paul, know as well, you know, spending time in the jungle is you have to, there's a frequency, there's a wavelength that you have to tap into, you know, and you can only get there by immersing yourself out there.
[02:18:38]  And I dare say, look, I've been on a pretty wonderful trip through.
[02:18:42]  Central America and Nicaragua and Costa Rica and Colombia.
[02:18:49]  My true freedom is being in the bush by myself.
[02:18:53]  That's my freedom.
[02:18:54]  That's the realness of it.
[02:18:55]  You know what I mean?
[02:18:56]  That is the pure realness of my freedom.
[02:18:59]  And I wish, I really wish that a lot of people get to find their freedom and their connection.
[02:19:06]  I believe that that can sometimes be the recipe for a lot of things in life.
[02:19:12]  We're dealing in a world now where mental health is a big problem, suicides are.
[02:19:16]  Consistent problem and all that kind of stuff, and I think people need to be able to identify their escape, yeah, in somewhere where they feel you know they can be more than the person that they are.
[02:19:27]  And we are designed to be out there, and only when you're out there do you know what you really are as a person.
[02:19:32]  As me, as we sit across the table from each other as a species, do we know our very design and what we're designed from, really?
[02:19:42]  Right now, we were hunting, right?
[02:19:44]  We were, we were sharp, it sounds crazy, we were sharpening spears, and you know, let's go back up.
[02:19:48]  Four or five thousand years, we were sharpness.
[02:19:50]  We were a formidable species that survived off this earth.
[02:19:55]  Yeah.
[02:19:56]  We've lost that.
[02:19:58]  Maybe some of us, very few, have this, like a recessive gene that gets followed through to keep it there in the psyche.
[02:20:06]  I've definitely felt that.
[02:20:07]  Remember when I said when I was a kid, I just didn't know why this fucking random guy was running around chasing animals and stuff.
[02:20:14]  And like, I'll see a bird fly and like, I'll just like, maybe that was something that's instinctively, Just kept there just in case.
[02:20:21]  Right.
[02:20:22]  Just in case.
[02:20:23]  Don't know.
[02:20:24]  Were there any other crazy fucking animals that you had to run into that you weren't prepared for that either you had to evade or you had to hunt?
[02:20:33]  Well, look, there's obviously a very high population of saltwater crocodiles in the Northern Territory.
[02:20:39]  You've just got to pick your river system smart.
[02:20:41]  And most people in the Northern Territory would hear that and be like, they're all in there.
[02:20:45]  And they are true.
[02:20:46]  But I think there's certain junctions and certain places where you can walk which would be through the water which would be less dangerous than others, you know?
[02:20:53]  That's definitely the case.
[02:20:54]  A lot of guys out there right now doing pig hunting and all that sort of stuff.
[02:20:59]  Crocodiles are a dangerous animal to deal with because they're an ambush breeder.
[02:21:03]  I've got a lot of respect for all those animals.
[02:21:06]  I see them all the time when I'm out there doing my.
[02:21:08]  So I do tours in the Northern Territory where I take people out and I teach them what I know, right?
[02:21:14]  And it's a very immersive, it's a very inclusive.
[02:21:16]  You'll have to come one day when you come to it.
[02:21:17]  Yeah, there you go.
[02:21:18]  There's the introduction right there.
[02:21:19]  Very inclusive.
[02:21:20]  I do, like, this is my plug now.
[02:21:22]  I'm doing my plug.
[02:21:23]  Yeah.
[02:21:24]  Australian wild tours.
[02:21:25]  So I take people out there and I teach them how to survive.
[02:21:28]  So I use, obviously, information from the mandate of the Australian Defence Force, my own survival techniques and all that kind of stuff.
[02:21:35]  And essentially, my job is teaching you how to become comfortable and confident in nature.
[02:21:41]  And so I run a number of different programs where I teach people that.
[02:21:46]  When we're out, there's obviously a huge focus on crocodile safety.
[02:21:50]  Well, they're everywhere there, but there's heaps of crocodiles.
[02:21:55]  Look, I've seen some things with crocodiles over the years which have really surprised me.
[02:22:00]  They're a sneaky animal.
[02:22:03]  And they, it's almost like the crocodile, get this, you'll notice.
[02:22:07]  It's almost like the crocodile was designed to exist between your behavioral wavelength.
[02:22:15]  Let me explain that.
[02:22:16]  Okay, let me explain it.
[02:22:20]  When you're in an environment that you don't know, after a while, it's natural for us to develop a pattern and to develop a sense of comfortability with it.
[02:22:30]  So let's just say you move to an area for the first time and you work out where the shops are, you work out shortcuts to get down to the park or whatever.
[02:22:37]  Yeah.
[02:22:37]  You're essentially hardwiring your brain to go from point A to point B to point C in a very biologically calculating way.
[02:22:45]  Same way an animal goes down to a place to feed or then goes into vegetation to take refuge or whatever.
[02:22:54]  They develop a pattern at play.
[02:22:56]  Now, what happens is when you develop a pattern, you become incredibly confident and complacent.
[02:23:02]  These are the two things that a crocodile will use against you.
[02:23:06]  So I'll give you an example.
[02:23:07]  You go down to a nice camping place in the Northern Territory.
[02:23:10]  You go there to collect like a bucket of water on the first day, you know, to wash dishes or, you know, wash your car.
[02:23:17]  And you go down there and you collect water down at the bank.
