Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - 264: Our Wild Animal Best Friends | Ear Biscuits Ep.264
Episode Date: November 16, 2020It all started with a tweet about an octopus. From a 16' crocodile to a wild lion in Africa, listen to R&L discuss astounding real-life human-animal friendships and what animal they would pick to be t...heir wild animal best friend on this episode of Ear Biscuits! To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Welcome to Ear Biscuits, the podcast
where two lifelong friends talk about life for a long time.
I'm Rhett.
And I'm Link.
This week at the Round Table of Dim Lighting,
we're tackling the question,
what would be our ideal wild animal companion?
Yeah, and you may think to yourself,
how would you be worried about that?
It's not that we're worried,
we're obsessed all we're obsessed.
All of a sudden.
We both experienced something via a screen
that is now peaked a certain interest
that I didn't know I had.
This all goes back to,
well, how you may have experienced it
through the lens of my social media,
shout out to Red MC on Twitter.
Okay.
I tweeted a while back,
Netflix got me crying over a damn octopus.
And I used the octopus emoji,
which don't think I've ever used it in any context.
Oh, you used the emoji?
Why not?
Did you type octopus and then it popped up?
You're like, oh, there's an emoji.
Well, of course.
Yeah, because you didn't know.
I wouldn't have known that.
Yeah, yeah, and I was like.
I don't know how to find an emoji if it doesn't pop up.
There's certain times when I'm like thinking,
I feel like this conversation calls for an emoji,
but I'm so inadequate.
You do the visual search through all the options
because that's happened to me a couple of times.
Yeah, and then that's just soul crushing.
And then you're like, you know what?
Is this a food or a traffic sign?
I don't know. This is not me.
This is not who I am.
And then I just- You leave it off.
I leave it off.
Well- But if it pops up,
I'm like, oh, an octopus.
And Twitter will do that for you.
So we're of course talking about the Netflix documentary,
My Octopus Teacher, which I watched and then-
Came to work the next day.
Told Link about.
And you were just gushing about this Netflix documentary.
Right, so we're gonna talk about that.
So, and we're also gonna talk about
some other animal friendships.
And then we're gonna talk about,
like we said at the beginning,
the wild animal friendships
that we might want to personally instigate.
Now, let me say, spoiler alerts forthcoming,
because actually spoilers forthcoming is a spoiler alert.
Yeah, and I was-
You might wanna go and watch Octopus Teacher.
It's called My Octopus Teacher on Netflix.
Now we're gonna discuss it in great detail.
I do not think that anything that we're gonna say
is going to make it where you don't want
to then also watch it.
But.
But if you're a spoiler-reverse person,
you wanna go watch it right now.
Not even that.
I would even, you know, it's,
I think, yeah, there's a couple of things
in the documentary that I just wanna speak about plainly
that I do think it's better to experience cold,
which is why I did not tell my family,
you were talking to Christy about it.
It wasn't at work.
Or maybe it was at work and then-
No, no, I was talking about it when we had our,
I actually invited you and your wife over
to take a dip in the hot tub.
Oh yeah, that's when you were talking about the octopus.
The first sort of like hot tub dip of COVID.
And then I went back home and I think it was that night
or maybe the next night and Christy, poor girl, she has gotten herself into
a binge watching spree of one tree hill.
I didn't get a permission to talk about it.
There's only one way to get somebody out of that.
Is with an octopus. Octopus.
Eight lambs to pull you out of one tree hill.
She goes to bed a lot earlier than me on a weekend.
And so I'll burn the midnight oil and I'll watch something
and I was, you know, she was upstairs.
She went upstairs earlier and I was like,
what you doing?
She's like, I think I'm just gonna watch one tree hill.
I'm like, okay, okay.
I'm not going to watch that.
That's your, that's the thing that, and you know what?
There's a lot of nostalgia. I'm not gonna make fun of her for watching your, that's the thing that, and you know what? There's a lot of nostalgia.
I'm not gonna make fun of her for watching this thing.
She's seen it all before.
Well, she said, you know what?
Turns out I haven't seen it all.
She didn't finish it?
I would just catch it when I caught it,
but it wasn't a binge thing.
It was before the days of binging.
And now she's like putting all the pieces together
and reliving her, I think we were newlyweds
when she watched that stuff.
How many pieces are there to put together?
Oh, well there's-
I mean, there's just one tree and one hill.
Turns out there's a surrounding community
and lots of, I don't know, there's basketballs involved.
And there's a kid.
There's a couple with-
Multiple basketballs?
I don't know how many.
But I went downstairs and I watched the My Octopus Teacher.
And then the next morning she was like,
what'd you end up doing?
And I told her and she was like, I wanted to watch that.
Rhett wouldn't shut up about it.
And I kind of wanted to watch it.
My wife was upset that I watched it without her,
but I got into it not knowing how impactful
it was gonna be on me personally.
I did not tell her anything about it
that you hadn't already told her.
And I didn't tell the kids anything,
but we got the kids to watch it.
And I watched it again.
Twice.
I watched it twice, homie.
Was it good the second time?
It was good the second time.
Well, so if you-
I rarely watch anything the second time
and it was still good, so I think-
I just wanna give people permission.
Yeah, there's permission to not listen.
I'm not a spoiler averse person.
I know you are.
But so if you're like me.
And I'm even saying you can still listen to us
and then watch it.
Right, what I'm saying is.
But it's not ideal.
Cause I don't like telling people who've just tuned in
to use an antiquated term to this podcast
to then go enjoy some other media.
That's just not good business.
That's not good business.
So I'm just saying that you can go and watch it
if you really want to.
But if you're listening.
But watching it and seeing it from the perspective
of the filmmaker is going to be much better
than us talking about it.
And then you should come back and listen to us.
So if you, again, what I was trying to say was,
it's not just about spoilers,
is if you know you're looking for things to watch
and you're committed to listening to this
and you promise that you're gonna come back
and listen to this, if you promise,
then I'm gonna say, you know what?
Don't, stop this right now.
Yeah, if you come back.
And do it in that order.
Right.
But we're also gonna talk about other things.
If we set you free, if it's true love, you will come back.
We both have other stories that are in a similar vein
of the octopus teacher.
Unlikely animal, human, like legitimate friendships.
Yeah.
Like friendships that are kind of mind blowing
that I did not know were possible.
And now that we do,
it might change the trajectory of our lives.
Entire lives.
But we're gonna talk about that stuff too.
I got some, I've read up on some, you've read up on some.
So we're gonna get to that.
But I'm mostly gonna dig deep into my soul
because that seems to be what happens in these situations.
Something happens on the soul level
when people spark friendships with wild animals.
Did you weep during My Octopus Teacher?
I felt the pressure to weep
because you not only tweeted about it,
but then you talked about it at length.
I think we've established that it doesn't-
And I didn't.
It doesn't take much for me to weep
while watching something.
