The Bullet Ant Episode - Is Wes the New King of Sting? ft. Jack's World of Wildlife

Hello everybody, welcome back to Tooth and Cloth podcast. We have Wes Larson, the gris kid, the wildlife biologist that we always we were. And I'm a younger brother. Mike doesn't. Jeff Larson. I wish it was the wildlife biologist that you were. Every time I talk to Wes, he's just complaining about everything. Mike Smith, he's the only one of us three that I think has gotten a death threat from a listener. I don't think me. That's true. He has yet. Yeah. That's pretty. Yeah. Listen, I was talking about something you shouldn't be talking about. No, I should. I would step away outside the boundaries of good, conversational taste. I dared to say something slightly negative about Taylor Swift once death threat, but that's fine. Listen, I was we were raised in the wild west of the internet. It's got our shooters. I was on something awful for a chance back in the day. I mean, I'm it's like getting a death threat is kind of like a ride a passage almost for I know. I wish I had one. I remember when I was in when I was in high school and chat room started. It was like, oh my gosh, no, no holds bar. You could say whatever you wanted to anyone. Yeah. Well, there's still places like that. There are, but I don't think it should be that way. I want to say that. Streaming sports. It's just like I can't close that chat quick. Yeah. Like on an illegal sports stream. Yeah. But sorry, I sent you that death threat on a fake camp, Mike. You're old. But you. I mean, stay away from her, Mike. I'm trying my best. I'm in the process of moving right now just to a apartment complex. My place of getting a little old here. It's bittersweet for me too, because I lived in that apartment for five years before Jeff moved in for about five years. So let me just say to you did a much better job of making it a comfortable place. Yeah. Pretty much. I tried my best with you. It's cluttered. Yeah. Yeah. You're less like half your stuff here. Only the stuff you wanted. I love that. You can do that. I love that apartment, Jeff. I am going to be a little sad. Didn't you leave a present that Jeff, Jeff gifted you? He was like a beetle or something, right? You just left. I did leave that. I did leave that. And I do kind of feel about that. It was getting. It's cool. Yeah. Well, just to explain, it was one of the better gifts Jeff's ever given. It was a big Japanese beetle. Japanese. Sorry, it was like a Hercules beetle or something, but it could have been from Japan. Who knows? Those mounted bugs often get these little like mites in them that eat them from the inside and then they get really, really fragile because it's just like the shell of the bug that's left. And I honestly, like honest to God, I was worried that if I traveled with it, it would just like completely disintegrate. Yeah. It's really cool. It's a cool, it's a cool beetle. I regret not taking it because it has held up, but I honestly worried that if I tried to move it to Montana, when I opened it, it would just be like, or when I like took it out of whatever box it was in, it would just be disintegrated. Well, it's crazy because like it had a bunch of bugs in there and you were right about that and you were like, I think whoever did this beetle, like sent it with a bunch of bugs in it. Yeah. But I cleaned out every single like part of it once you left. Yeah. So it gave back up and it's bugs from frickin salt lake that are getting there. It's like little tiny bugs from here that were getting into it. Yeah. So yeah, I would happily take it back, but I also don't feel like I have the right to ask for it back. I just, I honestly didn't think it would make it to Montana. So that's why I left it, but I loved it. It's a great present. Very thoughtful. Yeah. You can have it back, but I made that trophy that we want in exchange. The best podcast in the world. That's a great trade. That's sitting somewhere gathering dust. Yeah. You got it. All right. Well, speaking of bugs, we're going to talk about bugs today. We got a bug episode. Yeah. I've been talking about bears for weeks. So we're going to do another B animal, which is bugs, bullet ants to be specific. Oh, wow. Yeah. Triple B. Yeah. How many bullet ants beats a bear? Probably like 10. I think if a bear got stung by like a couple bullet ants, it would be out of there. What? I mean, like to the death. To the death. I don't know, like a few thousand. Because a bear would eat 10 bullet ants too and be happy. But I think if like it got stung right off the bat, it would kind of be like, I don't want to mess with these things. So I guess it depends on what you mean by beat. If it's a fight to the death, I think the bear wins until it's overwhelmed by bullet ants. Sure. So 10 bullet ants could make it pull a John Cena. Yes. I've never had John Cena smile on his face. Okay. He just, he just, that was his whole gimmick was he would never quit and he just quit. Okay. So anyone listening who hasn't wanted to quit fighting cancer or whatever things you can quit now. Yeah. Right. John Cena's at the stage for you. So he's inspiring. Yeah. He's a real, real trail trailblazer for lots of different. He's a quitter. Yeah. All right. Uh, well, to start this episode, I'm going to take you guys back to 2004. And during that year, explorers and notable wildlife of Fissuonatos, Stephen O and Christopher Pontius traveled to the Brazilian Amazon and they filmed a segment with a local tribe for their totally scientifically sound and well-respected nature program wild boys. You guys remember wild boys, right? With a Z. With what, Jack? With a Z. Wild boys. Wild boys. I described it accurately, right, Mike? Oh, yeah. Um, yeah. I feel like the first couple seasons by the end of its run, it was basically just Jack Assetton. But yeah, first two seasons were pretty animal centric. I think by the first episode of its run, it was pretty much. Yeah. It's messed up that you say I can't say I'm a scientist and then you'll call them scientists. Oh, well, if you want to rewind, Jeff, I did not call them scientists. I called them explorers and wildlife of Fissuonatos, which I would say for you as well. Didn't you say for scientific purposes? I said it was scientifically sound, which you can say stuff that scientifically sound. That doesn't make you a scientist. Yeah. I got you. So wild boys was actually Jeff. I got him. I was very careful about my wording there. Uh, wild boys was essentially a continuation of Jack Assetton. It featured Steve O. and Chris Pontius. They travel the world. They basically just did a bunch of dumb stunts with wild animals. When it came out, it was probably my favorite show. Now with kind of clear, yeah, with clearer eyes, I can see a fair amount of, no, but it didn't age well, especially with you getting all like environmental and smart. Yeah. You make it feel bad about animals. Being a biologist now, knowing about animal welfare, about what does actually cause stress to animals, I can see that a lot of what they did wasn't all that ethical and they kind of just would slap this thing on it. I say slap because of spider monkey slaps a minute. But at the end of each episode, they would say like, we love animals and don't do what we're doing. But it's like, you guys don't have any special, you know, ability to take care of these animals either. So I don't think that was good enough for me. But I am a big fan of the Jack Assette franchise in general. I don't like how they treat snakes on Jack Assette or like their bear segment in the last movie. But I do like Jack Assette quite a bit. Just kind of a quick disclaimer. Bam tree snakes pretty appropriate. It just gives him plenty of space. Don't touch them. Give them space. Yeah. There's just like even that one where they trick Bam into falling in the pit and then they throw snakes on him. They're just like chucking snakes down there. And I don't really don't like that scene because that can really hurt a snake. You can't just throw them around like that. Okay. Good to know. Anyway, season two, episode two of Wild Boys, the boys traveled to Brazil. They get up to their typical hijinks. But midway through the episode, they do the stunt that would really become cemented in my brain and stick with me for the past 20 years when I think about the show. And that was the traditional manhood ritual of the satari Maui people of the Amazon. It's a ritual that would ultimately send both of the host to the hospital for their first time ever on the show. So in this segment, you see Steve and Chris and they enter a tent and they're presented with these gloves and these gloves look like these big oven mitts almost that are made of like these dried woven fibers from different plants. They have these different kind of intricate decorations on them. And they're told to stick their hands in these gloves. And what we learn as the watchers is that inside of these gloves, there are hundreds of bullet ants that have been kind of sedated to be captured. And then they're woven into the glove with their abdomen sticking into the middle of the glove. So it's just all of these ant butts with their stingers ready to go and you're supposed to put your hand in there. And the idea is you keep this glove on for like eight to ten minutes while you dance and do this traditional ceremony. And this is a right of manhood for the men in this tribe. And women are allowed to participate, but they don't because what I read is they think it's stupid. So women again smarter than men. Is that what coyote Peterson's always doing? He gets bitten and he's doing the dance, right? He's just doing one at a time. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. One dance at a time. And boys in this tribe are often expected to do this multiple times throughout their kind of journey to manhood. You have to keep it on for a certain amount of time. On your episode, Jeff, you said it was ten times or something like that. That's unbelievable. I like after once I'm fine not being a man. Well, you're not going crazy. We have mentioned this ritual before, but just wait till this talks about it. No, it's my, Jeff did an episode on our subscriber channel called King of Sting. It's a really fun episode. We are going to re-try to listen to that one anymore. Wes has got it. No, you should definitely listen to it. Well, I did want to about like the tribal rituals too. I think that was in King of Sting, but I'm not sure. You did two Kings of Sting episodes. Yeah. I know. Okay. I'll try it if you're not. It's a really fun episode. We're going to re-try to a little bit of that information, but I have some new angles, and it's going to be fun. Okay. Yeah. So basically, Chris and Steve O put these gloves on. Steve O immediately starts screaming and takes it off. But Chris actually leaves them on for the full eight minutes. And while they have these gloves on, they're screaming, they're jumping around in pain, they're still laughing and joking at the end of the segment. You can tell they're in real pain. And these are people that are used to a lot of pain. We've seen them do crazy things with all sorts of different animals and stunts and whatnot. Like, what? I don't know. We're going to talk about that later. Steve O put on hook through his mouth and jumped in the water with a mecho shark. Like, some crazy stuff. But then we cut to them in the hospital, getting shots to help with the pain. And then the next morning, their hands are still really swollen and tender. And for me, this was my first introduction to the bullet ant. I'd never heard of them before the segment. I'd never really conceptualize that there was an ant out there with that powerful of a sting. But then last month, I actually got to have my own bullet ant sting experience in Costa Rica. Oh, mama. Oh. So this is actually going to be our first episode where the victim is one of the three of us. This is a trip where we had like an animal attack that was kind of merited a full story. But it was an interesting experience for me. And I want to rewind a little bit and talk about kind of my history with bullet ants. So my first time seeing them in the wild was actually an Ecuadorian Amazon. I was with a local guide who was indigenous to that area. We're out walking at night near a jungle lodge. We're looking for snakes and frogs and spiders and whatever else. And we had just seen a huge wandering spider a few really big tarantulas, like a lot of creepy crawlies. And this guy didn't even flinch around any of these things. Like he went right up to the spiders to take photos to help me see him. But then as we're walking, I see him quickly move away from a large tree and he turns around and tells me to like give it a wide birth. And I ask him why any points at a line of really large black ants that are moving up this tree and across the path. So he, he mouthed to me said, bullet ants. And then he wags his finger at me and the universal sign, which is like don't break with that animal, you know. So I watched the answer from a safe distance for a second. I made sure there was no stragglers around me or crawling up my leg or anything. And I caught up with this guide. And I asked him about the ants. I said, hey, do they actually deserve their reputation? And he told me that it was definitely deserved. They were the wildlife that he always watched out for when he was leading groups. And I asked him if he had ever been stung and he said that he had multiple times. And then I asked him what it felt like and he just made a finger gun at me and pretended to shoot, which I don't know if he's ever been shot. But I feel like you think it would be interesting. It feels like, yeah, it's a comparison. I feel like the ant might hurt more for like the very start. Yeah, we'll talk about that. I don't know. I think a bullet's worse than the sand. I've been still in tire time. Yeah. I don't know. Because like, you're generally goes up so much if you get shot by a bullet. I feel like for a little bit, you're kind of like what I can. What I can say is there's lots of videos online of people getting stung by bullet ants. I don't think there's any of people just like taking a bullet in the forearm. Jeff showed me a few. Yeah, Jeff has showed us those videos. I don't think it's something like this though. Yeah, it doesn't feel very good from what I saw. This episode of Two Think Cloth is brought to you by Graza. Always fresh, single origin olive oil. The holidays are here and everyone knows how important food is this time of year. Whether you're the gracious host or the professional party goer, it's always good to have extra olive oil on hand. Graza is our olive oil of choice. It's top notch olive oil at an affordable everyday price. For us, I would kind of just in the past go and buy whatever olive oil I could at the store. You have noticed since we switched to Graza that we're having better flavor in our food, it's easier to cook. The smoke point is just right. And that's because Graza is always fresh. It's never blended. It's made from the world's freshest olives and they have three olive oils for all of your classic holiday recipes. There's sizzle, which is their everyday cooking oil for marinating, sauteing, roasting. 