[02:23:19]  You know, you're looking out there, like fucking, you know, can't see anything.
[02:23:22]  Go and collect water.
[02:23:23]  All good and get away with it.
[02:23:25]  Second day, you go down there, same thing.
[02:23:27]  Third day, fourth day, fifth day.
[02:23:29]  I don't know.
[02:23:29]  10 days in, you're still doing it.
[02:23:31]  Everything's all fine.
[02:23:33]  Naturally, what happens in every human being is you become so confident in your surroundings that you going down to collect water is nothing more than an automated response in your brain.
[02:23:44]  Right.
[02:23:45]  That's where he gets you.
[02:23:48]  That's where he's been watching you, he's been following your pattern.
[02:23:52]  So, on the seventh day or the eighth day that you go down there just to collect water as you did, like the interview that I've done with that kid that got swiped, is.
[02:24:03]  What interview?
[02:24:04]  Oh, so that was the interview I've done with.
[02:24:07]  It was two interviews I've done.
[02:24:08]  One was with a guy who'd lost his wife to a crocodile attack, and I asked what had happened, and she went down there to clean dishes down there at the river where she'd.
[02:24:18]  Went, you know, for the last week or two weeks and you know, change things up, but no, you know, she'd went into a pattern and she got taken, and the husband watched her get taken.
[02:24:28]  Oh, god!
[02:24:28]  So, that crocodile will know the exact pinpoint location, and there's time, time doesn't matter for that animal, he's got all the time in the world, he'll wait there all day, he'll wait there for three or four days, he's got all the time in the world, you know what I mean.
[02:24:43]  And so, um, where the issue comes in is it comes into your natural possession of confidence and complacency in your brain, he'll wait all day for you.
[02:24:52]  He'll wait there and he'll get you.
[02:24:56]  That's why they're dangerous, is because they can understand your pattern probably better than yourself.
[02:25:01]  Is that why you have an advantage when you go to like catch them?
[02:25:04]  Do you, because you're coming in there, you're not, they haven't seen you before, you're not going there every day, you are doing the same thing, but the roles are reversed.
[02:25:12]  You know what they're doing, you know where they are.
[02:25:14]  Look, there's so much boasting about, you know, the crocodiles.
[02:25:17]  I could be, I could take a 14 year old child out on a dinghy and say, right, I'm going to teach you how to catch a four meter or five meter crocodile.
[02:25:25]  And it's not hard.
[02:25:27]  Yes, there are very dangerous and a lot of things that can go wrong.
[02:25:30]  But there's a technique to it.
[02:25:32]  You know, go in at nighttime.
[02:25:33]  You can use like a pole with a lasso.
[02:25:37]  There's many different ways of being able to capture an animal like that and get him under control and safely.
[02:25:41]  Manny hunts gators with those things.
[02:25:43]  Oh, yeah, 100%.
[02:25:44]  I'd love to meet him one day.
[02:25:46]  I'd love to meet Manny.
[02:25:48]  Yeah, that'd be incredible to get you guys together, man.
[02:25:50]  Yeah, I'd really love to.
[02:25:51]  Because, like I said, he was one of the originals, you know.
[02:25:54]  He was one of the true, you know, true originals, Manny.
[02:25:59]  Have you seen the videos of him levitating the croc alligators?
[02:26:01]  I've watched all this stuff.
[02:26:03]  I love him, I think he's great.
[02:26:04]  What?
[02:26:05]  Um, he'd be in his 60s now, wouldn't he?
[02:26:08]  Yeah, he's probably in his early mid 60s.
[02:26:11]  He's getting up there.
[02:26:12]  Yeah, he's focused on his art now.
[02:26:14]  He doesn't really around with wildlife.
[02:26:15]  He does, um, he'll be like guide people on like hunting trips and stuff like that, like hunting hogs or hunting gators or whatever.
[02:26:23]  But, um, he doesn't do any of the crazy stuff.
[02:26:25]  He doesn't swim with sharks anymore.
[02:26:26]  He's been bitten by seven different species of sharks.
[02:26:28]  Yeah, I saw that.
[02:26:28]  Yeah, yeah, it's wild.
[02:26:31]  Are is it so is there a big difference between your approach and?
[02:26:35]  To a gator versus a croc?
[02:26:37]  Oh, look, you couldn't.
[02:26:42]  And Manning would tell you this too.
[02:26:43]  You couldn't go into the Mary River or the Adelaide River in the Northern Territory and go there waist deep and try and levitate a saltwater crocodile because it'll be the last thing you ever do.
[02:26:53]  Why is that?
[02:26:54]  It just is different.
[02:26:56]  Are they more aggressive?
[02:26:57]  Oh, can't compare them.
[02:26:59]  Couldn't even put them in the same room.
[02:27:01]  Couldn't even put them in the same box.
[02:27:03]  What I'm trying to say.
[02:27:04]  Yeah, they're behaviourally different.
[02:27:05]  This animal here, the Australian saltwater crocodile, sorry, the Estuarine saltwater crocodile.
[02:27:10]  Is a whole different kettle of fish.
[02:27:15]  The way that he looks at the world, different to an alligator.
[02:27:18]  Oh, look, I've been in the water with alligators before.
[02:27:21]  Is the diet different?
[02:27:22]  No, I think the diet would probably be the same.
[02:27:24]  I think, yeah, almost identical.
[02:27:27]  I just think there's just something definitely structured in the brain, which is different.
