January 8, 2013 • 25 mins
You've heard the warning before: If you're being chased on land by an alligator, run in a zig-zag. Of course, the average person should be capable of outrunning an alligator. Josh and Chuck take the opportunity to explore alligator safety anyway.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the two thousand twelve Toyota Camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know?
From House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
(00:20):
and this is Stuff you should Know Reptilian edition. That
was not funny. Yeah, I'm really sure. I didn't expect it.
I can't fake laugh. I got you yesterday, didn't I? Um,
when I did a great fake laugh. Oh that made
me really laugh. Yeah, and that's ultimately what you want. Josh,
(00:43):
And we're shooting TV promos and he handed up a
little at one time, but they never do sometimes do Um.
So I have a I have a question for you. Yes,
do you know the difference between a crocodile and an alligator? Chuck? Um? Yeah, sure,
all right, let's hear it's smart guy. Well, no, go ahead,
(01:03):
I mean I don't want to steal your thunder. Okay, Well,
I mean they don't live in the same places. No,
that's a big one. And a crocodile has a gland
and its tongue that helps get rid of excess salt,
which allows it to live in brackish water. Salt water.
Alligators don't have that, right, and that's why they are freshwater. Right.
If you see an alligator in the ocean, you're on acid. Um,
(01:26):
it's probably not crocodiles in the ocean now there. They
could be in the ocean if they wanted to. Is
the point. I just don't want to. But you still
have a high likelihood of being on acid. If you
see a crocodile ocean. Yeah, I would say you may
want to rethink what you're seeing. That's one thing. Another
one is, um, the crocodile has a V shaped snout,
whereas the alligator has more of a rounded you. Um,
(01:49):
and uh. Lastly, you can always tell a crocodile because
it's fourth front tooth on the bottom sticks up over
its top lips, so when it's mouth clothes, there's always
one tooth sticking out. Snaggle tooth. Yeah, it's a snaggle tooth.
The crocodile is interesting. I remember learning most of this
and uh back in the school in days, but I
never heard about the tooth. What is this podcast if
(02:11):
not a revisit to school and then something back to
school without Rodney Dangerfield. Well, you know so, Um, crocodiles
and alligators diverged. Um uh sixty five million years ago. Yeah,
they had a big falling out and Carnes or cairns.
Are you familiar with these things? I've heard of that.
What is that? C A I R N S. For
(02:32):
all intents of purposes, it's another either alligator crocodile. But
all three of them they went their own ways. They
broke up like the eagles, uh sixty five million years ago. Yeah,
they all went on to do their own thing. The
eagles go back, got back together. Though. Oh yeah, you
said you've never seen the h is. Oh now I
have to show that to you. I'll send you that link. Okay. Anyway, Um,
(02:54):
and I forgot what the point was there any years ago?
Oh yeah, they broke up the band, I got you.
The point of all this is you've heard that you
can outrun an alligator in a zigzag. I have heard
both alligator and crocodile. Okay, so it's maybe a shared commonality,
probably depending on where you live. The only shared commonality
(03:17):
is that it's not really true with either one. Yeah,
I guess it is true, but it's just completely superfluous information,
that's right, the MythBusters busted this one wide open with
crocodiles and alligators. Um, with live crocodiles and alligators. Yeah,
they had their live alligator, uh with cork corks on
its teeth. Like. They stuffed pantyhose with quail like dead
(03:41):
quail and attached it to the uh their little dummy
guy they always use, and had a zigzag course and
then I think they used I think cary like really
got in there. But they basically they busted it because
they couldn't even tempt them to come after them, which
is sort of the point. It is the point the
out running an alley gator and his zigzag. Um. Yes,
(04:03):
you could outrun an alligator in his zigzag. You could
also outrun an alligator in a straight line. Um. And probably,
like you say, the point is that an alligator is
not really interested, inn't you? Like almost all animals were
way more afraid of them. I'm sorry, they're way more
afraid of us than we're afraid of them. Yeah, I mean,
(04:23):
I guess we're afraid of them, but you know, you
know what I'm saying. Sure they don't want human interaction. No,
we smelled of them. Yeah, a bear didn't want to
kill you. A shark doesn't want to kill you. An
alligator doesn't want to kill you. No, No, I think
a bear wants to kill you if you're wherever it
doesn't think you should be. Now, a bear wants to
get into your state cooler in the campground. You've seen,
(04:46):
grizzly man. You should destroy this tape alright, so you
can out run an alligator. Josh, you were right, because
they top out at about eleven miles per hour, which
is nothing. It's actually be fast, dude. Eleven miles an hour.
That's tough to keep up for a little while. Luckily,
humans can sprint it's called foot speed, from between twelve
(05:09):
and fifteen miles an hour, and not only can we
run faster, but we have more endurance. And alligator is
not going to chase you down the street in your
neighborhood in Pensacola. It will come up and growl at
you on the porch, which apparently is defensive posturing, not aggression. Yeah,
that's true. I actually, uh did a canoeing trip down
(05:31):
the Okefinoke many years ago, not that many years ago,
like two years ago. It's been the last like twelve
or fourteen years. I wasn't like a little kid. I
think it was booze involved. Uh, And there were alligators
there and you know, near our canoe. And then when
you do a trip through the Okayfinoki, one of the
coolest things is is you don't, uh, there are no campgrounds.
(05:55):
It is just swampland, and you have to reserve these
camping decks and you're the only person that can stay
on the deck because it's like whatever, fifteen by fifteen feet,
and so you reserve these things ahead of time into
your trip, and so you were the you see no
other human being once you set off in that canoe.
