Wildlife Expert Breaks Down Animal Scenes from Movies | GQ

hey everyone it's for Escalante here from Animal Planet's extinct you're alive I'm a wildlife biologist and you're watching the breakdown [Music] first up Ace Ventura check this out look at that that's a true albino pigeon some rich guy lost it he's offering a $25,000 reward so I'm gonna pause it right there it's pretty funny just off the start if you're somebody who lives in a city anywhere you know that there's nothing that uncommon about seeing a white pigeon you know you see them every day so just the fact that in this clip a venturi is looking for a rare albino pigeon that's worth 25 grand is absolutely hilarious so it's a good start [Music] it's just so much fun you know the whole idea that Ace Ventura can wiggle the keys and all of the animals in his house that you know he's rescued or he lives among we'll all go and hide into various spots it's ridiculous it's not how it works it's not our animals work doesn't matter if you're the best trained creatures in the world maybe you could get the odd dog to do it but to get you know this cacophony of creatures that all live in this tiny one-bedroom apartment to all go and hide it it's absurd it's hilarious it's not realistic at all and it's a ton of fun as Ace Ventura blows the whistle the first thing you see is the beagle coming running out the dog there's a toucan in the frame there's a whole bunch of South American parrots which is hilarious of course these are common you know birds in the pet trade but you certainly wouldn't want to have that many of them living in a small apartment now my favorite part of the the opening of this scene is the otter coming out of the toilet that's an Asian small-clawed otters they're absolutely hilarious super inquisitive of everything and how unrealistic these clips are the most realistic part of this is probably an Asian small-clawed otters hiding and playing in a toilet because they're just so mischievious they're so playful there's so much fun they would absolutely hide in the toilet and pop out like that I love that clip it's super cute now this is a trained animal and each one of these animals that you're seeing are indeed trained animals so it's amazing that they're capable of doing this on command for the camera but it doesn't mean that they all did it you know in simultaneity when the whistle was blown it doesn't work that way you can be sure that when they were setting this up they probably spent a day getting the skunk to pop out of the laundry and another day getting all the birds to fly in and another day getting the Asian small-clawed otters a pop out of the toilet so it's beautifully done it's really clever filmmaking but it's not the way that animals work the notion that this many creatures of this diverse of species could all live in a single one-bedroom apartment is pretty ridiculous that being said animals are incredible and they're adaptive and they're very very trainable and they're very understanding like could you have otters and parrots and puppies and skunks all living together absolutely there's no big predators in that group so they could all live in harmony but they couldn't all live in harmony in a one-bedroom apartment that's ooh there's just not enough space for the amount of animals you're seeing so Ace Ventura pet detective absolutely awesome movie everyone should watch it it's tons of and it makes you love animals but ridiculous to think that that many creatures could all be crammed happily into a one-bedroom apartment next up anaconda now if you're working with anacondas they don't have that build you know they don't have that kind of flexibility that you're seeing what you're seeing in this frame here is this animal has maybe the back 1/8 of its body up in that whatever building structure is and the rest of it it's holding up with this body weight that's unrealistic those animals are not capable of doing that all they can do is hold about 1/3 of their body up and off the ground at a time the front third and so seeing as maybe that's you know six or seven eighths of its body being held up it's unrealistic it's too skinny and it's too long that's not the way anacondas look for a second so there's two species of anaconda there's green anacondas and there's yellow anacondas now what I'm seeing here is is neither really it's it's I don't know you know I can see what they're going for they're trying to make this look like the green anaconda but it's it's got too much red it's too dark you know maybe maybe if the snake we're about to shed and it was really really old it would have that darker coloration but really it looks too dark and the eyes look too humanoid that's not a reptilian eye and you can see why they've done that as human beings as bipedal creatures when we look at another animal we connect to them through you know eyesight through ocular vision and so when you see bigger meaner looking eyes like what they put on the snake it's instantly scarier than when you see the actual snakes eyes which are far more kind of peaceful looking than this animals hold it there for a second so as you see the snake wraps up with the back third of its body to coil its victim now there's two pieces today the one part that's accurate is anacondas are indeed constrictors they will absolutely wrap their prey asphyxiate it by crushing the ribcage and then consume it but they will never ever lead with their tail they do not have the ability to do that when a constrictor snake attacks its prey it leads with its head latches on to something and then uses that grip with its mouth to then wrap around its prey or victim so the