[02:27:32]  They just see you purely as prey.
[02:27:34]  And their approach is very sneaky as well.
[02:27:37]  We're talking about a predator that's evolved over tens of millions of years.
[02:27:43]  Yeah, he doesn't at all see you as a threat as long as he's in his own natural environment.
[02:27:50]  If he's up on land, yeah, he'll still defend himself, but he doesn't want anything to do with you.
[02:27:54]  You can walk along the banks of the Northern Territory, and if these guys are up on the bank, the first thing they'll do is go straight into the water.
[02:28:00]  They know because that is where, that's their world, that's their realm, that's their hiding place, that's their vantage point.
[02:28:05]  You know, it's where you go to the edge of the water or you go into the water, you'll become undone, you'll become unstuck.
[02:28:10]  So, one of the things I teach, As part of the tours, is obviously crocodile awareness.
[02:28:15]  I'll take them out.
[02:28:16]  We've got some captive crocodiles that we feed and, you know, get people to really appreciate and respect these animals, but just, you know, teaching them the safety points.
[02:28:24]  And, you know, the Northern Territory government, the parks and wildlife, they do a very good job at, you know, trying to educate the public or for travelers which are coming in.
[02:28:33]  It's called the Crocwise Program.
[02:28:36]  And essentially just telling people, like, you know, stay out of the water, essentially.
[02:28:39]  Be smart around the water's edge if you're doing fishing, if you're doing any kind of things recreationally, because, um, The problem, look, someone gets taken, some, you know, a father or a son or a daughter or whatever.
[02:28:51]  Generally, it's men because we're just, you know, that way inclined.
[02:28:55]  And, but, you know, then the animal's got to get shot and it's bad media.
[02:29:00]  It's this and that.
[02:29:00]  It's not a good thing.
[02:29:01]  So, yeah, we try to be quite preventative with our approach.
[02:29:07]  And, you know, a lot of warnings and all that kind of stuff, you know.
[02:29:11]  You got that video, Steve?
[02:29:12]  Play that video.
[02:29:29]  Is this that same area?
[02:29:31]  Northern?
[02:29:32]  No, it's the Finnish River Station.
[02:29:36]  So that's where I operate.
[02:29:39]  And it's like 55,000 acres of just wildlife wonderland.
[02:29:45]  That's fucking awesome.
[02:29:46]  That's the most venomous snakes on earth.
[02:29:48]  And we've also got our very own ancient dinosaur.
[02:29:54]  Euchel's Wild Tours are Australia's wildest experience.
[02:29:59]  An adventure like no other.
[02:30:02]  Dude.
[02:30:03]  That is wild.
[02:30:04]  That's gorgeous.
[02:30:05]  You can find me at ukleswildtours.com.
[02:30:08]  So, I'll tell you a funny story.
[02:30:09]  So, I started having meetings with the Northern Territory government.
[02:30:12]  And this was around about the same time I started talking with Parks and Wildlife.
[02:30:15]  And I was just like, I'm going to do the right thing from now on, right?
[02:30:18]  I'm just, you know, I'll do everything your way, the permit way.
[02:30:21]  And, you know, and they're like, all right, Mr. Ukles, you know, we're going to trial you, see how you go.
[02:30:26]  And then, as soon as I think I've had this pivotal part in my life, the, you know, I started connecting with NT Tourism, Northern Territory Tourism.
[02:30:36]  And, you know, essentially they've been, you know, fantastic in, you know, helping me try to develop the tours and make it more, you know, increase the distribution and all that kind of stuff.
[02:30:45]  But the first thing that the lady said when I sat down is she says, if you want us to help you or get behind you, you have to do just one thing.

=== Organic Wildlife Work (08:38) ===

[02:30:55]  I said, what's that?
[02:30:56]  She goes, Andrew, if you want us to take you serious and you want us to promote you to an international market, you have to put your fucking shirt on.
[02:31:06]  Yeah.
[02:31:09]  And it's true because cultural appropriation is different around the world.
[02:31:13]  I actually, you know, I was in Zimbabwe and I was walking around with my shirt off.
[02:31:16]  And I had one of the locals there say, Hey, where's your shirt?
[02:31:19]  I said, What are you wearing?
[02:31:20]  Really?
[02:31:20]  Where's my fucking shirt?
[02:31:21]  I said, My shirt's in the car.
[02:31:23]  He said, Go put your shirt on.
[02:31:25]  I said, Why?
[02:31:26]  He goes, Because this is, you're not allowed to do this.
[02:31:29]  You're not allowed to have your shirt off.
[02:31:31]  I thought everybody walked around shirtless there.
[02:31:33]  Mate, me too.
[02:31:35]  Uh oh.
[02:31:35]  Most of the pictures are without shirts.
[02:31:38]  Only the locals are allowed to go shirtless, maybe.
[02:31:41]  Exactly.
[02:31:42]  Yeah.
[02:31:42]  Well, yeah.
[02:31:43]  So they're like, put your shirt back on.
[02:31:45]  That's weird.
[02:31:46]  So, yeah, so I've had to do everything with a collared shirt now, which is fine.
[02:31:51]  Okay, find the video on Andrew's YouTube channel.
[02:31:53]  I think it's your number one video with you approaching a hippo.
[02:31:58]  Right?
[02:31:59]  Yeah, probably.
[02:32:00]  Probably somewhere.
[02:32:01]  What were you doing?
[02:32:01]  Was that in Africa?