It's neat and kind of creepy. But um, did you
(06:18):
have a gun with you? Sharp Rock? I don't own
a gun. Um did you borrow a gun? No. We
had a lot of boxed wine though, and food and
it was me and my buddy Claying Big John, and
we all went and um, we got on our camping
deck and by this place right by this sort of
open lakey area, just gorgeous. Man, one of the great
(06:39):
trips of my life. And in the morning we woke
up surrounded by alligators like we saw eyes everywhere and
we heard them growling. It woke us up, and they
were just hanging out, letting us know they were there,
and it was it was a little unsettling, but I
wasn't I wasn't like scared the whole time, but I
(06:59):
was definitely aware. Like when you look in this water,
it looks like iced tea. It's you know, they call
it black water, but it's really brown. But you can't
see like three inches down underneath the water. You can't
see anything. So that's what's terrifying is if I fell
out of the canoe, I'd probably just get back in
and be no big deal. But you think if I
fall out the canoe, I'm going to get eaten alive.
(07:20):
So it's a little intimidating, yeah, Because I mean you
say that, you know, alligators don't want to kill you
or anything like that. They will eat you though, if
given the chance, if that's just how things end end up. Um,
the problem is is that you or me aren't going
to run into too many alligators that could eat us,
which means that they would have to tear us into pieces,
(07:42):
which an alligator tends not to like to do. Because,
as I understand from reading this article, alligators are a
little lazy. Yeah, they like to eat their meals in
one big, gulpy manner. So like a normal size alligator,
which would be about five ft or so, UM is
gonna eat crayfish and turtles and snakes and things like that,
(08:04):
and even a small dogs not really at a threat
by an alligator. I don't know if I throw my
Chihuahua in the Okefinoki and say go for a swim.
But you're right, at the very least, it's just dirty.
It's not dirty. It's just different water. Uh, it's nice
if you chuck all water is beautiful. It was. I mean,
(08:27):
it's not like it looks gross. It's just brown. So
you talk about small alligators five feet in under, um,
that's a vast majority, as I understand. Um, apparently humans
like ones that are even smaller. You've heard of having
an alligator as a pet. Yeah, Bannon specifically advises against this.
(08:48):
I think it's Rex Bannon from the beer bearing episode
of The Simpsons Moses a pet store all of a sudden, Yeah,
Um and that. But that's how most um alligator attacks
happen is when you try to basically adopt an alligator
as a pet, right, Because these things, even if they're small,
(09:08):
like a three foot alligator, it's tiny, and they make
cute noises and they're weird looking, they will still take
a bite out of you if they feel threatened. And
even if you're not going to die, you're still have
to you the hospital. Yeah, and and and a mother
alligator will certainly attack if you're trying to take one
of her little babies as a pet um. Not a
good idea. And these things we we mentioned they're not
(09:29):
super fast on land, but they can swim like twenty
Yeah that's the big deal. Like, yeah, you can outrun
an alligator, and you probably can't out swim an allegy. Definitely,
you definitely can't. So the ones that you and I
would need to be afraid of would be one of
a full grown one, maybe up to like eleven feet. Yeah,
that's large. These are the ones that could look at
(09:49):
us and be like, I might be able to get
that down my gullet in one bite, so let me try,
or at least a small kid, you know. Um. The
thing is that even these big ones, like you say,
they're more scared of us than we are of them. Yeah,
maybe at the very least, they don't want to be
anywhere around us typically. Yeah, and they don't want to
be in a fight either, like any kind of prey
(10:12):
that's going to fight back. There's not interesting though you
said they're lazy. They want something easy that they can
just Hey, look at that turtle. Okay, I got one
for you, smart guy. How about whenever you're like paddling
down the okay finocchi, and there's an alligator on land
and all of a sudden it comes into the water
towards you. Is that not aggressive? That is not aggressive?
(10:33):
You know what that is? What? It's the alligator feeling
threatened and feeling way more at home in the water
where they can hide except their little eyeballs that are
on top of their head. Right. So they're not coming
after you. You've just startled the alligator and it just
so happens to be to seem like it's coming towards you.
It's just going back to its home. I get what
you are. If you're in a canoe and you see
(10:53):
fifteen alligators on land all of a sudden jump in
the water towards you, you think they're coming to attack
me and kill me and overturn a bote. I've seen
Temple of Doom. Yeah, and that's gonna happen. Did that
happen to Temple of Doom? There was a guy who
got rolled? Oh yes, and like, you know, are you
thinking of romancing the stone? I maybe? Okay, you have
(11:15):
a good memory. But tell them about rolling, the most
terrifying thing that can no doubt happen to a human. Okay,
So we said that, you know, alligators don't want to
attack you, they don't want to eat you. They still
will attack and they still will eat you under certain circumstances,
especially if you happen to be in pieces at the time. Um.
But the way that an alligator will attack you or
(11:37):
it's food or whatever prey it's going after, it clamps
down with its jaws, which are substantial, and it does
what's called the death roll, where it rolls over and
over and over again, taking its prey with it on
this little ride from hell um. And typically the alligators
prey dies from drowning from being rolled. Because an alligator
(11:59):
can hold its breath for up to an hour, it
has no problem with death rolling for as long as
it likes um. It also has nostrils on its snout
so it can keep his jaws clamped and still breathe
while it's death rolling as well. You can't do any
of this thing. So if you an alligator get you
in a death roll, you're in big trouble. Yes, agreed,
(12:21):
But again we should point out the numbers bear out
the idea that alligators don't really want to have anything
to do with us, right, but they still call it
a death roll and not a severe injury roll. You know,
once you're in the death roll, it's your toast right.
