Zoologist Reacts To Viral Animal TikTok

[00:00:18]Well, hi there.

[00:00:20]This is a video of something that we at least like as a the formal scientific community had never documented until fairly recently. Uh what this is is a nursing humpback whale, which is something you really might not think about much, but it is a mammal. You can tell it's a humpback whale specifically.

[00:00:47]I mean, obviously I think it's a whale, but and you can tell it's probably some sort of a baine whale a lot by those those kind of row those lines that come down the face. Those allow the the whole throat area to expand massively on baileine whales when they're grabbing a whole bunch of ocean water full of krill and other small animals. And then they filter it out by pushing that water out through this this hairike baine that they've got and just filtering out all the animals and then swallowing them down. But that they need those big expansion grooves. And you can kind of see in the baby's mouth too, you know, something like unto baine. The way that you can identify this specifically as a humpback whale really comes down to those really big pectoral fins. Humpback whales have way longer pectoral fins and they've kind of got those little knobs on them. They're they're a much gnarier looking whale than most. And so this is really really clearly a humpback whale.

[00:01:52]As far as nursing goes, like that is that is something I hadn't really given much thought until not very long ago. It it's something I I grew up going to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and they had a diarama of a nursing manatee.

[00:02:10]It comes up and and the mammorary glands and nipples are up sort of underneath the the front flippers on a manatee.

[00:02:20]That was maybe sort of the first time I ever thought about marine mammals nursing. Seals and other pinnipeds have something kind of similar. They've got they've got nipples that are averted most of the time or and then they they kind of pop them out when they need to nurse. But whales, you know, the difference between whales and things like manatees and and dong and pinnipeds is all of those animals have flexible lips. You know, they can get a pretty good seal and nurse in a sort of traditional way.

[00:02:52]How do whales do it? That's that's tricky. That's that's a tricky one because they've got much more rigid heads generally. Often no flexible lips, nothing that they could really use to get a great seal. And where even are the mammary glands on whales? Well, it turns out and and you actually see this fairly well here. Whales have what is called a mammary slit.

[00:03:19]They've actually got two of them paired memory slits. And they really do kind of fire milk out. The baby will come up and and nudge the belly of the mother and then she will fire milk into the baby's mouth. And that is so stinking rad.

[00:03:38]Whales have the largest mammary glands of any animals on Earth. With all of that said, I'm pretty confident that this video is AI.

[00:03:49]Uh really like it, for the most part looks really really convincing. It's it's a very very realistic looking depiction of whales nursing. And you'd have to know a lot about either whale anatomy or whale evolution in order to understand what's wrong here. For starters, I I'll just I'll kind of show you. You can see the milk gets fired out from right about dead center of the chest, right around the pectoral girdle.

[00:04:24]Um, not too far away from where it would happen in a manatee. The thing is, manatees are afrotherans like elephants and that is where the mammary glands are in elephants. Whales are not afrotherans.

[00:04:40]Whales are unullet. like a cow or a horse. And so their mammary glands are actually located back by the pelvic girdle in more the location where you would find it on a cow or a horse, not up here where you would find it on an elephant. Additionally, they don't have just one of these slits. If you notice, that slit is kind of like dead center of the chest, and there just appears to be one. They've actually got two memory slits, one on either side and again back near the back. However, if I didn't know that, it would have been very, very difficult to pick this out as being an AI video. Okay, client, I'm glad you pointed that out cuz that is one subject that I want to have you discuss today. It's been a while since we last did one of these videos and a lot has changed since the last one. AI videos are everywhere. So, I'd love it if you could quickly introduce yourself and then share your thoughts about AI animal videos and what that means for our future. And then I will tell you about today's categories because they are all new. Okay. Well, my name is Clint Lela. I have an undergraduate degree in uh zoologology and biology, a double major, and then I got a master's and a PhD in biology studying evolutionary ecology and specifically life history, evolution, and biology education. Today, I with my wife Leysa run Clint's Reptile Room, which is in Springville, Utah, as well as Clint's Life Science Academy, which is where we are right now. And uh we are right now in the middle of our life science academy summer camps and we're about to resume our university level courses this fall if people are interested in that uh and get more information about all of that at cleanseriles.com.

[00:06:26]And as for my thoughts on AI animal videos, um AI animal videos make me sad. Uh, mostly because I can tell that the era where I could be amazed by a video about animals is coming to an end. Um, and honestly, like a large percentage of all of the amazing experiences that I've had observing animals have been through animal videos. It's it's kind of it's the same thing that happened with photography a few decades ago when Photoshop started to allow people to manufacture fake photos that were nearly indistinguishable from real life. Once that was common place, it became my default to assume that any photo that fell outside of what I already knew to exist was probably fake. But video was still kind of different.

[00:07:27]Uh, you know, pics didn't mean that it happened, but video was still pretty solid, but not but not anymore. Right now, I can still spot issues with anatomy and behavior that allow me to identify fake videos like we did with the whale. Uh, and I can do this with a pretty high degree of accuracy, but I think that it's already past the point that most people would not be able to tell. and and it's going to pass by me pretty soon. So, pretty soon I won't be able to trust anything amazing unless I have tons of confidence in the source and that's a real shame to me. Animals animal videos have brought so much wonder into my life and that's coming to an end. Um, and I I like I've been thinking about it. It's crazy that in all of human history, like the time where people could really be amazed by animal video, only lasted a couple of generations.

