Most dangerous animals in the Amazon jungle | Paul Rosolie and Lex Fridman

let me ask you a ridiculous question what are all the creatures right now if they wanted to could uh cause us harm the thing is the Amazon rainforest has been described as the greatest natural Battlefield on Earth because there's more life here than anywhere else which means that everything here is fighting for survival the trees are fighting for sunlight the animals are fighting for prey everybody's fighting for survival and so everything that you see here everything around us will be killed eaten digested recycled at some point the jungle is really just a giant churning machine of death and life is kind of this moment of stasis where you you maintain this collection of cells in a particular DNA sequence and then and then it gets digested again and recycled back and renamed into everything and uh so so the things the things in this Forest while they don't want to hurt us there are things that are heavily defended because for instance a giant anteater needs claws to fight off a Jaguar a stingray needs a stinger on its tail which is basically a serrated knife with Venom on it to deter anything that would hunt that Stingray even the catfish have pectoral fins that have razor long steak Knife sized defense systems then you have of course the Jaguars the harp eagles the piranha the candiru fish that can swim up a penis Lodge themselves inside it's the Amazon rainforest the thing is as you've learned this week nothing here wants to get us with the except exception of maybe mosquitoes every other animal just just wants to eat and exist in peace that's it but there is each of those animals like you described have a kind of radius of Defense so if you accidentally step into its home yeah into that radius it can cause harm or make them feel threatened make them feel threatened there is a defense mechanism that is activated some incredible defense mechanisms I mean you're talking about 17t black cayman crocodiles that with significant size that could rip you in half anacondas the largest snake on earth Bush Masters that can grow up to be nine to I think even 11 feet long and I've caught Bush Masters that are thicker than my arms so for people who don't know Bushmaster snakes what are these things these are vipers it's the LGE I believe it's the largest Viper on Earth venomous extremely venomous with hinge teeth tissue destroying Venom like if you get bitten by a Bushmaster they say you don't you don't rush and try and save your own life you try to savor what's around you look at look around at the world smoke your last cigarette call your mom that's it so that moment of stasis that his life is going to end abruptly when you interact with one of those yeah I even have even this this seemingly can I just pause at how incredibly beautiful it is that you could just reach to your right and crap piece of the jle it's like it's like even this seemingly beautiful little Fern if you if you go this way on the fern you're fine as soon as as soon as you go this way there's invisible little spikes on there if you want to oh I see I feel see that so like everything is defended if you're driving on the road and you have your arm out the side or if you're on a motorcycle going through the jungle and you get one of these it'll just tear all the skin right off your body it's kind of doing that to me now so what what would you do like we were going through the dense jungle yesterday and you slide down the hill your foot slips you slideing down and then you find yourself staring a couple feet away from a bush Master snake what are you doing you're for people who somehow don't know are somebody who loves admires snakes who has met thousands of snakes has worked with them respects them celebrates them what would you do with a bush Master snake face to face face to face this has happened um I've been there it's nice um I've come face to face with the bushmaster and there's two things there's two reactions that you might get one is if the Bushmaster decides that it's vacation time if it's sleeping if he just had a meal they'll come to the edges of trails or beneath a tree and they'll just circle up little spiral big spiral big pile of snake on the trail and they'll just sit there and one time there was a snake sitting on the side of a trail beneath a tree for 2 weeks this snake was just sitting there resting digesting his food out in the open in the rain in the sun in the night didn't matter you go near it barely even crack a tongue now the other option is that you get a bush master that that's alert and hunting and out looking for something to eat and they're ready to defend themselves and so I once came across a Bushmaster in the jungle at night and this Bushmaster turned its head towards me looked at me and made it very clear I'm going to go this way and so I did the natural thing that any snake Enthusiast would do and I grabbed its tail now 11 fet later by the head the snake turned around and just said if you want to meet God I can arrange the meeting I will oblige and I decided to let the bush Master go mhm and so it's it's like that with most animals you know a Jaguar will turn and look at you and just remind you of how small you are like what did you see in the snake's eyes what how did you sense that this is not the right this is not this is going to be your end if you proceed is Readiness I I I wanted to get him by the tail and show them to the people that were there and maybe work with the snake a little bit as an 11 foot snake he the snake turned around and made it very clear like not today pal it's not going to happen is in the eyes and the movement and the tension of the body movement it was the movement and the of the neck it was it was it was as if you pushed me and I went let's go make my day yeah like he just looked a little