[02:32:03]  That was, yeah, that was in Africa.
[02:32:05]  Yep.
[02:32:06]  Oh, look, I've had some close calls with you.
[02:32:08]  The thing I want to put out there is this whenever I've had a true, like a true, True, true, true close call.
[02:32:17]  Camera's never rolling, right?
[02:32:19]  Because you're fucking you've got to get the out of it.
[02:32:21]  Yeah, so I've had and this was years ago, film, but I had one just recently where I almost got taken out by a hippo and it was at night time.
[02:32:28]  Uh, this was on the recent Honey Badger one, yeah.
[02:32:30]  I hit him with a torch, hey, yeah.
[02:32:32]  He came out, dude, you are a maniac.
[02:32:34]  Yeah, I ended up uh hitting him in the head with a torch, which I thought was a pretty good advertisement for this torch company.
[02:32:40]  Um, but yeah, so what happened was I was walking and um.
[02:32:45]  His came in from the bush and I was walking through the river.
[02:32:47]  And I don't know if he was directly, well, no, he was directly going for me.
[02:32:51]  And the only thing I had in my hands as a saving grace was I had this big torch.
[02:32:54]  I fucking threw the torch at him.
[02:32:56]  It's fucking bounced off his head, but I feel like it was enough for me to just like kind of get away to the left hand side.
[02:33:02]  And then he didn't worry about chasing me.
[02:33:03]  I think he was just more so just trying to go to the water.
[02:33:05]  But mate, it happened fast and they can fucking move.
[02:33:08]  Oh my God.
[02:33:09]  Yeah, but I flogged him with a torch, eh?
[02:33:12]  I heard it.
[02:33:12]  Oh, fucking dope.
[02:33:15]  Um, So, do you get fucked up by hippos often?
[02:33:19]  Or do people die?
[02:33:20]  Yeah, 100%.
[02:33:21]  People know how to stay away, or do they still get people?
[02:33:23]  The locals are pretty smart, eh?
[02:33:24]  Yeah.
[02:33:25]  Because there's a good flight distance, I guess, that the people will have with them.
[02:33:30]  But yeah, people get chomped all the time.
[02:33:32]  If that animal gets on top of you, just like a water buffalo, he'll make work of you.
[02:33:40]  But they don't eat meat, right?
[02:33:42]  No, they don't.
[02:33:43]  They don't.
[02:33:44]  So I stopped doing the YouTube stuff a couple of years ago.
[02:33:48]  Why?
[02:33:50]  For the reasons I was saying.
[02:33:50]  It was just me with my camera.
[02:33:53]  It was so much hard work.
[02:33:55]  When you're trying to do things which are organically, the reason why, look.
[02:34:00]  When you look at the success of people like Cody Peterson on that space, crew of people, things are organized, things are scripted, things are, you know, and it becomes a process which is completely computational and algorithmic.
[02:34:16]  Yes.
[02:34:17]  And it has to be, and you'd even know it's like when you, the ability to do a podcast here and have next person after the other one, you know, like a, you know, like a door that's always opening, is it's always content coming out.
[02:34:27]  It's a lot.
[02:34:27]  It's a lot of monotonous work.
[02:34:29]  Yeah.
[02:34:29]  Yes.
[02:34:30]  If you're trying to film your natural, Natural engagement with animals, capturing animals, and all that kind of stuff.
[02:34:37]  Some of these animals would take me weeks to try and catch.
[02:34:41]  You know, even look at the honey badger, it took me four and a half fucking months to catch in Africa.
[02:34:45]  And one thing I really wanted to stay true to is I didn't want to do the same animal, the same snake, and I watched some guys, the same snake, and the same snake again, same guy, it's been done a thousand fucking times.
[02:34:54]  I wanted to do things, you know, like all different animal species.
[02:34:58]  But doing these and going to these areas and doing the filming, sometimes it would take me, you know, on average two to three weeks to Try and find an animal, you know, or to capture it down and all that kind of stuff.
[02:35:07]  And when you start thinking about that and how that would integrate into content for YouTube and engagement, it doesn't work.
[02:35:15]  Right.
[02:35:16]  Because there's no consistency there.
[02:35:18]  Right.
[02:35:18]  You know, and I think that was probably one of the biggest issues.
[02:35:20]  And that's when I kind of left that and thought, right, well, I'll just do the documentaries.
[02:35:24]  These are all solo documentaries that I was doing.
[02:35:25]  These are the ones that went to Netflix.
[02:35:27]  Right.
[02:35:27]  And now it's come to a point in my career where, and I think I can say, like, Forrest has just put me up for a show on Animal Planet, which I hope I get, you know, hosting show.
[02:35:39]  You know, if it's something like that and there's help around me and a production and things are paid for, then I'll be the first person there at the airport waiting.
[02:35:50]  The problem is in my entire life, and I don't take back one day of it, but 15 years of going out there just by myself with a camera and the amount of expenses and everything else, I barely made a dollar.
[02:36:03]  You were?
[02:36:04]  I barely made a dollar.
[02:36:04]  I sound Australian there.
[02:36:06]  I barely made a dollar.
[02:36:07]  Like if I was to break it down over 15 years, I've probably made a quarter of a million dollars.
[02:36:12]  But imagine if you would have been.
[02:36:13]  But think about that, quarter million dollars over 15 years.
[02:36:15]  What's that?
[02:36:17]  That's like $16,000 a year.