So um again though, if you if you look at
the numbers, there's like four alligator attacks in the United
(12:41):
States a year since nineteen forty eight. The Fish and
Wildlife Service reports three hundred and fifty six alligator attacks
on humans since twenty five or fatal. Yeah, and they
think nine of those the victim was already dead. So
I guess it has happened upon a dude that had
a heart attack. Insta. This guy's in four pieces too.
(13:03):
It's my lucky day, good eating. So the numbers are
on your side, and that this is not because they
are not around. Because they also point out that in
Florida alone, um, they average about twelve thousand complaints a year,
and I mentioned Pensacola. My family cousins grew up there
in Gulf Freeze, and they had you know, they would
go out for school one day and there's an alligator
(13:25):
in the front yard. Let's go out the side door.
And they would call and that's one of the complaints, Like, hey,
I got an alligator in the front yard and they
I guess someone come by and take care of it
by shooting it, probably back into the woods or replacing it.
I don't think they would just like shoot to kill
or anything like that. Uh, you know, they usually take
its head off with a shovel. They don't shoot it.
(13:48):
That's not the or a shoe, the heel of the shoe.
What does an alligator complaints sound like? This alligator is
looking at me? Is an alligator looking at me? Can
come do something about it? Yeah? That's an alligator can
plant pretty much is they're they're not where they are
where they should not be, which is in my on
my property. Or again though we're maybe where we should
(14:09):
not be, which is in an alligator's house. It's to
heck up a point. They lived right on the bay um,
all right, So if an alligator get to you in
the mouth or gets the prey in the mouth, they
are going to let go at a certain point to
get ready to swallow you. Well, it's in its death roll. Yeah,
so they don't like, No, it's like after the death roll,
(14:30):
they juggle you around to get you in a good
position to eat. They don't like just start chomping down right,
because they can't move those huge jaws very easily. No,
but they're very strong, So you're not gonna get out
of an alligator's jaw. But they do recommend if you
are attacked, Um, this could be a very risky way
to get away is to wait for like play dead
and wait for them to release you to try and
(14:52):
swallow you. Yeah, that's and it's specifically that's your last
ditch effort, and it's an extremely risky one. Becau is
once you're in the death roll. Again, they don't call
it a severe injury role. Um, once you feel an
alligator clamped down on you, you want to act immediately,
and you by acting, you want to scream, you want
to yell. You're gonna make as much noise is entirely possible.
(15:15):
Because again, alligators are lazy. They go for low hanging
fruit or low hanging crawfish meat. Yeah. Um, and if
you put up any resistance, they're gonna be like, attack
with this, I'm gonna go after something that doesn't yell.
Don't like my diving things to yell at. I mean,
it's just depressing, you know. Yeah, and it's probably going
to be your instinct unless you go into like shock
(15:36):
or something. So do what comes naturally, which is flail
and scream and hit them. And then if you can,
just like the old shark snout, if you can actually
get your wits about you, try and jam a finger
in their eyeball, which is a good method for stopping
any kind of attack. I think it's like the eject button. Yeah,
during an attack humans, any kind of animal, the gugs
(15:58):
their eye, they're gonna be like, dude, I only got
two of those and al yeah and al all right.
So that's how to get out. That's how to prevent
the death roll. Um. If you again, though, if you
are in a death roll, pretty much, try playing dead
nice knowing you yeah, because either you're gonna play dead
(16:20):
or you're gonna be dead one or the other. Uh So.
Crocodiles are a little more aggressive, and that's probably why
alligators get a little more of a bad rap um.
Crocodiles have been known to come after folks here and
there if you're if you're hanging out fishing on the
shore line, especially if you're cleaning your fish on the
shore line. That's a bad move. It's a very bad move.
(16:42):
And um, they are especially aggressive where and uh Africa
and um, South America or Australia. Australia. Of course they're
aggressive in Australia. Oh that's where crocodile dundee phone. That's right.
So um, we've coached people on how to fight back. Yeah,
(17:02):
and Chuck, let's take a step back. We're giving detailed
instructions on what to do if you're attacked by an
alligator crocodile. Does it ever occur to you that we
do stuff like this sometimes? Sure, it's crazy, it is crazy. Ahead,
it's crazy, as my wife says. Um. All right, So
the two reasons you might get attacked by an alligator
(17:23):
or crocodile is, like we said earlier, if you're messing
around with their family. Um, or you're just in their
territory and it's feeding time and you're caught unaware mating season,
which is early to midsummer. Yeah, that's when the adult
males will come after you. Careful, Hey, I don't want
you trying to hunt my lady. It's my lady. And
(17:45):
that brings us Josh to the to me one of
the best sentences on our website, which is, many attacks occur,
I'm sorry to sentences. Many attacks occur as a result
of people teasing or trying to capture alligators. Throwing sticks
and rocks at alligators may seem harmless, but doing so
creates a dangerous situation. Wow. Yeah, it may seem harmless.
(18:06):
I read that was like, who thinks throwing rocks and
an alligators are harmless? Act? What's this gonna harm? Unless
you're like Damien from the Omen. You know what kind
of sick twisted kid does this? Sick twisted kid future
serial killers? All right, so it's not harmless at all.