I weep during commercials occasionally.
I wept.
But you've learned why.
I've learned why?
I thought from therapy you learned why.
Well, it's a combination.
I don't wanna bait you here.
No, it's a combination of two things.
Number one, I am actually in the,
I don't know the name of it,
but I'm in like what would be called, believe it or not,
the sensitivity triad of the Enneagram.
I don't know if that's the correct term,
but there's basically a few numbers
that are actually significantly,
I'm actually on the sensitive side of the spectrum of people,
but I also have a personality based in all kinds of things,
you know, that has kind of shielded me from my emotions.
So there's this weird thing that happens
where there's actually a very high level of sensitivity
that is happening in me compared to an average person,
but I have sort of a shell of a personality
that will make you think
that I'm not experiencing the things.
And actually I'm so good at constructing the personality
that I can actually keep the sensitivity
and the emotions and the feelings from my own brain,
like hidden from myself.
And so I would have told you before therapy,
I am not a sensitive person.
Yeah, I cry at commercials sometimes.
My dad's the same way, he's always done that.
But that's actually a sign of that.
Yeah, it means there is a deep level of sensitivity
that exists in my person that has to find a way
to come out in order for me to be in equilibrium.
And so what ends up happening is often instead of
Comes out on an octopus.
Dealing with like sitting there and like crying
about something that's happening to me personally,
I will see something happening between a man
and an octopus on Netflix and begin to weep
because there's a lot of potential for sensitivity there.
Now that's not to say,
it seems that I'm implying that I cry
in like things that pertain to my real life.
And it's like, that doesn't happen either.
So I might have a couple of layers, but anyway.
But you've only been going to therapy
for less than a year.
Right, we're gonna,
I'm gonna divert this stream back to the streaming
of the documentary.
So I, and you'll tell me when you cried.
I have a good guess, but I actually-
Multiple times.
Oh, okay.
Well then I have three guesses.
But yeah, it's gonna be my wreck at the end of this thing.
Spoilers.
Spoiler alert, there it is.
No, no, no, they're not gonna hang on for the wreck.
So this thing, just to give a little overview
via Wikipedia, just for the sake of time,
my octopus teacher came out on the 4th of September
of this year, 2020.
It's 85 minutes long.
It's out of South Africa and it is in English.
The film shows how in 2010, Foster, who is Craig Foster,
he's a filmmaker that then became the subject of this film
that uses footage he shot
and some footage that was shot by another cinematographer
and then directed by two other people.
So Foster began free diving in a cold underwater kelp forest
at a remote location in Faults Bay
near Cape Town, South Africa.
So we're talking about the Horn of Africa,
like the southernmost point in Africa,
which, you know, it's down there.
It's getting, it's cold, it's getting cold down there,
and this dude would swim in the water
in just a pair of shorts.
And we're talking about like,
like not scuba diving, we're talking about snorkeling.
He had like a snorkel and a mask, fins, a weight belt
in order to kind of get down into the kelp forest
and a pair of shorts.
It's called free diving.
He was holding his breath to go down.
And it was, he said the water would get as cold
as I had to Google the conversion,
but like 45 degrees Fahrenheit.
Yeah, it's actually-
That sounds crazy to me.
It's unnaturally cold.
If you get in 60 degree water, that's frigid feeling.
Just last night, I jumped into my pool.
As you can see, we're the jacket boys today.
We've got on jackets.
Jacket weather is finally here in California.
And I got into my pool last night
and it said on the thermometer that it was 70 degrees,
but I felt like I was getting into a refrigerator.
So to think about, and when we did the ice bath,
it was in the 50s.
55, 58.
So 45 degrees, we're talking, and it's phenomenal.
He said, at one point early on in documentary,
when he said, after a year, because he dove every day.
Every day, without exception.
After a year, he says, you start to crave the cold.
I'm like, after a year?
I don't, anything that catastrophically numbing and painful.
But don't you want that?
And death defying.
When he said that.
But yeah, but I want it if it would,
like maybe after a week, you start to crave the cult.
After a year, you start to crave the cult.
Well, and a little, just a little bit of background
that what got him to this point.
So he was a documentary filmmaker.
He is a documentary filmmaker
and he essentially had a midlife crisis, right?
He had been working on some documentaries
and one in particular that was like following a tribe
somewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa.
And he had a kid and he began to just kind of feel
disconnected and felt like he needed to drop everything,
didn't know if he would ever film anything again,
didn't know if he was gonna pick up a camera again.
Went back to the Horn of Africa to get into the water
because his family had had a house,
which did you see the house that they showed?
That was literally-
Below the tidal line, so like the waves crashed.
How do you build that house?
Waves would go into the house.
Waves would go into the house.
So, and we're talking about like on a cliff,
not like sandy beach.
Yeah, and that's what he grew up doing.
So he went back to his roots.
He wanted to go back to the roots.
And he would like,
cause he went skin diving as a kid.
And so he just went back there, not filming.
And then he came upon an octopus,
not a special octopus, just a normal octopus.
In fact, what is it called?
Octopus commonus or something. I don't know what, it's a normal octopus. In fact, what is it called? Octopus commonus or something?
Yeah, yeah.
I don't know what, it's a common octopus.
That is not what it is, but it is just a common octopus.
And so the things that he learned, observed,
and started to film and share with the viewer
were just amazing.
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Now, one of the things about octopuses,
is it octopi? Is that correct? Octopi? Through the power of the things about octopuses, is it octopi?
Is that correct, octopi?
Through the power of the internet,
I think that most people who have an internet connection
have learned-
That they're smart.
That they're smart.
This is something that like five years ago,
maybe most people didn't know,
but now most people are like,
yeah, I've seen that crazy video
where the octopus like changes color.
I didn't know that octopuses could,
octopi could change color and could do weird things
like walk on two legs and-
Sprout horns over their eyes.
And then I also didn't know that if you're doing
the IQ thing, the animal IQ thing,
that these things would actually rank
just a little bit above a dog in intelligence,
which seems nuts to me.
And on top of that,
two thirds of their cognitive power is in their limbs.
Wild.
I mean, they evolved on a completely different-
Branch. Branch.
And when we were hanging out
and you were gushing and gushing and gushing about it-
Like an octopus shooting outin' out ink.
Mike, our friend, ended up saying,
he was like, you know, the way that they're so intelligent,
if they, the way that they evolved,
if they didn't live, if they only,
why can I not put this thought together?
They only live a year.
If they lived as long as we do,
evolutionarily speaking, they would be running the earth.
They would have developed technology
and they would have vehicles to come on land
and farm everywhere and create the internet.
That's why it's so remarkable.
We'd be nothing.
That in the movie Arrival,
the alien beings are octopus-like
and I thought that was super appropriate.
The balancing factor for me is that they're-
Beautiful. Gross.
Oh. Not beautiful to me.
I'm like, oh gosh.