[00:08:36]>> I'm hoping that with your help, we can know a little better what is AI and what isn't AI. So, I'm going to start you off with a category of videos I'm pretty sure are real, but I'm not sure what I'm looking at. And we're going to call it, what am I looking at here?

[00:08:51]>> Okay. Then we'll look at a bunch of uh really cool videos that might be a little too amazing.

[00:08:58]>> Mhm.

[00:08:58]>> And we'll play a game truth or AI.

[00:09:03]>> And then we're going to look at some dangerous videos, but I want you to tell us how much danger was it really?

[00:09:09]>> Okay.

[00:09:09]>> Then we have some videos that have some amazing information in them. I just want to know, is it true?

[00:09:15]>> Okay.

[00:09:16]>> But let's start with what am I looking at here?

[00:09:19]>> All right.

[00:09:33]squishy.

[00:09:36]So, those are the soles of kangaroo feet, which they look pretty crazy. I mean, they kangaroo feet, if you really look at them, even from above, they look pretty wild. But this really lets you see some of the crazier aspects of kangaroo feet.

[00:09:52]Um, I'll start with the fact that kangaroos, well, this whole thing is the foot.

[00:10:01]Kangaroos when they're up hopping, they're what's called ditigrate. So, they're up on their toes and just bouncing. And that's probably the posture we're more used to seeing from kangaroos. Which is why the fact that the soles go all the way back to what a lot of people would think is a backwards knee. It's not. It's just their heel.

[00:10:19]But because they're normally up on their toes, that long foot looks like a piece of the leg. And so they're they're digitra when they're hopping, but when they're standing or they're walking, they're plantigra. So they just like you do, they put the whole foot on the ground when they're standing there and then they they're they have the most ridiculous walking gate because they can't step one foot at a time forward. They can't walk. So if they're moving too slowly to be bounding where they go, they need to get five limbs involved, which means both for limbs, both hind limbs and their tail. It's called a pentipedal gate. And so that is that's the way that they walk. And that whole foot ends up on the ground. And so they've got a pad down the entire foot.

[00:11:20]Being macropods, they've got this also very strange, very, very strange toe arrangement.

[00:11:28]At a glance, it's kind of similar to what you would see maybe on a theropod dinosaur, like a chicken, in that it looks like they've got kind of three toes on the ground.

[00:11:44]Technically, there are four, but two of them are all fused together.

[00:11:50]And you can actually see that pretty well here in this video. So, in macropods, they're missing their first toe. So, so like the big toe is gone.

[00:12:00]Their second and third toe are fused together. They look like a single toe except there are two claws coming off of it. And then their fourth toe is enormous. It's like the main toe that they use for everything. You know, they could almost get away with just having that fourth toe. And then they've got a fairly big fifth toe on the other side.

[00:12:22]So, you got toes two and three and and five that kind of look like small toes.

[00:12:28]And then this fourth toe is just colossal. And that's the basic structure of a kangaroo foot.

[00:12:40]I'm going that a crazy creature.

[00:12:53]I will tell you I did not know that these were this kind of weird until I had one in my saltwater aquarium. This is a conch snail.

[00:13:06]And they are such weird creatures. They're so very weird. Uh I'll start with their alien eyeballs cuz I love them. So those eyes that on eye stocks, they've got actually a really advanced camera style eye. If you look at the eyes, like if you look at the eyes up close, like they look extremely human. So that's weird because nothing else about them is human like at all. They've in addition to those ice docks, they've also got a giant siphon. So that's like an elephant trunk that goes around. So they got an elephant trunk. They got these human eyes on crazy alien ice docks. And then they've got this giant claw thing, which is actually So this is a snail. And if you've seen a lot of snails, a lot of snails have a second valve, you know, a little a little extra piece of shell that they can move to seal up the entrance. It's called the operculum on conch snails. It's modified into like a claw almost like a crab leg sort of a claw thing. That's what it's, you know, got wrapping all around everywhere there. They use that claw as their main way of moving around. It's called leaping locomotion. And they just stick the claw in the ground and then they go and they just kind of fling themselves forward. You saw how like radical it is with the way it moves it.

[00:14:30]Well, that's how they move it. Just cl and then they just throw themselves forward and then they do it again. They are absolute aliens and I love them.

[00:14:55]Okay, so this is a wonderful creature.

[00:14:58]This is a kiwi and it's kind of a kiwi up close. So, we're getting a really good look at some of the finer details of a kiwi that you don't always get a really good look at. Um, one of the things that they show you are, well, they show you the beak. And the beak is super cool. We'll talk about the beak in a second, but they also show you up around the beak. You've got these little kind of whisker like bristles. They're they're called uh vibbrrise and they're they are what they look like. They're they're very touch sensitive little little bristles. They've in addition to that they've got that long beak which is also extremely touch sensitive and then nostrils near the end of the beak though it's not as unusual as I've long thought of it as being. So the sense of smell is actually really important for kiwis which is not not commonly the case for birds and sense of touch is also extremely important for kiwis. A sense that's not important for Kiwis as far as we can tell is vision.

[00:16:06]They have tiny eyes. And interestingly enough, there are kiwis that have a condition that causes them to go completely blind. And there is no measurable difference in how well the totally blind ones do versus those that see. Vision just doesn't matter for kiwis. This is an interesting thing, but kiwis are often thought of as being nocturnal, but they actually are only nocturnal in areas where there are predators. Where there are no predators, they're active day or night. It doesn't really matter for them. Uh, and I I I told you nostrils at the end of the nose is an unusual thing for birds, generally speaking, but it's something I I really got to thinking about recently when I was in Australia.