bit too too ready he's like I love this okay all right so you know you just know you just know whereas like the snake you met last night yeah beautiful snake such a calm little thing he just focuses on eating baby lizards and little snails and things and that snake has no concept of Defending itself it has no way to defend itself so even a even something the size of a blue jay could just come and just Peck that thing in the head and swallow it and it's a helpless little snake so it's it's really it kind of depends on the animal depends on the mood you catch him in each one has a different temperament the grace of its movement was mesmerizing curious almost maybe I'm anthropomorphizing projecting onto it but it was the tongue flicking was a sign of curiosity trying to figure out what was going on it's like why am I on this treadmill of human skin you know they're just just trying to get to the next thing trying to get hidden trying to get away from the light also the texture of the scales is really fascinating I mean it's my first first sake I've ever touched is so interesting it just such incredible system of muscles that are all interacting together to make that kind of movement work and all the texture of its skin of its scales what what do you love about snakes from my first experience with a snake to all the thousands of experiences you had to snakes what do you love about these creatures I think it's when you just spoke about it it was that's the first snake you've met and it was a tiny little snake in the jungle and you spoke about it with so much light in your eyes and I think that because we've been programmed to be scared of snakes there's something there's something wondrous that happens in our brain maybe maybe it's just this this this Joy of discovery that there's nothing to be scared of and whether it's a rattlesnake that is dangerous and that you need to give distance to but you look at it from a distance and you go whoa or it's a harmless little grass snake that you can pick up and enjoy and give to a child it's they're just these strange legless animals that just exist you know they don't even have eyelids they're so different than us they have a tongue that sens senses the air and they to me are so beautiful and I've I've my whole life been defending snakes from humans and it's it's they seem misunderstood I think they're incredibly beautiful there's every color and variety of snakes there's venomous snakes there tree snakes there huge crushing anacondas it's just of the 2,600 species of snakes that that exist on Earth there's just such beauty such complexity and such Simplicity they're just they're just to me to me um I feel like I feel like I'm I'm friend with snake and and they rely on me to protect them from my people friend was snake me friend snake me friend snake you said some of them are sometimes aggressive some of them are peaceful is this a mood thing a personality thing a species thing is it what is it so as far as I know there's only really two snakes on earth that could be aggressive cuz aggression indicates uh uh offense and so articulated python has been documented as eating humans anacondas although while it hasn't been publicized they have eaten humans um every single other snake from Boa constrictor to Bushmaster to spitting cobra to grass snake to garter snake to everything else every single other snake does not want to interact with you they have no interest so there's no such thing as an aggressive snake once you get outside of anaconda and reticulated python aggression could be trying to eat you that's predation but for every other snake a rattlesnake if it was there would either go escape and hide itself or it would rattle its tail and tell us don't come closer a cobra will Hood up and begin to hiss and say don't approach me I'm asking you nicely not to mess with me and most other snakes are fast or they stay in the trees or they're extremely camouflaged but their whole MO is just don't bother me I don't want to be seen I don't want to be messed with in fact all I want to be do is be left alone and once in a while I just want to eat and by the way when you see a snake drink you're heart will break it's like seeing it's the only thing that's cuter than a puppy like watching a snake touch its mouth to water and just you just see that that little mouth going as they suck water in and it's like it's just so adorable watching this scaled animal just be like I need water in a state of V vulnerability yeah but bro there's nothing cuter than a little puppy with a tongue like a baby ball python all right baby king cobra take baby elephant so what are they're they're like at a puddle and they just take it in they can be at a puddle and they just take it in or one time in India I was with a snake rescuer and we found this 9- foot king cobra this this God of a snake their opop fagus Hannah is their Latin name and they're they're snake eaters they're the king of the snakes the largest venomous snake and the people that call called The Snake rescuer because that's a profession in India um you know it had gotten into their kitchen or their backyard and so we showed up and we got the snake and the snake rescuer he knew he looked at the snake and he went to me he said you know why do you think the snake would go in a house and he was quizzing me and I actually went you know I don't know is it warm is it cold you know like sometimes cats like to go into into the warm warm cars in the winter and he was like he's thirsty he goes watch this he took a water bottle poured it over now the snake is standing up snake stands up 3 feet tall this is a huge king cobra with a hood terrifying snake to be around he leans over to the snake and the snake is standing there trusting him and he takes a water bottle and pours it onto the snake's nose and the snake turns up its