notion that it can just kind of use its tail like Indiana Jones whip and wrap around and then continue to do something else with its head is well it's just silly all there for a sec now what you're hearing is an anaconda screaming that's a real piece of movie magic for you right there ladies and gentlemen because there's no such thing you know I've caught hundreds of anacondas I really have and none of them have ever gone her and growled or screamed at me they just don't do that the most noise that that animal is capable of making is releasing air from its body to let out the hissing sound that we're familiar with in snakes which is like a bit of a sound but this whole notion that it growls and grunts as it's fighting with this guy it's just it's just complete add in audio so now what you see is the snakes trapped in this net right but it's still got its two victims within its coil oh you're really anthropomorphizing the animal here and what I mean by that is this thing's out for vengeance right it's not even there to eat the its prey the two people it's there just to kill them that's why it won't even let them go in a net well if you've ever caught any kind of wild animal you know the second that it's under stress it doesn't want it continue to try and feed it doesn't want to continue to try and tact it wants to get away these are all things very far from real life but if this situation were to happen in real life where you were being constricted by an anaconda and it hadn't latched on you with its teeth and you were trapped in a net the second that's something dramatic like gunfire and nets were coming up and around it it would release and do everything in its power to get away hold there now the speed is really really interesting so the reason that anacondas get so big is because they live a long time anacondas like many reptiles grow until the day they die right as you get bigger and bigger it makes it harder and harder to move it takes more energy expenditure so the largest anacondas that I've ever caught the 21 plus footers are so big and so heavy that out of water they can barely slither I mean it's like you can see the amount of effort going into every motion and here we have our 60 foot long anaconda of course it's three times the size of anything in reality but it's moving it there's a lightning speed first of all two bites bad a bite from big snake sucks they have a recurve tooth system like this and when it goes down they interlock and then you're stuck within those T's so you really don't want to end up with a bite from a big boa or a big Python like an anaconda that being said the bites not the part that'll do damage sure you're going to take these three inch long recurve needles into your body but it's the coiling and the asphyxiation that creates a problem you can get an anaconda to release from you or any snake for that matter by wedging something in its mouth and prying it open but if you're attacked by a big snake like this or a realistic one you got to get your buddies which I've had do to me a couple times run around uncoiling the thing as it's trying to wrap you up because that's the dangerous part if the snake feels like it's being attacked it's not going to continue to try and consume you the only reason a big snake is holding on to you is because it's trying to eat you otherwise it's a defensive bike it's a strike bite and release on their own so if you're in the situation where they're already coiling up it's because you're restraining it and it's trying to do some damage or because it's trying to eat of everything I've seen the most realistic kind of bite and coil you see the snake there lunges forward he grabs a guy by the shoulder pulls him back into his own body and starts to wrap around him that's actually how the snakes do behave very different to what you saw earlier where it used the back half of its body like a whip just to wrap around that's that's complete nonsense this is at least anatomically somewhat correct hold there for a second this is actually pretty good the teeth aren't bad they're relatively anatomically correct what I was talking about earlier they're backwards-facing there's a lot of them which is right now these snakes can open their mouths up wider than the width of their body what you're seeing him get ready to do here to consume the guy it's actually not bad whoever whoever scripted this probably had actually seen a snake eat something before I've never been inside a snake so I don't know how real that is so when a constrictor consumes its food it's almost always completely dead in this case the guy's feet are literally wiggling as he goes down the snakes throat so you know no animal would do that at risk of injury to themselves because if they're going to consume something that's clawing and scratching on the way down it's going to do damage to vital internal organs so you know again we're back to a little bit of Hollywood magic but at least it's somewhat anatomically correct they do feed from the head down not from the legs up so that part's right he would go down headfirst there would be that kind of bit of gulping that you're seeing the snake do that parts all accurate but the reality is the prey would already be killed by asphyxiation before the snake ADA and then as you see as the prey goes down in this case the guy its body's actually expanding to the the size of the meal and that's accurate as well snakes will do that if you feed a snake something it can eat something larger than its own head because it's jaw can stretch so much and their skin is stretchy enough that they can actually consume things bigger than them and you'll