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So head to Graza.co slash tooth and use tooth to get 10% off your order and get cooking this holiday season with some fresh, delicious olive oil. So in the next few years, after this first experience, I saw a bowl of ants a few more times, both in Ecuador and Brazil. I talked to more guides and locals that have been stung. All of them described it as a pretty unique, incredible type of pain. And then like I just mentioned, there's lots of YouTube videos. Coyote Peterson being the most famous of these stingfluencers. But there are a lot of videos of people getting stung by this ant online, including a recent one I just saw from Nat Geo where the person says it's a bullet ant, but it's this tiny little red ant. This all goes to show that there's a lot of videos and stories and we're going to talk to one other person actually about their bullet ant sting, which is one of the creators Jeff brought up in his episode, who I kind of dismissed when we first talked about him, but I really like him. And that's all thanks to Jeff. He's the man. He's great. And I'm going to give him a better intro later. Jack's he is the man. Yeah. I feel like you, you're on the path, but there's still a head of you for keen to sting. Oh, yeah. I'm not. I'm the do you like that of sting? The twelfth in line prints. Yeah. Yeah. What was Matt Damon in the last duel? He was like the Errol. Yeah. I'll be the Errol of sting that everyone kind of doesn't respect. One of my favorite videos I stumbled across is from the Sustrelean comedy duo. They're called Hamish and Andy. They go to the Amazon. They do the bullet ant glove. Andy doesn't do it, but Hamish does. And this is like they were like radio DJs and then they started their own comedy show. And then they did videos and whatnot. And I really liked this video because these are not wildlife influencers. They're not people that are like getting views by rolling around on the ground and over exaggerating or anything like they. I think we saw a very honest reaction of what the sting was like for them in the bullet ant glove, which I think is the worst case scenario for these stings. And I did just want to show you guys a little clip from it because Hamish just loses his mind and he genuinely seems to be in the worst pain that a human being can experience. So I just want to play a quick clip from that, which I'm going to pull up now. Oh God. Could I put these gloves on and keep my cool in front of the troll? Have mercy. Oh, obviously not. She's with a couple of deep breaths though. I felt like I'd be back to normal in those times. Can I get you a panadol? And you're a f***ing bus? What do I do? What do I do? You have to dance to release the pain, Hamish. Okay. Can we dance then? Jeez, I was going to be surprised if this helped. Seems like a very trained director from the doctor isn't it? Just dance. And evidently, it didn't. Hang in there, buddy. Hang in there. His name soon commends what we now know as the six stages of sting pain. Shrieking. Riffles all the dance. You have to dance. I don't want to dance. This is the last time I've ever felt like dancing. Screaming, slash and or swearing. F***ing. Sweating. Oh. Some shaking. Biting stick requests. Problem was this went on for an hour relentlessly. Call what? Yeah. Any last. Yeah, I'll get you one. Okay. Alright, so you can see it's pretty intense for him. And it actually goes on and gets like a little darker. Like he really takes a turn to where he's in a lot of pain and can't handle it anymore. And they need to go to the hospital and he spends the night in the hospital on like a morphine drip. So there are like where I'm kind of trying to get at with this is there's a wide variety of reactions to the sting. There are people that had similar reactions to me in their stings where it was kind of like really hurt, but it wasn't crazy. And then there's people that. That's not what I'm saying, but I do think the glove is on its own level. You know, doing the glove and getting dozens of not hundreds of these stings just ratchets it up to kind of an unbelievable degree of pain. There's a shot in that clip where it just cuts to a young boy. I think it's a boy and it's just so messed up that they just like it's going to be you soon little guy. I'll be you someday. They really just broke my heart. It's your future brutal. It's an interesting one where it's like obviously it's incredibly intense pain that you get put through, especially with like the gloves. It feels like it is like a kin to the most pain we can get like getting burned or getting shot or whatever. But then like there's no permanent damage at all like the next day you're fine. So that's where it is kind of like it almost does make you want to do it because it's like I kind of want to put myself through torture just so I know what tortures like and then I'll be fine the next day. You know exactly. And for me, you know, I'm going to tell my story but I think the women should do it. I do. For me, I think that was the real like kind of silver lining for my sting was that I got to have that experience. You know, like afterward I kind of got to be like, well, I've done that now. You know, I think you're going to get addicted. I think you're going. I think if I tell you enough times in execution or wasp is worse, you're going to get stuck by an execution or want to start being a sting food. Yeah. You're right. Anyway, so Jeff talked about Justin Schmidt on his King of Stings episodes. He recently passed, but he is commonly known as the King of Sting because this is the guy that did the actual study on what the pain level of these different stings were and how they affect people. He's an entomologist and he created what's commonly known as the Schmidt pain index, which Mike Chris, your friend, was nice enough to send me that after she learned that I had been stung. Yeah. Which was kind of funny. Yeah, it did. Yeah. Yeah. Um, this, this pain index really just involves hymenopter instincts, which are soft lies, bees, wasps and ants. So I do think if we were to incorporate like scorpion spiders, arachnids into the sting thing, they're going to be in their own category because they can, you know, do a lot more damage than, than these insects can. So on this pain index, he had four levels. The European honeybees kind of serving as the anchor. And in a way, he would base all the other ratings off of how they compared to a honeybeasting. So the honeybee was on level two. And what he would look at was the pain level and pain duration. And then during the time that he created this index, he took 78 different stings from different hymenopterous species and only three of them scored on level four. The first of those was tarantial hawk wasp, which he described the sting as blinding fierce and shockingly electric, but that the pain was very short lived in only last about five minutes. Another score of four. Yeah. That one looks the coolest of like all of them. It's so cool. And that's the one that they're called tarantial hawks because they'll lay their eggs inside of tarantulas, which then hatch and eat the tarantula alive. So it's like a pretty, a pretty metal animal. I wonder if tarantulas have a pain index for those. Yeah. There's like a tarantula entomologist. It's like, hey, this one's pretty bad. Come up with like really it was exquisite. The pain was exquisite. Exquisite. Exquisite. I was eating the live by wasp larva, blinding shrieking pain. Another score of four was the northern warrior wasp, which is also cinneweka septentriol analysis. I masquered that but northern warrior wasp. I like the other name more. Yeah. Schmidt described their sting as torture. You were chained in the flow of an active volcano and then he remarked, why did I start this list? That sting lasted about two hours. So gallum knows what that feels like. Oh yeah, active volcano. Yeah. That's true. He didn't care dude. He had his precious back. He was in total euphoria. That's true. Yeah. If Schmidt had the wondering, he would have been like, yeah, worth it. Yeah. This doesn't matter. None of this matters. I have my precious. I wonder like in that video West played, there's just nothing that could take away the pain. Do you think the ring of power you would still feel the pain? That's a good question. Yeah. Yeah, right? Does turning in the bill make the pain go away? I don't know. No, I guess not because when Frodo was stabbed by the morgue, or the morguell blade, he still felt pain and he was wearing the right. Okay. Schmidt's worst sting was that of the bullet ant. He gave it the maximum of a four plus and not only was the pain comparable or higher than all of the other worst stings. It also lasted over eight hours. So here's how he described the sting of the bullet ant, which is also called paraponera clavata. Paraponera clavata stings induced immediate, excruciating pain and numbness to pencil point pressure, as well as trembling in the form of a totally uncontrollable urge to shake the affected part. Now, later work, he described the sting as pure, intense, brilliant pain, like walking over flaming charcoal with a three inch nail embedded in your heel. So pretty intense. I like this guy's description. So we've talked about him before, but he is very descriptive, yeah, conch on for writing. So well, I guess we can wait to get into your experience, but things just aren't adding up quite for me yet, but maybe they will when you get into it. Well, like I said, there's a whole different range of how people experience these stings. I did see videos that people kind of felt at the same way that I did where it was intense pain, but not like life changing. Right. Okay. So let's get into my story. The amount of people complaining about one single angsting, it's crazy. Yeah. Get over it. The amount of your things. How many, how many are you seeing? Wes's guide. Schmidt. Okay, one, Wes. Two, three. Yeah. You're right for like 20 minutes. Yeah. All right. No, never mind. You're a good call, Jack. So on the second, it's just an ant. You're just, you're talking as if this is like something that like impedes on your daily life is just having to hear people complain about ants. I mean, I've been stung by an ant. All right. On the second full day of our Costa Rica trip, we had set up this canyonary experience in the rainforest. And it was actually really cool. Either of you cared, explain kind of the basics of what that looked like. Nah. Okay. I can explain it. I'm happy too. Jeff, do you want to do it? Yeah. Of the canyonary trip. Just like, is a lot of repelling through little waterfalls and then at the end of big waterfall. It's just like kind of following a steep stream through the jungle is raining the entire time, which kind of added to that atmosphere of it. A lot of people on the trip face their fears. We had Avery who's like legally blind made it through, which kind of was incredible to everyone. Yeah. The most impressive thing I've ever seen. Yeah. Really? Yeah. Just that she would even want to do it. It's crazy to me. Yeah. Yeah. It was really cool. It was a lot of like repelling that would then turn into zip lining. It was much cooler than I expected because you guys know me. I'm not a big zip lining fan. It always took for two for our zip linings on the trips. We are. It always though feels to me like a tourist trap kind of thing, but this didn't feel like that at all. It felt very wild and fun. When we ziplined in Kenya, West would get stuck every single time. I'm not good at zip lining. I'm not good at it. I kept trying to tell him to leave back and then I'm like the last one you did. You finally did it. I was good at it. The canyoning was fun because I've repelled a lot. I had to repel for hawk watch a little bit and stuff. But it was really fun and much more adventurous than I ever thought because we did a lot of walking through the stream bed. This canyon with slick rocks in the jungle is really neat. Okay. It felt like Lara Croft. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I've been wanting to for so long. This episode is brought to you by Element. Stay hydrated without the sugar, food dye, and other dodgy ingredients found in popular electrolyte and sport strengths. 