nose and just starts drinking from the water bottle human giving water to snake big scary snake but this human understood snake gets water snake gets released in Jungle everybody's okay so sometimes the needs are simple they just don't have the words to communicate them to us humans yeah and is it disinterest or is it fear almost like they don't notice this or is it where Source the unknown aspect of it the uncertainty is a is a source of d well animals live in a constant state of danger like if you look at that deer that we saw last night it's stalking Through the Jungle wondering what's going to eat it wondering if this is the last moment it's going to be alive it's like animals are constantly terrified of that this is their last moment yeah just for the listener we're walking through the jungle late at night so Darkness except our headlamps on and then all of a sudden Paul stops like sh and he looks in the distance he sees two eyes he's I think you thought is that a jaguar or is it a deer and it was moving its head like this mhm like uh scared or maybe trying to figure trying to localize itself trying to figure out see around you're doing the same to it the two of you like moving your head yeah and like deep into the jungle like I don't know uh it's pretty far away through the trees you can still see it 30 30 ft or so yeah that's the thing to actually mentioned I mean the with headlamp you see the reflection in their eyes it's kind of incredible just to see a creature to try to identify a creature by just the the Reflection from its eyes yeah and so the cats sometimes you'll get like a greenish or a bluish glow from the cats the deer are usually white to Orange Cayman orange night jars orange snakes can usually be like orange moths um spiders Sparkle and so you have all these different as you walk through the jungle you can see all these different eyes and when something large looks at you like that deer did your first thing is what animal is this that I am staring back at cuz through the light you kind of get you see the reflection off the the bright light off the leaves and I couldn't tell at first cuz I actually that those big bright eyes it could have been an ocelot could have been a Jaguar could have been a deer and then when it did this movement that's what the cats do they try to see around your light thought maybe Lex Freeman's here we're going to get lucky it's going to be a Jag right off Trail your definition of Lucky is a complicated one yeah it's a fascinating process when you see those two eyes trying to figure out what it is and it is trying to figure out what you are that process uh let's talk about Cayman we've seen a lot of different kinds of size we've seen a baby one a bigger one tell me about these uh 16 ft plus apex predators of the Amazon rainforest the big bad black cayman which is the largest reptilian predator in the Amazon except for the Anaconda they kind of both share that that that Notch of apex predator they were actually hunted to endangered species level in the 70s cuz they're they're leather Black Scale leather but they're coming back they're coming back and they're huge and they're beautiful and I was I was walking near a lake and I never understood how big they could get except for I was walking near a lake last year and I was following this stream you know what it's like when you're following a little stream and there's just a little trickle of water and all of a sudden this River Roder had been running the other direction on the tree on the stream River AER comes up to me and I swear to God this animal looked at me and went hey and I went hey he like didn't expect to see me there and he turned around he like did a little spin started running down the stream then he turned around and you could tell he was like let's go and I you know you I'm not anthropomorphizing here the animal was asking me to come with him so I followed the river down the stream we started running down the stream and the river looks at me one more time is like yo jumps into the lake and I'm like what does he want me to see now in the lake there's River ERS doing Dives and freaking out and going up and down and up and down and they're very excited they're screaming they're screeching all of a sudden and I've never seen anything like this except for in like Game of Thrones this crock head comes flying out of the water all of the river ERS were attacking this huge black cayman 16 ft head half the size of this table and she was thrashing her tail around creating these huge waves in the water trying to catch an otter and they're so fast that they were zipping around her biting her and then going around and this otter swear to God inter species looked at me and went watch this we're [ __ ] with this Canon it was amazing and I for the first time I got to stand there watching this incredible interspecies fight happening they weren't trying to kill the Cayman they were just trying to mess with it MH and the Cayman was doing his best to try and kill these otter and they were just having a good time and that sick sort of hyper intelligent animal like wolf sort of way where they were just going you can't catch us yeah like intelligence and Agility versus like raw power uhhuh and dominance I mean I got the handle some smaller Cay in and just the power they had you know you scale that up to imagine what a 16t even a 10t any any kind of black hon the kind of power they deliver maybe can you talk to that like the power they can generate with her tail with her neck with her jaw alligators and Cayman and crocodiles have some of the strongest bite forces on Earth think a saltwater crocodile wins as the strongest bite force on Earth and you got to hold about a what was it a 4ft spectacle C and you got to feel I mean you're a black belt in Jiu-Jitsu how do you how do you compare the the explosive