Like the first thing I told you was like,
yeah, but when I think about an octopus,
I think about them being able to squeeze through tight
places because they're just so gelatinous.
And I just get this,
when I went to the aquarium and I saw one put all of its arms
through this little hole and I was like,
what are you doing?
And then all of a sudden,
like the bulbous head of the octopus,
it just kind of started shoving its own head
through this hole.
And that was very disturbing to me.
I was like, you're gonna get stuck. No one's gonna be able to yank you out of there. And it was very disturbing to me. I was like, you're gonna get stuck.
No one's gonna be able to yank you out of there.
And it was just, but then it effortlessly went through,
but it was just like gross.
I think the thing that's scary to me about them,
first of all, they're scarier on land
than they are in the water
because they're not moving very gracefully,
but there's also, and I don't know if I-
They're not typically on land.
So no, like you see-
There was a scene where this one was on land.
You see the videos where like,
they get like caught in a net
and then they try to get back into the ocean
and it's kind of crazy.
There's some good YouTube videos about that.
But I think there's a movie, an old movie,
where there's like an octopus
that's killing a bunch of people.
It might be a squid, but there's a beak.
It's called Octopussy.
It's a James Bond film.
There's a beak in there up in the,
like if you were to take the legs and like expose it,
which doesn't happen in this particular documentary,
there's a mouth in there that is powerful and can do things
and I'm scared of things like that, like beaks.
He talks about how there's a, he calls it a drill,
where he can drill a hole into a shell
at a very particular spot that will make the mollusk
or whatever that's inside just like let go of the shell
and then-
Well, it injects it with some kind of venom
that paralyzes it.
At a certain spot.
But it's gotta be a very particular part
of the snail inside the shell.
Okay, so to continue the story,
he dives every single day for a year
and then at some point, he just runs into this octopus.
And he realizes that, okay, so octopuses,
this is another thing I didn't know.
Octopuses, I'm gonna say octopuses, I know it's wrong,
but I just, octopi sounds stupid.
Octopuses have dens.
So there's like a place at a particular rock,
under a little rock where this thing lives and returns.
An octopus garden. An octopus garden.
And he's like, okay. In the shade.
This is where I live.
And this is where I'm gonna be every time you come
and see me.
So he's like, okay, this is cool.
And he decided to go there every single day.
And in the opening of the documentary,
there's a soundbite of him saying something like,
but there was a boundary that I discover
that you just don't cross.
And I'm like, is he gonna expose himself to this octopus?
I thought that he was gonna potentially make love
to the octopus, but then I was like,
I don't think this would be on Netflix.
Because you hear about the scientist
who had the relationship with the dolphin,
and then there was a sexual component,
or at least there was a masturbation component
in order to get the dolphin to be more compliant.
Today, we're not talking about that.
So we're not saying anything,
but it did conjure those fears among my brain cells,
but that's not what they meant.
But we can get back to that.
What that, you know, what that,
the boundary was a relational one.
And there's also a documentarian part of this thing
because- It's a feat of filmmaking.
The fact that like the things that he observed,
like he observed the octopus using it,
like wanting to inspect the human
and then using a shell as a shield
and then slowly approaching behind,
like holding it up like a shield and then finally-
Sticking another tentacle out.
Finally making contact with him
and then realizing that there's a curiosity
on the part of this octopus that he never named.
I mean, he never gave the octopus a name.
I think that's a good point.
I think- It's a good observation.
And that's the boundary, I think.
Part of the boundary was he didn't name the octopus.
He wasn't trying to make it a pet.
And he was also, as you will see in a second,
not trying to insert himself into the natural flow
of nature that was going to happen with this octopus.
We can gush all day about all the things
we learned about octopi,
but you can get that from the documentary.
But the thing that was interesting was,
I mean, he could see the octopus predator swimming around
like pajama shark, and then he was scared
and he would go back every day like what's gonna happen?
And then freaking he films a shark attack
his friend,
the octopus. I mean, they had a bond at this point.
The octopus knew him, would come out,
they would swim together.
You know, he would like swim on his,
the octopus would, she would hold onto his hand and-
And it was-
It would like, the octopus would like come up
and settle on his chest.
And give him a hug. Because he's not wearing a wetsuit. That's part of the deal. The octopus would like come up and settle on his chest.
And give him a hug.
Because he's not wearing a wetsuit,
that's part of the deal.
He wanted to be as close to nature as possible.
So this almost naked man has this octopus
just nestling on his chest.
He didn't reach out, grab the octopus
and put him on his chest. No, the octopus did it.
He let the octopus instigate.
Take the initiative.
But you left out an important point, which was,
he was filming it.
Once he was like, oh, I'm gonna start filming this thing.
I'm gonna take my camera down there.
He had developed this trust, this bond,
and then it was following him
and he dropped a lens off of the camera.
And it spooked the octopus
and it did not go back
to its den so the next day he goes back,
the thing is not in its den.
It goes back the next day, it's not in its den.
He's like, oh crap, I've ruined this relationship.
We had built this trust.
And you've broken up.
That was the first time I cried.
I was already crying when he had the bond
and then he broke the bond.
Oh, so you didn't cry when he successfully tracked her down
and reconnected?
Oh no, I cried again then.
That's number two?
Yeah.
Well then was number three?
I mean-
It was at least three times.
I mean, the big point of horror was him filming the shark-
Getting attacked.
Attack her and rip off one of her arms and just eat it.
And then it gets to that boundary
because he didn't stop it from happening.
But then he says, I couldn't resist.
Basically he couldn't resist helping.
So, you know, she's in, she's holding up in her-
She makes it back to the den.
Yep, on her own.
With seven limbs.
He's tempted to help, but he doesn't help.
He just films her going back to her den,
limping with one less arm, which has her brain in it.
Yeah, lost a part of her brain.
And then she's like, she's too weak to even change color.
Yeah, she just turns white.
And so, but he did crack open shells.
Like some muscles or something.
Muscles or something and serve it to her
to have some nourishment.
And she took it.
She took it, but he said it didn't,
I don't think it did much good,
but I think he might've been saying that
because he crossed his own boundary,
which I'm like, dude, wait, you know,
when you're in a relationship with an animal,
all bets are off, like it's not a pet,
but it's a, there was a bond there and he freaking,
yeah, I totally understand that he had to like
do what he could to help, but it was,
it seemed like a little, little, too little too late
until she freaking grew her arm back.
Did you, I didn't, I forgot that that was possible.
I didn't know it was possible.
My jaw dropped.
She grew the arm back.
And so she had eight limbs again
and she kind of came back to life.
And again, so he lost contact with her, tracked her down,
learned how to track her movements
by looking at the sand on the bottom of the ocean.
But he's got-
Reunites with her,
watches her get attacked by the shark.
She loses the limb and then she gets back in business
and the sort of the, it goes on and on and on.
The relationship continues.
