Wildlife Expert Breaks Down Animal Scenes from Movies Part 3 | GQ

different pods of orcas actually have different dialects so the same is you know we speak English and Australians speak English but Australian sounds super funny a certain pod of orcas will have its own dialect and they are able to cross communicate but they can also distinguish each other very very clearly just audibly I'm wildlife biologist for Escalante and this is the breakdown in this day and age I don't think we'd ever even consider making a positive movie about orcas in captivity and that's because we've learned so much about them we understand that these animals are highly intelligent now right here what you're seeing is the intelligence of an orca express is actually pushing the coke bottles towards the young kid to show him that he wants to play or I'm not sure what he's indicating but this is a sign of incredible mammalian intelligence that being said in the same exact frame you can see the bent-over dorsal fin when we see orcas in the wild we see it straight up it means they're happy they're healthy they're not under stress once they get captured and put into captivity they bend down like that and we've learned that that as a result of them being very fatigued and emotionally upset once the animal has been in captivity and it's dorsal fin is curled down it will never erect again even if the animal is freed its relocated back into the wild it will never again go straight so this is a physiological form of emotional torture that you're seeing exhibited as a characteristic like all fins the dorsal fin is used for stabilization thrusts and swimming when it's straight up and down obviously it's going to help the animal be more aqua dynamic slice through the waves and when it's curled over its gonna be a bit of a problem for it no it's amazing about this movie compared to many other movies is there's nothing to say how real is this or isn't it because it is real they are using a real animal a real very well trained animal and you're seeing it express real characteristics it's quite beautiful in helping us understand these animals even they shouldn't have been in that situation it may be that in this scene the blowhole was exhibited in the sense of like you let out a sigh and be like uh-huh but that's not what's going on whales don't do that and I bet whoever was directing this movie when that happened he was like yes that was perfect the whale just sighed but the whale didn't sigh it was just taking a normal breath us as humans we anthropomorphize that and start to feel it as though it's a characteristic that we would exhibit let's pause it there so one thing that's really interesting that I think most people don't realize is the dexterity of these large mountains this is a huge marine mammal it has no fingers and toes it doesn't have the ability to dissect things the way we do as primates with our fingers but instead it has the ability to do that with its mouth it can carry that tiny little piece of paracord that's connecting the two coke bottles or cos when hunting say like in South Africa when they chased off all the great white sharks they're so precise with using their mouth and teeth that they were able to just take the livers out of the sharks that they were hunting and leave the rest of the animal because they wanted the iron that was in the livers so it's amazing we don't think that this big goofy-looking mouth could be used so delicately but it's actually a very precise tool in this scene what we see is Willie blowing water at Jessie like he wants to play and that's actually what he's doing the animal is so intelligent that we don't have to answer for more flies characteristics on him we know that that is actually what he wants which is to play in this case it's a trained animal for the movie but if it were to do that say to its keeper it's probably because the animal wants something or it wants to play and that is incredible to be able to tie an action to a result in other words spit water and I get play out of it the amazing sign of intelligence [Music] see now it's beautiful about this is what you're hearing on screen is actual whale projection people have been able to record what whales sound like by putting microphones down into the ocean and that's what they're playing they're playing but what they're depicting is the fact that Willy in captivity through some kind of wall or barrier is talking to his family out in the ocean now whether or not orcas can communicate above water I'm actually not sure these are animals that have evolved to live in the ocean and we know that sound travels at a much greater rate than water that it does in air as far as sticking your head up into the air and communicating to a pod of Orca that's out in the ocean that seems a little more far-fetched to me relatively new science has actually shown that they can also distinguish each other very very clearly just audibly so in this case Willy is communicating with this pod outside and they know straight away that's him it's not just like somebody be like hey buddy and now they're gonna be like hey I hear ya you know they know exactly who they are it's like if you're yelling to your mom across the house she knows who it is that's yelling to her and that's the situation that's going on right here this is ace ventura - when nature calls [Music] rodents quadrupeds lend me Jim Carrey calls all the animals and all of a sudden the hunter in his hunting lodge is looking around and firsta sees a lion and then you hear in the background an accurate African lion roar and then he sees a zebra and sure enough to be feared as ever as a background they've actually sunk up real animal sounds with the stuffed animal to make it seem as though these mounted creatures are coming to life freezes frame we're splitting hairs at this point right but we know that Ace Ventura is in Africa and you've got an African elephant mounted on the wall and yet what comes bashing through the wall it's an Indian elephant you can see here the African elephant has got these big huge ears and the Indian elephants got these little small ears