[00:16:55]I was spending a lot of time around other paleogath birds. So, these are part of the the paleogy, which are the basalmost lineage of birds. things like ostriches, emu, casawaryis, rias, kiwis, also elephant birds, and moas, uh, tinnamus.

[00:17:15]But what I hadn't thought about and then I started looking at these birds is having your nostrils up high is a common thing for birds now, but it's actually an unusual location for the nostrils on a theropod dinosaur.

[00:17:37]And so I got to thinking like, is that actually the ancestral location of the nostrils? And what I did notice is on many of the paleogath birds, the nostrils are right where you'd expect them to be on a theropod dinosaur.

[00:17:51]They're down near the end of the beak.

[00:17:55]And so I, you know, I often thought that the the nostrils on kiwis had migrated to the end of the beak because they use them for smell so much. They they're basically like shrews that happen to be birds in New Zealand. However, uh you know, as I as I look at their close relatives, I don't think their nostrils in their lineage were ever up near the top of the beak. I think they've always been somewhere near the tip. That's maybe just a little bit more accentuated now.

[00:18:24]>> For nearly 10 years from making wildlife videos, but I have no idea what it is that I'm holding in my hand right now.

[00:18:32]>> Okay. Well, this is a Harvestman. Uh it's hard to say which one without knowing like for starters where he is.

[00:18:42]Uh but I will say like this is a brave guy. I mean I was told when I was a kid that that harvestmen were the most venomous spiders on earth. Uh you know unfortunately at least the ones near where I grew up their fangs were too small to bite you. Um, but at this size, I don't know. You know, it's probably a good thing that they don't have any fangs or venom. Uh, they're also not spiders, but they are on Earth. That part is true. Uh, I love harvestmen. They they are like spiders. They're arachnids, but they're a different group of arachnids. They have eight walking legs. They got two pedipelps and chiserate which are claw-like mouth parts. In spiders, those have been modified into fangs, but in the other cherates like scorpions, uh, whip spiders and things like that, especially, you can really see them well on soul fugitives, the u sun spiders, they're still clawike. Chisera means claw. And so their clawike mouth parts in harvestmen, they're still that they're little. This one is particularly rad. We found some really cool ones like this down in the Amazon rainforest and so could be one of those. I don't know which one, but definitely a harvestman.

[00:20:05]Totally awesome animal.

[00:21:16]Wow, that is amazing. So, that is what it would look like if a T-Rex was ever trying to decide if it should eat you or not. That specifically is a shoe bill. Uh, not a shoe bill stork.

[00:21:37]People used to call them that cuz we used to think they were stors. They're actually closer to commerce, uh, pelicans, and their closest relatives are hammer cops, which I know well because we had one in the Pangani Forest when I when I worked there at Disney's Animal Kingdom. These are all rads. Just rad as heck. Um, and honestly, like we should make a video about this group.

[00:22:01]Uh, what I can tell you is vocalization like that, as far as I know, is rare. Uh what I what I usually see from these guys when they make sound is a rapid kind of bill clattering that they do the chattering of their bill.

[00:22:17]It's that's really cool too. But I've never heard these sounds before. That was awesome. Okay. Very cool. So those were all things that I was pretty sure were real but strange nonetheless. Uh but these next things seem to be a bit fishy to me. So, I want to play the game of truth or AI.

[00:22:36]>> Okay.

[00:22:37]>> If truth, tell us what it is. If AI, tell us how you spotted it.

[00:22:41]>> Okay. Okay.

[00:22:43]>> Now, remember, this isn't truth or dare.

[00:22:47]>> You You don't have the option to sing.

[00:22:49]>> Okay.

[00:22:50]>> I may sing.

[00:22:51]>> You'll have to stand up on the uh desk if you sink.

[00:22:54]>> Obviously. Yeah.

[00:22:55]>> Hey, buddy. What you doing on my porch?

[00:22:57]Huh? Let me P Oh god.

[00:23:03]Now, Suge, I knew just as soon as you walked on that porch and saw that porcupine what was about to happen. I really did. And you should know better.

[00:23:13]>> Wait, what he didn't know is I was totally AI. Um, one one really obvious thing at the beginning was it switches from being a North American porcupine that is kind of covered in quills everywhere to being an African porcupine that just has quills at the back.

[00:23:33]But most importantly of all, it fires the quills. Um, no porcupines do that.

[00:23:40]That's that's a commonly held misconception because the quills on North American porcupines are barbed and detachable. So if you run into an American porcupine, any of the new world porcupines, if you run into an a new world porcupine, once you move back, some of the quills are going to stay in you and it might feel like they got fired at you. You you know, you're going to find them in your dog and all that kind of stuff. They got all these barbed quills stuck in them. However, they can't fire them. They can't cover any distance. You have to make contact with the quills and then they'll stay with you. Kind of like a cactus. African porcupines, which is what this turns into at the end, their quills aren't detachable. They just come mostly off the hind quarters. Keep in mind, you know, and if you've seen our our documentary on rodents, African porcupines and North American porcupines are not closely related to each other.

[00:24:34]just being a spiky rodent that works and and so being spiky is working for both of them, but the way they do it is very different. You you don't have the the barbed detachable quills in the African porcupines. And again, neither of them can fire quills AI. I I will tell you, I've had several experiences with wild American porcupines, new world porcupines, all of them super positive.