see that big lump in them as it goes down so in this case what would typically happen is a big snake eats a big meal like that it's gonna get pretty lethargic it's gonna settle down it actually can't have that meal disrupted too much if it does it'll regurgitate it because there's so much whole food in there it slowly has to kind of let the muscles work the prey down and get to the stomach acids which will dissolve everything including bone the animal has to kind of chill in order to do that so you can't have a snake that's gulping down you know a huge meal aka guy and then turning around to gulp down the next three because it's just too much energy they're not really capable of that now those are real anacondas for the first time so that's kind of nice to see in that scene we've gone from our monster CG anaconda to a couple real green anacondas as you're likely from a zoo or a captive breeding facility and you can see the difference in what I was saying earlier you know the coloration you can see the marketing they're not jet black with those evil eyes they're a nice you know pale green color and they're very beautiful they're very sleek they're very shiny and there we have the regurgitation I was talking about so this is I don't want to say correct but it's not too far-fetched if a snake were to eat a big meal like a guy like that you know of course it would kill him and then if it got bumped and it was running around there's too much energy exertion it would just throw it back up so watching this scene from anaconda look it's not my favorite it may demonize his snakes one of my favorite animals they shouldn't be demonized it's very fabricated for Hollywood the behavior of the animal the way it whips its tail around the way it's out to actually get someone its silliness it's not real that being said there's a couple relatively anatomically correct things the kind of shape of the animal the way that it does constrict its prey the way that it bites the way it has recurved teeth all those things are correct so it's a little bit of a balance but overall it's not for the best next up the revenue Hair scare me man I'll tell you I've worked with a lot of wildlife and bears are they're tough and what you see here the idea that Leonardo DiCaprio is hunting and he's kind of dropped his guard and all of a sudden the ferns start moving in this animal charges totally realistic now the bear looks a little CG but the behavior totally realistic you could be out in the woods especially up in the far north you're out hunting the Bears on to you it could be in the springtime when they're trying to store up fat so they're willing to risk their own bodies in order to hunt a large meal like a human being or you know a caribou or something like that and this whole idea of it hunting you charging out of the bush totally now the way he's mauling Leonardo DiCaprio again seems pretty realistic to me he's on top of them he's overpowering him now bears are highly intelligent and they know if they're making a kill that's the way to do that so again it looks pretty real he's digging in with his claws he's doing a lot of damage in as efficient a manner as possible without letting any damage be inflicted on himself so that is the way a bear would attack I mean this is a CG bear but it's obviously supposed to be a grizzly or a brown bear you know black bears are much smaller they wouldn't behave in this manner they're far more timid this is clearly supposed to be a grizzly bear as opposed to CG sounds like in some of the other clips these are actual bear sounds that have been put in now they may have been kind of stretched and and and warped a little bit to fit the scene but these are real bear noises so the bear is attacking like that it's going to cut very very deeply not just because of the sharpness of the teeth and the sharpness of the claws but rather the jaw pressure and the immense amount of strength that that animal is putting into it the teeth and claws they're sharp but they're no sharper than like your puppy dogs at home it's just they have so much strength behind those teeth and claws that that amount of damage is I mean they're gouging really really good now this part I kind of don't understand and what I mean by that is the Bears just standing over him now I'm not to say that that couldn't happen cuz it could you know bear could be tired from making the kill tired from the mauling and just catching its breath just admiring its prey but I don't know if it would need to necessarily this wasn't like a big battle for the bear he kind of caught Leo pinned him down beat him up now it's time to eat and he's not he's just standing there for a second it almost feels a little a little bit too prolonged but certainly not outside of the realm of reality a bear is gonna attack for two reasons right the least likely is that it sees you as a prey source that's very unlikely the more likely one is that it's a defensive aggressive attack and what I mean by that is say this is a sow a female and she has a couple cubs nearby she will absolutely attack to defend her cubs she thinks you're another big predator and you are as human beings we're apex predators that could be the case here where the attack is simply a mauling it's almost like a warning that does a lot of damage and then she's going to leave it she doesn't want to eat you she wants to move on so when a bear attacks there's two mentalities really if it's a black bear you want to be loud you want to be aggressive and you want to be dominant and the reason being they're a little bit smaller and they're far more timid and shy a grizzly bear like this the accepted