[02:36:19]  What's nothing?
[02:36:21]  You can barely live off it.
[02:36:22]  You know what I mean?
[02:36:22]  So I think it got to a point where it was just like, I've got a skill set.
[02:36:26]  I've got this ability.
[02:36:27]  I know I can host and I've got the character.
[02:36:30]  I know I've got all the necessary formula behind me.
[02:36:33]  But now I just need something which is more formative because to continue going like this by myself.
[02:36:40]  That's interesting, man.
[02:36:41]  That's an interesting way of thinking and doing and living your life because.
[02:36:46]  I think most people would, if there was no cameras rolling, they wouldn't do half this shit or they wouldn't do probably any of it.
[02:36:54]  But you look at it the completely opposite way, which is very, very unique.
[02:37:00]  And that's not just with doing crazy wildlife shit and trekking through fucking deadly territory and catching deadly animals.
[02:37:07]  I mean, that's with anything, right?
[02:37:09]  Even podcasting.
[02:37:10]  Like how many people would sit here and would want to, it would be unsustainable, I guess.
[02:37:15]  It's impossible to fly in people from all around the world and talk to them if you're not.
[02:37:19]  Trying to like set up some sort of a machine around it and try to develop a money making apparatus to make it sustain itself.
[02:37:26]  Well, I think, and what people are seeing there look, I think I'd uploaded close to 100 videos.
[02:37:31]  What people are seeing is less than 0.001% of what I was willing to show people.
[02:37:37]  Right.
[02:37:38]  There's so much that I've done.
[02:37:40]  You know what I mean?
[02:37:42]  There's so much to it.
[02:37:43]  Yeah.
[02:37:44]  And I just seen a lot of these guys that were coming up for you, and the first thing that they were thinking, there was a brand instruction in place.
[02:37:49]  All right, we've got to do the hats and we've got to do the backpacks and we've got to do the shirts and we've got to do this.
[02:37:53]  And everything was just, it was just like a McDonald's fucking business.
[02:37:56]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[02:37:57]  That's what it was.
[02:37:57]  It was just like a marketing McDonald's thing.
[02:37:59]  Yeah.
[02:38:00]  And when I saw people like that person, like Katie Pierson, that's all it was.
[02:38:04]  It was just like, how can I be a franchise brand?
[02:38:08]  And that was the force.
[02:38:09]  The animal stuff is second, but how can I be that brand first?
[02:38:12]  And I think that's where the dis, being disingenuous and that disingenuous people can sense that.
[02:38:18]  Yes, they can.
[02:38:19]  But people like that, Never become icons like Steve Irwin because the core of what they're doing, you can see the undercurrent of that.
[02:38:26]  I'm sorry.
[02:38:27]  I'm sorry to call it out, but for me, I can see it.
[02:38:30]  I feel like Australians are really sensitive to that kind of stuff too.
[02:38:34]  Like someone that's selling out is, yeah, it's just, I wouldn't wear a backpack or I wouldn't wear a pair of shoes that I didn't believe in.
[02:38:46]  Does that make sense?
[02:38:47]  Absolutely.
[02:38:47]  I wouldn't believe in.
[02:38:48]  I've only had three sponsors.
[02:38:50]  I've had K Bar, right?
[02:38:52]  Because, well, then I was work.
[02:38:55]  I put them to the test.
[02:38:56]  You know, if you don't believe me, I can show you some stuff at the Buffaloes if you like.
[02:38:59]  Really?
[02:39:00]  But listen, there's only very small brands that I would actually put my life into.
[02:39:05]  And I can relate that back to the rawness of what I've done.
[02:39:08]  I'm not going to sit here with something and promote something that I don't believe in.
[02:39:12]  I just want, it's against my core.
[02:39:14]  I just don't believe in that.
[02:39:15]  And maybe, you know, a lot of people probably watching this podcast and be like, well, no wonder why you got no money because you didn't sell out.
[02:39:24]  I'd rather be broke than sell out.
[02:39:26]  That's my character.
[02:39:27]  And I think a lot of people in the industry, it's not like that, Daniel.
[02:39:31]  They'll sell out.
[02:39:32]  They'll change their fucking names.

=== Translating Chimp Language (10:42) ===

[02:39:34]  They'll do whatever they can to make it.
[02:39:37]  They'll fake it till they make it.
[02:39:38]  That was never going to be me.
[02:39:40]  I'm sorry.
[02:39:41]  It's just, it's not who I am as a human.
[02:39:43]  It's not.
[02:39:44]  Well, that's why you're such a fucking badass, bro.
[02:39:47]  Well, I think it's just, it was just, it's a lot of it's about being true to yourself, too.
[02:39:51]  Yeah, absolutely.
[02:39:52]  100%.
[02:39:52]  100%.
[02:39:53]  You know, and yeah, look, there's got to be gives and takes.
[02:39:55]  There's been, Some shows that I haven't been 100% on.
[02:39:59]  And, you know, you've got to see these things as opportunity or opening doors.
[02:40:03]  And so it's not like I've been close to that because there have definitely been things where I thought, you know, okay.
[02:40:08]  But I think, yeah, you've definitely got to stay true to yourself.
[02:40:13]  You have to stay true to yourself.
[02:40:15]  What do you think about?
[02:40:16]  Have you heard of this thing called interspecies AI communication?
[02:40:22]  No.