What was the last thing that filled you with wonder
that took you away from your desk or your car in traffic?
Well, for us, and I'm going to guess for some of you, that thing is...
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And then,
lo and behold,
the same dang gone shark comes back,
or one of the sharks that hunts at this reef comes back.
And this point, this is when my mind started,
I was like, am I experiencing reality correctly
at this point?
Yeah.
Because the octopus has the ability
to pick up all these shells
and ball itself up and shield itself.
It looks like a soccer ball that's made out
of all these shells that it's holding.
And there's a name for that as well.
I can't remember what it was.
And the octopus, the shark comes up.
I do not think that this behavior
was ever documented before he observed it.
Because he says he remembers seeing that,
the first time he ever came in contact with the octopus,
it was in that state of this soccer ball with the shells.
And he was like, what the hell is this thing?
Right.
And then he realized it's a octopus protecting itself.
And then there's like epic battle with a shark
that still is trying to eat the soccer ball of shells.
And then, okay, two things,
two remarkable things happened during the shark attack.
The first thing that happens is,
is that the, once the octopus,
the shark picks up the octopus and is shaking it around.
Cause it realizes, okay, this isn't a soccer ball.
This is an octopus,
but the octopus gets away and swims out of the water,
gets on the shore on a rock and eventually has to get back
in the water because it can't stay out too long.
And at that point it gets on the sharks back and rides the shark because it gets on the shark's back and rides the shark
because it knows that the shark can't eat it
as long as it's riding on it like it's a fricking horse.
But it rode it as a soccer ball of shells.
Yeah, right, it kept itself in the shells
while it did this.
So that the shark was totally confused
and then when it brushed up against some coral,
it just ever so normally,
it just brushed itself off and floated away.
This thing is so freaking smart.
And that's why you observe this thing every day for a year
and you're making this bond with it.
And you're saying, okay, I'm now going to film my best ocean friend
getting eaten alive.
How much do you think was the footage
that we were seeing in the documentary
was the footage that was captured
in the moment when it happened?
And how much was like filler, like filling it,
like going back and filming later to make it make sense?
Like pickups, like movie pickups.
Like I do think the octopus is smart enough
to comply to pickups.
Like, hey, can you get on the back of that pajama shark
again and you know, it's like,
we're gonna look at the continuity photos,
you're gonna get the same shells in the same place.
Because every single thing that would happen.
I think he captured all of it.
He had incredible shots of it.
And I think that was a level of obsession
that I totally understand.
It's like, again, you're making this bond
and then you don't know what's going to happen every day.
And it's like, is this the day that I come back
and the octopus is just not there?
Has been attacked and is just gone?
Am I gonna have to track it again?
But that's why it's so amazing to me
that he didn't intervene,
except in that one breach with feeding.
And then it comes back and it's like,
there's another octopus, they're mating,
they've mated and then it's like,
he knows that she's gonna die at that point.
So he's just, he's coming back every day to see.
That's the end of the life cycle.
Yeah, only a year.
At what point in the process do you think
that the inner filmmaker, there's a spark sometimes,
especially when you're doing documentary film,
there's a spark.
We don't have a whole lot of experience with this,
but I do remember when we were making
"'Looking for Ms. Locklear,"
which is really the only documentary we've ever made,
full length documentary.
And once the search for our teacher became much larger
and became about the struggle of the Lumbee people,
and we found ourselves in Washington, DC at a hearing
filming John McCain talk about, you know,
the Indian Affairs Committee.
There was this moment that somewhere along the lines
where I was like, we got something here, right?
He was, at what point do you think he understood
the potential for what he was creating?
I mean, he was a nature documentarian.
I think he had to be pretty early.
And I do think that was the factor
because I'm not that familiar with him,
but I have to believe that there's these rules
of you don't intervene, you know?
Well, there's a famous photo that won a prize of some sort,
whatever the photo prize is, of the starving child.
Right.
But I don't even remember when it was from.
So there's a journalistic principle
that applies to nature as well.
Well, just to complete the thought though,
there's a picture of a starving child
that was walking to get food.
And this journalist, photojournalist,
took a picture of the child, but did not assist the child.
And I think the story goes that the child died.
And when people found out about that, they were like,
well, okay, what's more important,
your journalistic principles or the life of this child?
This isn't a child, this is an octopus we're talking about,
but there is this sort of commitment
to these journalistic principles
that he went into the process knowing that like,
if I'm gonna make this into something,
I understand the type of criticism that I'm gonna receive,
especially when it's an animal, for intervening, right?
And he really, he held strong.
I couldn't have done that.
And I found myself being angry with him
when the octopus was in that epic battle as a boulder.
Cause he could have just reached out
and like slapped a shark.
But maybe that's a good point to analyze
because an extraordinary thing was documented that happened.
You know, it's like-
You don't wanna see a human hand come in there
and like thump the shark away.
Yeah, this is not the story.
You know, he was presenting her story, not their story.
But really, I mean, when the directors took the footage,
they presented his story,
but it was more about how he had a son
and there was a connection to,
it was what did the octopus teach him?
And there was, his takeaway was more of a,
that we're all connected.
Right.
Well, it raises a larger question,
which I think we'll get into as we begin to talk about
some of these other scenarios,
which is what part of this incredible connection
between this animal that's more intelligent
than I ever understood.
You know, and I think about, you know,
my relationship with Barbara,
your relationship with Jade, who's currently in your lap.
And definitely I attribute human emotions
and human instincts to Barbara.
Like when Barbara looks at me with a,
she gives me a facial expression that may be like,
well, she's confused right now,
or she is annoyed right now, or she's happy right now.
And again, a lot of that is me projecting
a human understanding onto a dog's face,
even though we do know that dogs,
since being domesticated have developed these things
that only exist with them and don't exist with wolves,
like the ability to make eye, sustained eye contact
with a human to get to communicate via eye contact.
That's not something that would happen with a wolf.
But even so, it makes sense that there is some sort
of emotional connection.
Like I feel like when I'm doing my stretching in the morning
and Barbara comes and gets on my chest
and like puts her head on my face or licks me or whatever,
I don't think that she's just like,
I'm doing this because you're gonna feed me later.
That might be a part of it.
But I do think that there is an emotional component to it.
But how much of this was an understanding
that this octopus had, which is like,
and again, they wouldn't put it in human terms,
but like how much of it do you think was
in so far as an octopus can consider a human a friend, that was what was going on.
It seemed that way, it really did.
I mean, like the, he wasn't,
she, the octopus was not getting anything from him.
He was, except for that one little time,
he was not feeding her, he was not doing anything except like being interesting.
You know, she was interested.
And there was a connection,
there was a form of relationship,
like curling up on his chest and stuff like that,
or just like swimming together.
I mean, he witnessed her being playful with fish,
once you really understand how something works.
And it's extremely, I'm so glad that we got a dog
because until you experience a connection with an animal,
it's just not something that,
it's just not something you can judge from the outside.