force you felt from that animal compared to what a human can generate it's uh it's difficult to describe in words there's a lot of power and we're talking about the power of the neck like the what is it I mean there's a lot it can generate power all up and down the body so probably the tail is a monster mhm but just just the neck and you know not to mention the the of the bite that and the speed too because uh the thing I saw and got to experience is how still and calm at least from my amateur perspective it seems calm uh still and then from that sort of 0 to 60 could just just go wild just thrash and then there's also a decision it makes in that Split Second whether uh as it thrashes is it going to kind of bite you on the way or not MH and that's where that's where of the four species of Cayman that we have here you see differences in their personalities as a species and so you can like just like you know like generally golden retrievers are viewed as a as a friendly dog generally not every single one of them but as a rule spectacle Cay in puppies You released one in the river and it did nothing didn't bite one of your fingers it just swam away mhm we dropped one in the river and what did it do it chose people piece now I had a smooth fronted Cayman a few weeks ago and this is probably about a three and 1/2 footer not big enough to kill you but very much big enough to grab one of your fingers and just shake it off your body just death roll it right off and as I was being careful totally different Cayman than the one that you got to see this one has spikes coming off it they're like like like leftover dinosaurs it's like they evolved during the dinosaur times and never change they have spikes and bony plates and all kinds of strange growths That You Don't See on the other smoother can and I tried to release this one without getting bitten and I threw it into the stream gently into the water just went w and tried to pull my hands back and as I pulled my hand back this came and in the air turned around and just tried to give me one parting blow and just got one tooth whack right to the bone of my finger and uh a bone injury feels different than a skin injury so you in instantly and it just reminds you of that's a came in with a head this big and it hurt and I know that it could have taken off my finger now if you scale that up to a black cayman it's it's rib crushing it's it's zebra head removing size you know just just meat destroying it's it's incred it's Nature's metal sort of you know just raw power so what's the the the biggest croc you've been able to handle we were doing Cayman surveys for years and we would go out at night and you want to figure out what are the populations of black cayman spectacle Cayman smooth freny Cayman dwarf Cayman and the only way to see which Cayman you're dealing with is to catch it because a lot of times you get up close with the light and you can see the eyes at night but you can't quite see what species it is for instance this past few months we found two baby black cayman on the river which is unprecedented here we haven't seen that in decades so it's important that we monitor our Croc population so I started catching small ones um and mother God I write about the first one that me and JJ caught together which was probably a little bigger than this table and uh probably mid 20s bravado and competition with other young males of my species led to me trying to go as big as I could mhm and I jumped on a spectacle Cay in that was slightly longer than I am and I'm 5'9 so I I jumped on this probably six foot Croc and quickly realized that my hands couldn't get around its neck and my legs were wrapped around the base of its tail and the thrash was so intense that as it took one side I barely had enough time to realize what was happening before it beat me against the ground my headlamp came off so now I'm blind in the dark laying in a river in the Amazon rainforest hugging a six foot crocodile and I went JJ as I always do but I in that moment before I even let go I knew I couldn't let go of the Croc because if I let go of the Croc I thought she was going to destroy my face so I said okay now I'm stuck here if I just stay here I can't release her I need help but I was like I'm never ever ever ever going to try and solo catch a Croc this big again I was like this is this is I knew in that moment I was like this is good enough so anything longer than you you don't control the tail you don't have you have barely control of anything really yeah and that's a spectacle Cayman a black cayman is a is a whole other order of magnitude there it's like saying like oh you know I I was play fighting with my golden retriever versus I was play fighting with like you know what what's the biggest scariest dog you could think of this the dog from Sandlot a giant gorilla dog thing like a like a malamu something something huge what do they call Mastiffs yeah mffs I me you mentioned dinosaurs what what do you admire about black cayman what they've been here for a very very long time there's something prehistoric about their appearance about their way of being about their presence in this jungle with crocodiles you're looking at this this Mega Survivor they're in a class with sharks where it's like they've been here so long when you talk about multiple extinctions you talk about the sixth Extinction Earth's going through all this stuff the crocodile and the Cockroaches have seen it all before they're like man we remember what that Comet looked like and they're not impressed yeah they have this they carry this wisdom in their power yeah in the Simplicity of their power they carry the wisdom yeah and they're just sitting there in the streams and they don't care and even if there's a nuclear Holocaust you know that there would just be some Crocs sitting there dead eyed in that