[02:40:23]  The first thing I think of, though, is if an alien was to come down here to Earth, How long do you think it'd be until someone tried to fuck it?
[02:40:30]  Honestly, you know that would happen pretty fast.
[02:40:34]  Yeah.
[02:40:34]  It would.
[02:40:35]  Yeah, if there were enough of them, 100% you could find somebody who'd want to fuck it.
[02:40:38]  Absolutely.
[02:40:40]  Yeah.
[02:40:42]  And you know, there'd be a disclaimer.
[02:40:43]  The government would be smart and it'd be like, do not contact, do not touch.
[02:40:46]  But really, the government's just like, please, someone just don't fuck one.
[02:40:50]  We just don't want to create a virus that's going to wipe out the earth.
[02:40:55]  We just don't want that right now.
[02:40:57]  I don't think we'd have to be worried about that.
[02:40:59]  I think the thing you'd have to be worried about is the aliens wanting to fuck us.
[02:41:03]  You reckon?
[02:41:04]  I think the aliens would want to probably fuck the humans or like find some, you know, some hot indigenous humans.
[02:41:11]  Okay, I think I have heard about this.
[02:41:12]  So is this to do with the original conversation where the octopus wasn't from here?
[02:41:18]  It came from somewhere else?
[02:41:19]  Is this where this is going or no?
[02:41:21]  No, I don't think so.
[02:41:21]  I think so.
[02:41:22]  This is, correct me if I'm wrong, I mean, we can read it, but what was explained to me was that it's a new artificial intelligence that's being developed, like a language intelligence that can decipher animal communication for us and basically translate it into something we can understand.
[02:41:43]  Yeah, blow that up so we can read the bio of this company.
[02:41:50]  Disciplinary global think tank to encourage the acceleration of interspecies communication with 4,500 plus members, including leading sector professionals.
[02:41:58]  A primary premise of the project is that the interspecies internet can be used to both link non human species that are not collocated and can use its computational capacity to introduce AI and machine learning methods to transduce signals from one species into coherent signals for another.
[02:42:21]  So, yeah, they want to basically translate animal language into human language.
[02:42:26]  I feel like something just went through my mind.
[02:42:28]  I feel like if I was to compile a series of sentences, which probably came off all the animals that I've chased over the years, a lot of those things would run off the narrative of why the fuck are you chasing me?
[02:42:45]  Fuck off.
[02:42:47]  Who is this wanker?
[02:42:50]  Yeah, you're probably right.
[02:42:52]  Straight out.
[02:42:53]  That'd be another concise thing.
[02:42:54]  Yeah.
[02:42:55]  But how fucked up would that be, dude, if we could telepathically communicate with animals?
[02:43:00]  There was a dog that I've seen.
[02:43:03]  So there's been a number of animals over the years which I think have really been individualized as having this next level of intelligence.
[02:43:12]  One was an African grey parrot called Alex.
[02:43:18]  I think that was one.
[02:43:20]  I think there was also a gorilla that was in captivity.
[02:43:25]  Is that Amy?
[02:43:27]  May have been.
[02:43:29]  And a dog.
[02:43:31]  The most recent one was the dog where, you know, they've got, I think it's got a lexigram where they have all these different buttons that symbolize different things like outside, food, water.
[02:43:41]  And this one was actually a really complicated lexigram where there was almost like questions in it that evolved around motion.
[02:43:47]  And I believe it's one of those, is it a Labradoodle?
[02:43:51]  Like the poodle across the Labradoodle?
[02:43:52]  Yeah.
[02:43:52]  One of those ones.
[02:43:53]  Yeah.
[02:43:53]  Really intelligent.
[02:43:55]  This was the most interesting part was the dog went up to it and it pressed.
[02:44:01]  It simultaneously pressed the button that said, What am I? and then walked over and looked into the mirror and looked at the owner.
[02:44:09]  What?
[02:44:11]  That's deep.
[02:44:12]  Wow.
[02:44:13]  That's deep.
[02:44:15]  That's deep.
[02:44:16]  Wow.
[02:44:17]  That's deep.
[02:44:18]  What am I?
[02:44:19]  That's deep.
[02:44:20]  That is very deep.
[02:44:22]  What the fuck, man?
[02:44:24]  That's interesting.
[02:44:25]  Yeah, I got to find that.
[02:44:27]  Coco.
[02:44:28]  Coco.
[02:44:28]  That's it.
[02:44:28]  Because there was a famous scene with Robin Williams with Coco.
[02:44:34]  And I think it learned sign language, it was able to communicate.
[02:44:37]  There's an interesting study that they've done years ago, and this is actually really scary.
[02:44:42]  I think it's one of those Russian experiments where they put a child and a chimpanzee together at a very, very young age.
[02:44:51]  And essentially, the experiment was to teach this chimpanzee human knowledge and human traits and behavior and all that kind of stuff.
[02:45:01]  I think the experiment only went on for a couple of months and they had to shut it down.
[02:45:05]  You know why?
[02:45:07]  Because it was actually the child that was starting to learn the traits of the chimpanzee.
[02:45:12]  Because animals have such a hardwired behavioral system, like, and everything that they have is so hardwired.
[02:45:17]  And it was interesting to see that it was the human brain that had that plasticity or that adaptability and was actually absorbing more information from no way.
[02:45:27]  So, yeah.
[02:45:28]  And which I thought was fascinating, you know, truly fascinating.
[02:45:32]  You know what I mean, though?