That's what I was doing, right?
So it does something within a human soul,
I think, to have a connection with an animal.
Let's get to some of these,
because I think these are an exploration of that point.
Yeah.
Well, I'm gonna talk about Dindim.
Tell me about Dindim.
The penguin.
So in May of 2011, a guy named Joao Piera de Souza,
which I would just call Mr. de Souza from this point on.
Okay.
And I'm reading points from a CNN article
in 2016 about this.
A humble retired bricklayer rescued an injured penguin.
Where?
In the state of Rio de Janeiro.
Okay.
Or Rio de Janeiro.
And the flightless bird was covered in oil
and unable to move.
So oil spill, it was one of those situations
where you got a bird covered in oil.
So D'Souza took him.
We're not talking sexy oil, we're talking crude oil.
Not a lubricant, well it is I guess,
but you know, yeah're talking crude oil. Not a lubricant, well it is I guess, but you know, yeah.
Not KY jelly.
D'Souza took him under his wing, pun,
and nurtured him back to health,
thoroughly cleaning oil residue on the penguin's body
and feeding him for days until he was fit enough
to return to the water.
So this guy basically lives on like an island nation,
lives on the beach essentially.
Not an island nation, an island area near Rio.
So he took him to another nearby island to set him free,
to set Dindim free.
And later, of course he hadn't named him at this point,
later that day, he hears some squawking in his backyard.
And he's like, holy crap, the penguin is back.
He came back to the backyard.
And he, the penguin, now he wasn't like,
he didn't put him in an enclosure,
he didn't treat him as a pet.
He did feed him and he did touch him.
Well, this penguin stayed with D'Souza for 11 months.
And then he shed his annual coat of feathers,
molted or whatever the term is, and suddenly was gone.
Like he was nothing but feathers?
He disappeared, no.
That penguin was just a ball of feathers.
All of a sudden. I've been duped.
All of a sudden, he was not in his backyard.
Okay.
So at this point D'Souza is thinking,
okay, that was a weird but awesome thing,
this short-lived relationship with this penguin
that I nursed back to health.
But then the next year, he came back.
He came back. To the backyard.
And that's when you cry in the movie.
And then he left again.
He's marching.
Haven't you seen March of the Penguins?
And it turned- They do something, right?
For years, every year since 2011,
he has come back to his backyard at the same time.
It's like an extended period of time.
He like comes back in the middle of the summer
and stays until like February and then goes away
and then comes back at the same exact time.
Now- It makes you cry a little.
You know? You can make yourself cry?
Makes you well up because just imagine his feeling.
He did this selfless act of rescuing-
Well, you wanna cry?
A flightless bird.
Look at this video.
Oh no.
You have to describe what you're seeing.
Here he is.
This is him.
He's waddling.
He's waddling up.
And he just puts his, he nuzzles him.
What is he?
He puts his beak on his face and he doesn't do this.
He's kissing him.
He kisses him and he doesn't do this
with any other humans.
He doesn't allow any, if any other human tries to touch him,
he bites them.
Oh wow.
But he lets him give him baths.
He's giving him a shower. Slow mo shower.
And then he just let, he told him,
this is a humble bricklayer, Link.
That's a humble bricklayer.
I mean, and just, you know,
it's such a rewarding connection.
It's like you do a selfless act and then it's recognized.
It's like, I owe you my life.
I'm gonna come back and I'm gonna nuzzle you.
Only you, I am not tame.
Well, okay. I am allegiant.
I don't wanna take any of the magic out of it, but I'm gonna nuzzle you, only you, I am not tame. Well, I am allegiant. I don't wanna take any of the magic out of it,
but I'm gonna tell you something that has been theorized
about this particular situation.
Now, the first thing is, for those of you who are like,
how did you know it's the same penguin?
Well, there were some scientists who asked
the same question and so in 2016, they tagged this,
they drew graffiti on him.
Oh.
They tagged the penguin
so they could keep up with his location
and sure enough, it's the same penguin
and he travels like 5,000 miles.
Wow.
But what?
But, okay, while the, and this is from the article,
while the idea of a penguin returning to visit every year
seems surreal, Krajewski, who is a scientist, said that most magellanic,
it's like Magellan with an I-C, magellanic penguins
are very loyal to their partner and nesting site.
They nest in the same place every year
and with the same partner.
So in the circuitry of this penguin's brain
is a commitment to monogamy.
And so one theory is that he sees D'Souza as his mate.
He sees it as another penguin.
And so he has this tendency to bond and connect
and almost imprint on this other being.
And it just happens that, hey, yeah,
you guys go and you spend time with other things
that look like birds and you do interesting sexual things with them
and it makes baby penguins.
I just go hang out with a humble bricklayer.
Well, you should see the brick he can lay.
But still it's beautiful and it's sweet.
I'd like to see your mate Tammy lay brick.
Right, exactly.
You know?
That's dindim.
I mean, I read an article about Yuriko the fish in Japan.
There's this underwater shrine sacred to the Shinto religion
and there is a caretaker of the shrine.
So he scuba dives down there, Hiroyuki Arakawa.
And there's this, I'll call it a ugly fish.
I'm just gonna say it.
It's a ugly, it's a bottle nose, bulbous headed,
sheep's head, Ross fish.
It's not pretty.
There's no octopus.
And this thing comes up and for 25 years,
he greets her with a kiss on the forehead.
But I watched the footage of it.
I think you watched the footage too.
Little less impressive.
It's just a big old fish getting petted on the forehead.
And then-
It looks like it wants something.
Yeah, it looks like it wants something.
I mean, it snapped at him and it- Looks like it wants something. Yeah, it looks like it wants something. I mean, it snapped at him
and it seemed like it was eating something later
but he kisses it on the head.
That doesn't count for me.
I mean, it's like, that's not special.
It's just like, hey, a fish knows
you are gonna show up every day and maybe feed it
or at least kiss it on the head.
And- I bet a little something
comes out of your mouth
that it tastes.
A fish has got to be, and this fish looks really stupid.
I mean, like I think all fish are probably pretty dumb.
This fish looks like especially stupid.
But I mean, the fact that it's lived 25 years,
I think is just a testament to it.
You don't have to be that smart
to make it 25 years in the ocean.
But let me tell you about this crocodile.
Okay. Okay.
I got another one too.
I wanna go ahead and skip to the crocodile.
Okay, all right.
Because I think it's, this is crazy.
All right.
A dude named Cheeto is in Central America.
He's a fisherman.
He finds a crocodile, like a small crocodile
that's been shot by a farmer
because it was coming out, he has cattle.
And shot this crocodile in the head,
like in the eye to kill it.
But then he finds it and he nurses it back to health
over three years.
And he's like chewing stuff for this little crocodile
and like, and then giving it to the,
like showing the crocodile, oh, you need to eat this.