Indian elephants are much smaller they have a much different shape of their head their trunks are different they don't have tusks anywhere near like an African elephant I mean they're really two very different looking animals but it makes sense because Indian elephants are much more trainable they're the kinds that you typically see in circuses they're much more receptive to behavior modification than your big African elephants and behind that is a macaw from the Amazon so although we're in Africa the first two animals we see bash into the room are not native to the African continent at all behind them a call we've got pigeons we've got a horse I'm seeing at random in front of the zebra yep we just got a horse here maybe we got a real mix of animals here what the people making this film have done you said get me all the trained animals that we can and let's put them all together in a room you know how many biologist nerds like forests are gonna actually watch this and pick it apart and say oh these animals don't occur in Africa this is ridiculous the opening scene of Ace Ventura 1 is a whole bunch of animals working together as he hides up in his apartment here we are I think in the closing scene basically of the second film and we've got all these animals working together what you're seeing here is the elephant rears up is not a typical aggressive elephant behavior right for an elephant to rear up it's exposing its underside which is giving it a vulnerable point if an elephant is really aggressive what's going to do is put its head down and charge and trample you low to the ground or push you into the ground using their head or their trunk what you're seeing instead is kind of like that circus elephant behavior right where they rear up they play with the ball it's kind of a playful behavior but if you're a six foot tall human being and an 18 foot tall elephant rears up it's very intimidating feeling and that's the image they're going for here I would never classify an elephant as aggressive right they're protective they can be very territorial and they could certainly express aggression towards humans but an elephant like most animals if you leave it alone it's gonna leave you alone so vultures don't swoop in and attack things they're carrion eaters they eat dead things so instead this animals literally just coming in for a landing right and it's keepers probably right off camera like this and it landed right on his arm [Music] you see humans and animals can live in harmony incomes Ace Ventura riding an ostrich right I grew up in Zimbabwe which is where ostriches are native that in fact my neighbors had an ostrich farm so I spent a lot of time riding ostriches as a kid as an adult man it's pretty hard to ride an ostrich you have to kind of do exactly what he's doing and be way back and you just kind of fall off after a very short amount of time because a little kid when you weigh like 60 or 70 pounds you can actually stay on the ostriches for a lot of time and it's a lot of fun ostriches don't really like it they're not made to be ridden their Birds does it totally negatively affect them no but should you go riding ostriches here and there no no it's not good for no it's not realistic but the idea that you could just have this weaponized skunk that you cuddle like your lap Katan and pull up his tail and you just rock it stink spray all over you is absolutely hilarious not how it works but absolutely hilarious skunks obviously use that as a defense mechanism when they're threatened if the skunk is hanging out in your lap it's clearly not very threatened so it's not just gonna spray on sweaty blows like the barrel of the gun the barrel is gonna handle which is a little bit funny this is a Christmas classic elf I think he's walking through Central Park here if I remember correctly and sure enough he comes up on a very fat very healthy raccoon hey what's your name should you be seeing a raccoon out in a very snowy environment like that no today probably not that that being said he's in New York right he's in Central Park in New York City the raccoons will climb up the sides of skyscrapers and sleep in the tops of tall buildings where the heating units are so they actually tend to be really active all year long so your odds of encountering a raccoon in Central Park even in the winter it could definitely happen raccoons are nocturnal they're mostly active at night but they're pretty corpuscular meaning they're pretty active at dawn and dusk as well so are you gonna see them just out foraging in the middle of the day no it's less likely that's when predators are out that's when it's scary but keep in mind these are City raccoons right they don't exhibit normal behavior they can easily be out foraging in the middle of the day my name is buddy hold that there for a second look at that thing I think a lot of people in North America don't realize how cute our own animals are right we like look at it like these exotic elephants and lions and tigers look at that face nowhere has a raccoon like that it thanks freaking adorable let's see what happens my name is buddy that's back up there for a second here he is he's all cute right he's cuddly he's got a sweet little smile and then all of a sudden he starts to back up right so that's good that's body language to suggest that this raccoon is nervous of whatever is in front of it all the sudden he just goes into this little like diamond raccoon face which i think is still adorable maybe I shouldn't maybe I'm sick in the head is this a real raccoon in this exact moment yes but it's a real taxidermied one or it's a real stuffed one that's been made to looks gnarly and growly that cute little cuddly trained raccoon is definitely not making this face that you're seeing in the scene and they just inserted that one shot if you chased a raccoon into a corner of an alley he would just run up over the fence or run through your legs if he was completely out of options stuck in a cage or stuck in a trash can or something like that that's when you might see this super aggressive looking body language someone need a hug so pro tip don't