[00:25:07]Uh we found North American porcupines here in Utah.

[00:25:13]Like anytime I see one, like I'm going to get close to it. Porcupines are well enough defended that they don't need to be very defensive. They're going to try to slowly get away from you, but they don't need to be super defensive animals. And so they're pretty chilled.

[00:25:25]so I can get out and take pictures of them. They're not going to shoot any quills at you. So, as long as you don't run all the way into it, uh, you should be fine. I will tell you, my closest call with a porcupine was also the most endearing and delightful experience I've had with a porcupine, which was on our first night in the Amazon. We went road cruising before we really really went out into the jungle and we encountered this prehensiletailed porcupine on the road and it was so delightful. It was definitely wanting to climb up my leg like it knew I was there. It was coming towards me. was going to climb up my leg, which probably would have been fine, but I didn't know exactly how I felt about having a porcupine on me, you know, like like, you know, in retrospect, I should have maybe just seen where that went, but that that seemed like a bit of a risk at the time, but it was, you know, it was totally unafraid. And these little aroreal South American porcupines are they're so cool.

[00:26:29]And it was it was adorable. And porcupines have a special place in my heart almost exclusively because of that experience.

[00:26:41]That is so insane.

[00:26:52]Wow. Okay. So, that is real.

[00:26:57]That's a telescope fish.

[00:27:00]Um, obviously everything about it is kind of crazy looking, but probably the craziest looking thing of all are their telescope eyeballs.

[00:27:12]They've got tube eyes, which is odd. Usually, we think of eyeballs as being spheres. This is actually something that they have in common with jumping spiders which have very very good vision for being such little animals. And and a big part of this is visual acuity generally speaking is based on absolute eye size, not relative eye size. So if you're small, you need disproportionately enormous eyes in order to see very well. In the case of these guys, if you live in dark places and you're going to see, well, you need disproportionately huge eyes, but you actually don't need the whole sphere. You just need a pretty big gap between the lens and the retina.

[00:28:09]And so these guys instead of having a gigantic sphere of an eyeball just have essentially the gap between the lens and the retina so that they you know they have they have effectively a giant eyeball in a much smaller area. Now these guys a lot of times during the day they're in very deep waters. At night they undergo what's called a dial vertical migration. So they go up into shallower water. And so you could actually end up seeing one of these if you went on a night dive, which is a concept that I find simultaneously amazing and terrifying. The idea of being out in the ocean at night when visibility is very poor is a very frightening concept, but also you would see some unbelievable stuff. And this is one of those things that you might see and and tragically unless you actually saw one in person in the notsodistant future, this would easily be an animal that you might not believe exists.

[00:29:58]Okay. So, I was a little bit on the fence for the first little bit of that video. Um, mostly the way that its mouth was opening when it was rubbing on him.

[00:30:07]If it weren't for the fact that this is an animal that sticks its tongue out regularly to smell, I wouldn't think it would open its mouth quite that often.

[00:30:14]However, as I watched more, especially the way that it was doing those curious little tongue flicks near the end, I'm very, very confident this is real. But, this activity is a little bit on the risky side. This is a Hila monster. Uh, if it bit him, I will say the the likelihood of him dying is astronomically small. We did have somebody die just a couple of years ago that was the first person ever on record to have died from the venom of a Hila monster, at least in the last many, many, many decades.

[00:30:50]But in general, the venom of a Hila monster shouldn't kill you. That was a very, very freaky situation. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong.

[00:31:01]Um, I would say if I were socializing a Hila, I'd be very reluctant to let it push its snout into me like that. A lot of times, for various different reasons, reptiles will do that before they do a little test bite. Sometimes, you know, that one's young, so I wouldn't be as worried about it. But males a lot of times will do that before they do a little test bite. They'll test bite onto females because kind of biting on back near the neck is often part of mating.

[00:31:30]And so they'll do a little test bite somewhere to see if the female runs them off or if she's like, "Yeah, that was all right." Cuz if that's okay with her, then they'll they'll go for a little bit more. Um I've seen other lizards do a little flirtatious nibble like that. And I wouldn't want a flirtatious nibble from the teeth and venom of a Hila monster. The venom won't kill you, but look at these teeth. Those are those are not the kind of teeth that you want in you. And I want to mention that I for a long time underappreciated how much squamate reptiles like touch.

[00:32:08]Touch is very important to them. Touch is a major part of the way that they interact with each other. Touch. If you if you flip over a log and find say three snakes under there or or a couple of lizards, most of the time they're going to be in contact with each other.

[00:32:24]The way that you touch a squamite reptile can dramatically influence the way that it behaves. Touch matters to these animals. And you could see there that it was it was the one initiating the touch.

[00:32:38]Really cool. There's a lot more going on with these animals than I think most of us realize.

[00:32:58]So, that is AI. Uh, the the turtle it's trying to depict looks to me like a a mix between a common and an alligator snapping turtle. There are hybrids that exist in the real world, but that's not what this is. This is Well, okay, for starters, like it's all in on Okay, I'm looking at the neck here at the end. Neck looks crazy, but also it's got the shell of an alligator snapping turtle. It's got the head and neck of a common snapping turtle, but the jaws of an alligator snapping turtle and the tongue of a common snapping turtle. And uh then the stance of the karate kid.

[00:33:49]Yeah. AI.