And then like feeding it stuff and like being-
He's like demonstrating chewing?
Yeah, to a crocodile.
And it worked.
A crocodile, yeah, and this thing-
How big is this thing?
Well, it was small,
but then over the three years of it regaining its vigor, this thing grew to 16 feet long.
That's a big animal.
It's a huge crocodile.
And then he named it Pocho.
And he puts it back and once it recovers,
he like, he sends it away.
And then he gets up the next morning
and that thing has come back and is in his yard.
And then he does it again, does it three times.
And the crocodile, Pocho, just keeps coming back
and hanging out in his yard.
He doesn't want to leave Cheeto.
And so then Cheeto is compelled to spend more and more time
with this crocodile to the point that his wife starts to think
he's sneaking around on him and like,
and then it realizes it's a crocodile but gets jealous.
The wife gets jealous?
And they get a divorce.
He wasn't making love with it, was he?
No, he wasn't.
He was just spending more time with the crocodile
than he was spending with her and he's quoted as saying,
"'Another wife I could get.
"'Pocho was one in a million.'"
Well, you could say that again.
He did get another wife and they had a daughter
and the daughter's not allowed to like be around Pocho,
but Pocho will not leave.
So like, he's like spending all this quality time
and learning all the intricacies of like
how the crocodile looks and all this stuff.
And you start swimming with the crocodile
and there's like a Nat Geo documentary,
which incidentally is shot by the same person
who was a cinematographer on My Octopus Teacher.
Really? Yeah.
And in the opening shot, you see this huge crocodile
like in the water with his eyes at the water level.
And then his mouth opens.
And you know how you see a crocodile's mouth just gape open.
And then you realize,
no, this is not the crocodile's mouth gaping open.
There's like a huge bald head in its mouth.
No, the crocodile's mouth is shut.
And a bald headed man named Cheeto
is underneath the crocodile pushing his head up
and revealing himself.
This is like the opening shot of this Nat Geo documentary.
And he rides on its back and he's,
I mean, this is a reptile.
You would think that this couldn't happen
because again, the way that the reptilian brain develops.
They're not that smart.
I mean, it's like, yeah, it's-
We have a number of layers of brain on top of
the core of our brain.
Basically the reptilian brain is just instinctual.
That's what's so crazy about the octopus
is that it's evolutionarily so much more separated.
But yeah, a crocodile, I mean, but-
Why doesn't he eat Cheeto?
I mean, his name is Cheeto after all.
It's spelled differently.
But it's not as compelling as the octopus thing
because you can't attribute as much intelligence
to the crocodile, but I mean, there's enough there-
There's a lot more risk though.
There is a bond,
and there are many documented cases of people
like after years and years of having a pet reptile.
And he was a pet, but he was still free to go.
He's free to go now.
They'll turn on you and just kill you at any point.
Didn't he die?
He died at age of 50 in 2011.
But the interesting thing is how-
The crocodile.
The crocodile, yeah.
Cheeto described it as,
whenever he would play with the crocodile,
he said it was like being with God.
Like the dude was obsessed with this connection
because it can become so, I'll say magical.
You're able to cross this impossible boundary.
And it's, I mean, you could tell in his interviews
just how meaningful it was to him to have that connection.
And it is interesting to explore
like how much of that is, you know, projection.
But it's real for him and it's important for him.
Well, we have a tendency, you know, post enlightenment,
especially in the Western world,
we have a tendency to do what we're doing,
which we kind of just naturally do,
which is to try to break it down
to just its naturalistic elements.
But there is- An emotional component.
Well, I would say they're even a spiritual component,
right, potentially. So what I'm getting at is in so far as- a spiritual component, right, potentially.
So what I'm getting at is in so far as-
That's what he did, yeah.
When you talk about the idea of oneness, right?
And the idea that consciousness is a thing that exists.
I'm not saying I subscribe to this idea,
but it is a very intriguing way to look at the universe.
And the idea that there may not necessarily be,
there could be a God who is somehow separate
from this creation and was the one
who set everything in motion.
But to me, there's a slightly more interesting idea
that in many ways seems more compelling
that God is in everything, right?
And is sort of the universe is essentially
a physical expression of a consciousness that exists
that you and I and this wooden desk are all a part of.
This is something that I used to, when I-
And I'll just break in and say, I don't know if it's,
it may be more interesting and compelling.
It is interesting and compelling to me as well,
but it may be because it's a little more,
it's a newer idea to us, but-
Well, I'm gonna talk about that
because I actually feel like,
I remember when I used to hear
about different Eastern religions
and I heard about it in the context of growing up
in a conservative Christian home and a church
where the way that we would interpret say Hinduism,
Buddhism, whatever, like when I learned
that there were all these specific gods associated
with different objects in Hinduism,
to me, I was like, that's ridiculous, right?
I remember thinking that as a kid, I was like, that's really, that seems kinda remember thinking that as a kid, I was like,
that's really, that seems kinda,
that seems sort of archaic and it seems like
like an old kind of idea that you would attribute,
you would find a God in a rock.
Mystic, it was mystical.
Or what I'm saying is I belittled the idea.
I'm saying, I'm not saying that it was mystical.
What I'm saying is I looked down on the idea.
I thought that it was a bad way to look at the universe.
I thought that it was a simple way to look at the universe.
And I was like, when you can-
Or ignorant.
Yeah, yeah, that kind of makes sense.
Like maybe those people haven't evolved to a place
where they can appreciate the idea
of a personal creator God.
But one of the things that I'm kind of reevaluating again,
I don't know where I fall in this perspective,
but when I think about that, I'm like,
oh, it isn't necessarily just as simple,
the super simple sort of dismissive view that I had,
which was attributing a God or magic to every single thing.
But to me, it's a way of kind of expressing that idea
that there is life, there is God,
whatever the word you want to use,
there is consciousness in all things
and sort of more of a sense of fabric of the universe.
And so I do think there's been times in my life
where I have felt connected to things
that it would be like,
it's weird to feel connected to a plant, right?
But if you go back from a scientific standpoint
to the point where, well, we come from the same place,
we're all stardust.
At one point, the same atoms that make up that plant,
you know, the same atoms that make up me
are gonna become the same atoms that make up a plant,
that make up an animal, that make up the next Jade.
And what I'm getting at is,
are you using Jade as a visual example right now?
I am, yeah.
And so your connection with Jade is,
again, the Western enlightened view
is that this is a lesser creature
that is here for your benefit.
This is here for you.
The idea that you're human and therefore,
you must exercise dominion over all things on Earth
and that everything is here for your exploitation.
There's a different way to look at things,
which is we're all part of the same system
in a much more integrated and thorough way
than we ever appreciated.
And when you think about it like that,
maybe what's happened between Cheeto and Pocho
is a sort of strange, it's not an anomaly,
but it's an expression of that type of connection
that can happen between beings.
I'm not gonna swim with a croc to find God, but he did.