hug raccoons for fun in Central Park I'm guessing how they got that shot as they took a stuffed raccoon or raccoon toy and literally threw it at Will Ferrell's neck and had him fall backwards and it's hilarious is that how a raccoon would jump up and attack I guess but in Central Park it would much rather just turn and run away we've got 101 Dalmatians [Music] dogs bark you know for a number of reasons to sound an alarm to communicate to call in this case he's marking to reach another dog [Music] diversity now is like this game of dougie telephone Dalmatian barks first then it hits the dog on the barge announcing the dog in the alley and I assume it's good to continue passing the message on to get across the city it seems that's not really how dog barking works right the dog barks at another dog in the dog barks back a dog can bark for hunger it can bark um it's sad you know there's a lot of reasons the dogs make noise but when they're all together and the sound is kind of traveling from dog to dog it's because they're all getting each other excited all right anybody's ever been on a farm knows that's not really how it works right the dog doesn't tell the horse to tell the pig something can the horses or the donkeys or the pigs sense when the dogs are super excited or sad or being punished totally there's no simple answer to do animals communicate you know sheep dogs work with sheep cattle dogs work with cows you know there's certain hunting dogs that work alongside of horses these are two different species that work together it doesn't mean that they're family it doesn't mean that they're best friends it just means they know how to respect one another say a cattle dog that rides along the Cowboys horse right that dog knows that he's in charge of the cows but he's still commanded by the person on the horse so there's a chain of command that gets developed this interspecies relationship although initiated by man happens in the wild - there was very recently a really cool viral video of a badger in a coyote going through a tunnel in San Francisco going to hunt together nobody taught them that those are just two animals in the wild that figured out how to work together these relationships do develop with and without man but not exactly like you're seeing it here we've got jungle 2 jungle so the first time I'd ever seen it was when I was a little Sam Bob Wian boy who had just come to the United States and I come from my own jungle 2 jungle so of all the movies that we're looking at this is the one that actually no the best which is hilarious maybe Domo he does have a big tarantula just walking on him which looks very intimidating but as we know from the pet trade are pretty common animals that can be handled all that therefore I have people all the time telling me these incredible fables of the snake or the spider that chased them you have never been chased by a spider it has never come after you the way it's coming after Tim Allen in this film right they don't do that the spider wants to have nothing to do with you it wants to get away did it happen to run in your direction possibly as a means to escape sure you can work with them just like this this is as weird as it sounds a training spider me me I thinks the kids name kind of gently tapping the spider on the butt goes into the basket close to the basket I believe that this kid actually did that whether he did or was a stunt double I don't know but that's what they're like they're not big scary mean aggressive animals typically just pretty calm spiders when tarantulas are agitated they will shed their hairs because their hairs have a terrible irritant on them and if they get in your eyes when they get in your mouth if you're a predator like a bird trying to eat them that becomes a big problem tarantulas basically have two forms of Defense one is to bite and the other to shed their hairs so obviously these are CG animals right the tiger CG the fishes CG and at the end of the movie we kind of understand why but this is very very real behavior in fact of all the movies this might be the most real behavior anybody that spent a lot of time fishing out at sea knows that you 100% do get flying fish that will fly right into the boat hit people in the face now it's typically happening at night flying fish are attracted to light they migrate based on moonlight or your boat light but sitting up here like this it kind of looks like moonlight and the flying fish will fly full speed and pretty much kamikaze right into the side of boats I've been hitting the chest I've been hit inside of the head to have flying fish fly into you like that is a very real thing flying fish fly for a couple reasons the main one is predator avoidance so when they're startled they take off and they put out their modified pectoral fins they act like a wing and they let them glide over the surface but they also use that as a means to migrate to move fast distances across the sea it's yours I like the paper airplane rendition of the flying fish right you throw it puts it specs out and flies off never tried it don't think it would work but again this happens this is a real thing I mean I don't know that it happens quite in that density that you're seeing it like that you know it's more like one here one there but you totally get groups of flying fish nailing the sides of boat and landing in the boat just like this out at sea again it's all CG but it's still pretty realistic that's what happens with a big school of fish congregate around a boat around the ocean you get all this foaming water and it's just kind of chaos just like that I'm Forrest Galante and this has been my breakdown [Music]

Channel: GQ

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Keywords: the break down, 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 2020, animal movie, animal movies, free willy breakdown, ace ventura breakdown, elf racoon scene, animal movie breakdown, life of pi breakdown, life of pi, jungle 2 jungle, free willy, ace ventura, gq, gq magazine

Id: ikWPI-OkB4g

Length: 18min 20sec (1100 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 23 2020