idea is that you play dead and because once you play dead the animal is done expressing dominance right it no longer feels threatened by your presence so she's gonna leave you alone and go back to her cub so if it comes in you can keep quiet and go limp obviously really hard to do let the bear attack happen then the idea is she will retreat go back to her cubs and you can get up and run away you can hear the Cubs in the background great so what that tells me straight away this mother did not attack out of predation she wasn't trying to eat Leonardo DiCaprio because she was starving instead she felt threatened by his presence as another predator in her habitat and she's protecting her young so now she's come in she's mold him he's rightfully played dead or he's so injured that he's seems like he's dead and the Bears beginning to retreat now it looks to me like Leo begins to kind of sit up and say what's going on is she gone and that prompts another attack right she turns around and charges I think as he does as anyone naturally what he has a firearm any any fires and so that of course you know inflicts injury upon the bear and provokes an ongoing attack so overall in the revenant I would say the bear attack is the most accurate one that I've seen of all the clips today all right the gray here so now you know now I'm gonna really rip them apart because when you see anaconda you can kind of forgive the bad CG from 1997 I think the gray was made like two years ago it's hard to forgive such bad animal CG in this day and age when you got things like Avatar where you're like wow this is incredible and the first scene of the grey where I'm seeing this here you've got this terrible black CG wolf with the dripping fangs and the the huffing and puffing of breath I mean it it's truly we've created a monster this is more of a werewolf than a real wolf and that's that's a bit sad because this is supposed to be telling a story of actual wolves so this guy is doing the absolute wrong thing here he's low to the ground he's making eye contact with the animal and then he's backing up like you couldn't do anything worse if you're threatened by a canine you know it has one-on-one standoff situation like that you make yourself big you lower your gaze so that you're not challenging it because when you make eye contact with a canine specifically a wolf you're challenging it that's a threat display the drop eye contact say leave me alone you know get big and get loud and let the animal retreat by being low to the ground you're being small you're not intimidating and by retreating that instantly triggers the attack response because it says I'm prey I'm scared of you right if you're ever faced with an apex predator you want to show them you're the boss whereas if you retreat straight away they go I'm in charge so he's small he's retreating and he's threatening it like he's doing everything wrong if you were faced with this situation you got five-year buddies hanging out and you're all staring off a wolf if they all got loud and advanced that that was not gonna stick around you can't take on five full-grown people almost 100 pounds that animal would turn in hightail it but instead they're standing off they're actually they're actually inviting combat to this wall as opposed to just being aggressive being the Nader and and making the animal retreat alright let's skip ahead [Music] there so here we see Liam Neeson he's in the den right and we're establishing that by movie magic we see the remains of old animals we see the animals underground now you can tell that he has actually put himself in too much of a threatening position and what I mean by that is a mother wolf just like a mother bear she's gonna do everything in her power to protect her cubs pups in this case and you know if you're in a wolf's den that's a very bad place to be no longer you trying to trigger the fight-or-flight response from the wolf but now you're the aggressor you're putting yourself in a position where the mother has one option and that's to get rid of [Music] they're now wolves are very social pack animals they hunt as a pack they work together they work in unison they use audio communication signals and body language signals and they're actually doing a pretty good job of showing that here not only do you have all of the walls surrounding Liam the way that a pack would when there is a single intruder but you have the the alpha male the dominant male the largest strongest wolf standing on the highest ground in the best attack position while the other animals watch now if there's one animal that's going to advance over the others the first one should be that alpha then would come into support players all of the other animals and they know that based on the alphas body cues now we're back to anthropomorphizing animals we're giving them human qualities what we're saying is the Alpha is like our villain from a superhero movie and he's like alright this one's mine you know you guys back off no Wolf's gonna do that they're not stupid instead his pack would stand there and watch and he may be the first aggressor the alpha male but then the pack animals would join in as needed wolves are actually the most demonized animals throughout human history dating all the way back into the ancient Romans and the ancient Greeks or hieroglyphics where a man would fight a wolf and we'd combat a wolf all the way into cave paintings and what's interesting is if you look into the records of it there's only ever been something like three fatal wolf attacks on humans in history in this frame right here he's showing a lot of aggression right his brow is furrowed