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It's raining. It's misty. We get to a section with a little waterfall. And one by one, what we did is cannonball into this tiny pool of water that's barely big enough for our bodies. You had to just like perfectly hit it. And then we go a little further where they had to stop and wait again. We had about 20 or so people in our group and we're all kind of spaced out over the entire canyon. So like we didn't really see Jeff hardly at all, but me and Mike were really close to each other. And when they had us wait at the top of this little waterfall, me and Mike were in the second group of five or so people that were there and waiting. And as we were waiting, we watched one of these guides lay his body flat over the top of this small waterfall and he kind of creates a human dam. And meanwhile they took five people in front of us to the bottom of this waterfall and made them like a human centipede, but without the ass to mouth stuff. More like a human caterpillar. Yeah. Unfortunately. Yeah. I think that to everyone is complaining. They're like, ah shit. Yeah, exactly. That's the extra price. But everyone's pretty much sitting in each other's laps in single file at the bottom of this waterfall. And the water kept building up behind this guy that's the human dam. And then when he couldn't hold the water anymore, he did a countdown, jumped out of the way. And the pool that he had created rushed down this waterfall and over the top of the five people that were waiting below. So it covers them in like, like they're inside of a waterfall and it was a fun little trick. I really liked that part. Yeah. There's a reason I'm explaining this in such great detail. We'll get to it. So the group that me and Mike were in was next and newer, our friend newer was in front of me. And we're sitting in this essentially dry waterfall waiting for the water to build up behind the guide. And as we're sitting there, I notice a bug in the water about five feet away. I look at it closely and it looked really familiar and I pointed out to newer and I said, look, there's a bullet ant. And newer was familiar with what a bullet ant was. She got a little concerned and I told her it was already downstream of us. We didn't need to worry about it, but that we could keep an eye on it. Then the water's released. It pours down all over us. And when it was finished, we get up and walk away. And about 20 seconds later, I felt a sharp burning sensation just above my elbow on my right inner tricep. So I knew pretty much immediately that I'd been stung or bitten by something venomous. It felt like a lost thing, but one that was getting progressively stronger and stronger by the second. The initial feeling was like someone had put a hot coal inside of my arm that was somehow just getting bigger and bigger and hotter and hotter. I remember when it first happened, you remarked very calmly and really not in any pain at all at this point. You're just like, pretty sure I just got stung by a bullet ant. Yeah. Pretty sure. And that was about the extent of my experience of your bullet ant encounter. But then it, yeah. Yeah. And I was quickly evolved into something. I was in pain, but it wasn't like what I'd seen on YouTube, you know? So I was kind of like, I'm not sure if this was what it was, but I did tell you where it had happened. And I said, you know, just in case I'm unconscious, like this is where I got stung. And it's not that the pain was that bad. It was that I was not sure what had gotten me and had it been like a venomous snake, like a fertile answer or something. I wanted you to know where it had happened just in case I passed out. All right. So looking back, I do think I kind of knew what had happened. I think there was probably a group of ants that were moving along those rocks at the base of the vegetation. And they had given the water like plenty of space. But when the guys blocked the water and then let it go, it swelled bigger and hit parts of the rock that it wasn't touching before and washed the ants into the water. That's what I think must have happened because there was suddenly all this like debris in the water and whatnot from that rush of water. And I think that's probably what got the ants in there. And I think one of them just got on my arm and I didn't even notice it. And that would also explain why they were kind of ready to sting. Because you can actually usually like you could probably let a bullet ant go over your hand and it wouldn't do anything. But most of the people that get stings online are like grabbing it and forcing it to sting them. They're not just like stinging Willie Nilly. But I got stung. What I thought was just going to Willie Nilly and the Willie exactly. So the pain for me didn't really start to flare up in a concerning way until we were walking up these switchbacks to get back to the little building that we started from. And up until that point, I thought maybe I just got stung by a bad wasp or something. But my mind was starting to drift to what it could be. And I was really looking forward to getting the changing area where I could get my shirt off and see the mark. Because at that point, I was like, this could be a huge gash. This could be something crazy underneath there because the pain was getting really intense. But I wasn't really telling anyone at that point that it was starting to get like concerning. So the pain, like I took my wet shirt off and I saw this raised sting spot. It kind of looked like a little donut. And there was red irritated skin radiating out from it. But at this point, it kind of just looked like a rash to me. So I Emily gave me some hydrochordazone. But now there's like this darker spot that was starting to form and the sting and the pain were getting like a lot worse. And I thought the pain would have subsided by that. And the fact that it hadn't and it was just getting more and more intense, I started to really think that it was probably a bullet ant. So I showed one of the guides and he was like, yeah, that's a bullet ant. And then by the time Jeff got there, the dark spot had started turning purple and it had this really like kind of target pattern forming on it, darkest in the middle and progressively lighter as you move away from the sting. And something interesting to me is I've watched these videos very few of them have that kind of like bruising almost. But I think it's because they all are taking it like on forearms or hands. And mine was in like a more kind of fleshy area. And I did find a couple other photos of people that got stung in like fleshy or more mussely parts. And they also had like the purple and bruising and like the weird marks that I had. Yeah. No, it was it was a like surprising mark. Yeah, it was like, wow, that's pretty big. Yeah, I'll post some photos on Instagram, but yeah, at that point I was like, okay, this is this is something that I kind of have to keep my my eye on. The pain really hit a peak when we were eating lunch. And it was funny because as we were eating, Jeff had a cat that came up and sat like right next to him. And then like God in his lap and was like eating from his plate with him. And it was really cute. Like it was a really cute moment and it was really funny. And I was just staring at it, trying to distract myself because the pain was getting like so crazy that I just needed something else to focus on. And it was really happy that I had that distraction. Jeff had a little buddy. Yeah. I think it was that lunch too. It was the second time you told me and that's when I knew it was kind of serious because you were like, if it gets much worse, start considering maybe going to the hospital. I was like, oh wow. Okay. So this is this is a real like because you did a great job of like staying calm. But yeah, once you started saying that more than once I started to get pretty concerned myself. Yeah. And part of that was because I still because I didn't see it, I still wasn't like 100% convinced it was a bulletin at this point. Because like if it had been something that it could have been, you know, like a spider or something that could have been worse, then I didn't want to like put it off too long. You know, we've told so many stories of people that yeah. Anyway. So yeah, like Mike said, I had started remembering these stories of people who needed to be hospitalized from stings or got really sick from them. So it was kind of starting to spiral out a little. But the pain wasn't what I had imagined. It really, really hurt. By far the worst thing I've ever had in my life, but I didn't feel like I needed to like scream or shake or roll on the ground. And I do think part of that is because most of the stings I had seen had either been from people who were kind of hamming it up to get more views or from people that had done the glove. And I do think the glove is a different experience. One that I'm going to Jeff do someday, I think. Whatever. Like start crying, you're going to say I'm hamming it up for you. You got to be, you got to become a man somehow though, you know, and that's our last shot. It obviously hurts a lot. Let him, let him, let him hamm it up. I didn't say any names. I was just saying there's people. It wasn't just him. Like there's a number of videos online of people like losing their minds. And, but here's, yeah, here's honestly what I, and I mean this. I do think this affects people differently. And I don't think it's a toughness thing. I think it's a physiological response to venom kind of thing. And I feel lucky that I didn't have that like overwhelming type of pain, but it was crazy pain. And it lasts forever. And I'm going to go a little bit more into what it definitely depends like where you get bit and how well it gets you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can bite too. Yeah. They do, but that doesn't hurt that much. Do you think maybe this is something we'll get into in a bit, but are there levels to how badly like sometimes snakes will have a dry bite kind of thing where they don't really inject it's still a painful experience, but maybe they haven't really put their full, I don't know what the word is. All their venom like all of their weapons at their disposal. Yeah. Exactly. Do you think ants can kind of just halfheartedly sting sometimes and not do their full? I don't know. But what I do know is that they are like wasps in that they can sting multiple times. So you can get a lot of stings from one ant if it is there long enough. I don't think I got more than one. And I don't I think it was kind of a glancing sting too because I just had the one sting mark. It was kind of a drive by too. I was floating down the water. Probably could get all the way. Good purchase. Anyway, we wrap up lunch. We head into town. And at this point, I think my bruising was getting the worst. I had this crazy purple mark on my arm. And the pain was at its max. And here's where I made a pretty bad decision. Our group decided to split up. Some people went to town for like 30 minutes into a pharmacy. And then the other people went on a multi hour tour of a chocolate and coffee plantation. Which one do you think Westpitch? This is how you know that like my FOMO is at kind of a dangerous stupid level because I really didn't want to miss out on the chocolate experience. So I said, no, I'll just like grip. You know, I know that nothing is really going to help with this pain aside from like some morphine. So I'll just go on the chocolate tour. I'm going to be in pain regardless. It's a bad idea. It was a bad idea. Yeah, I was having a hard time paying attention just without having an inexpensive extreme pain. Yeah. It was a little slow. And during the tour, I did start to kind of spiral and dissociate a little bit. And I kind of had hoped that the pain would be subsiding by then, but it was just getting worse and worse. And our guide on that tour knew he was like guiding the chocolate and coffee, but he knew a lot about wildlife. Like he was a really, really well informed guide. And so at one point I pulled him aside and I said, hey, have you ever been stung by a bullet ant? And he said as a kid that he ended up in the hospital actually with a fever for a week because he was stung by a bullet ant. And then I showed him my arm and he's like, yep, that's bullet. You got stung by a bullet ant. So I kind of just lost, I got lost in my own world for a little bit. I really sunk into the pain during the tour. I was starting to wonder if I might end up with some of these other side effects and like ruin the trip for people. And then right as I was kind of getting to that mindset, the pain finally started to break. And by the end of the tour, it wasn't too bad. That night when we all hung out in the hot springs in a dinner, I really couldn't feel much of anything. And then that night when we laid down to go to sleep, it did kind of come rushing back. But I just kind of greeted my teeth for a few hours, tried to find a comfortable position. And then a few of our group had given me like some nice pain killers and muscle relaxers and stuff. So I took those and then I just kind of passed out and in the morning I was fine. I had it. It was a little sensitive to the touch, but I was okay. I was in this room and I was like going to bed and he goes, yeah, it's starting to really hurt again. This is like a little scary. And I was like, oh shoot. And then I just went to bed and just fell asleep. It's no worse. I so in retrospect, like we said earlier, it was kind of scary when it happened, but afterward I was actually really happy that it had happened. It was a fun talking point for the trip. And it was like one of those things that you always hear about as a biologist, especially if you've spent a decent amount of time in tropical Latin America and then experiencing it, I kind of got a window into what how bad it can actually be. And I do think I came out on the lower end of how bad it can be. I know Ian that we talked to that got the scorpion sting. He's been stung by a bulldoin and he had a similar reaction where it was really bad, but it wasn't like the worst pain of his life. And that's where I was at too. What was the worst pain of your life? Huh. I got, you know, when I even college, I played Mud Volleyball and someone, I got mud underneath my contact lens at the time and a bunch of little tiny like shards of glass essentially from the sand got lodged into my eyeball. And I was in so much pain. I couldn't take off my contact and it just kept rubbing him into my eye. And I had to go see an emergency optometrist and he pulled 20 little fragments of glass out of my eyeball. That was the worst pain I've ever felt. Stop. Yeah. Please, Wes. First then an ant. Yeah. Yeah. I got to scare this flicker. The flicker's chirping in the background. All you burders can probably hear a northern flicker. Hey. A side note is that chocolate from the coffee chocolate tour. The chocolate I made I think might be the worst chocolate I've ever eaten. Yeah. I was lucky that Andrew was across from me and he's like a chef. And he's like a Ben a chocolate tear before and he or I guess still is. 