It's very harmful. Yeah, don't throw rocks at any living thing,
jerk um. And you said when you were on your
(18:29):
okay Finocchi canoe trip that you know you couldn't see
very far down into the water. Typically you want to
avoid swimming in just that kind of water. If you
want to avoid being, you know, an alligator encounter, let's
call it that. That's super PC. If you want to
avoid an alligator encounter, um, you want to swim in
(18:50):
areas where the water is pretty clear and you can
see pretty deep into it, and areas that are well groomed,
not a lot of shrubbery and grasses and muckiness for
an alligator to hide him. Yeah, and don't send little
Timmy down there with his uh beach ball to play
along the shoreline of the grassy shoreline. If your dad,
(19:10):
like we said, don't clean your fish out right there
by the shore line. Moms can clean fish too. Uh,
that's a that's a good point. Thanks. In fact, in
some families, dad catches the fish, mom cleans the fish.
In some families, mom catches the fish and dad cleans
the fish. And in some families nobody fishes. Just buy
(19:31):
a fish at the store, you just go to you know,
Arthur Treachers. Emily would never clean fish. Are you kidding me? Oh? Yeah,
good lord? You mean said she loves cleaning fish? Really
she where she grew up. Yeah, I could see that
because you got spunk, Emily. If you'd handed a knife
and to cut this fish's head off. She would she'd
be like, are you kidding me? What kind of a
(19:53):
joke is this. Let's just go to Arthur Treachers. Yeah, exactly.
You got anything else? Um? Yeah, I do have something else?
Um you said if you're uh, your cousins would call
the Fish and Wildlife Service when they saw an alligator.
If you see an alligator, no matter how small, you
want to alert everybody else too that there's alligators because
(20:14):
if you see a baby one, there might be a
mom um. And also, don't feed alligators. That's a good point.
The reason why is you are basically writing their death sense, right,
which is a weird thing to write, but that's what
you're doing. Um, because alligators who are fed sometimes lose
their fear of humans and making may come close enough
(20:36):
for a terrible alligator encounter. And any any alligator that's seen,
you know, approaching a human not out of fear, is
going to um, it's going to be put down. You
shouldn't feed any wildlife like that, really because there especially
once I can kill you though. Yeah, they're pretty good
at finding their own food, right until you start feeding them.
(20:58):
Then they become less good at that and it just
hurts everybody. Basically, you upset the circle of life to
turn it into an a rhombus. Yep. Uh. If you
want to know more about alligators and zigzags and you
want to see a photo of a person holding a
detect human arm from an alligator attack and it's crazy,
(21:20):
you can type in alligator zigzag in the search part
how stufforks dot com. It will bring up this article.
And I said, search bars means it's time for a
listener mail. But first, chuck, it's getting to be about
that time. We're like a week or so out from
the premiere of our television show Stuff you Should Know
on Science Channel. That's right. So it's quick plug time, yes,
(21:42):
as we like to call it, Saturday, January Science Channel
ten pm Eastern and ten thirty because we're showing two
episodes on premiere night, back to back after season three
premiere of Idiot Abroad, which is great, so, uh watch
it and hey, you can get on an itune the
day following the show. Yeah, Sunday mornings, wake up, have
(22:04):
some brunch, a little bloody Mary, download the show. That's right,
and you know what Science Channel is offering the premier
show for free. That's very nice of them. It is
very nice. They taken care of us like the cor Leone.
But I hope not. You didn't do dead. Not if
we stand there good I think? Okay, okay, so listener me.
All right, guys, I'm gonna call this meth another one
(22:27):
about math meth mania. How about that? Uh just finished
listening to the podcast, and I thought I would share
my experience. I've never used meth um, but I do
have bipolar disorder, and the manias I experience have some
remarkable core llaries with being high on met. I know
about these similarities from reading about people's experiences tweaking shows
(22:48):
like yours, and friends who have actually used meth and
some who still do. During manias, I will stay up
for long periods of time. I think sixty hours straight
was the longest I've ever been without sleep. I cannot eat.
I cannot even think about eating. UH talk a mile
a minute, talk so fast in my head that I
don't even realize I am skipping sentences so people can't
(23:09):
follow what I'm saying. I can focus on a little
weird task like you mentioned. I want to UH decided
to transcribe r M s it's the end of the
world as we know it of a CD player stopping
it and starting it. Mania. This is the only time
I drink, which is a bad thing because of my medications.
I will walk for hours listening to my iPod because
music is so amazingly rich and meaningful. Um. During about
(23:32):
the mania once I was pacing the halls of the hospital,
and I could feel every nerve firing, every muscle cell
tightening and releasing to make me walk. Yeah. Because of
these feelings that happened during mania, there are many people
with bipolar who will use meth to recapture that feeling,
especially in the throws uh in the opposite pole of
(23:53):
soul sucking depression. Once my psychiatrist and I decided to
take a very brief course of methyl finidate riddling. I
think it's it's a certain type of riddle. UM. I
had a paradoxical reaction by that time. By the time
I had taken two doses, I slept for twenty hours.
When I was awake, I was acutely intensely suicidal. So
(24:14):
no Infanta means for me, that's probably a good idea.
I wanted to emphasize that meth does play on the
brain's existing systems, that the brain itself can even use
itself under unusual circumstances. I'm sure what that means. I
think you just explained. Okay, manias can be very destructive
though guys, it doesn't. Uh, but it does not affect
(24:35):
your dentist bills excusing math. And that is from Serena
Bodine Clark, and she said, go ahead and read my name.
I think this is cool. That's awesome a lot. Serena
appreciate that, agreed. Um, let's see alligat your story crackadox. Yeah,
I why not? Have you got one a good one?
(24:56):
Not like you came up on my yard and yelled
at me right now, I complained bloodshed only please um uh.