his lips are curled back expressing his teeth he's locked on his gaze with liam neeson these are all typical canine behaviors expressing a challenge saying you know I'm here to fight you and and that part's quite accurate what's not accurate is the way the animal looks it just doesn't look like a wolf it's too shabby it's too dark it's just too CG so now another movie about wolves that I haven't seen Alfa so that's actually you know straight off the bat it seems more realistic I mean one the wolves are clearly still CG but the way that the wolves are somewhat communicating they're expressing dominance you could see they're working together and they're hunting like a pack that's how wolves do hunt gray wolves come in a variety of colors from basically pure white to pure black and these grey and brown and tan colors that you see in between you know our minds black wolves like Black Panthers are scarier and more evil and that's why in Hollywood they're the leaders and they're the biggest and they're the meanest that's absolutely not the case in nature [Music] so here you hear the animals howling as the kids stuck in the tree it's not unrealistic because wolves howl to communicate and and signal to other packs and other animals where they are but if they've got prey cornered in a tree they probably don't need to how they call others over so it's kind of pretty and it's nice I don't necessarily know that it's what would be happening so a second ago you saw the wolves howling while the boy was in the tree and then the very next scene the wolves are all gone so that actually makes sense right so the Wolves cornered this kid in the tree they go F we can't can't get him he's up there we're stuck down here let me call and see where the rest of the family is where the rest of the pack is they how they here in the distant of the packs you know three klicks to the left I'm going that way and they all take off but the one animal that's left behind is of course the one that's injured so now that's interesting because they have a real wolf dog in that clip meaning an animal that's a hybrid between a real wild wolf and and domesticated dog has more wolf traits physically but they've used a real animal and they painted a bit of fake blood on it and I already like this more than the grey because the kids showing some compassion right he doesn't want to just murder the wolf he knows that the wolf's an animal it's a predator it was trying to eat him but now it's injured it can't eat him and they're they're leaving each other alone I think in this situation the wolf would be far more terrified and aggressive I can understand it's it's very injured and it's probably dehydrated so it probably doesn't have a lot of energy to be aggressive but I think it would be growling and snarling if someone were to approach it keep in mind this is an animal you know of course this is dated very long time ago this is an animal that's likely never done seen a human being before alright and then he picks up the wolf really nice so now we're gonna fast forward a bit so now they're buddies right he's swimming he's playing with the wolf now it's fun and it's enjoyable to watch but wolves are not pets they're just not wired that way I've worked with a lot of wolves even domesticated wolves at no point could you be picking up and throwing a wolf around they still have wolf behavior they still have pack mentality and that would be you trying to dominate an animal that otherwise wants to be done here you see the wolf is dominant you know he's far more capable of hunting this wild boar than the kid is I love that I love that scene you know it's grounded in historical scientific theory which is that wolves followed human beings humans slowly domesticated wolves over generations and then they work together to hunt and feed here we've seen it all in the span of an hour in a movie and really it probably took many many generations but it's great to see the the idea the human and animal working together to benefit each other and that's why dogs are man's closest friend love that absolutely love that that they're so here you see right the packs returned the wolf that's been with the boy they've established a bond and when the pack the Alpha from prior the big black bad wolf comes in to make the attack he sees that the other wolf has become friends with the boy so to speak and the body language cues allow that other wolf to relax I don't know there would be that instantaneous as you see it here but the idea that these animals are intelligent enough to say hey this is my pack that's your pack you know let's not fight he's very great and it's true because animals do respond that way especially canines that are as intelligent as wolf great love it yeah I think we're learning that that's a female you see the gray wolf that the boys been with and then the big black wolf they stand off and then the big black wolf drops his guard you know the body posture relaxed and the gray wolf comes in and does Allah under his neck it's a mate they subtly do that in body language and it's nice it's well done when you compare the gray in alpha you see one movie that truly demonizes and villainize as wolves and another movie where wolf becomes man's best friend so for me it's an easy choice as to what the better message and the better movie is it's the one where we respect the animals enough to bring them into our home and have an understanding and learn from them it's the it's alpha next up the shallows [Music] I'm going to stop there okay so there's a couple things here first of all we have Blake Lively on a surfboard right she is clearly getting picked off by