Right. He did.
And his second wife was with it.
So.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, it is interesting.
I do want you to get to the lion.
You know, I had heard about this, but like this is a,
the relationship narrative
associated with this is flooring.
Well, and this is a video that you've seen.
If you're one of the 100 million people who have watched it.
Christian the lion.
You may have seen about 10 years ago,
there was a video that went viral
and it's obviously like old footage.
It's from the late 60s.
And I think the original version doesn't even have any sound
but there's these two very hippie looking white dudes
with long hair and bell bottoms.
And they're like out in Africa.
Bell bottoms, yeah.
And next thing you know, there's a fricking lion
that still seems to be juvenile, doesn't have a mane yet,
but is a fricking 500 pound creature
that could easily kill them,
starts running up to them and you're like,
oh no, what's about to happen?
And it jumps up and it hugs this dude.
And then it's just like licking him and hugging him
and frolicking and then it goes up to the other guy
and the same thing happens and they're like laughing.
And it's one of these things you're like, what?
I've seen this before, like on Tiger King.
You know, I've seen people interact with big cats
that were raised in captivity,
but these guys are in the middle of Africa, the bush.
And this thing comes out.
So the story behind this is that again, late 60s,
there's two Australian dudes who see a lion cub for sale
in England, because there was an exotic animals market at that time,
they purchased this thing.
In their early 20s,
they're not trying to take advantage of the thing,
they're just like,
who knows where this thing's gonna end up,
let's give it a good life, and they do this.
They raise this thing in their apartment,
in their flat in England.
And this lion cub grows over the course of a year
and is their pet and stays in their house,
rides in the back of their convertible Mercedes
everywhere they go around town,
goes to parties with them,
becomes friends with their friends.
And there's like an account of him jumping up on a woman
that was one of the lion's friends
and he accidentally like claws her dress
and it falls to the floor.
Like all these crazy surreal,
this seems like some sort of like Wes Anderson movie
where there's this lion friend
who is going along with these guys.
Now eventually they realize this cannot continue.
He's too big.
He's never shown any signs that he's gonna hurt anybody,
but he doesn't really understand his own strength
and it's probably not moral to keep this thing in England.
Probably not.
So they take him to Kenya
where they just drop him off or whatever.
And at this point you're thinking,
this thing has never lived in the wild,
surely this thing's gonna die.
Well, if you watch that video,
you'll see one of the things that happens is after he's,
after they're interacting with this male lion,
all of a sudden a female lion comes up to them
and starts interacting with them.
Not in the same way,
but it's basically just right there next to them
walking around. Curious.
Curious and like coming up next to them
and kind of rubbing up on them.
They put Christian the lion in the bush.
It came back three months later
thinking they would never see him again.
Three months later? Three months later,
he comes up to them, hugs them like that,
and then brings them his wife and they meet,
they stay there for nine days
and they meet his wife and his kids.
He's got, they have a litter,
whatever the correct term of cubs.
So he-
That couldn't happen in three months though.
I think it could.
You have babies in three months?
Maybe if you're a lion?
I don't know what the gestation period is.
I don't know if I've got all the facts right,
but I do know when he came back,
he had, he introduced them to his wife and kids.
He made it.
He made it.
He made it and he made it.
And then they never saw him again.
I don't know, the story kind of ends there.
But these guys, when the video went viral in 2011,
they ended up going on like the Today Show.
And of course they were much older at this point.
And then they signed a movie deal
where Zac Efron was gonna play one of them
and I don't think that ever happened
because I looked and I couldn't find it.
Yeah, the whole captivity thing is a-
Complicates it.
Complicates this conversation but I mean,
the fact that there's, you know,
having a connection with an animal,
one of the things this highlights is how extraordinary
it was with an octopus, going back to that.
You know, you might have one in an aquarium,
but you're not gonna have an actual relationship,
this connection.
And it was just, it's mind blowing.
Does it make you think twice?
I like them more.
About enjoying octopus at a fancy restaurant?
It gives me an easier excuse to not eat it.
I think- You don't like it.
I've had it a couple of times.
And I really do like it.
And I didn't hate it, but I've never seen it on the menu
and said I gotta have this.
And I'm the exact opposite.
So if I see it on the menu, I order it without exception.
If Octopus is on the menu, I order it.
What about now?
Oh man, this is tough.
Seriously?
You cried three times?
Well, again, I'm not trying to go philosophical here
and I'm also not trying to justify my own behavior,
but just go with me on another little journey for a second.
Okay, okay.
Don't hold your dog up in the middle of it.
Just stay with me.
I'm not.
I've thought about this
and I thought about this as it relates to the morality of eating meat, right?
It was something, I actually think about it
on a pretty regular basis, right?
And if you follow that sort of oneness idea
and that we're all connected, I mean, first of all,
the distinction that we make between plants and animals,
obviously there is a distinction
between plants and animals.
There are some weird sort of intermediate things.
And I do think that for whatever reason,
the closer something gets to our level of intelligence,
for good reason, it becomes weirder to eat it, right?
But everybody draws a line at some point.
Some people say anything with eyes, anything with the face.
Some people say anything with the conscience
as however you define that.
But there's actually a lot of evidence to suggest
that there is a level of consciousness amongst plants.
When you eat a plant, you are killing it.
You're constantly murdering microorganisms
that have some level of consciousness
just by being a person,
meaning that there is a give and take
that happens between beings in the universe.
Now, there are some things that you can point to
that really seem totally unnecessarily exploitative,
like factory farming as an example, right?
When you begin to see an animal simply as a source of food
and its existence is just for the benefit
of you being able to eat exactly the right kind of beef
that you want or whatever.
And then of course, what the net effect of that is,
is that there is an animal that is being bred
in a certain way, in a certain environment
that is just to be eaten,
which is different than, hey, there's a deer that's out here enjoying its life,
doing its thing, being a part of nature.
It's going to be killed by something eventually, right?
It's usually, animals in the wild
don't usually die of natural causes.
They end up getting eaten by predators.
And so there are points at which a human enters
the food chain and says, I'm the predator and I'm going to,
anyway, I believe that you can kill an animal
for the purpose of it being food
and do it in a respectful way
that is actually respecting its life.
I think that that's a possible thing to do.
So all that to say, from a moral standpoint,
while I understand someone saying from a moral standpoint,
I will not eat animals, period.
I think that it's a much more complex thing
than a lot of people maybe are willing to admit
because there's a lot of gray in that equation.
So you will eat the octopus.
Well, I guess what I'm saying is, again,
not trying to defend myself and justify myself,
but I honestly feel my perspective is,
I can be absolutely amazed at the octopus,
appreciate the octopus in a way that I never did before,
and still eat the octopus.
Like I don't have to- I don't even like having-
What I'm saying is, if I get to a point
where I have to disrespect an animal
in order to be able to eat it,
I'm not saying, you know what I'm saying?