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Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with rocket money. To rocket money.com slash claw today, that's rocket money.com slash claw. Rocket money.com slash claw. Anyway, in retrospect, I'm very confident it was a bullet ant now and the two reasons are because of the severity of the pain and how long it lasted. I had pain for about 10 hours which is about what you should expect from a bullet ant sting. So from a bullet ant. In bullet ant sting, would you say you're like 2% more of a real man now? Yeah, I feel like I'm maybe like 2%. I need to wear like a real man. I did find that after that trip I was like, wow, I've been watching a lot of football lately. Chopping down a lot of trees. Jesse's like, what are all these trees coming from? I don't know. Just wake up at night and go chop down trees. And I'm just kind of an asshole now too. All right. To me a real man protects the forest. Yeah, sure. I mean, do you see train dreams? I guess we won't make that joke. I love train dreams. That guy, he was chopping down trees all over the place. By the end of the cry, would you say he is a real man? He's crying a lot. He is. I haven't seen it. I think to Jeff's point. Yeah. Because real men don't cry, do they? That's maybe I've been crying a little bit less because of this bullet ant. You know, who knows? No, go ahead, man. Cry all you want. Yeah. I encourage always be crying is what I get. Yeah, ABC. ABC. That's kind of my rallying cry these days. Yeah. You know, I don't feel like I need to prove my manliness to anyone to be honest. Just a little. Except to Jesse. Not even to her. All right. So proof is a weird word, but like I just, you know, there's a lot of people out there. I feel like once a month, like one or two nights a month. Sure. That's not what I'm talking about. All right. Let's get into bullet ant biology a little bit. We talked about them a little bit already, but bullet ant actually isn't their official name. Worldwide there are known as paraponera clavada, which is their scientific name. They have a lot of different nicknames. Why don't we just call them that? That's it. Yeah. It's kind of funny that insects and reptiles, people that work with them a lot just use scientific names. That usually, you know, and it's kind of like, come on guys, we can use common names for these. That's not getting too serious. We can biologists, right? I hate you guys. I mean, that is like the only thing they go to school for. Yeah. Learn Latin. The Latin is. In Venezuela, they're often called hormiga, bantequatro. That person that complained about me doing an accent is going to be pissed about that one. But that means the 24 hour ant, which refers to pretty much all day of pain that you can expect after being stung. Brazil, they're often called for me, go, coboverge, for me, go, or for me, go, pray though. Isn't that the, what's the actress in the conjuring movies? Isn't that her last name? Veriformiga. Veriformiga. Yeah. Is she one of those? Or mega does mean ant in Portuguese. What the heck? That's her last name is ant. Yeah, I guess. I never really thought about that. Veriformiga. Ant. Veriformiga. Yeah. Verif, that's yeah. I'm out of it. Are we giving that right? I might be having some recency bias here. Veriformiga. She's farmiga, not for me. Shoot. Veriformiga, I'm pretty much just means like big ant. And then the indigenous Tupigwara ni called them Tukanindi, Tukanindi, which translates to the one wounding deeply. But their most famous nickname may actually come from Costa Rica, where they're known as Bala, which means bullet. You can find them pretty much from Honduras down to Brazil. They like to inhabit humid tropical lowland forest. They're large, reddish black ants or blackish red. They can get up to about an inch in length. They have really large bullbuss segments, so they're pretty unmistakable once you get an eye for them. They just look like this really chunky, big black ant. They're social insects that form nests generally at the bottoms of trees. And those nests typically have a few hundred ants in them, the majority of them work or ants. And they sting as both a hunting strategy and defensively. They eat all sorts of critters from frogs to butterflies to spiders. And they're really defensive. They'll defend their colonies vigorously. And when they're defensive, they actually produce a sound that emanates from their abdomen. They've been shown to drop down on attackers from trees. Pretty cool. Who does that? Crazy. In movies. In movies? Probably does that. Drops down out of a tree. Kicks again in the face. Does he? I don't know. I imagine that he does that. I'm mad at anybody. Say good that in the three ninjas. Oh, cool. Yeah. One of them, Colton, I think maybe. Colton. Yeah, Colton. Yeah. The cool one. He was always my favorite. Yeah. Then middle. Middle child. Most, it's a, it's kind of a ninja move. Yeah. It is a ninja move. Assassin's Creed, you're always jumping out of trees to have people. Yeah. They should call him ninja bugs, ninja ants. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. So the venom in their sting is comprised of a Ponera toxin, which is a neurotoxic peptide that in inactivates sodium ion channels and skeletal muscle to block synapse transmission. So we talked about this in our bark scorpion episode. But basically what this is doing is just it stops your body from telling you to stop feeling pain. So those synapse transmitters, the channels just stay open. So you're just continuously feeling like the maximum pain response. And that also happens with scorpions. And that's why these stings are so painful is it's tricking your body into just constantly having a huge locked in pain response. And aside from just searing pain, bullet ant stings can also produce temporary paralysis, uncontrollable shaking, nausea, vomiting, fever, and cardiac arrhythmia. Okay. So really quickly. I wanted to invite someone else on that had been stung and immediately our friend Jack from Jack's world of wildlife came to mind. And again, if you listen to Jeff's King of Sting episode his first one, I was a little dismissive when I first heard about Jack. You hated him. No, I didn't say I hated him, but I was dismissive. And I the reason as I thought there's anyone in the world you could kill it, be Jack. He's about to be on the show. I did not say that for Jack. I promise you. But what I did think is that he might be one of these wildlife influencers who just does sting and pain content. But after I looked into his videos, I did recognize that he was actually a kindred spirit, a really amazing educator and naturalist. And one of the things I like best about Jack is that he is teaching people about animals that they might be really afraid of like insects or racnids, lots of other like reptiles and creepy crawlies. And he does a really good job of explaining just how beautiful and interesting and complicated these animals can be and why they're almost always much more afraid of us than we are of them. And I really, really like this content. So with no further ado, we're going to bring Jack on. Naturalist are those guys that are always naked, right? So you wanted this? He's not one of us. I've never seen him do any naked content. Maybe he has an only fan so we don't know about. Shoot, sign it up. We'll ask him. All right. Well, I just introed him, but he is here joining us Jack Shownhoff who is a wildlife educator, but I'll let you explain your background, Jack, just so people know who you are. Sure. Yep. Like I said, my name is Jack Shownhoff. I run Jack's World of Wildlife, which is me. I post all over the place. I started on YouTube, but everywhere now, the TikTok Instagram, Facebook, whatever. I'm just going to be a bit more of a funny fan. Yeah, right. My main thing that I pretty much do is I take a not necessarily antithetical approach to wildlife, but I try and take the expectations that people have about misunderstood species. So usually I'm filming stuff like reptiles, venomous snakes in particular, spiders, the stuff that people have this kind of scary idea of built in their heads and try and sort of rein them in back into reality. That's kind of the initial sort of conception of my brand if you want to call it that. Yeah. Which is just kind of, I was seeing when I first started, you had creators like, you know, Kaya Di Peterson or other people that were kind of capitalizing on the negative sensational capabilities of wildlife. And I'm not somebody who thinks that you have to speak in a monotone voice and provide everything in an academic setting. I do believe that the natural world is sensational and people should be able to feel excited and want to connect with it. But at the same time, what I want to do is highlight how cool and interesting and the real side of these animals rather than taking the nastiest components of them and trying to drum that up in order to facilitate getting views. So part of that mission did have me running parallel with creators like Kaya Di Peterson, kind of making it almost a rebuttal sting series. And this is something if you've seen any of my videos, you know what I'm about. But if you're looking from the outside, you think I'm just hopping on the bandwagon of sting videos. That's not what I'm doing. Basically, you have millions of people consuming, aggressively consuming these sting and bite videos because they're really just, you know, freaked out and they want to see somebody getting hurt. You take those people who are interested in that kind of thing and you show them actually, just doesn't want to sting me, doesn't want to bite me. And even if it does, it's not nearly as extreme or painful or hand up as some people are kind of peddling it to be because of course they make money off of interaction and stuff like that. It's really fun to like watch a Kaya Di Peterson sting and then watch your exact same sting like right after. Right. It's like, it's not in day, not in day because I mean, I guess somebody people like, man, this guy is so tough. He has to have an insane paint on it. He's just going to pluck my, you know, my unibrow. I'm not some superhuman, you know, Superman made out of steel, right? It just doesn't hurt. It'll hurt. And I would probably jump 10 feet in the air if something crawled up my bridges and stung me on the tank or something. But if you're fully, you're going three, two, one, it's like, if somebody put a gun to your head and said, if you scream, I will shoot and kill you. I believe every single person on earth over eight years old would be able to sit there and just right. That's an interesting way to put it and not that I'm trying to put a front on if I'm doing a sting or something. But if it's not going to physically make me do anything, I'm not going to do that. You know, there's no point. Yeah, I imagine like once the video ends, that's when you really start screaming. Right. Right. I'm like, you look a little bit like a brother. I like what you said. And like, we pick on him sometimes, but I do think there, like, was a place for all of that. I think it's interesting in it. It's like a kind of opening to educate people with the sting stuff and whatnot. But it's run its course for me, you know? And I think the thing that you said that I agree with is like often these invertebrates or whatever else, they really don't want to sting us. It's energetically costly. It is like their last line of defense. It's not something that they want to do. But if you force them to do it, they will do it. And I did want to ask you about bullet ants specifically. I don't know. I didn't see my ant when I got stung. I saw it in the water afterward. I was confident it was a bullet ant because it lasted as long as it did and it was painful as it did. Right. Yours, you had to force it to sting you. Correct. I saw the video and I'm just curious if you could run us through your experience, tell us, you know, where you were, how it felt, how long it lasted the whole thing. Yeah, absolutely. So I've actually been stung two separate times intentionally. So when I first started the channel way back in 2018, I was living in Costa Rica working an internship. And at the end of that internship, we traveled down into the humid lowlands because we were up in the mountains. We traveled down into the humid lowlands. And I was like, I got to try a bullet ant, which is, you know, some people want things to want to try. That's crazy, right? But it's funny because actually before all this sting stuff was kind of taken off, I actually have a huge special interest in ants. I got into it kind of later in high school. I was breeding them. I was selling them. I was just really fascinated by ants. And part of what made them really interesting in one of my favorite groups is called the Tried Ponderini. And this will come