a tiger shark great accurate done wrong absolutely tiger sharks attack surfers now tiger sharks attack a lot of things they're known as the dumpsters the sea right but the reason specifically the tiger sharks have been known to attack surfers is because when you're dangling your arms and your legs off your board you look like a sea turtle and that's tiger sharks favorite meals you look you have a big round thing in the middle your surfboard which looks like a shell and your four flippers bobbing around so when tiger sharks do attack surfers it's when they're paddling out or they're sitting in the lineup the notion that this shark would actually come through a wave risking its own safety to attack the board is silliness it doesn't look like a sea turtle it's moving too fast and sharks generally don't want to put themselves in the surf line that's why for the most part you're safe swimming in the shallows because sharks don't want to come into ways where they're gonna get rolled up onto the beach and get their gills and everything else damaged so it's good that it's a tiger shark it's accurate that it's possible that could attack a surfer it's bad that it's doing when she's standing up on a wave at second look having been bitten by two different sharks myself never anything that bad I can tell you that looks like the way that it would go right so though the shark would never come up and knock her off her board but at this point where she's swimming she's thrashing she's making commotion on the surface now she looks like an injured fish or an injured marine mammal or and injured turtle the shark comes in for what they call an investigation bite we have hands and fingers right if we want to figure something out we pick it up and go hey check it out this is a remote right if you're a shark you're doing that with your teeth yeah I got bitten here this year when I was out doing extincter live working with tiger sharks this bite was from a lemon shark this guy came and lunged at me to go for my arm and I just pulled back and just caught a single tooth on the side of his mouth if I had been another second that would have been my hand gone for sure the dead whale totally so alright I'm gonna hold that right there all right now it's adding up right so now we've got a tiger shark that's attacking and eating because there's a dead whale now there's two pieces to this puzzle will there be sharks around a whale carcass absolutely but are they going to bother attacking something thrashing and swimming around when they've got an entire whale to feed on questionable that's why I say there's no right or wrong answer they absolutely could that instinct could be triggered they could see that splashing go I want that fresh meal or they could be so full of whale and lazy and know that they've got this buffet lunch over here that they're not even gonna think about the thing surfing that being said if I'm finding a dead wheel on a beach in Costa Rica I'm not surfing anywhere near it talk about a bad place to be trapped stuck on top of a dead whale floating in the ocean with a shark bite so right there I can see the bite on Earth I write first of all that's in a bad place there's some major arteries there that could be cut you can bleed out but the shark that I saw in the wave earlier you're talking about a 13 or 14 foot tiger shark right the jaw of a 14-foot tiger sharks this wide so if that's putting your thigh in its mouth it's taking most of the thigh with it you know there are those investigation and release bites like I mentioned earlier but the way that it grabbed and pulled that's going to rip flesh as it pulls down right so that bite is not accurate for the scene we saw earlier what you're looking at is a bite of something that took a nibble that's maybe five feet long as opposed to something that's 15 foot long and dragged her underwater that entire thigh would be missing based on the scene we saw earlier all right I've never seen jaws so let's watch the ending of it let's hold it there for a second you can see this this toilet paper roll of a shark that's launching out of the ocean and basically sinking the back of the ship now that's grounded in the thought that you know sharks like in Seal Island don't they'll launch out all the way to kill prey I get that but no shark is ever going to attack a boat that's four times the length of it and beach itself to try and sink the boat you're putting way too much faith in the animals intelligence and desire to get something off of that boat yeah you know it's not bad it doesn't look great but you know the white around the jaw the size of the teeth the pointyness the snout it looks like a great white shark it doesn't look fake chomping on board bits I don't think so the notion that this animal would just be sitting up on the bow on the stern of the boat just flopping its head back and forth like pac-man just kind of Hungry Hungry Hippos anything that falls down the boat is cartoonish I can't think of any other way to describe it that animal would get one bite of net and board and be out of there in a heartbeat it doesn't want to eat those things so all right look let's break it down we've got this monster murderer great white right he's way too big he's way too plastic he's smart enough to bodyslam a boat to sink it and then go Hungry Hungry Hippos on everything that falls into his mouth and then he gets a bite of flesh right whatever it is it's this guy he's gonna chomp it and then he retreats I mean there's so many things wrong with it right a shark would never behave like that it's never gonna put itself in that much risk but more importantly I think big