stagnant water waiting for the life to regenerate so they could eat again it's going to be the remaining humans versus the Crocs and the Cockroaches and the cockroaches are just background noise yeah they'll always be there sons of [ __ ] you know we're talking about individual black cayman and Cayman and different species of Cayman but when whenever they're together and you see multiple eyes which I gotten to experience it it's quite a feeling there's just multiple eyes looking back at you mhm of course for you that's uh immediate excitement you immediately go towards that you want to see it you want to explore it maybe catch them analyze what the species is all that kind of stuff yeah what's can you just describe that feeling when they're together and they're looking at you so head above water eyes reflecting the light yeah so the other night Lex and I were in the river with JJ surviving a thunderstorm we're in the rain and we had covered our covered our equipment with our boats and the only thing that we could do was get in the in the river to keep ourselves dry and so we were in the river at night in the dark no stars just a little bit of canopy silhouetted with all this rain coming down it was such a den you could hardly hear anything and all the way down river I just see this Cay and ey in my headlamp light mhm and I started walking towards it because I was like this is even better we can catch a Cayman while we're in this thunderstorm in the Amazon River and uh when JJ went Paul it's too far JJ very rarely very rarely like he'll he'll make a suggestion question like he'll usually go like maybe it's far but in that situation deep in the wilderness unknown Cayman size he went Paul it's too far don't leave the three of us right now yeah we're too far out to take risks we're too far out to be walking along the riverbed at night because then you know right here at the research station if you step on a stingray you get evaced out where we went nothing so so for me seeing those eyes I think I've become so comfortable with so many of these animals that I I may have crossed into the territory where I feel I feel so comfortable with with many of these animals that they just don't worry me anymore I mean you were I I I looked at you in a raft while you had a sizable probably about 12T black cayman right next to your raft I watched its head go under bubbles the bubbles it was all coming up right next to your raft as he he was just moving along the bottom of the river cuz he looked at me went under and then my raft passed and yours came over him so now I'm looking back and your raft is going over this black cayman and I'm going I'm not worried at all mhm I was not worried I was not worried that the Cayman would freak out I was not worried that he would try to attack you I knew 100% that came and just wanted us to go so you could go back to eating fish yeah that's it man it's humbling it's humbling these giant creatures and especially at night like you were talking about and for me it's both scary but and just beautiful when the head goes under H cuz like under under water it's their domain so anything can happen so what is it doing that its head is going under it could be bored it could be hungry looking for some fish it could be maybe wanting to come closer to you to investigate maybe you have some food around you maybe it's an old friend of yours and just wants to say hi I don't know I have a few on the river old friends um no when we see their heads go under it's just they're just getting out of the way we we're shining a light at them and they're going why is there a light at night I'm uncomfortable head under so these Cay in again you think of it as this big aggressive animal but I don't know anybody that's been eaten by a black C and the the smaller species smooth fronted Cayman dwarf Cayman spectacle Cayman they're not going to eat any but again at the worst if you were doing something inappropriate with a Cayman like you jumped on it and were trying to to do research and and it bit your hand it could take your hand off but that's the only time I've been walking down the river and stepped on a Cayman and the Cayman just swims away and so in my mind Cayman are just these they're peaceful dragons that sit on the side of the river and so to me they are my friends and I worry about them because two months ago we were coming up River and on one of the beaches was a beautiful about 5 foot black cayman with a big machete cut right through the head the whole Cayman was wasted nothing was eaten but the Cayman was dead what do you think that was curious humans just committing violence yeah just loggers people who aren't from this part of the Amazon because a local person would either eat the animal or not mess with it like pico would never kill a Cayman for no reason because it doesn't make any sense so these are clearly people who aren't from the region which usually means loggers because they've come from somewhere else they're doing a job here and they they're just cleaning their pots in the river at night and they see eyes come near them because the cay and probably smells fish and then they just whack because they want to see it and they're just curious monkeys on a beach and again me friend of Cayman I protect from my type that said you know you uh protect your friends and you analyze and study your friends but sometimes friends can have a bit of a misunderstanding and if you have a bit of a misunderstanding with the black cayman I feel like just a bit of a misunderstanding could lead to a uh bone crushing situation but not for a little 5- foot Cayman and I think that's incredibly species IST w a ball humans or a ball Cay no I'm like all my friends do the same thing they go you swim in the Amazon Rain for you know you swim in that River and I go yes every day we you know back flips