I don't disrespect, I don't think that a cow's life
is pointless.
I don't think that I have sympathy for a cow.
I eat beef at the same time.
And you know, listen, I may get to a point
where it's like that contradiction is something
that is truly a contradiction that I can't live with.
But I actually think there's more compelling reasons
to stop eating meat than the moral dilemma
around the life of an animal.
But anyway.
Well, what about this?
What animal would we each choose,
wild animal we choose to have a best friendship with
that would remain wild?
Not domestication, not making a pet,
not putting in a pen or in your house
or in your convertible.
But like if you could go and go on their terms,
be friends with that animal, what would it be?
I really like the idea of being, of like scuba diving.
I can't do the skin diving.
You could though.
No one can do it at the beginning, that's what I've heard.
I know.
No one can do it at the beginning.
I have an anxiety of like holding my breath, like.
Everyone has the anxiety.
That's what I, were we talking about this before?
Oh, it was that book, the book I told you about
that I wanted to do a whole episode on
that we can talk about it later.
But the guy talks about it in the book.
Well, I know that.
That everyone has this underwater anxiety.
But like, I would love to get my scuba license.
I've wanted to do that ever since I've been snorkeling
a couple of times and like, man, I wanna go deeper,
but I don't wanna have to hold my breath.
Oh yeah, there's scuba diving.
I'm actually more freaked out by the scuba
than I am the free diving.
So I'm, well, I'm actually,
so I'm thinking in that realm.
It could be an octopus for me now.
It could be.
Well, I think you gotta pick something original.
That's been done.
You have to have my sea bass teacher.
Yeah, I don't think there's,
I mean, there's some of the mammals in the ocean.
Any mammal in the ocean.
A dolphin connection.
So I don't know, I guess I do wanna stay.
Seahorse, you like little horses.
They're not smart.
Well, what if they are?
You don't know that.
What if you could have a little seahorse
that just nestles up into your chest region?
Yeah, that's cool.
I would want one of the bigger ones though.
The biggest seahorse is for you.
How big do they get?
I think they can get as big as your thigh.
No.
No way a seahorse gets that big. Maybe as big as your thigh. No. No way a seahorse gets that big.
Maybe as big as my foot.
I don't think a seahorse gets that big.
I think maybe at some point in the distant past.
Maybe a size 11 foot.
You think there's US size 11 shoe.
Well, I gotta ask this question now.
How big can a seahorse get?
Can range in size from 0.6 inches to 14 inches long.
That's a size 14.
Yeah, that's a big seahorse, man.
You can find a big size 14.
Can seahorses kill humans is also.
And they could nuzzle in a way that a horse would.
It says, might seem like the most harmless,
unassuming creatures under the sea,
but they're actually one of the most deadly.
Okay, forget it.
Just a normal horse on land.
You know, I mean, people have these connections with horses.
There's like therapy associated with horses.
Like they have this like cosmic connection to people.
So I just gotta go back to a regular horse.
Final answer, what's your answer?
But it has to be a wild horse.
Yep.
It can't just be like a horse
in a stable somewhere in Burbank.
Yeah, it has to, I only-
Like a Mustang.
I'm gonna ride it only by invitation.
Like it's gonna have to kneel down and kind of,
like when the horse picked up Aragorn
when he was like totally decimated, he seemed dead,
and the horse like basically put him on his back,
that's how it would have to happen.
But it would after like a year.
Well, my animal is horse-like in a sense,
and it's also, I think I've been on record saying
that this is my favorite animal, giraffe.
I think I've been on record saying that this is my favorite animal, giraffe.
I'm a very, I'm tall, I'm a very large man.
And the idea, could you imagine what it would be like
to be friends with a giraffe?
Just think about that for a second.
First of all, they're obviously-
They're so tall.
Gentle and sweet.
Have you seen the eyelashes on those things?
And they are also rideable.
And that's not, I'm not in this just for the ride,
but riding a giraffe would be one of the more badass things
that you could do.
Again, this would be in the context of a friendship.
It wouldn't be in a context of-
It would have to be initiated by the draft.
I'm saying that. There's no saddle.
I wouldn't have a saddle made.
I'd be riding this thing bareback
and I would be holding onto its neck.
I wouldn't even be grabbing onto its hair
because I might hurt it.
It's kinda like riding a hobby horse
or like a carousel horse.
Yeah, and this is only if, again,
if I was invited to ride it.
But I think that if you are in a friendship with a giraffe,
I think that's part of it.
I just think you'd be walking with it
and it would just be-
I think I might grab onto one of its legs,
like one of those little stuffed animal monkeys.
Like a child?
That just like stays on a leg
and I just hold onto the leg and go around
and then occasionally it throws me up
and lets me walk up its neck to see what it sees.
You're kind of missing the relationship.
I was looking for more of like,
you would read aloud to it.
Well, this is all part of it.
You read aloud to the giraffe.
I'm just talking about the more sensational things.
Okay, is that your final answer?
And there is a place, there is a hotel.
Yeah, it's called Disney World.
There's a hotel in Africa where,
again, I don't know if these things are like
just on the premises, I don't know the situation.
I'm not advocating like pet giraffes,
like giraffes need to be in the wild.
But there is a hotel where you eat,
you're in your room and you're like eating breakfast
and the giraffes come in and like interact with you.
I think it's giraffes.
I've seen this, yeah.
I've seen a picture of it.
I don't know about if it's ethical.
So I'm not saying I'm doing it.
If they're wild giraffes that have somehow
just become comfortable with people, then I might go. If they're wild giraffes that have somehow just become comfortable with people, then I might go.
If they're like giraffes that they're keeping
and making interact with people for money,
then I'm not part of it.
But I think that's where the hotel comes in.
Well, I mean, maybe the giraffes are,
what are the giraffes getting at?
I don't know, yeah.
I'm just saying you're out in the wild,
you're reading a book to a giraffe, just keep it pure.
You're the one muddying everything.
Just keep it pure, man.
Listen, the world is complex.
And when it gets attacked, you can't intervene.
I don't know what I would do in the case of,
anything that can hurt a giraffe.
I'm gonna tell you right now.
It's probably not something I could do something about,
but you as a seahorse man.
I would intervene with my friend
because I'm not a nature documentarian
and that's why I'm not, because I want the seahorses to be,
I'm gonna do everything in my power to protect my seahorses.
Well, my seahorse friends, they're not mine,
I don't own them.
Oh, so you did go back to seahorse.
I took you back to seahorse,
I thought you went to land horse.
That's right.
I could have both.
Okay, so tell us what you think.
You know what?
I know, you don't have to tell me what you think
about the controversial things I said.
There's already enough of that.
Just tell us what you think about,
just tell us about-
Octopus Teacher.
Octopus Teacher. What did the octopus teach you?
Yeah.
Hashtag your biscuits.
We'll speak at you next week.