into play later. So these are typically painfully stinging ants. We have a few really cool species in Texas, but this group includes like Harry, Panther ants, trap jaw ants, stuff like that. They're usually active foraging ants with a powerful sting. And their queens are semi-cloustral, which means they have to hunt for prey even while they're founding the nest. There's bigger ant and a lot of queen species that they just will burrow into the ground. And they'll just use all their energy stores to lay eggs. And then once their workers emerge, then they have somebody to go out and get food. These Ponderini and Paraponderini, which includes the bullet ants, can't do that. So that's why a lot of these groups of ants are equipped with those painful stings. So of course, I was interested in that. I just started testing them just out of curiosity. I'm not allergic to any bees or anything like that. So me and some buddies, it was a trip way back in 2017. It was one of my first kind of road trips with my buddies. And we went all the way down to South Texas. And we caught our largest native Ponderini tribe ant, which is the Harry Panther ant down to South Texas. And I was like, I should try it out. You guys, do you think I'll be able to drive afterwards? I was just always driving my car. I don't know, you know, and I tried it. It was interesting, it was kind of cool. So it started to become a little bit of a thing I would try and do. And so that's another reason why I felt like I wanted to start these sting videos because I had the personal sort of reference for like, this is ridiculous. I can't believe that people aren't just seeing right through some of these insane sort of, you know, Oscar award winning, you know, performances. So anyway, to tie that back in. So back to 2018, I had tried a Transyl Hawk Wasp, which I was a little nervous for. So my first big sting. I don't know what was going on. War level fours. Yeah, it was almost entirely painless. And wow. We had a little bit of kind of, you know, inflammation right at the bite site like the next the following day. But I was like, this is shocking. Maybe I don't know what was going on, but almost no pain whatsoever. And so yeah, for the bullet ant, we'd gone down again into the human lowlands. We were in bullet ant central. We found this amazing Airbnb, which is sadly closed now. It was on this two acre plot in the middle of all these cattle pastures. And there was like 10 bullet ant colonies. And it was right after a good, nuptial flight. So we even had big honken queens. The queens, because they're semi-cloucetral, are not multiple times larger than the workers. They're only about 25-ish percent bigger than the workers. But anyway, so I was like, okay, we have some bullet ants. We can try out the sting. So again, bullet ants, I find them to be fairly shy. They, unless you catch them at the base of the tree physically in their nests, they're actually kind of difficult to get into a sort of a defensive mode. If you kind of almost scoop one off of a leaf or a log or something like that, without really having to worry about being stung. It's usually if one of them gets in your clothes, I've had friends lean on a fence post or a tree or something that the bullet ants, they don't see that they're on, and they get stung that way. For me, I've never been stung unintentionally by a bullet ant. So anyway, we caught these bullet ants to film. I took the female worker and I had to pin against the skin gently, of course. The stingers are quite large. The genus Paraponera, there's two described species. Only one of them is extant living today. They're kind of a primitive group of ants. Their tribe Paraponareini, excuse me, is for more or less a monotopic tribe now today. So they are similar to those Pottera, if you remember me mentioning those before, which are kind of primitive, active foraging, usually painfully stinging ants. So they're equipped with a pretty potent neurotoxin. That's not terribly dangerous, but they're larger ants. They're around an inch long, usually about 0.7 to 1.2-ish inches. We ran through some of the biology too. Okay. I'll just, you don't have to get too deep into it. So we talked about it most of the time. I could talk for a long time about bull. It's fine. There's some of my, I think I've got one on my shirt, actually. Somewhere right here. Oh, yeah. On the logo. So yeah, I had to pin it to the skin. The stinger actually got stuck. So I just let it go. My first bullet ant sting video that I released way back in 2018, the bullet ant was lodged in my arm for maybe 30, 40 seconds of memory service. No, I remember that. And it just looks like, yeah. I just kind of let it stay. I didn't want to yank on her. Sometimes with stinging insects, you can cause some damage if they don't pull themselves out. Like a drastic example would be like honey bees. They can actually lose organs if they have their stinger get stuck. Anyway, so I just kind of let it go. And you can see my hand kind of, I'm tensed up a little bit and it's hurting. But what a lot of people don't realize with stinging insects is I find that they, there's the Justin Schmidt pain index of, you know, kind of one to four. Yeah. And my opinion, most stuff exists in this tiny little sliver of the pie. Because for me, being stung by a bullet ant, the initial pain, I should say, I should clarify, the initial pain exists in this tiniest spectrum. Because you could have a really bad hornet or wasp sting that's on this end. But then, you know, a standard yellow jacket or paper wasp is going to still be fairly close to that. And in my experience, a bullet ant is, the initial pain is extremely similar to any paper wasp or bee sting or anything like you think you hear all the bullet ant, you're going to be riding on the ground. It's 24 hours of pain. And while the effects certainly last longer. And for me, then, you know, a paper wasp or something like that. The initial instance of that pain is, is, you know, maybe within one or two clicks of a sting that most people have experienced before. That's interesting. And I think, I think a lot of people kind of, again, they inflate this idea of, well, tarantula hawk and velvet ant and bullet ant and Asian giant hornet, they're, they're four out of four or whatever. And they think it's going to be some, you know, monumental, painful experience. And in reality, it's like, oh, like it would certainly surprise you. And I can't imagine, you know, accidentally sitting in the nest of them, but just putting your hand in the glove or something. Exactly. Exactly. Being stunned because you've got to think too, you know, there are kids who do this in the Amazon where they, and they have, it's not just a one time thing. This is, this is 20, 30, 40 ritualistic, you know, bullet ant gloves that they have to do over the course of months or even years. And they're not, they're not riding on the ground. It's, I can imagine a horrible hangover because that neurotoxin, I mean, you would just be laid out for days because again, it's not just a potent nasty neurotoxin that is incredibly painful, but the volume that these ants can store, I mean, they're, they're big honken ants. And so, you know, you're thinking of, I want to get you to like do the bullet ant gloves. And then afterwards just be like, compare it. Yeah, guys, it's not that bad. Not that bad. My, my, my, I had a gun to my head. I could, I would scream. I would actually, I have a buddy of mine who went and did that a few years ago, again, to kind of crap on coyote Peterson. But I would be really interested to try it. My only reservation is the aftermath because I know the initial pain of the moment. You, you can stick it out. Oh, how long am I doing it for? To 15 minutes, 20 minutes, whatever. Like it's good. Right. It's that, it's that come down and that shaking. Yeah, exactly. And that's a specific tribe to get to. It's like a three or four hour boat ride there. Yeah. So the aftermath of that is you get to lay down in the boat and just have neurotoxin shakes for the next, you know, 48, 72 hours or however long. And I, my thought of how that would feel would be similar to I did actually, again, I went a little to the extreme and I tested a black widow bite. This was in 2019. I, so yeah, I know. I know. I know I've got any questions for you. And I want to talk about that. Police systemic neurotoxin. Yeah. Kind of stuff. Like it's not going to kill me, but it's going to be somebody worst because my thing is I would rather take pain more extreme for 15 minute, 30 minute window, then kind of a lower simmering, you know, seven or eight or nine out of 10 for 11, 10 hours, 12 hours. No, no, no, no rest. So tell us, tell us then like, you know, the initial sting wasn't that bad for you, but tell us about how it progressed over the next few months. So my, I'm going to, so the initial pain because I'm going to talk about both my stings is I had a more recent sting back in 2023 in Ecuador. So I was going to, you know, I'm in a different country. This is a different population of bullet and same species that tested at Ghostreka in Ecuador. So for Costa Rica, my, my reaction was kind of more intense, I would say. So afterwards, I kind of had some pretty serious inflammation. I usually use my left arm for my stings. So I'm just kind of illustrating here about maybe seven inches long and kind of maybe two inches sort of wide. And it was just really sore. The initial sort of, you know, hot needle was completely gone after the first 20, 30 minutes of the sting. And it was kind of left with a sort of a shallow aching in my arm. So additionally interesting is, and this has, this happened with my second bite as well, kind of profuse localized sweating in that area. So rest of my body completely fine, but it, you know, warmed to the touch and just beads of sweat that would come off it. In fact, my more recent test, I took a pretty dramatic, now it's, I'm in Ecuador, it's humid and it's hot. But you can just see everywhere else in my arm is dry. And I just have sweat just dripping off of this inflamed area the next day. Interesting. You know, some people call it the 24 hour amp. For me, it didn't last nearly that long. I got stung in the morning, maybe about 10 or 11 a.m. That night, it was pretty sore, but, you know, it was, it was, it was, to the point where it was a little annoying how sore it was. It was maybe, you know, a six, you know, out of 10 or something like that. I've just kind of an aching, like you just feel like you slammed your arm in a car door sort of thing. But the next morning, it was almost entirely gone with the exception of like, you know, if you have like a mosquito bite, you ignore it and it kind of goes away. But if you brush up against something, you know, it starts to get itchy and inflamed again, that type of thing. So yeah, you'd be like, oh, it doesn't hurt or itch or whatever anymore. But you know, you brush up against it, then it, you know, starts to get a little puffy and flamed. But really, after about 24 hours, 36 hours somewhere in there, it was pretty much almost entirely gone. For my second test, it was, I think actually maybe a little bit longer. Now I had a little bit of a head cold at the time. Maybe that played a little bit into the immune response and stuff, but it was very dramatic local ice sweating. It was more extreme than I recall, you know, way back, you know, seven years ago, eight years ago almost now. Gosh, that first bullet-ass thing. But both instances still perfectly easy to remain composed. It's a painful thing, but, you know, I think two, I've said that, you know, those things sort of exist on a spectrum. They also exist in a spectrum of pain, you know, breaking a, you know, I've never broken a bone, but I've twisted an ankle or a shot. Have you been shot? I've never been shot. That's the other thing too. I will talk about it. Because people, again, they're like, oh, yeah, some people say it's as painful as being shot. I cannot imagine that it'd be as painful as being shot. Number one, just because it's like a beer wasp. Nobody says, oh, I got stung by a wasp and in 10 minutes the pain goes away and you're just left with a big swollen ear or something like that. It must be as painful as bullet, but also at the same time I feel people kind of, again, they inflate this idea of pain in their heads. Most people, if you shoot them with a gun, your body will go into shock. A lot of the times, if you have a serious enough injury, you're not really going to even be feeling it that much. You know, people go, oh, you know, it would be driven mad with the pain or whatever, you know. At some point, you either go into shock, you pass out like this, whatever people think is going to happen away up here, you know, you're way down here, you know, people like even with my, I don't know because I saw the video of Donald Trump King shot and I feel like he would have been more pain if he got stung by that. Exactly, exactly what I'm saying, right? But I do think, I think it's important to say like, I agree with you because I had a similar reaction. Venom is very complicated. And so is pain and pain responses and our synapses and all of that. And just, you know, this is just kind of a disclaimer. Just because me and you didn't have like the strongest reaction to it, there are people out there that will have a more strong, you know, a stronger pain reaction and Venom is just going to affect him. I am. Even outside of like an allergy or something. And I agree, I agree in sort of half with that statement. I think that people react to pain in very different ways. I am skeptical that pain exists on as broad a spectrum as reaction, if that makes sense. So what I think is, you know, like I said, again, I could be stung by a bullet ant, preparing myself that kind of almost mind over matter. My reaction is going to be