into the river we've been swimming in the river how many times with the piran and the stingray and the candiru and the Cayman and the anacondas all of it in the river with us M and we just do it and what's that for you so what what allows you to doing that to do that knowing and having researched all the different things that can kill you which I feel like most of them are in the river mhm what allows you to just get in there with us well I think it's something about you where you become like this portal through which it's possible to see nature as not threatening but beautiful and so in that you kind of Naturally by hanging out with you I get to see the beauty of it U there is danger out there but the dangerous part of it just like there's a lot of danger in the city there's danger in life there's a lot of ways to get hurt emotionally physically there's a lot of ways to die in the stupidest of ways we went on a Expedition through the forest just twisting your ankle breaking your foot um getting a bite from a thing that gets infected it's there's a lot of ways to die and get hurt in the stupidest of ways in a non-dramatic Cayman eating you alive kind of way yeah it it it strikes me as unfair because humans we still in our minds so so programmed to worry about that Predator that Predator that Predator what predator we've killed everything black Caymans are coming off the endangered species list we exterminated wolves from North America I actually heard a Suburban lady one time tell her son watch out foxes will get you mhm foxes yeah the eat baby rabbits and mice well in the case of apex predators I think when people say dangerous animals they really are talking about just the power of the animal and the black came have a lot of power lot of power and it's almost just a way to celebrate the power of the animal sure and if it's in celebration then I'm all for it because my God is that power like the waves of of of Fury that you saw like when that tail I mean you saw you saw the tail of the spectacle that perfect amazing thing with all those interlocking scales that work so it's like a perfect creation of engineering and then and then when you have one that's this thick and all of a sudden that thing is moving with all the acceleration of that power W the volume of water the sound that comes out of their throat they're such they're dragons we talked about the scales of the snake but like the came and just the way it felt yeah was um incredible just the armor the texture of it was so cool I don't know like the the the bottom one came in have a certain kind of texture and it just all feels like power but also all feels like designed really well it's like it's like exploring through touch like a World War II tank or something like that just it's the engineering that went into this thing yeah that like the mechanism of evolution that created a thing that could survive for such a long time it's just like incredible this is a work of art the PO you know the defense mechanisms the power of it the damage it can do uh how effective it is as a hunter all of that all you can feel that in just by touching it do you ever see the the mashup where they put side by side the image of I think it's a falcon in Flight next to a stealth bomber and they're almost the exact same design it's incredible like that what's the equivalent for for a Croc like you said maybe a tank like more like armadillo Turtle I don't know like H Hol and yeah there may not be a a m machine a war machine equivalent of a crocodile it would have to have like a big jaw element to it yeah and the water I mean we we talked also about hippos those are interesting creatures from all the way across the world just monsters yeah hippos and rhinos hippos are bigger usually or rhinos are bigger rhinos rhinos is after elephants is the largest white rhinos they can be terrifying too again when you step into the defense absolutely but I have to tell you after being around so many rhinos you have friends you have friend I have Rhino friends black and white rhinos Y and uh they're all sweethearts and I mean I mean sweethearts and I mean when you look at a rhino it's like a living dinosaur I know it's a mammal but somehow it screams dinosaur cuz it seems like penic and and and from another age with the giant horn and they're so much bigger than you think like they're minivan sized animals like you're you're we're not taller than they are at the shoulder and they have this strange shaped head and the huge horn and they sit there eating grass all day so if a rhino is dangerous to a human it's because the Rhino is going don't hurt me don't hurt me don't don't hurt my baby and then they're like you know what I'll just kill you it it be easy cuz you're scaring me right now you're too close to that Rhino yeah and so like there again I just think it's funny cuz humans were so quickly to go which snakes are aggressive well there are no aggressive snakes you know rhinos can be dangerous if provoked otherwise they're peaceful fat grass unicorns you know like they're they're really pretty calm we have these incredible giant animals and the largest animals on our planet the black cman the Rhinos the elephants all the big beautiful stuff is becoming less and less yeah and it almost reminds me like in Game of Thrones they're like yeah they in the beginning they're like yeah there used to be dragons and it was like this memory and it's like yeah we used to have mammoths and we we used to have Stellar sea cows that were 16 ft long manatees and it's there were things we used to have the Caspian tiger that only went extinct in the '90s our lifetimes and it's that that's mind-blowing to me that's that that has haunted me since I'm a child I remember learning about Extinction and I went wait you're telling me that I remember being a kid and going by the time I grow up