[00:34:09]Okay. That is not only real, but that is an absolutely amazing shark. It's a bucket list shark for me for sure. Um, one I've rarely even seen video of it. And this is one that probably a few years from now I might not have believed was real if I didn't already know about them.

[00:34:30]This is the wing head shark. It has proportionally the largest sephilof foil of all hammerheads. makes up like 40 to 50% of the total length of the shark. So if you take take the whole length of the shark, up to half of that is the width of just the sele. Um we go I know into great detail about these guys in our full fogyny named hammerheads. They are they are the hagfish of hammerhead sharks. And while probably not my favorite one cuz I I I pretty much love all the hammerheads actually, but this is the most unusual one and probably the one I would be the most excited to actually get to see in person. Amazing.

[00:35:40]Hey, baby. Everybody Well, that is something you don't see every day. That is real.

[00:36:04]That is a juvenile flounder.

[00:36:08]And flounders are weird and wonderful fish. So, um, the re So, so if you've seen a flounder, if you kind of know what they they are.

[00:36:24]Flounders live their lives kind of like stingrays.

[00:36:30]They lay flat on the the bottom of the ocean, largely bury themselves. They're very good at changing colors. They have incredible color change abilities. I mean, like a cuttlefish.

[00:36:41]and and and they just lay there with just their two little eyeballs sticking up and what looks like maybe their dorsal fins sticking up.

[00:36:52]It is weird to see a tie fish that is that dorso ventrally compressed. Usually tilios fishes are laterally compressed and as it turns out flounders are also laterally compressed.

[00:37:10]In fact, if you look at them, if you look at this one, it looks weird. It's a weird looking fish because you can it's see-through and you can see through its organs and stuff, but its basic proportions are kind of normal fish stuff.

[00:37:23]What why it doesn't look like a flounder normally looks is because what happens as they age is they'll start to just well one of their eyes will migrate from one side of the head to the other side of the head and then suddenly both eyes will be on the same side of the head and they will just lie down. If you look at them when they're done there, you know, their mouth is still it's sideways. They've got one gill on the top, one on the bottom. That thing that sticks up that looks like a dorsal fin, actually one of their pectoral fins. They are just a sideways fish with two eyes on one side of their head. And which eye migrates to the other side is actually a trait that you can use to identify different flunders because it varies by lineage which eye goes where. And so anyway, absolutely remarkable fish, but something you don't see very often in the stage in its development before the eye makes the migration.

[00:38:51]Aren't animal videos amazing? Like, this is real. Uh, this is I I I don't remember what species, but it's a heron from somewhere between these live like in northern South America and Central America.

[00:39:13]and they have a really long pointy beak. Um, I'm trying to remember all the details on why they walk like that, but a lot of it is just so that they can keep their head still and and get a good look at things. And then and then what they do with that beak, it's long and skinny, which is good for grabbing fish and other things that will quickly dart out of the way cuz you can quickly snap or they can lunge forward kind of snake- like, but they can also lunge off to the side and grab things. And even if it gets a little bit away, that beak is so long that it'll end up still grabbing them.

[00:39:58]So dang cool.

[00:40:01]>> All right, guys. So look look at that.

[00:40:03]Wow. Look at that. These guys. And I'm And I'm not holding him really tight at the neck either. This is just to show you guys the things.

[00:40:13]And this is a nonvenenomous snake, guys. Look at that.

[00:40:18]>> Okay, so this is a very easy one to think must be AI because those teeth that those teeth look like what people who don't know anything about snakes think snake teeth look like. Thing is though, that's real. That's an emerald treeboa. And their teeth are enormous. They're massive. He calls these fangs. They're not fangs, but they are very fang-like. In fact, just like the fangs of vipers, they have to fold down in order to fit in the mouth when it's closed. So, they fold back and then they extend out very much like viper teeth. And I have had the opportunity to see what these teeth can do. We have an emerald tree boa uh here at Clintile Room and uh one of our one of our employees was handling them. I had I I had never seen blood spray out of a person from a snake bite before, but now I have. In fact, I have a video of the whole aftermath.

[00:41:29]It looks like some sort of serious crime occurred. It was amazing. Um, scary teeth. Wild. Definitely. He's like, like I said, ours will bite. He's pretty good. Um, but a l he's just a lazy biter. He doesn't strike, but he just comes and just yells at us.

[00:42:04]Okay, so uh just for starters, it says uh the crocodiles in Mexico climb trees up to 9 m in height to regulate their body temperature. And then it shows us uh I'll I'll tell you the first crocodile like I've never seen a crocodile climb a tree, but if I ever saw a crocodile attempting to climb a tree, it would probably look quite a bit like that. That said, this is definitely AI. Um just right off the bat, like I found this behavior really unlikely. Uh you know, if for no other reason than this is a pretty large, heavy animal. Like what happens if they fall? They're they're not really built to take falls from height. When you get to be this large and heavy, you tend to get really, really injured. But that said, there are turtles that climb trees. So something like this, while it seems implausible, and in my world where I doubt any video that shows me something I'm not used to, it's, you know, it's probably not impossible.

[00:43:14]I shouldn't I shouldn't just eliminate it because it seems weird and I've never seen this before. That said, it's the scoots on its tail and things as it's climbing the tree are quite bizarre. And the the biggest giveaway is at one point it opens its mouth and the lower jaw like opens in the middle of the it it doesn't open with the mouth. So that was a pretty dead giveaway.

[00:43:50]Hi.

[00:44:15]It's Chicken.