picture is why why would this animal do that that is so much more work than swimming you know a couple feet away to the seal rookery and grabbing himself a nice tasty snack it's funny to even consider this reality and maybe in the 70s when this movie was made and we had a very poor understanding of shark behavior then sure but nowadays we know that great white sharks have no interest in eating people if you swim with great white sharks and clear water they're not going to attack you they know that you're not on the menu the only instances where people get attacked by white sharks and when they're either provoking them or when there's a case of misidentification usually because the water is very dirty so this whole notion is pretty ridiculous so I've now seen clips of Jaws clips of the shallows to movies I've never seen before but I've now seen the clips of them and thumbs down for me as far as that wildlife behavior goes all right this is Jumanji the big mean crocodile [Music] told that dev for a sec so I've worked with a lot of crocodiles and I've never seen one with stegasaurus spikes coming off of his back like that before that thing is ultra mean but you know this is a fantasy movie nobody's saying that this is you know the actual wilds of Africa he goes to a whole new world called Jumanji and maybe in that world these animals do behave differently and they have big back spikes I know it's a crocodile it's it's not an alligator there's a couple reasons one is we're seeing all African animals in Jumanji right there's no alligators in Africa but secondly crocodiles are the ones that are dangerous to people alligators don't hunt large mammals like people but in this situation in the Jumanji film here this animal is actually actively hunting Robin Williams and family so when he turns the corner based on the fact that he's from Africa with all the other African animals and he's hunting people this is a croc I'm gonna hold it there so here's something kind of funny now everybody's gonna think I'm crazy for saying this but of all these movies that I've seen the comedy Jumanji movie with the fake croc from the alternate universe of Jumanji is probably the most realistic in behavior so far I've seen and been hunted by crocodiles obviously they haven't got me but I've seen them hunting and that slow motion along the surface that keeping the eye level down to the water that totally cueing in on the prey source that's all really accurate as far as how a crocodile would actually come in to attack something even the bite and the attack they're dropping underwater before attacking the prey so that the prey doesn't know which direction it's coming from coming up jaws open for the bite it's pretty good let's just hold it there Crocs are very mobile and they're very agile he's not just gonna sit there while something's pushing on his jaws he's gonna do one little flick of the head and he's got you no problem at all so the idea that stay away from the pointy end using your feet to keep the jaws away that absolutely would hold there for a second now interestingly when you think of telling these stories of these big scary animals like we saw in the grey like we saw in Jaws and like we saw an anaconda all those animals are super sized like they're way too big they're double the size or in case of anaconda three or four times the size what the animals actually get - this one's not when you see a crocodile this size where his head takes up most of Robin Williams torso that tells me that you're looking at about a 20-foot crocodile which is very real there are 20-foot crocodiles out there so at one point you see you know Robin Williams has his arms around the crocodiles jaw now interestingly enough he could actually do that the animal has an incredible bite force going down but they do not have a lot of muscles for opening their jaw I've been able to hold like 15 foot crocodile's jaws shut just with two hands like that so holding animal's jaws shut the animals now in trouble right so it goes into typical crocodile behavior something called a death roll and you see that as he submerges with Robin Williams and you see it start to roll now when a crocodile attacks what it does is it bites onto something and then it rolls and it rips the flesh or rips the limb off something and then the animal leads out and it eats so they use it as a defensive mechanism as well as you're seeing here to try and shake Robin Williams off of the Crocs so that's it's actually pretty good it's actually anatomically pretty correct so I've watched a bunch of the clips now and I've seen a lot of different stuff some of its anatomically correct some of its correct in behaviors but overall what I've seen is you know a demonizing of animals which I really don't like to see because animals are wonderful incredible creatures and I can understand why you do that it tells a good story and it makes for a good movie but as long as people can realize the difference between how great animals really are and a Hollywood animal I think you're okay

Channel: GQ

Views: 5,863,849

Rating: 4.9119658 out of 5

Keywords: the breakdown, forrest galante, animal expert, wildlife expert, wildlife, animal, wildlife biologist, wildlife expert breaks down, animal biologist, forrest galante gq, forrest galante breaks down, forrest galante interview, forrest galante 2019, jaws break down, ace ventura break down, anaconda break down, the revenant break down, the grey break down, alpha movie break down, jimanji break down, the shallows break down, gq, gq magazine

Id: 9ttxmg2nBOQ

Length: 37min 3sec (2223 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 04 2019