very different than if I sit on one and I'm completely not expecting it. I'm trying to surprise elements sometimes. If you don't know what's happening, you don't know if it's going to happen again, I feel a lot of people sort of don't, you know, and I think this is something to sort of almost an evolutionary thing that's built in at a younger age, a violent reaction to sort of a pain response can be helpful in notifying, you know, family members, people who are around, something is going on. You don't know what's happening. It's a sort of a natural response for people to have, especially you can see in young kids, you know, a bonk on the head or something that we could just be like, oh man, that things, is more of a violent reaction in a younger kid. I feel like a lot of people without having sort of the exposure that I've had of just being stung over and over again and kind of having the conceptual idea of about what each of these things is going to feel like. A lot of people would react violently, maybe without experiencing, you know, pain on a 300% increase the scale to myself. What you're saying is that Schmidt is a bit of a drama queen is what you're trying to tell us. It's possible that Schmidt is a bit of a drama queen. I have tried, I've really tried hard to give everyone as best of a benefit of a doubt as I can. For example, I did a valvedant sting. My first one, you know, years and years and years ago, it was nothing. I retried it years later and I guess I had a dud the first time because the second time it was actually extremely sharp and impressively painful. In my opinion, that's the most painful sting insect in the United States is the larger daisy motilla, you know, valvedance. And so I've tried trancell hawk wasp three times now. I just don't know where I'm going on. It is just, I've heard people say, oh, I had one fly up my shorts and it was so bad. I'm like, it is almost unreadable for me. And I don't know, for me again, conceptually, it makes more sense for a paralytic venom of a solitary wasp that can fly away to not be the most painful thing. It's specifically designed to paralyze prey, not necessarily to be used in defense. I've got bright colors. I can fly away different than a valvedant who has bright colors, but is terrestrial. And so it would benefit from having, you know, maybe a painful sting. It sounds like you need to try one up your shorts. Right? That might be the next. I've got the rest of the drama queen. I've done so much. I've been so down here for a while. I've tried to have stuff sting me on the lips or or I'll show you that. So there's my well. Yeah. It was like pretty a pretty solid well that I got. Yeah, that looks pretty good. And again, I think that was just because it was a fleshy part. But I don't know, hearing all this makes me think you just need to try like recreational drugs or you need some other way to get it. I need some other way to get you to go. I think West needs to try more stings instead of doing drugs all the time. Right. Yeah. I'm somewhere, I think my reaction was somewhere in between yours and like a coyote or a Schmidt or whatever. Like it really hurt. It was definitely the worst thing I've ever experienced, but it wasn't like I didn't, you know, lose my mind. Sure. Have sure a hospital or anything. Exactly. And I think too. Again, you were surprised with that sting as well. I think I was surprised. I have a nice place. I would say at least 50% of, you know, when I didn't know what had gotten me, I couldn't have made it like an eyelash vibe or, you know, I have no idea. I couldn't even see the sting for a good part of it. So, but for the sake of time, I know Jeff has some questions for you. Go for it. He wants to ask you outside of the whole thing, even. I started watching your videos a few years ago when I have seen the growth so congratulations on that. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. with the Schmidt index like we we heard you say that you would you would narrow it down to like a real narrow piece of the pie But just going from his index what would be your biggest change that you would make to it? I think that Schmidt didn't go far enough east to make a complete list in my opinion I've not yet taken a sting from Bestba Madder, any of Japanica the Japanese giant hornet but I took a sting from a very close relative Vespotropica very early on in my YouTube career Does that have a more common name? The greater banded hornet Okay It's a insane genus Vespotropica is the binomial but it's a pretty significantly it's about maybe 1.7 to 2-inch hornet big sucker and volume of the venom is impressive as well that thing hurt like nobody's business and that is one of the only instances I can think of were audibly I kind of yelled a small yell but that was involuntary I was like I'm surprised you have it Yeah yeah yeah It really sucks and my arm was blinped up for a week again that's that volume of venom plays a big role in that kind of thing So would that be the worst sting you've taken? That's the worst wasp or hornet or sting I've taken absolutely but I have a feeling that the larger Asian giant or Japanese giant hornet would be a step up from that again from that Is that the murder hornet? The murder hornets, yeah I do think that just based off of size alone of similar venom composition similar everything else you're just getting more venom bigger stinger I think that you'd have to be crazy to not have that be at the top of the list because if you're thinking largest hornet in the world Now I can't say that emphatically but from my experience with with the greater banded hornet you know executioner wasp and bullet ant and transselhock They're just little guys you know it's painful stings but akin to a paper wasp or something like that That's patropica these big Asian hornets these are in a different league because they're just the size alone elevates them I mean you're the you're the voice I trust most with this so that's my new number I appreciate that's what I would say and I would say that if Schmidt I think we need a gloves for I would say that That's patropica Asian giant hornet you know speculatively would be somewhere in that five to six range in my bag A more dramatic initially you know longer more you know sort of they kill people too Exactly and that's the thing too yeah just a handful of stings again from that volume perspective you think how many bee stings does it take to kill a person you have something with you know a venom tank about the size of a honey bee You know so you're you're talking about a lot of venom you know just a handful of those giant hornets you know if you got swarmed by a nest you're done 10 15 stings I don't I mean you'd be in critical condition it's a lot of them. I'm actually two zip liners that just got killed by giant hornets it is it's no joke you know a single isolated sting is one thing A colony of really any of these on this list you know luckily you know a velvet ant and transselhoes hawk wasp or solitary but a colony of bullet ants would be nasty a colony of execution or wasp of Asian giant hornets you know don't underestimate you know the power of numbers numbers Alright next question for you so does coyote Peterson follow you or is he ever like had any interaction so funny enough actually Mario Al Dacoa who is the biologist for Brave wilderness who has actually left the project now he actually just started following me on Instagram so we chatted a little bit coyote does not follow me and I wouldn't expect him to because I've spent I I was a lot more sort of antagonistic at the beginning for me I kind of don't have I don't hold bad blood for people I don't really have like profession like that it's just kind of a more of a playful thing for me of like don't act like an idiot online if you think nobody else else is going to come along and say she's like an idiot I have some friends who actually worked over it Brave wilderness I know he's aware of my stuff he's seen something of it I'm sure people have sent it to him he's aware of it in my opinion I kind of honestly I really kind of come out of the bite and sting stuff I do him every once in a while still just again out of curiosity because I genuinely am interested in the effects and also I do like to kind of show to people that it's not nearly as bad as you would think I'm sure I'm sure people have sent it to him he's aware of it in my opinion I kind of honestly I really kind of come out of the bite and sting stuff I do him every once in a while still just again out of curiosity because I genuinely am interested in the effects and also I do like to kind of show to people that it's not nearly as bad as you would think I'm sure people have sent it to him he's aware of it in my opinion I kind of honestly I really kind of come out of the bite and sting stuff I really kind of come out of the bite and sting stuff I really kind of come out of the bite and sting stuff I really kind of come out of the bite and sting stuff I really kind of come out of the bite and sting stuff I really kind of come out of the bite and sting stuff I really kind of come out of the bite and sting stuff I really kind of come out of the bite and sting stuff I really kind of come out of the bite and sting stuff I really kind of come out of the bite and sting stuff I really kind of come out of the bite and sting stuff I really kind of come out of the bite and sting stuff I really kind of come out of the bite and sting stuff I really kind of come out of the bite and sting stuff I really kind of come out of the bite and sting stuff I really kind of come out of the bite and sting stuff I really kind of come out of the bite and sting stuff I really kind of come out of the bite and sting stuff I really kind of come out of the bite and sting stuff I really kind of come I wish that the animals, you know, anyone who's in a better positive conservation. Yeah, I think it's a little bit of bad press for the animals, but by and large, it gets people interested in stuff. And you know, it's, I could, the same sort of, you know, comments I could have about him, I could have about, you know, random Netflix documentaries that are all about, you know, Hammond stuff off and doing whatever. It's just, it is what it is. We all grew up with, with Steve Irwin. Steve Irwin, and like, you know, the most extreme. Yeah, like the thing about Steve is, there was this element of danger and he got bit a lot and, you know, and that didn't necessarily need to happen. Sure. But it did bring us into that world. Yeah. So I do think there's a place for it. Yeah. And again, like I mentioned, you know, before, I'm, I'm, again, I'm not a purist in the sense of, you know, removing how sensational the natural world is for people. Because I think it's a powerful element and it gets people excited and connected to it without it, you know, sort of taking, fully taking the reins and just being all about what's the craziest, most extreme stuff that you can show somebody. But I do think that there's some people who kind of are trying to maneuver through sort of psychom, the psychom world of trying to teach people and get them interested about stuff. And because they don't want to see McKin to the, you know, the real tarzans and coyote Peterson's of the world, they, they reign it in so much that it just doesn't get to people. Because the fact of the matter is, we're in competition to get to people and teach them about stuff, which is another reason a lot because a lot of people were, were critical of me for coming in behind. And I feel doing a tasteful job, sort of dispelling these sting videos by creating what these people were consuming and getting them to change their mind converting basically these die hard coyote fans and realizing, oh, this is just ridiculous. I can't tell you how many comments I've read, you know, that are diametrically put on a coyote video. Oh, thanks for letting me know, come, I'm going to kill every single one of these that I see. I would hate for this to get my kid or my dog or me or whatever versus, oh my gosh, you know, I didn't realize that they just wanted nothing to do. I'll sweep it outside with a broom or cup it and throw it onto the yard. I mean, for me, it's like, it's more fighting to get good press on animals so that people care. Because at the end of the day, it's easy for, you know, not, not geo photographers and some of these other animal creators to snap a cute picture of a baby whale or a bear or something like that. But in reality, our bugs are lower trophic levels of the ecosystem. These are the things that keep everything running. And if you don't care about bugs, if you just everything is disgusting and ends up a sticky gooey blob on the bottom of your shoe, you're missing the plot a little bit. Yeah. No, I just asked because we roasted them a couple times and then we noticed him follow Instagram account. So I just gave. Yeah. Yeah, I think I'm too far. I'm too far in. You were all so far. So I want to talk about the black way of video of your videos I watched. I think that was the one. I want to say that's the one where you miscalculated the most. And you took it very nonchalant and you were very joky. You're like, oh, these don't actually like people act like these are a big deal. They're not a big deal. And like I was really interested because my whole life I was like, black widows are a big deal. If you get like bit by a black widow, like when I was a kid, I was like, you're done. Yeah. Like you're dead. And so you still proved me wrong in that sense. You're still here. Yeah. But you did like to your point as well. Like it was really did not want to bite you at all in that video. And you really had to like get it aggravated enough to bite you. But that aftermath was pretty bad. Yeah. So yeah, with that test, so that was back. I think I did that. I filmed that in July of 2019. So