[00:45:10]Okay, I kept a close eye on that little shrimp that went over the top of him.

[00:45:15]This is real. Uh, this is a snail eating a fish. And I think, if I had to guess, I think this might be a cone snail, which I don't know if you're familiar with cone snails. I've been afraid of cone snails for a while cuz they have a super deadly neurotoxin. In fact, if you watch uh Jurassic Park the Lost World, they talk about their dart gun and that that they have loaded up with the venom of a cone snail. He tells him, "Don't uh you know, is there he asked is there an antidote?" And he goes, "What? In case you have an accident?" Don't. You'd be dead before you knew you had an accident. Um, I don't think it's really that powerful, but I did at least hear of a marine that picked up two of them and they both got him in the neck at the same time and he died in like 9 seconds. I'm not positive that that like I haven't been able to verify that story, but also when I first heard that story, it was from a somewhat reputable source. So, I I just haven't been able to find it again.

[00:46:22]Anyway, a very, very potent neurotoxin, which is kind of what you need to have if you're a snail that hunts fish. You need to be able to stop them from fleeing quickly because if they get away just a little bit, they're gone. Same thing goes for like sea snakes. Sea snakes have a very, very potent neurotoxin because they need to stop fish from fleeing immediately. If you're a rattlesnake, you can bite something and it can wander off and you can follow it. But if it wanders off into the ocean, it's gone.

[00:46:50]Okay, that sounds like a pretty dangerous creature. Yeah.

[00:46:54]>> Uh, let's look at some other dangerous creatures. All right.

[00:46:57]>> And tell us how much danger these people were really in.

[00:47:01]>> Okay.

[00:47:01]>> This is my highly venomous 13 foot long king cobra, Rusty. What is up, bud?

[00:47:10]Everybody always says in the comments that they think Rusty doesn't have his fangs or he's a venomoid, which means his venom glands are taken out. But he is a 13 foot long completely venomous cobra who can literally pack a punch.

[00:47:23]These guys have enough venom. Their venom yield is gigantic. They have enough venom to drop 20 men or even a full grown elephant. Now lucky enough for me I've raised Rusty up since he was a tiny little baby. Like literally he was probably 2 feet long when I got him.

[00:47:37]So we have a very very great relationship as you can tell. He rarely ever hisses. The only time he is defensive is when he is in his enclosure. And as you can see, now that he is out of his enclosure, he's a freaking puppy dog. Like, look how big this snake is. His tail is literally wrapped around my leg. And I just let him crawl all around me and do his thing. Obviously, I want to watch that head and make sure there's no funny business. Like I said, we have a great relationship and he is just absolutely awesome. And speaking of that, this is the new Rusty shirt that I have. Bunch of people were saying that they think it's AI. It's definitely not AI. My buddy Jay Tomsky was over here hanging out. He actually took this photo with his camera and I thought it was just enough to put it on a t-shirt. You guys want a Tylenol Tattoos Rusty shirt? Go on my website and get one for your own.

[00:48:26]Just such an awesome handsome man. He's so well behaved, absolute sweetheart.

[00:48:33]And we definitely have a really good relationship and understanding of each other. I've never put him in the position of being fearful of me. So, he knows nothing but love and kindness.

[00:48:42]I've never like grabbed him aggressively or I don't showboboat him and try to piss him off and get him to hood up.

[00:48:48]It's just all nice interactions just like this with my big handsome man. And now very very soon guys, another reason why you should buy a shirt. It's going to help me give him a new upgrade. So, right now I have him in this 6ft Vision.

[00:49:03]These cages are made by Vision right here. But very soon, we're gonna be moving all these cages down, and we're gonna build him a gigantic walk-in enclosure in the whole back of my room because look how big he is, guys. He is just a freaking monster. Okay, so that is my friend Tyler.

[00:49:22]Um, he is okay. I'll start by saying that is an a real large, not fully grown, but a very large king cobra.

[00:49:37]I have no reason to doubt that it has all of its venom. There's nothing about Tyler that would lead me to think that he would not handle that snake that way just because it has all of its venom. In fact, I think that would take all the fun of it out of it for him if it didn't have all of its venom. Uh, and truth be told, king cobras are very intelligent snakes. That snake has been raised, like he said, it has no reason to fear humans. There are only two reasons a snake is going to bite you. A snake will bite you because it's afraid of you or because it thinks it's getting food.

[00:50:11]This snake does not fear Tyler. Never had a reason to fear humans. you know, he's had nothing but good experiences with humans all his life. And so, a food response would probably be the only reason he would bite. Also, just something to mention, he'd probably hood up if he was afraid. And so, that's a nice thing with these guys. The most venomous snakes that I'll handle this way are my false water cobras. They also hood up if they're nervous. Just because they hood doesn't mean they're going to bite. But if they're not hooded, it means they're pretty calm, pretty relaxed, and so that makes it easier to read. Tyler's very good at reading king cobras. Uh, which are not true cobras.

[00:50:50]At one point he said, "This is a a cobra." I'm sure he knows that they're not, but they're closer to mambas. But, um, he's very good at reading them. He has made one significant error with a king cobra in the past. Um, and and if you ask him to hold up his hands, you'll be able to see the consequences of of that slight error. But but the truth is that snake is very unlikely to bite him right then. Uh in fact, you know, his likelihood of being bitten by that king cobra is probably pretty similar to my likelihood of being bitten by my false water cobra at some point. The only difference will be the consequences if one of us are bitten. There is a far greater than 0% chance at some point handling these snakes this way that one of us will be bitten.