[02:45:33]  Like, yeah, we're, we are so different from apes.
[02:45:37]  I mean, it's our closest living relative species.
[02:45:42]  And we, you know, supposedly came from apes and we, you know, we evolved from apes, but we're so fucking different.
[02:45:49]  Like, it's like, There's nothing.
[02:45:51]  There's such a huge gap between the most developed primate to a human being.
[02:45:59]  It's almost like there was some sort of intervention there.
[02:46:03]  Yeah, that's like the theory that a monkey ate a mushroom, a psychedelic mushroom, and the brain grew like five times the size.
[02:46:14]  What's the name of that theory?
[02:46:16]  It's called the, I forget the name of it right now.
[02:46:19]  I've never heard of it.
[02:46:20]  But yeah, there's all these crazy theories on how humans, because there's nothing really close to us in the world.
[02:46:26]  Think about every single animal that exists on Earth and then us.
[02:46:29]  We are so fucking, we're miles apart from every single one.
[02:46:32]  Completely.
[02:46:34]  It's funny.
[02:46:35]  The Stone Date Theory, that's what it's called.
[02:46:37]  The Stone Date Theory.
[02:46:37]  I just saw that last image and it reminded me of Travis the Chimp.
[02:46:41]  You know that story?
[02:46:42]  No.
[02:46:44]  Oh, man.
[02:46:45]  That's terrifying.
[02:46:46]  Who's Travis the Chimp?
[02:46:47]  Is this the one where the chimp ripped apart the little girl?
[02:46:50]  Uh, yeah, that woman, the next door neighbor, yeah, ripped her face off, yeah.
[02:46:53]  Oh, and the 911 call, and that lady's this is ties in back to that whole animal attachment, emotional attachment with the animal, and all that kind of stuff.
[02:47:02]  And this lady had a very unhealthy relationship with this chimpanzee and lived in a house, and all that kind of stuff.
[02:47:08]  And this chimpanzee would look out the window like every day and see the next door neighbor because this lady was friends with this other lady, and it just would death stare, you know what I mean?
[02:47:16]  And it probably waited its entire life to be like, I'll get you one day, really, you know what I mean?
[02:47:20]  Because once again, like to a chimpanzee like that, like time doesn't exist.
[02:47:22]  That's it, Travis the Chimp.
[02:47:24]  Is that what she looks like after?
[02:47:25]  Did she die?
[02:47:26]  She lived?
[02:47:27]  She lived.
[02:47:29]  Oh, wow.
[02:47:30]  She got a new face.
[02:47:31]  Travis the Chimp managed to escape from the enclosure one day and it essentially molded this lady to death.
[02:47:42]  A bit of hand off, a bit of face off.
[02:47:45]  And this lady, all the while, I think she was the owner was like stabbing it with a kitchen knife whilst on the phone to 911.
[02:47:54]  And it, yeah, it's this.
[02:47:57]  You know, I think at that point in time, particularly in the US, it really raised a lot of questions about the exotic animals or, you know, these dangerous animals which were being kept as literally kitchen pets.
[02:48:11]  You know, this kind of brings into the whole Tiger King thing now, doesn't it?
[02:48:15]  You know?
[02:48:17]  But yeah, I just thought that this was, yeah, a real tragic and bizarre.
[02:48:22]  Monkeys are terrifying.
[02:48:23]  Yeah.
[02:48:24]  You've seen the videos of monkeys stealing the kids?
[02:48:27]  No.
[02:48:27]  There's like, there's videos on YouTube of like these little monkeys.
[02:48:30]  I forget where it was, but there's uh, I don't know if he is.
[02:48:32]  I think, I think uh, the parent like intervened at the last minute, but these monkeys like stalked this little toddler and like tried to grab it and like steal it.
[02:48:40]  And they were like in a tug.
[02:48:41]  There it is right there.
[02:48:43]  Yeah, watch this.
[02:48:44]  Have I seen this?
[02:48:45]  Maybe there's also some tick tock.
[02:48:48]  Gotcha.
[02:48:48]  Look at this.
[02:48:50]  No, he's gonna use it as a form of body.
[02:48:51]  Holy crap.
[02:48:52]  I'll give you the child back.
[02:48:53]  You give me some crackers.
[02:48:56]  Like, what the man?
[02:48:58]  I think someone was just filming that recently.
[02:49:00]  I think it was in.
[02:49:01]  The monkey stole the little.
[02:49:02]  It took him out.
[02:49:03]  In Indonesia, I think it's the macaques.
[02:49:06]  And what they'll do is they will steal a wallet or a purse or a possession like a phone.
[02:49:12]  And they actually use it as like a form of barter.
[02:49:14]  And they'll go up to the tree and say, Will you give me a treat?
[02:49:16]  I'll give you the phone back.
[02:49:17]  So they've been able to work that out, which I think is that's another level of intelligence, isn't it?
[02:49:21]  Really?
[02:49:22]  Yeah.
[02:49:22]  Oh, yeah.
[02:49:23]  Well, monkeys are the one that first developed prostitution.
[02:49:27]  Really?
[02:49:28]  Yeah.
[02:49:29]  I forget when the study was done or whatever, but there was a study done where they put like two male primates or chimps and a female.
[02:49:41]  And how did it go?
[02:49:44]  The males were.
[02:49:48]  the female would end up fucking the male who gave it food.
[02:49:54]  Right.
[02:49:55]  I think that's how it went.
[02:49:57]  Right.