this is a long time ago. But yeah, there was a few things at play to basically make that perfect storm. So I intentionally selected it. It's an adult Southern black widow, but it had not had a recent meal. And I did that intentionally because when they feed, that abdomen swells up multiple times. And it becomes very fragile. And again, out of concern for the welfare of the animal, I didn't want to pin a fully inflated, we'll say, black widow, for risk of damaging it. Because at the end of the day, no video for me is worth terminally injuring an animal. So I picked this one that was going to be the easiest way for me to pin the spider without it getting hurt. But what had happened was because I'm thinking, oh, it hasn't eaten in a while. Maybe it's kind of running closer to empty. Black widows even when aggravated, rarely will defensively bite. And if they do, it's almost always a defensive bite through and through a pinching release. Now this is enough to cause a four or five hour painful experience. That's what I was expecting. You can feel that. You can kind of see it in the video. If you go back and watch that classic video, I feel, oh, oh, is that a pinch? And then I continue to hold it on there. And I wiggle it a little bit more. And then it goes from, I'm just trying to bite to hopefully be let go to the spider. I'm talking to the spider's point of view. I'm about to be eating or crushed or whatever. I've got it. This is my final claw to survive. Then you get a venom dump. And usually people don't realize that venomous animals are fairly conservative with their venom. It's not just for, I mean, there's very few animals that purely have defensive venom. And even then still don't like to use all of it in one go. You want to be able to, what if something else comes along 15 minutes later? I need to be able to defend myself. Most of these animals, they're using venom to not just per cure food, but digest it. And so you rarely get that crazy venom dump. But again, I was like, well, it's smaller. It hasn't eaten in a while. I really want a proper test. I really want a good test to make sure that I have enough venom in my system to really feel it. So in my opinion, that's what happened basically with that bite is a miscalculation. Again, I wasn't in terminal danger. I wasn't going to die or anything. But it did prolong the effects by about two to three times what they would have been. Because I had a buddy of mine who had taken a few accidental bites here and there pulling eggsacks from, you know, widow or whatever. And it's kind of like a mild, slew body day. He just pulling eggsacks. Yeah, just pulling eggsacks. Oh, my God. A black guy's got an exact pull an exact out. You know, oh, she didn't like that. She's going to bite you on the finger. And so yeah, that was, that was a miscalculation. Which I mentioned in the video. You ended up in the hospital for that one, right? Like you were in the, oh, I thought when you were like in a bathtub and then you're like, I just need some help. No, I was that, no, I didn't end up going anywhere because at the end of the day, I had taken some, which was a stupid idea. I took ibuprofen, which would not help. Again, it's a neurotoxin. It's a kind of bonds to the neurotransmitters. You have to have actual physical pain medication to really combat it. But I had taken ibuprofen and maybe a bended drill or something. So I was kind of like, I was already putting my kidneys through a lot with the venom. And so if I had gone to an emergency care for really only a truly pain management, I was kind of at a sort of an unsafe sort of level. I felt I didn't want to put my kidneys through all that and then waste the money anyway. So I was like, well, there's not really anything I could do because I kind of loved and took medicine. I shouldn't have taken and I felt like it was too much of a thing. So I ended up having a buddy of mine had like, you know, Hush Hush Wink Wink, like some dog pain medication or something from like his dog went to the vet. I ended up taking that like the morning after this whole event. So I stayed up pretty much the entire night and I only slept for like six hours after I had taken like dog pain medication afterwards. It was brutal. It was brutal. And then for like a week or two afterward, which didn't really make it into the video because I was trying to put the video out quickly. I was just like, I was sick. My arm was like like the bullet ant kind of aching feeling, but like unbelievable. Like I had to get liquid bandage pain reliever bandage stuff. I had to put it on every few hours when it started to wear off. And the worst part is like a few days after I did that bite test, me and my girlfriend at the time were driving down to Glen Rose. It's a short drive from where I live. It's about an hour and a half hour, 45. Pop to tire. And I was already like, you know, just driving down so weak and I had to get out. I could not change the tire. Luckily there was a guy like Moan lawns at one of the places that I pulled into and he came over and helped me and I was like, thank you, man. Because I was just like, my, I just look like, you know, a, you know, Wednesday character. Like part of the outfit. He let another man change your tire. I was like girlfriend. Oh, I was like, I could not. That's why that relationship ended. It was literally heated the summer too. So it was like a hundred plus degrees on black asphalt and I was just like, I'm going to die out here. We've all been there. We've all been like coming down from black widow vena. Yeah. So I did though. I learned, I learned they're not as dangerous as I always thought. And then for, I've only done one other widow test after that. I did a brown widow test years after, and I learned from my mistake. I just let a little pension release defensive bite because that's going to be the standard that you're usually going to get. And there was no problem at all. So yeah, I did want to just ask before we go to like a favorite animal that favorite, like insect type animal that people might not know about. Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. Well, I'll say this one because I'm about to head to Thailand. One of my favorite groups are the trilobite beetles. Oh, they look so sticky cool. And they're so mysterious and everything. I had a buddy of mine just send me a video of what looks like a trilobite beetle feeding on slime mold, which would be pretty cool. We just kind of assume that they fed on fungus and whatever, maybe slime molds on, you know, logs and stuff like that, but very hard to tell really what they're eating, but they are just such fascinating beetles and just the sexual dimorphism, the prehistoric, armor plating. They just look so cool. So I'm stoked to see those. And I think that that's a great one that a lot of people do know about, but a lot of people. It's the most alien looking. Yeah, I didn't know that. And I like beetles. Yeah. They're so cool. Well, I hope you see some eating some slime. I hope so too. Thank you, Jack. Yeah, not a problem with your Jack. We really appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah. I had fun. All right. That was great. Thank you, Jack. Mike is joining us again for the categories. Thanks for allowing me to get into categories. So you guys have any questions before we get into categories? Here are my okay. My arms okay. Yeah. It's fine. In fact, I've been doing Mike's workout routine and it's getting stronger. So next time you're huge. Next time the dance thing is just going to like bend and break when it tries to sting me. All right. So our first category, I wanted to ask you guys since we all three watched the show. I think you watched it, Mike. Your favorite moment from Wild Boys. Mike, you opened your mouth, thought dumb, but then no sound came out. It was real dumb of me to do that. I can make no response. I'll go first. Watch noise come out of my mouth this time when I open it. So we prefaced very at the very beginning of this episode. We did say how not all of the segments of the show had aged all that well. And I remembered one part that I thought I really liked and thought was super funny when Chris and Steve O were eating bugs off of like a street side food stand. And basically they were just like making a mockery of like a totally normal food item for people. I think it was over in Thailand and just right in front of them, just vomiting up all these bugs that they were eating and calling the food just like a crap stand and all this stuff. And I was just sitting there thinking like, man, this was so funny to me 20 years ago. And now I just can't really see it as anything other than, and I'm not trying to be like a weird white knight or whatever. Like it was just a funny moment where you look back on something that you that was so good and so funny. And just just didn't age that well. So I went with the chameleon dancing because you guys, this is like a little 20 second bit where the chameleon was doing like a little ray of break dance with Chris in the background. Yeah. I like that. That was a harmless one for sure. Yeah. Jeff, do you have an answer? Yeah. And in the moment is definitely where they wore the two piece zebra suit and they ran around with some lions and the lions like jumped on their suit. I'm going to ruin it for you. Well, I'm going to ruin it for you first. Okay. I did just recently learned that that happened in like LA or something. It was like some people own lions in California and they just went and did it. So like, no, still like kind of, but I don't know. It doesn't get to be my favorite anymore. Same with them. Same with them. I like with the meat. Oh really? Yeah. It was also those train lions. My new favorite is when Steve does a puppet show for some rock pythons and he like does a puppet show for this wild python and it just keeps biting him on the end as he's trying to do a puppet show. And then he like tattoos it right after. Yeah. I like that one. My favorite when I first watched it is also probably one that's like now unethical, but it was in their Indonesia episode and they are just in their hotel room and in a ring a tan comes in and just rushes it and just goes crazy. And I don't know how they got that. Chaos. It but it's so wild. But honestly, like one of my favorite segments was another Indonesia clip where they just have these like traditional whips in front of these like weird Indonesian longhouses and they're just whipping each other to see who can get the strongest well. And it gets pretty out of control how badly they're whipping each other. And I always just it felt just like a classic Jackass sketch to me. But there's there's so many funny moments from it. There's one where Knoxville is there with them and they put like a little cookie on a rattlesnake. Yeah. And they're like trying to get him to like grab the cookie and it could be ponious that's doing it actually. It's a bonus. Yeah. Yeah. So then he keeps getting scared and the snake like keeps looking at him and then he's like, I really want that cookie. And then just like, so funny, they just still like acting like he just wants to eat the cookie. Yeah. And then they convinced Knoxville that he actually got bit by the snake and they go to the hospital and stuff. But it's all just a prank on Knoxville. It was really a funny one. Yeah. All right. And then I also Knoxville though. Knoxville tricked Pony. Oh, are you? Yeah. They brought like a cobra and he was like pretending. That's it. Yeah. Okay. I also just wanted to do your favorite at large Jackass moment from the entire run of the show and movies. If you have like a favorite moment, we're skitt. I like the Buffalo rollerblading. I think it's like playing a song about you can't rollerblade with Buffalo. Rollerblade skate. Yeah. Yeah. Then they release a bison and it just freaking wrecks Knoxville. It was the guy that sings that song. It's the same guy that did King of the Road. She remembers his name. Yeah. Anyway, that's a great one. Morgan, Morgan Wallin. No. Yeah. Morgan must have been Roger Miller. Yeah. Mike, what did you pick? I went with it was, I think the 2010 Jackass movie. I forget which one it was. 3D. But it was the electric avenue where, and I just, I love the skits where like Aaron and Aaron's just every, everybody just like when they get legitimately scared, like they don't want to do something, those always end up being my favorite ones. But yeah, seeing Bam just bouncing through that hallway like a pinball, just getting tased over and over again and finally like flipping over the final hurdle is just so funny. And then like, it's like the most legitimately angry I ever saw him get. And it was, I don't know, just something about that. When seeing Bam get so mad at how bad something hurt and he was just like slamming the Wallin stuff is great. It's my favorite. I think my, I have two that I wanted to bring up, but Dave England was always the one that I thought was like the funniest reactions to getting hurt. And there's a really simple one where he rings a doorbell and this huge exploding like bag goes off in his face and hooks him down and like an air bag bag almost. And he is just so out of it afterward. And he's just like, what? What? Huh? And it's just, it cracks me up every single time. And then the other one that I really like is in 3D as well, Jackass 3D. And it's where they have the jet engine and they're just chucking stuff into the stream and like hitting people with shoes and tomatoes and stuff. Amazing. I could have watched that for like three hours, just that segment. So I don't know. When it hits that show is just so good. Okay. Your favorite pop culture aunt. I don't know if we've done this one before, but we're doing it again if we have. Yeah. I'm going with Flick from Bugs Life. That's what I picked. Yeah. He's an inventor. But also he gets all the other ants