[00:51:41]If I'm bitten by the false water cobra, that's a that's a significant venom.

[00:51:46]Like, it's it's not going to kill me, but my whole week will be different as a consequence. However, if he is bitten by that snake, he could easily die. And if he doesn't die, he's going to be in the hospital for a long time. There might be long-term effects. He might not all have all of his digits. Um, and and it could easily easily cost him his life. It's going to be very very significant for the reptile hobby, uh, for his ability to keep venomous snakes in the future.

[00:52:17]So, he's taking a significant risk by handling the snake this way.

[00:52:48]so much danger.

[00:52:51]And and I I get more anxiety I think watching that because um just about a year ago I was in a place where this sort of a thing could have easily happened. It was it was really interesting um being where we were. So, I had an absolutely unforgettable time in Africa being out seeing wild lions. I mean, it's one of it's one of the most unforgettable experiences of my life. It was it it was more it made more of an impression on me than diving with great white sharks did than you know any of the other cool stuff that we did on on that trip.

[00:53:37]Lions are incredible. But it was it was you know there were a lot of situations we we had these sort of lodges like this that are still open to the elements. So cool. But also I know there are elephants, rhinos, cape buffalo, leopards and lions all right around hyenas absolutely in camp every night. I I have I I mean like I was a couple feet from and and just just a little bit of of uh canvas away from a whole bunch of hyenas every night. But but the lions I knew the lions were maybe a kilometer away. Like they're they're they're not far. We didn't have to go far to start running into lions.

[00:54:22]And I will tell you inside of our canvas tents, that was like the only place where we felt like, okay, uh, lions shouldn't come in here. But like the showers, it's just like there's no door even on the shower.

[00:54:40]It's just kind of like a little maze.

[00:54:42]There's nothing to stop a lion from walking in there with you. And if a lion decided to come in there and kill you, like there'd be nothing anybody would be able to do about it. if that lion had decided to kill that guy, like he'd just be dead. And it's not like that happens really rarely. Um, lions absolutely do kill people. Lions are very, very dangerous animals, and that's terrifying and amazing.

[00:55:15]>> All right, guys. I found a very rare lizard right here. I'm not sure what kind. Yeah. Yeah. You want to? Yeah. I'm I'm NOT SURE. WELL, GO. OH MY GOSH. NO.

[00:55:24]NO. I'm trying. No. Oh. Oh, bro. I never.

[00:55:36]So, that is a spinytailed iguana. And it says it says aggressive lizard here. I think this actually really well demonstrates the difference between an aggressive animal and a defensive animal. That animal is just trying to not die, right? That guy is acting quite crazy. He's the one being the aggressor.

[00:55:57]It is just standing there. It has there's nowhere for it to go. So green iguanas, if you run into them, they tend to hang out near or over water. And so if they get scared, they just drop into the water. But the spiny tailed iguanas tend to usually go to to a hole. They go to ground. It looks to me like this iguana's escape path is to go under this hole under the fence. And it probably has a hole it would go in, but it couldn't get to its hole. This guy's got it there. And so all it can do is bite if attacked. And so it's there with its mouth open just trying to be as big and scary as it can be. But you notice it's never coming towards the guy. It's never the aggressor. So it's not an aggressive lizard. This is a purely defensive lizard. As far as uh how much it could hurt you, I mean that that iguana is big enough to bite your fingers off. And so there's something to consider that a bite from an iguana that bad is very unpleasant. Very very unpleasant.

[00:57:20]That is a hippo charging a safari vehicle it looked like as it was backing away. Uh which you want to be really good at backing up.

[00:57:31]You're going to be trying to outrun a hippo that way. You can see why they kill so many people. Hippos are. That one was being pretty aggressive.

[00:57:41]It's mostly defending its territory, but that was that was very aggressive.

[00:57:45]They're incredibly strong. Like, you'd be shocked how easily that hippo could probably lift up a big portion of that truck and maybe toss it off to a side. It can definitely kill you on foot in a real hurry. That's a serious animal. I I don't think this is the most dangerous thing we've seen in this section, but that's certainly a very dangerous animal acting in a way that is very dangerous.

[00:58:28]I will tell you this is this is a dangerous situation especially if he were alone and he's not alone. So that's a lot of stupid things were done here but that's not the dumbest thing.

[00:58:41]I'll tell you how I feed large constrictors like this. So, the thing is large snakes miss sometimes, especially if you are at least as warm and alive and mammally as the thing that you're trying to get them to eat. So, you you want them to dial in on this, but he's come out and he's missed and they see heat. He's still coming until he feels flesh and now he's got it. And you've been giving him this the scent of food all this time. That snake is now very likely to wrap this person and one a snake this big once it wraps you that is big enough to kill you by constriction doesn't actually happen very often that a captive snake kills somebody but this is how it would happen especially if you were alone those other people if they know what they're doing should be able to get the snake off of him they can do this by um hopefully just doing something like hand sanitizer in the mouth but also you can bend back the tail hopefully you don't have to break its tail But I mean, this could be a life and death situation.

[00:59:49]A very, very big mishap. Here's how I feed my large snakes. I get, and I don't have any snakes quite this large, but still big enough that I wouldn't want something like this to happen. I get some long hemostats, some big kind of scissor-l like tongs. I grab the feeder.