you're saying that I gorillas could be gone elephants could be gone and because we're doing it and then I I just that I I remember I remember looking at the the NightLight being blurry CU I was crying I was so upset and oh and it was Lonesome George that Turtle the Galapagos ttis where there was one left and they said if we just if we just had a female he could live and as a six seven 8-year-old that destroyed me we're all just trying to get laid including that Turtle including that Turtle for a few hundred years dude so for young people out there you think you're having trouble think about that Turtle think about that Turtle yeah you know there's a turtle that Darwin and Steve Irwin both owned yeah yeah I heard about that turtle man they live a long time they've seen things they've seen things that there's a there's a great like internet joke where they're like they're like accusing him of like being uh in congruous with modern times they're like he did nothing to stop slavery he didn't fight in World War II like canel the turtle yeah cancel the turtle oh [ __ ] what a world we live in so it's interesting you mentioned black cayman and an and uh anacondas are both apex predators so it seems like the reason they can exist in similar environments is because they feed on slightly different things how is it possible for them to coexist I read that anacondas can eat K but not black cayman how often do they come in Conflict so anacondas and Cayman occupy the exact same Niche mhm and they're born at almost the exact same size and unlike most species they don't have sort of a size range that they're confined to they start at this big baby Cayman are this big baby anacondas are a little longer but they're they're thinner and they don't have legs so it's the same thing in in terms of mass and they're all in the streams or at the edges of lakes or swamps and so the baby anacondas eat the baby Cayman baby Cayman can't really take down an anaconda they're they're going for little insects and fish they they have quite a small mouth so they again it's in their interest to hide from everything a bird a heron can eat a baby Cay pop it back M and so they have to survive but the Anaconda and the Cayman kind of kind of joust as they grow can you actually explain how the Anaconda would take down a Cayman like would it first uh use constriction and then eat it or what's the meth methodology yeah so anacondas have a kind of a I don't know like a three-point constriction system where their first thing is Anchor like Jiu-Jitsu so the first thing is latch on to you I like how I'm writing this down like all right this is just like a master class here this is for when you're wrestling in Anaconda just in case and you'll be like the coach in the sidelines SC you got uh don't let him take the back yeah all right so so one time me and JJ were following a her of Collard pecky and JJ's teaching me tracking so we're following you know the the hoofprints through the mud and we're doing this and I'm talking about no backpacks just machetes bare feet running through the jungle and we come to this stream and JJ's like I think we missed him you know I think they went and I'm like no no no they went here look and not cuz I'm a great tracker because I can see H you know a few dozen Footprints hundreds of individual Footprints right there and I'm going no no they just crossed here and JJ was like you know what we're not going to get eyes on him today he was like it's okay he's like we did good we followed him for a long time and I was like cool and then I was trying to gauge like can I drink this stream and I see a culpa and a culpa is a salt deposit where animals come to to feed because sodium is is is a deficiency that most herbivores have here and all of a sudden I just hear like the sound of a wet stick snapping just that bone Crunch and I look down and there's about a 16 foot anaconda wrapped around a freshly killed pecky wild boore and what this Anaconda had done was as the all the pigs were going across the stream the Anaconda had grabbed it by the jaw swiped the legs wrapped around it bent it in half and then crushed Its Ribs and that's what the Anaconda do whether it's to mammals to Cayman it's all the same thing it's grab on they have six rows of backwards facing teeth so once they hit you they're never going to come off you actually have to go deeper in and then open before you can come out all those backward facing teeth so they have an incredible anchor system and then they use their weight to pull you down to Hell to pull you down into that water wrap around you and then start breaking you and Every Breath You Take you go and you you're up against a barrier and then when you when you exhale they go a little tighter and you're never going to get that space back your lungs are never going to expand again and I know this because I've been in that Crush MH before JJ pulled me out of it and so this pig the Anaconda had gotten it and as the pig was thrashing and the Anaconda was wrapping around had bent it in half and I just heard those vertebrae going yeah and so for a Cay it's the same thing they just grab and they wrap around it and then they have to crush it until there's no response they'll wait an hour they'll wait a long time until there's no response from the animal they'll overpower it then they'll then they'll reposition probably yawn a little bit open their jaw and then start forcing that entire now here's the crazy thing is that an anaconda has stomach acid capable of digesting an entire crocodile where nothing comes out the other side and when you see how thick the Bony plate of a crocodile skull is that that can go in the mouth and nothing comes out the other side that's insane and so it always made me wonder on a chemistry level how you can have such incredible acid in the stomach that doesn't harm