[02:49:58]  But basically, they were both competing to see who could, like, bring the female the food.
[02:50:02]  And the female would only sleep with the, the, um, the ape that brought it food.
[02:50:08]  Right.
[02:50:09]  Wow.
[02:50:12]  Yeah, dude, they're bizarre.
[02:50:15]  So what else is there?

=== Funding Cape Buffalo Tours (03:20) ===

[02:50:16]  What else is there that you haven't done that you, that you still want to do?
[02:50:19]  Is there, is there any crazy?
[02:50:21]  Trek or any crazy animal that you haven't caught yet, or any place in the world that you haven't been that you want to go?
[02:50:27]  It was funny.
[02:50:28]  I was just in Medellin in Colombia.
[02:50:29]  I went to the zoo there.
[02:50:30]  And as I was walking through the zoo, you know, I had quite a wide diversity of animals from all over the place.
[02:50:35]  And it was funny because as I was walking there, I was like, yeah, I've caught that one.
[02:50:38]  I've caught this one.
[02:50:39]  I've caught that one.
[02:50:39]  Tracked this one.
[02:50:41]  I think, unless it's something which is really out there, you know, and once again, I think if a network was to turn around, like the Congo River, that hasn't been walked yet, I know people have talked about it and da da da.
[02:50:53]  But if I put this out now and I say to a network, if you will pay the way for me, I will go and walk the fucking Congo.
[02:51:00]  I'll do that tomorrow.
[02:51:01]  It's just, for me, it's not, I don't know.
[02:51:04]  I don't, obviously, it's a challenge.
[02:51:06]  Why the Congo?
[02:51:07]  Because it hasn't been done, remember?
[02:51:08]  I just, if it's been done, I don't care.
[02:51:12]  Whatever.
[02:51:14]  If something hasn't been done, I'll do it.
[02:51:16]  If someone's willing to pay the way for it, I'll do it.
[02:51:18]  Actually, my friend actually gave me a good idea.
[02:51:20]  He's like, man, you should just start like a GoFundMe of like people that can't believe.
[02:51:25]  You know, to like catch certain animals because I was telling people about how I catch the water buffaloes, and then straight away, someone's like, Oh, but you couldn't do it with a cape buffalo.
[02:51:31]  I'm like, No, I bet I could.
[02:51:33]  So, I reckon I could actually start like a GoFundMe where it'd be like, Right, if you want me to go and catch a cape buffalo, this is how much it's going to cost for my airfares, and then I'll go and spend however long to go and catch that animal.
[02:51:45]  You know what I mean?
[02:51:46]  Yeah.
[02:51:46]  But you know, you got to think like, What's the plight of all this?
[02:51:50]  You know, and I think part of that plight is it's about educating people, bringing awareness.
[02:51:55]  What I love now is teaching a skill set.
[02:51:58]  You know what I mean?
[02:51:58]  I think that's why I've probably evolved into conducting the tours in the Northern Territory and doing that kind of stuff.
[02:52:04]  But look, I'm definitely open to doing stuff with networks and filming.
[02:52:09]  You know, that's always been like a huge passion of mine.
[02:52:12]  You know, and I don't feel like you can over explore any kind of place.
[02:52:15]  I think there's always something to do.
[02:52:17]  But like I said, like Daniel, I'm always after a challenge.
[02:52:21]  I want a hard challenge, you know.
[02:52:24]  And I said to Forrest, I said, if he gets the funding to go to that Tasmanian tiger thing, I said, I'll be there.
[02:52:31]  He knows I'll be there.
[02:52:32]  That's fucking incredible, man.
[02:52:33]  I hope it happens.
[02:52:34]  Yeah.
[02:52:34]  Well, dude, thank you, Andrew Uchals, for doing this, man, all the way from Australia.
[02:52:38]  Well, from Medellin to here and back to Australia tomorrow.
[02:52:41]  Yep.
[02:52:41]  But thanks again.
[02:52:42]  Where can people find you online and find your tours?
[02:52:46]  Right.
[02:52:46]  So, Australian Wild Tours.
[02:52:49]  But they can obviously find me on Instagram, Facebook, just for Andrew Uchals.
[02:52:53]  And I've got a YouTube channel, which is there.
[02:52:56]  And yeah.
[02:52:58]  And OnlyFans.
[02:52:59]  OnlyFans.
[02:53:01]  That's funny, man.
[02:53:02]  I know, actually, I know people who use OnlyFans instead of Patreon.
[02:53:05]  Oh, really?
[02:53:06]  Yeah, there's this dude.
[02:53:08]  He lives in Hawaii, Nathan Florence.
[02:53:11]  He's a professional surfer.
[02:53:12]  I've heard of Nathan.
[02:53:13]  Just wait.
[02:53:13]  I think we follow each other, maybe.
[02:53:15]  Oh, really?
[02:53:15]  Yeah, his brother's John, John Florence on the world tour.
[02:53:19]  He's been one of the biggest, best surfers in the world growing up on the North Shore.
[02:53:24]  Anyways, he used OnlyFans to publish all his content on there.
[02:53:27]  So he's a patron.
[02:53:29]  That was pretty funny.
[02:53:30]  Pretty creative.
[02:53:30]  That's wild.
[02:53:32]  All right.
[02:53:33]  Thanks again, bro.
[02:53:34]  Awesome.
[02:53:34]  We'll link all your shit below.
[02:53:36]  And good night, world.