[01:00:05]I open the door a little bit and stick it in and close the door so it's only open about this far. So, even if it misses, it can't come back through. And I wiggle that around to let it get it.

[01:00:12]Then I pulled the tongs out. And I still don't do that when I'm alone because if I did it really wrong and I got wrapped, I wouldn't be able to free myself. So, this is potentially a dangerous situation caused by a very foolish choice in how he's feeding this snake.

[01:00:28]>> Yeah, that was crazy. Before we get to our last video, I just want to say that we haven't done this in a while.

[01:00:34]>> So, we have a lot of great videos saved up. Um, so I want to invite our audience to weigh in in the comments and tell us if they'd like to see more from this series sooner than later.

[01:00:45]>> Okay.

[01:00:45]>> Um, we certainly have the videos. Uh, but along those lines, this last video makes some pretty amazing claims. Are they true?

[01:00:54]>> Okay.

[01:00:55]>> Candace just did a tweet the other day that said, "Dinosaurs are fake." What do you guys think about that?

[01:00:59]>> I didn't see that.

[01:01:00]>> Y'all didn't see that? No. The older I get, the more absurd the concept dinosaurs roam the earth until a great big meteor hit it.

[01:01:06]And Candace is right because if you look into the dinosaur stuff, we didn't start finding dinosaur bones until like the 1800s, like 1870. And then all of a sudden, they were able to find like hundreds of species of dinosaurs. And it was these people were competing. And a lot of times they were finding uh bones from like a giraffe or something, right?

[01:01:24]And they were saying that it was a dinosaur.

[01:01:26]>> Anytime you've ever been to a museum, you're not looking at an actual dinosaur bone. What you're looking at, you're looking at a copy of a bone, >> a replica. They say like what 70 80% of what you're looking at is just is is dead.

[01:01:38]>> It's 100%. It's not it's not 80 or 90.

[01:01:40]There's no real dinosaur bones on display any >> Okay, that was a big one. Uh so some of what he said was true and some was not true.

[01:01:55]Um the first he said the first dinosaur bones that we found were in the 1870s.

[01:02:02]I think the first dinosaur was the first non-avian dinosaur was described somewhere in the early 1800s. So that's not way far off. Like it's not it's not importantly far off, but it's that's a little bit factually inaccurate. But then after we started finding them and describing them, we knew what they were.

[01:02:20]We started finding a lot of them. Um almost almost like once we knew that these were out there, we started actively looking for them. Uh but I will I will say and this when this sort of thing happens it's so bad for science but the the bone wars and you know just a lot of the competition for discovery did lead to some people not not everybody involved but some people doing some very dishonest and and unethical things and that shines a bad light on the entire field of paleontology.

[01:02:56]Uh and that stinks. But I think I think the really important claim that he made here is that 100% of the bones in museums are not real. That that there are no real dinosaur bones on display anywhere.

[01:03:13]And that is not true at all. Now it is true that some of the skeletons on display are casts. For example, um there are way more museums that want to display a Tyrannosaurus Rex than there are complete or near complete Tyrannosaurus Rex skeletons in existence, at least that are known and discovered and prepared and assembled. Um, and so some of the dinosaurs that you'll see in museums are the original bones, which are very heavy, but they're there. And some of the skeletons that you'll see are casts of the original bones. So, so kind of copies made by putting silicone over the original bones and then and then pouring in a a resin inside of them and making a cast that is like a essentially like a three-dimensional photocopy of the original bones and then putting that skeleton on display. But you know, and so so it is true that a a fair percentage of the bones that you see are casts instead of original bones, but the claim that there are no real skeletons on display anywhere is insane. Um, with respect to the the the the interview about Candace Owens that had been going around for a while, they it looks like they had a tweet about her saying that they're fake. I I I kept seeing the same clip being shared over and over again uh about her saying that that dinosaurs are fake.

[01:04:57]>> Looked up to her and I was like dinosaurs that seems pretty fake and gay.

[01:05:00]>> For the longest time I couldn't figure out where she'd said this. Like I was trying to find the original context.

[01:05:06]Like so I you know I it's one thing to see something out of context. Like I I spend a fair amount of time say in our creationist videos trying to restate accurately the arguments the creationists are making. If you just clip those out of context though, it's going to look like I'm making a creationist argument all the time and or an anti-evolution argument. And so I didn't want to just assume that I understood everything based on these outofc context clips that I'd seen. I did finally find the full interview and I will tell you that in context what she had to say was even crazier than what it sounded like she was saying out of context.

[01:05:51]I have been considering doing a video responding to that interview and and and addressing some of the the points that she'd made about whether or not dinosaurs are real. And if that's something that you guys are interested in, please let me know. I something we could do in Dinosaur December, if not before. So, let me know if you want to, uh, if you want me to address Candace Owen's arguments that dinosaurs aren't real. But I think that's it. So, uh, let us know also if you want us to do this again. And as always, like and subscribe. We hope to see you real soon.

[01:06:34]>> Sexy is what it is.

[01:06:36]>> I'm sorry. Did you just call that thing kangaroo feet sexy?

[01:06:43]>> What they were doing with that?

[01:06:46]>> Gross.

[01:06:48]>> Yeah.

[01:06:49]>> TVMA over. He's been buying pictures.

[01:06:54]>> Yeah.

[01:06:56]>> Uh I don't know if you guys are aware, Will pulled out his phone just now and booked a flight to Australia.

[01:07:03]That's how into that foot he was.

[01:07:05]>> Checks out.