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thousand twelve Toyota Camera. It's ready. Are you
Brought to you by the two thousand twelve Toyota Camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know?
From House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
(00:20):
and this is Stuff you should Know Reptilian edition. That
was not funny. Yeah, I'm really sure. I didn't expect it.
I can't fake laugh. I got you yesterday, didn't I? Um,
when I did a great fake laugh. Oh that made
me really laugh. Yeah, and that's ultimately what you want. Josh,
(00:43):
And we're shooting TV promos and he handed up a
little at one time, but they never do sometimes do Um.
So I have a I have a question for you. Yes,
do you know the difference between a crocodile and an alligator? Chuck? Um? Yeah, sure,
all right, let's hear it's smart guy. Well, no, go ahead,
(01:03):
I mean I don't want to steal your thunder. Okay, Well,
I mean they don't live in the same places. No,
that's a big one. And a crocodile has a gland
and its tongue that helps get rid of excess salt,
which allows it to live in brackish water. Salt water.
Alligators don't have that, right, and that's why they are freshwater. Right.
If you see an alligator in the ocean, you're on acid. Um,
(01:26):
it's probably not crocodiles in the ocean now there. They
could be in the ocean if they wanted to. Is
the point. I just don't want to. But you still
have a high likelihood of being on acid. If you
see a crocodile ocean. Yeah, I would say you may
want to rethink what you're seeing. That's one thing. Another
one is, um, the crocodile has a V shaped snout,
whereas the alligator has more of a rounded you. Um,
(01:49):
and uh. Lastly, you can always tell a crocodile because
it's fourth front tooth on the bottom sticks up over
its top lips, so when it's mouth clothes, there's always
one tooth sticking out. Snaggle tooth. Yeah, it's a snaggle tooth.
The crocodile is interesting. I remember learning most of this
and uh back in the school in days, but I
never heard about the tooth. What is this podcast if
(02:11):
not a revisit to school and then something back to
school without Rodney Dangerfield. Well, you know so, Um, crocodiles
and alligators diverged. Um uh sixty five million years ago. Yeah,
they had a big falling out and Carnes or cairns.
Are you familiar with these things? I've heard of that.
What is that? C A I R N S. For
(02:32):
all intents of purposes, it's another either alligator crocodile. But
all three of them they went their own ways. They
broke up like the eagles, uh sixty five million years ago. Yeah,
they all went on to do their own thing. The
eagles go back, got back together. Though. Oh yeah, you
said you've never seen the h is. Oh now I
have to show that to you. I'll send you that link. Okay. Anyway, Um,
(02:54):
and I forgot what the point was there any years ago?
Oh yeah, they broke up the band, I got you.
The point of all this is you've heard that you
can outrun an alligator in a zigzag. I have heard
both alligator and crocodile. Okay, so it's maybe a shared commonality,
probably depending on where you live. The only shared commonality
(03:17):
is that it's not really true with either one. Yeah,
I guess it is true, but it's just completely superfluous information,
that's right, the MythBusters busted this one wide open with
crocodiles and alligators. Um, with live crocodiles and alligators. Yeah,
they had their live alligator, uh with cork corks on
its teeth. Like. They stuffed pantyhose with quail like dead
(03:41):
quail and attached it to the uh their little dummy
guy they always use, and had a zigzag course and
then I think they used I think cary like really
got in there. But they basically they busted it because
they couldn't even tempt them to come after them, which
is sort of the point. It is the point the
out running an alley gator and his zigzag. Um. Yes,
(04:03):
you could outrun an alligator in his zigzag. You could
also outrun an alligator in a straight line. Um. And probably,
like you say, the point is that an alligator is
not really interested, inn't you? Like almost all animals were
way more afraid of them. I'm sorry, they're way more
afraid of us than we're afraid of them. Yeah, I mean,
(04:23):
I guess we're afraid of them, but you know, you
know what I'm saying. Sure they don't want human interaction. No,
we smelled of them. Yeah, a bear didn't want to
kill you. A shark doesn't want to kill you. An
alligator doesn't want to kill you. No, No, I think
a bear wants to kill you if you're wherever it
doesn't think you should be. Now, a bear wants to
get into your state cooler in the campground. You've seen,
(04:46):
grizzly man. You should destroy this tape alright, so you
can out run an alligator. Josh, you were right, because
they top out at about eleven miles per hour, which
is nothing. It's actually be fast, dude. Eleven miles an hour.
That's tough to keep up for a little while. Luckily,
humans can sprint it's called foot speed, from between twelve
(05:09):
and fifteen miles an hour, and not only can we
run faster, but we have more endurance. And alligator is
not going to chase you down the street in your
neighborhood in Pensacola. It will come up and growl at
you on the porch, which apparently is defensive posturing, not aggression. Yeah,
that's true. I actually, uh did a canoeing trip down
(05:31):
the Okefinoke many years ago, not that many years ago,
like two years ago. It's been the last like twelve
or fourteen years. I wasn't like a little kid. I
think it was booze involved. Uh, And there were alligators
there and you know, near our canoe. And then when
you do a trip through the Okayfinoki, one of the
coolest things is is you don't, uh, there are no campgrounds.
(05:55):
It is just swampland, and you have to reserve these
camping decks and you're the only person that can stay
on the deck because it's like whatever, fifteen by fifteen feet,
and so you reserve these things ahead of time into
your trip, and so you were the you see no
other human being once you set off in that canoe.