the Anaconda itself and someone said but it's able to digest oh it's some kind of oh the there's oh interesting there's levels of protection from the anac itself but it seems like the anac is such a simple system as an organism but like that Simplicity taking a scale could just do the can swallow a Cayman digest this slowly I know but my question was how how on Earth is it physically possible to have this hellish bile that can digest anything even something as as as horrendous as a as a a Cay in scales and bones and all the hardest [ __ ] in nature and then not hurt the snake itself and I had a chemist explain to me that it's probably some sort of mucus system that that lines the stomach and and neutralizes the acid and keeps it floating in there but my God that must be powerful stuff so what does it feel like being crushed choked by Anaconda uh you when an anaconda is wrapped around you and you you find yourself in in the in the shocking realization that these could be your last moments breathing you are confronted with the vast disparity and power that there is so much power in these animals so much crushing deliberate reptilian ancient power that doesn't care they're just trying to get you to stop they just want you to stop ticking and there's nothing you can do and there's I find it very awe inspiring when I encounter that kind of power when you even if it's that you see you know you see a dog run you know you ever try and outrun a dog and they just Zip by you and you go wow you know or you see a horse kick and you go oh my God if that if that hoof hit anyone's head it'd knock him three states over and it's like it's like there there is muscular power that is so far that like you said that explosive that we we dream of doing it like imagine if like a a Muay Thai kickboxer could could harness that sort of Cayman power that smash um and so it's it's just a inspiring I think it's real really impressive what animals can do and we're we're all you know we're all the same sort of makeup for the most part all the mammals you know we all have our SK skeletons look so similar we all have like you know if you look like a kangaroo's biceps and chest it looks so much like a like a like a a man's and if same thing goes for a bear or you ever see a naked chimp there's like chimps with alopecia oh [ __ ] and so it's oh they're shredded it looks like a bodybuilder like it's got cuts and huge huge everything like it's got pecs and they got that face that's just like just let me in what now where's your wallet yeah do something but yeah but there's a the specialization of a life time of doing damage to the world and using those muscles it just makes you makes you just that much more powerful than most humans cuz humans I guess have more brain so they get lazy they start puzzle solving versus you know using the BPS directly well yes and no and I have this question okay so I you know that whole you are what you eat thing now we one time here had two chickens now one of them was a wild chicken like from the farm had walked around its whole life finding insects and the other chicken was like Factory raised and so we cut the heads off of both of them started getting ready to cook them now the factory raised chicken was like a much higher percentage of fat had less muscle on its body with softer tissue a lighter color the farm raised chicken had darker more seny muscles less fat was clearly a better made machine and so my question is is that what's happening with us you know like if you go see a sherpa who's been walking his whole life and pulling you know and walking behind mus oxes and lifting things up mountains and breathing clean air and not being in the City versus someone that's just been chowing down at IHOP for 40 years and never getting off the couch like I imagine it's the same thing that you you become what you eat yeah I mean like you and I were like half dead running up a mountain meanwhile there's a grandma just like walking and she's been walking that road and she's just built different with her alpaca on her shoulders with a baby you just they're just built different when you when you apply your body in a physical way your whole life yeah like you can't replicate that like like just like that chimp has those from constantly moving through the canopy constantly using those arms just like if you you know if you see an Olympic Athlete or you hug Rogan exactly you just go what why is there so much muscle here that's exactly what I uh what I feel like when you give him a hug this this is definitely a chimp of some sort how how does that uh just just that the the constriction of the Anaconda just the the the feeling of that I are they they doing that based on inst instinct or is there some brain stuff going on like is this just like a basic procedure that they're doing and they just really don't give a damn they're not like thinking oh Paul this is this kind of species who would taste good or is it just a mechanism just start activating and you can't stop it with an anaconda I really think it's the second one I do think that they're impressive and beautiful and Incredibly Arcane I think a very simple system a very ancient system and I think that once you once you hit predation mode it's going down no matter what

Channel: Lex Clips

Views: 73,344

Keywords: ai, ai clips, ai podcast, ai podcast clips, artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence podcast, computer science, consciousness, deep learning, einstein, elon musk, engineering, friedman, joe rogan, lex ai, lex clips, lex fridman, lex fridman podcast, lex friedman, lex mit, lex podcast, machine learning, math, math podcast, mathematics, mit ai, paul rosolie, philosophy, physics, physics podcast, science, tech, tech podcast, technology, turing

Id: iOCgTtE6zdE

Length: 45min 57sec (2757 seconds)

Published: Sat May 25 2024