that stick up to their oppressors. You know, lots of ants together. Yeah. You can get that's good message. Yeah. Yeah. Wasn't that wasn't it Kevin Spacey, the voice of the bad guy? That's extra based. He's standing up to that guy. Really? I don't know. Maybe that was ants. I'm forgetting. Yeah. I think that's ants. I think that's ants. Oh, okay. But still, that's cool. Yeah. Like a labor organizer, you know, just like knows that together were a lot stronger. Then we think we are a love flick. Yeah. That was my answer to it. I can't believe I didn't even think of it. I'm going with Joseph's hot girlfriend. Honestly. It was Kevin Spacey. Oh, that's me. Maybe that's who I should pick. Hot, the hot ant. What's her name, West? Well, not that you're on the IMDB page. Let me see. I mean, pick it. Both. I'm actually going with the huge ants from them. It's like a 19, old 1950s, just a creature feature. I mean, the noise they make, the huge screeching. And there's at least an old guy. I'll always remember. My dad always called me out whenever this movie was on. But the guy was like, shoot the antenna. Shoot the antenna. And then they shoot one of the antenna. And he's like, shoot the other antenna. Shoot the other antenna. And then they shoot that one off. And it's like, they need those antenna or something really stupid. It's like, and it just roars. So it's so great. I love that movie. Julia the weed dry face was the hot ants voice. So there you go. I think. All right. Next category is just a simple one, something you recommend this week. Oh man, I'm going to go first just to get this one over with. I'm going to suggest people watch the anime, Aracala Under the Bridge. It's a, by a studio shaft. If anyone, people who know, know what that, all that entails, the head tilts, the weird close ups on eyeballs, just like absurd off the wall humor. Below all of that joking around goofing off, it's a really interesting study in wealth and inequality and where true satisfaction happiness in life comes from. It's about this guy who the rich heir to a company, he's kind of like the literal poster boy for perfection. And then he meets a bunch of rag tag people living under the bridge, like kind of the homeless subculture of Japan, I guess, is what it represents. And they just show him like how much more there is to life than I'm asking wealth. And like how no one really ever truly gets through the conceit of the show is that he never wants to ever be in debt to anybody. But the folly of that line of thinking is that just as a person, as a human being, we are all reliant on each other for happiness and success and fulfillment. So great, great show. I just so funny and so fun. Jeff, what you got to recommend for us? I'm going to go, well, first, Montana grids football. They're going to play the cats this Saturday, Montana versus Montana State, Brawl of the Wild. It's the first time these two teams have ever played in the playoff. And it's to make it to the championship game. And they're both the only two highly ranked teams left in the tournament. So it kind of feels like the championship game. So that's just going to be really exciting. And also I want to shout out. I want to shout out to you, Chris. The 50 cent documentary on P Diddy. I want to say that. I thought it was really good. You know me, I've been pretty susceptible to a lot of different theories out there. And I think Diddy killed two pock. So I agree. That was interesting to hear it laid out. Like he didn't do it, but I think he wanted pulling the string. I think because he wanted two-pock dead, two-pock dead. And I think the first time two-pock got shot. Like he thought Diddy did it. And there's a lot of reason to think that. You know? Yeah. Right. Yeah, I think it's been funny seeing all the like no one holds a grudge like 50 cent type stuff. And it's like, it's kind of true, but also no one gets like death threats like 50 cent either. Like he has more of a vendetta almost than anything I think. Like, and he's really coming through on it. There's a really funny one where like after the documentary came out, Diddy sent 50 cent some flowers from prison really and it's like funeral flowers. But 50 put it on his Twitter and it's just like, look out gay. This guy is sending me flowers. He's just a world class hater. He is. He is. He is amazing. Yeah. It's aspirational. Alright. I'm going to recommend and I've recommended this to both Mike and Jeff already. But Park Chan Wook came out with another great movie this year. It's called No Other Choice. I will agree Mike made the point. I don't think you've watched it yet, but he did make the point like there's been a lot of just kind of capitalism is killing us all movies, especially out of South Korea. And it does get like a little tedious. But man, he's probably my favorite director and this is just another masterpiece in my opinion. I just think it's like good start to finish and really well. People even watch it. I don't know. Yeah, I got it from like some guy that pirate stuff for me, but you can probably pay for it on like streamers once it comes out. And to be completely honest with you, I'm going to buy like the physical copy of this and I'm going to give them my money. I just wanted to see it because I don't think it comes out in the US until like January. So keep your eye out for it. Yeah. There's a message worth repeating. It's that. Alright. I want to do a couple quick listener questions from Patreon. This first one's from Nick. Nick says, yo, first time in the chat, I'm thinking about eating a butterfly. Do you have any advice? Don't would be my advice. It's the worst bug to eat. So don't do it. Yeah, start with like an ant. Yeah. Yeah, start with something small and if you do eat a butterfly, make sure you got some water on hand. Maybe butterflies the right way to go first. Because then like you don't want a like eating bugs. So then like at least he won't like it. And it's kind of like you at the bowl of it. Like you could have gradually got stung by worse and worse animals, but you went to like top of the pain that index right away. That's true. I've been stung by bees and stuff though, but yeah, that's fair. I would just say don't be so worse than an ant. It's not true. Did you ever get a pay attention? Alright, this one's from Barkwood Blues. Could you rather lose all of your memories before today or never make any other memory from today on? So you lose all of your existing memories or you can never make another memory. I'd rather never make another memory. That just kind of means you die or you just like can't hold any reset. Yeah. I don't even retain like it's knowledge. Like can you still speak? I don't know. That's not really a memory. I just don't think you have like memories. I think you can probably still interact. No, so what I would do is like everyone's always talking about, oh man, if I could watch the Lord of the Rings for the first time, again, man, I would do anything to have that. So what I would do is I'd make a master list of all of those things I feel that way about and then do it. And then I'll just have that on like a magnet on my fridge with that whole list. It's going to be a sick couple of years. Like a moment, do Momento or you just randomly tattoo it all over here. Everybody. Yeah. What is one piece, one piece of what? Yeah. Yeah, that is smart. I don't think it makes sense to not be able to like remember future things as they happen. Like to me, that's like you're just want, you're gone. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think maybe you're overthinking it though. Like you're not forming any like memories in the way that we view memories from an abstract point, you know? No. You're not having any more fun experiences, essentially. Yeah. Mine is what would be dead. Well, hold on. Isn't like, isn't that living in the present? That's the whole thing about, you know, I don't know whose mantra that is, but isn't that like something that some people are like in very serious pursuit of is not dwelling to time on the past. Just living in the moment. I don't know. Maybe there's something there. I kind of feel like I've like done my fun as stuff already. Yeah. And that like I would rather treasure all that than like, I don't know. But yeah, you guys maybe have convinced me that I'm wrong. So I don't know. Okay. It would suck to like, like you don't know that getting hit in the testicles hurt. So then you get hit there and it's like, oh shoot. You have to be the first item on the list is like gently tap yourself on the nuts just to like remember. Be aware of that sense. It's going to be a pretty sensitive part of your body. Yeah. All right. This one's from Tanisha. Question for you all, I know you don't really vibe with Stephen King. We do vibe with Stephen King. We just get frustrated with him. It depends. Oh, I don't think he might say that as a general statement for authoring of us. But have you watched Welcome to Dairy if so what did you think about it? Have you guys watched it? No sir. I started it. I watched it in its entirety. I really liked it. It has some really cheesy like dumb things in it. But I think if you're into it and Pennywise, it really delivers, especially in the last few episodes. So I really liked it. Okay. We'll just move on then since you guys haven't watched it. This one's from Ravioli. This y'all's favorite muppets and favorite piece of muppet media. Ravioli? Yeah. My dear cats. That's got a cat avatar. Could be a cat. I don't do muppets. Oh really? You don't do the muppets at all? I like muppet treasure island the most and my favorite muppet is Rizzo the Rat. Oh, that's a good pick. It's always be a Gonzo guy. My mom had a whole series of children's books featuring Gonzo. The one where he runs through the museum full of everything and then the last frame is him like bursting out of the door into the wide world and being like, there's so much else out there too. That was always fun for me to read. Man, what a book. Oh man. Is Elmo a muppet? No, that's not something that's sesame street. Because I like when he tweeted, how's everyone doing? Yeah. Everyone's like, read the room. Elmo. It's pretty tough out here. I don't know. Not so good, dude. You got to like, Kermit, Miss Piggy. Yeah. Vazzy? No, I don't. Rolf? The dog. You should watch muppet Christmas Carol. Kermit's a Christmas cake. Dory. Kermit's a Dory. Are you serious right now? Piggy isn't even hot. Oh. Disagree to disagree. Doesn't pass Jeff's personal betched-elf test. Is there a hot girl in it? All right. We're going to leave the listener questions there. Quick claw rating for this animal. We haven't done them yet. 10 on a main. Easy. Yeah. Because it hurt me. Yeah. That's awesome of it to do. All right. So 0 to 10 claws. How many claws would you give the bullet ant? Maybe like a three. Three claws. I don't think I like them that much. I like it compared to other. I like the leaf cutter and some more than bullet ants. Yeah. I think that's fair. And just by virtue of them having the most painful schmit sting, you got to give them a few extra bonus points. Maybe that's what you already did. I don't like little bugs staying me. Like a bee. It's like they look cool. They're productive. So I'll put up with it and I'll like them. And they have like, you know, they dance and stuff. I don't think dance. I don't think bullet ants dance at all. They do. I don't think so. They can produce sound, but they don't dance. Lots of things. No sound. Abdomen sound. Yeah. Mike, how many claws? I'll go with the six. I think they're interesting anthropologically. If that's something I can take into account, I don't know. I just, I always appreciate something that is the very most of whatever it is that they do. Like a cheetah being the fastest, et cetera, et cetera. I just think that that's a really cool thing that exists somehow. They developed that defense mechanism to really really forgot a dude's day execution. They lost his words. It probably is. Who knows? Give these guys the number number one. No. East who I trust. I ride with Schmidt. I'm going to give him a six as well. I think they're probably my favorite aunt now, especially that I've gotten stumbled on. Now, I think I can't think of ants that I am more interested in and fascinated by. But, Antary, yeah. Do like my Antary. They might have the best ant petunia. Oh, I hate them. One clover petunia. They might have the coolest name for an ant. Yeah. They do have a cool name. See, it's between that and fire ant in the chain. Fire ant's a cool name. That's so cool. Looks out of ten for me. Yeah. All right. Well, we'll stop here. It's going to really win. I'm going to give Ant Petunia a two clause. She didn't have to take Harry in. You know? Yeah. She kind of stopped. She kind of stopped. She kind of stopped. She kind of stopped. She stopped all the way. You know? But she could have just left him out on the sidewalk. It would be hard just to have an unpredictable wizard in your house. Right? Did they? Like, towards, once he's growing up, they like put him in a bedroom, right? So that bedroom was just there the whole time he was in the stair. Well, it was, it was deadly for extra bedroom is what we just watched. Number two. And that's when they bring it up. Yeah. Store all of his toys there. Yeah. That's really quick. Makes sense. Before we, before we finish, if, you know, this is coming out before Christmas, if you have any last minute gifting ideas, a gift to our Patreon is a great idea. You can hear Jeff's episode on this. King of Stain, parts one and two. You'll hear a lot of extra content. You can buy an annual membership or a monthly membership. We definitely highly recommend it. All right. You really don't need to. The West just did my episode. Very big. Very big. You can hear me talk shit on Jack, who I now love. All right. We'll see you guys. Love you. See you.