It's neat and kind of creepy. But um, did you
(06:18):
have a gun with you? Sharp Rock? I don't own
a gun. Um did you borrow a gun? No. We
had a lot of boxed wine though, and food and
it was me and my buddy Claying Big John, and
we all went and um, we got on our camping
deck and by this place right by this sort of
open lakey area, just gorgeous. Man, one of the great
(06:39):
trips of my life. And in the morning we woke
up surrounded by alligators like we saw eyes everywhere and
we heard them growling. It woke us up, and they
were just hanging out, letting us know they were there,
and it was it was a little unsettling, but I
wasn't I wasn't like scared the whole time, but I
(06:59):
was definitely aware. Like when you look in this water,
it looks like iced tea. It's you know, they call
it black water, but it's really brown. But you can't
see like three inches down underneath the water. You can't
see anything. So that's what's terrifying is if I fell
out of the canoe, I'd probably just get back in
and be no big deal. But you think if I
fall out the canoe, I'm going to get eaten alive.
(07:20):
So it's a little intimidating, yeah, Because I mean you
say that, you know, alligators don't want to kill you
or anything like that. They will eat you though, if
given the chance, if that's just how things end end up. Um,
the problem is is that you or me aren't going
to run into too many alligators that could eat us,
which means that they would have to tear us into pieces,
(07:42):
which an alligator tends not to like to do. Because,
as I understand from reading this article, alligators are a
little lazy. Yeah, they like to eat their meals in
one big, gulpy manner. So like a normal size alligator,
which would be about five ft or so, UM is
gonna eat crayfish and turtles and snakes and things like that,
(08:04):
and even a small dogs not really at a threat
by an alligator. I don't know if I throw my
Chihuahua in the Okefinoki and say go for a swim.
But you're right, at the very least, it's just dirty.
It's not dirty. It's just different water. Uh, it's nice
if you chuck all water is beautiful. It was. I mean,
(08:27):
it's not like it looks gross. It's just brown. So
you talk about small alligators five feet in under, um,
that's a vast majority, as I understand. Um, apparently humans
like ones that are even smaller. You've heard of having
an alligator as a pet. Yeah, Bannon specifically advises against this.
(08:48):
I think it's Rex Bannon from the beer bearing episode
of The Simpsons Moses a pet store all of a sudden, Yeah,
Um and that. But that's how most um alligator attacks
happen is when you try to basically adopt an alligator
as a pet, right, Because these things, even if they're small,
(09:08):
like a three foot alligator, it's tiny, and they make
cute noises and they're weird looking, they will still take
a bite out of you if they feel threatened. And
even if you're not going to die, you're still have
to you the hospital. Yeah, and and and a mother
alligator will certainly attack if you're trying to take one
of her little babies as a pet um. Not a
good idea. And these things we we mentioned they're not
(09:29):
super fast on land, but they can swim like twenty
Yeah that's the big deal. Like, yeah, you can outrun
an alligator, and you probably can't out swim an allegy. Definitely,
you definitely can't. So the ones that you and I
would need to be afraid of would be one of
a full grown one, maybe up to like eleven feet. Yeah,
that's large. These are the ones that could look at
(09:49):
us and be like, I might be able to get
that down my gullet in one bite, so let me try,
or at least a small kid, you know. Um. The
thing is that even these big ones, like you say,
they're more scared of us than we are of them. Yeah,
maybe at the very least, they don't want to be
anywhere around us typically. Yeah, and they don't want to
be in a fight either, like any kind of prey
(10:12):
that's going to fight back. There's not interesting though you
said they're lazy. They want something easy that they can
just Hey, look at that turtle. Okay, I got one
for you, smart guy. How about whenever you're like paddling
down the okay finocchi, and there's an alligator on land
and all of a sudden it comes into the water
towards you. Is that not aggressive? That is not aggressive?
(10:33):
You know what that is? What? It's the alligator feeling
threatened and feeling way more at home in the water
where they can hide except their little eyeballs that are
on top of their head. Right. So they're not coming
after you. You've just startled the alligator and it just
so happens to be to seem like it's coming towards you.
It's just going back to its home. I get what
you are. If you're in a canoe and you see
(10:53):
fifteen alligators on land all of a sudden jump in
the water towards you, you think they're coming to attack
me and kill me and overturn a bote. I've seen
Temple of Doom. Yeah, and that's gonna happen. Did that
happen to Temple of Doom? There was a guy who
got rolled? Oh yes, and like, you know, are you
thinking of romancing the stone? I maybe? Okay, you have
(11:15):
a good memory. But tell them about rolling, the most
terrifying thing that can no doubt happen to a human. Okay,
So we said that, you know, alligators don't want to
attack you, they don't want to eat you. They still
will attack and they still will eat you under certain circumstances,
especially if you happen to be in pieces at the time. Um.
But the way that an alligator will attack you or
(11:37):
it's food or whatever prey it's going after, it clamps
down with its jaws, which are substantial, and it does
what's called the death roll, where it rolls over and
over and over again, taking its prey with it on
this little ride from hell um. And typically the alligators
prey dies from drowning from being rolled. Because an alligator
(11:59):
can hold its breath for up to an hour, it
has no problem with death rolling for as long as
it likes um. It also has nostrils on its snout
so it can keep his jaws clamped and still breathe
while it's death rolling as well. You can't do any
of this thing. So if you an alligator get you
in a death roll, you're in big trouble. Yes, agreed,
(12:21):
But again we should point out the numbers bear out
the idea that alligators don't really want to have anything
to do with us, right, but they still call it
a death roll and not a severe injury roll. You know,
once you're in the death roll, it's your toast right.
So um again though, if you if you look at
the numbers, there's like four alligator attacks in the United
(12:41):
States a year since nineteen forty eight. The Fish and
Wildlife Service reports three hundred and fifty six alligator attacks
on humans since twenty five or fatal. Yeah, and they
think nine of those the victim was already dead. So
I guess it has happened upon a dude that had
a heart attack. Insta. This guy's in four pieces too.
(13:03):
It's my lucky day, good eating. So the numbers are
on your side, and that this is not because they
are not around. Because they also point out that in
Florida alone, um, they average about twelve thousand complaints a year,
and I mentioned Pensacola. My family cousins grew up there
in Gulf Freeze, and they had you know, they would
go out for school one day and there's an alligator
(13:25):
in the front yard. Let's go out the side door.
And they would call and that's one of the complaints, Like, hey,
I got an alligator in the front yard and they
I guess someone come by and take care of it
by shooting it, probably back into the woods or replacing it.
I don't think they would just like shoot to kill
or anything like that. Uh, you know, they usually take
its head off with a shovel. They don't shoot it.
(13:48):
That's not the or a shoe, the heel of the shoe.
What does an alligator complaints sound like? This alligator is
looking at me? Is an alligator looking at me? Can
come do something about it? Yeah? That's an alligator can
plant pretty much is they're they're not where they are
where they should not be, which is in my on
my property. Or again though we're maybe where we should
(14:09):
not be, which is in an alligator's house. It's to
heck up a point. They lived right on the bay um,
all right, So if an alligator get to you in
the mouth or gets the prey in the mouth, they
are going to let go at a certain point to
get ready to swallow you. Well, it's in its death roll. Yeah,
so they don't like, No, it's like after the death roll,
(14:30):
they juggle you around to get you in a good
position to eat. They don't like just start chomping down right,
because they can't move those huge jaws very easily. No,
but they're very strong, So you're not gonna get out
of an alligator's jaw. But they do recommend if you
are attacked, Um, this could be a very risky way
to get away is to wait for like play dead
and wait for them to release you to try and
(14:52):
swallow you. Yeah, that's and it's specifically that's your last
ditch effort, and it's an extremely risky one. Becau is
once you're in the death roll. Again, they don't call
it a severe injury role. Um, once you feel an
alligator clamped down on you, you want to act immediately,
and you by acting, you want to scream, you want
to yell. You're gonna make as much noise is entirely possible.
(15:15):
Because again, alligators are lazy. They go for low hanging
fruit or low hanging crawfish meat. Yeah. Um, and if
you put up any resistance, they're gonna be like, attack
with this, I'm gonna go after something that doesn't yell.
Don't like my diving things to yell at. I mean,
it's just depressing, you know. Yeah, and it's probably going
to be your instinct unless you go into like shock
(15:36):
or something. So do what comes naturally, which is flail
and scream and hit them. And then if you can,
just like the old shark snout, if you can actually
get your wits about you, try and jam a finger
in their eyeball, which is a good method for stopping
any kind of attack. I think it's like the eject button. Yeah,
during an attack humans, any kind of animal, the gugs
(15:58):
their eye, they're gonna be like, dude, I only got
two of those and al yeah and al all right.
So that's how to get out. That's how to prevent
the death roll. Um. If you again, though, if you
are in a death roll, pretty much, try playing dead
nice knowing you yeah, because either you're gonna play dead
(16:20):
or you're gonna be dead one or the other. Uh So.
Crocodiles are a little more aggressive, and that's probably why
alligators get a little more of a bad rap um.
Crocodiles have been known to come after folks here and
there if you're if you're hanging out fishing on the
shore line, especially if you're cleaning your fish on the
shore line. That's a bad move. It's a very bad move.
(16:42):
And um, they are especially aggressive where and uh Africa
and um, South America or Australia. Australia. Of course they're
aggressive in Australia. Oh that's where crocodile dundee phone. That's right.
So um, we've coached people on how to fight back. Yeah,
(17:02):
and Chuck, let's take a step back. We're giving detailed
instructions on what to do if you're attacked by an
alligator crocodile. Does it ever occur to you that we
do stuff like this sometimes? Sure, it's crazy, it is crazy. Ahead,
it's crazy, as my wife says. Um. All right, So
the two reasons you might get attacked by an alligator
(17:23):
or crocodile is, like we said earlier, if you're messing
around with their family. Um, or you're just in their
territory and it's feeding time and you're caught unaware mating season,
which is early to midsummer. Yeah, that's when the adult
males will come after you. Careful, Hey, I don't want
you trying to hunt my lady. It's my lady. And
(17:45):
that brings us Josh to the to me one of
the best sentences on our website, which is, many attacks occur,
I'm sorry to sentences. Many attacks occur as a result
of people teasing or trying to capture alligators. Throwing sticks
and rocks at alligators may seem harmless, but doing so
creates a dangerous situation. Wow. Yeah, it may seem harmless.
(18:06):
I read that was like, who thinks throwing rocks and
an alligators are harmless? Act? What's this gonna harm? Unless
you're like Damien from the Omen. You know what kind
of sick twisted kid does this? Sick twisted kid future
serial killers? All right, so it's not harmless at all.
It's very harmful. Yeah, don't throw rocks at any living thing,
jerk um. And you said when you were on your
(18:29):
okay Finocchi canoe trip that you know you couldn't see
very far down into the water. Typically you want to
avoid swimming in just that kind of water. If you
want to avoid being, you know, an alligator encounter, let's
call it that. That's super PC. If you want to
avoid an alligator encounter, um, you want to swim in
(18:50):
areas where the water is pretty clear and you can
see pretty deep into it, and areas that are well groomed,
not a lot of shrubbery and grasses and muckiness for
an alligator to hide him. Yeah, and don't send little
Timmy down there with his uh beach ball to play
along the shoreline of the grassy shoreline. If your dad,
(19:10):
like we said, don't clean your fish out right there
by the shore line. Moms can clean fish too. Uh,
that's a that's a good point. Thanks. In fact, in
some families, dad catches the fish, mom cleans the fish.
In some families, mom catches the fish and dad cleans
the fish. And in some families nobody fishes. Just buy
(19:31):
a fish at the store, you just go to you know,
Arthur Treachers. Emily would never clean fish. Are you kidding me? Oh? Yeah,
good lord? You mean said she loves cleaning fish? Really
she where she grew up. Yeah, I could see that
because you got spunk, Emily. If you'd handed a knife
and to cut this fish's head off. She would she'd
be like, are you kidding me? What kind of a
(19:53):
joke is this. Let's just go to Arthur Treachers. Yeah, exactly.
You got anything else? Um? Yeah, I do have something else?
Um you said if you're uh, your cousins would call
the Fish and Wildlife Service when they saw an alligator.
If you see an alligator, no matter how small, you
want to alert everybody else too that there's alligators because
(20:14):
if you see a baby one, there might be a
mom um. And also, don't feed alligators. That's a good point.
The reason why is you are basically writing their death sense, right,
which is a weird thing to write, but that's what
you're doing. Um, because alligators who are fed sometimes lose
their fear of humans and making may come close enough
(20:36):
for a terrible alligator encounter. And any any alligator that's seen,
you know, approaching a human not out of fear, is
going to um, it's going to be put down. You
shouldn't feed any wildlife like that, really because there especially
once I can kill you though. Yeah, they're pretty good
at finding their own food, right until you start feeding them.
(20:58):
Then they become less good at that and it just
hurts everybody. Basically, you upset the circle of life to
turn it into an a rhombus. Yep. Uh. If you
want to know more about alligators and zigzags and you
want to see a photo of a person holding a
detect human arm from an alligator attack and it's crazy,
(21:20):
you can type in alligator zigzag in the search part
how stufforks dot com. It will bring up this article.
And I said, search bars means it's time for a
listener mail. But first, chuck, it's getting to be about
that time. We're like a week or so out from
the premiere of our television show Stuff you Should Know
on Science Channel. That's right. So it's quick plug time, yes,
(21:42):
as we like to call it, Saturday, January Science Channel
ten pm Eastern and ten thirty because we're showing two
episodes on premiere night, back to back after season three
premiere of Idiot Abroad, which is great, so, uh watch
it and hey, you can get on an itune the
day following the show. Yeah, Sunday mornings, wake up, have
(22:04):
some brunch, a little bloody Mary, download the show. That's right,
and you know what Science Channel is offering the premier
show for free. That's very nice of them. It is
very nice. They taken care of us like the cor Leone.
But I hope not. You didn't do dead. Not if
we stand there good I think? Okay, okay, so listener me.
All right, guys, I'm gonna call this meth another one
(22:27):
about math meth mania. How about that? Uh just finished
listening to the podcast, and I thought I would share
my experience. I've never used meth um, but I do
have bipolar disorder, and the manias I experience have some
remarkable core llaries with being high on met. I know
about these similarities from reading about people's experiences tweaking shows
(22:48):
like yours, and friends who have actually used meth and
some who still do. During manias, I will stay up
for long periods of time. I think sixty hours straight
was the longest I've ever been without sleep. I cannot eat.
I cannot even think about eating. UH talk a mile
a minute, talk so fast in my head that I
don't even realize I am skipping sentences so people can't
(23:09):
follow what I'm saying. I can focus on a little
weird task like you mentioned. I want to UH decided
to transcribe r M s it's the end of the
world as we know it of a CD player stopping
it and starting it. Mania. This is the only time
I drink, which is a bad thing because of my medications.
I will walk for hours listening to my iPod because
music is so amazingly rich and meaningful. Um. During about
(23:32):
the mania once I was pacing the halls of the hospital,
and I could feel every nerve firing, every muscle cell
tightening and releasing to make me walk. Yeah. Because of
these feelings that happened during mania, there are many people
with bipolar who will use meth to recapture that feeling,
especially in the throws uh in the opposite pole of
(23:53):
soul sucking depression. Once my psychiatrist and I decided to
take a very brief course of methyl finidate riddling. I
think it's it's a certain type of riddle. UM. I
had a paradoxical reaction by that time. By the time
I had taken two doses, I slept for twenty hours.
When I was awake, I was acutely intensely suicidal. So
(24:14):
no Infanta means for me, that's probably a good idea.
I wanted to emphasize that meth does play on the
brain's existing systems, that the brain itself can even use
itself under unusual circumstances. I'm sure what that means. I
think you just explained. Okay, manias can be very destructive
though guys, it doesn't. Uh, but it does not affect
(24:35):
your dentist bills excusing math. And that is from Serena
Bodine Clark, and she said, go ahead and read my name.
I think this is cool. That's awesome a lot. Serena
appreciate that, agreed. Um, let's see alligat your story crackadox. Yeah,
I why not? Have you got one a good one?
(24:56):
Not like you came up on my yard and yelled
at me right now, I complained bloodshed only please um uh.
You can tweet to us as always at s y
ESK podcast. You can send us a nice little note
or missive on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know,
and you can send us a good old fashion email
(25:16):
to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com for more on
this and thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff
Works dot com m brought to you by the two
(25:38):
thousand twelve Toyota Camera. It's ready. Are you
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