Big Food and Beyond with Cliff and Bobo. These guys are your favorites, so like say subscribe and raid it five star and greatest on Yesterday listening watching Limb always keep its watching. And now your hosts Cliff Berrickman and James Bubo Fay, Hey Bubo. How are you doing today?
Man?
All right? How's it going to Cliff?
Pretty good? This is gonna be a good one.
Man.
This is a really exciting podcast today because our guest today is Adam Thorne. Adam Thorne is a legit biologist, a totally legit biologist. He has a TV show on History Channel. I think the Two Seasons is out or two Seasons are out right now. King of Pain is what it's called. And what a crazy concept for this. And they basically get stung and bit by horrible things and they say, now there's the there's like a pain scaled. Did you know this?
Bobo? Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally yeah.
And they try to see, like does it match up to the pain scale. It's like, well, like, I don't know. I guess I should ask Adam about all that sort of stuff, but it seems like I don't know. I'd be more interested in doing a TV show, like does it match up to the pleasure scale? So yeah, this is this is fantastic, you know. But yeah, Adam Thorne, thank you so much for spending some time with Bobo and I on Bigfoot and Beyond. We really appreciate your time.
Well, Adam, hey mate, how you going. I'm excited to be on it here because I actually listened to the podcast all the time and I've had I've had the introest on to Bigfoot and Beyond in my head for days. It always gets stuck in my head. It's so catchy. You're like the you're like the scientist like version of Jackass. It seems like huh yeah, apparently.
Well you know that's a good that's a fun TV show, uh premise and and like, well, let's first, let's start with your your qualifications. You are a legit biologist, you're a working biologists. I was looking at your website and you do consultations and you do survey wildlife surveys, you do all sorts of stuff. So tell us little b about your biological background if you would.
Yeah.
So I have a degree in wildlife biology, a diploma in primatology, and a few qualifications from regarding primatology from like Kyota University and Duke University as well. Basically, I've done environmental consultations, so fauna surveying, and also what I do in Perth is fauna relocation. So when they're bulldozing save for example, a bushland area to build houses, I'll go out trap the animals and relocate them to a
safer area, but also do consultations. And around Perth we have kind of these black cockatoos which are endangered species of birds, so I'll do nesting stuff with them, go out into the desert in the pilbri and Western Australia and done tagging quolls things like that, and now kings are where I get bitten and stung by stuff. So yeah, it's it's an interesting job.
No, whose idea was that TV show?
It wasn't mine. I've done wildlife documentaries and stuff in the past, and then like production company reached out to me and said, I've got an idea for a show. Can you fly out to LA. So I flew out to LA and they told me the premise of the show and I was like, oh, okay. I thought it was like a wildlife show, like a sort of more
traditional wildlife show. But then I figured, well, I get bitten and stung by animals all the time anyway, I may as well do it for TV and create a pain index around that, and you know, entertained people and people laugh their asses off.
Hum.
Yeah, so you decided to do this? Did you know? Your your your partner in crime, you're your co hosts there Keeveman is that what you guys call him?
Yeah, caveman Robiliver and no, I didn't. So when they flew me out, it was to do the chemistry test pretty much see who who got along the most, and Rob and I just got on like we'd known each other for years and we're pretty much my best friends now from it now, speed to him every day. So it was really cool, like to have such a cool co host that I didn't know from a bar of soap when I first met him, but now it's like, yeah, just best mates.
Yeah, people know from listening, people know from listening to us.
We talked enlessly about how you become a family, like the crew, like the camera people, the producers.
You get so tight you're.
On the road together and living together and working all day and night you get you get really close to them.
You want to get along with the crew, especially spending so much time together. If you didn't, then it'll just be like, oh this is the night.
Yeah.
Yeah, you're recically living with these people. They become family. And so you've done two seasons so far of King of Pin. The last one was in twenty twenty two, I believe, or is there are there is there any talk right now of coming back or is it just like hiatus until further notice? Because I did notice there was a gap in time between season one and two.
So yeah, well, after season one, COVID sort of hit like pretty much within a few months of finishing up on season one, and then as far as I was aware that was Kings of Pain done, it was over with. And then randomly I got an email saying this was like two years later, Hey, we're doing a season two. What animals you want? Wow? Okay. But because COVID was still a thing still happening, we couldn't travel around the world for season two like we did in season one.
So I was in LA for three months filming the second season, So we brought the animals to us rather than going out and catching them in the wild. It was more of like an unboxing thing, like you know, what do we have in store for us today? It opened the box and be like, oh, it's a giant tarantler. Awesome.
So of all the beasts and critters and creepy Crawley's and hugly googlies and all these things that you've had to deal with to let them sink their fangs or whatever into you again. I mean everyone has to ask, of course, which one do you look back on and say that was the most screwed up thing I've ever done in my life. I never want to do that again. I was an idiot for thinking they would do that.
The sixteen foot reticulated python was a mistake. Yeah, that was bad like that. I needed staple stitches like it. The scar in my arm, I mean, it's an awesome scar. I love it and I don't regret it just for that because it's such a gnary sky looks like I've been hit by a bow propeller. But my co host cave Man, when he got bit one of the teeth, because particularly pythons like have about one hundred teeth that are like needle sharp, and these ones were you know,
probably the best part of an inch long. So it punctured Caveman Robs on the nerve in his arm and gave him permanent nerve damage, so he can't really move his pinky finger and it goes cold because it's not great circulation, so he's got permanent damage from it. And from then on we're like, well, that was the after season one, that was like the top of the pain index because of the permanent damage and just the damage
in general. But we said, if we get anywhere close to the reticulated python, we've made a mistake, right, And then we beat the reticulated python in season two. That was really Yes, that was a Mexican beaded lizard. So you've heard of a helo monster, very venomous heloderm. The beaded lizard is in the same genus and sort of the same venom as well, and it's one of the only sort of group of lizards that have apart from your monoitor lizards. But there still needs to be a
bit more work done on their venom. But these are like as venomouses can be, and like, it was unbelievable. I've never experienced pain like that, and it lasted days and days. I was vomiting in and out of consciousness. It was really bad.
Well worse than a bullet out.
Huh oh mate. The bullet ant like is actually, if you go on our pain indexes is pretty low compared to some of the other stuff we did. Like it's I would do all I would do ten bullet ants for three days straight. Overdoing the Mexican beaded lizard again.
Yeah.
We had Pat Spein on the broadcast and he was describing the bullet ant ceremony that he had to go through, and he said that he's never experienced anything like it. And you're saying that, like, well, there's way worse things than that out there. I don't think Pat would would like to hear that.
I think, well. I mean, the thing is, when Justin Schmidt did the bullet an, he rated at top of his Justin Schmidt's pain index. He's a very well known entomologist. So when people see that, they go, okay, well, that must be the worst stinging in there is. But that was just within the group of Harmanatra, which is like bees, wasps and ants. There are like, yeah, there's so much more,
you know, we did scorpion fish, lionfish. We did lots of vertebrates, especially on season two, but we also covered Justin Schmidt's pain index as well and did a lot of the invertebrates that he did, and we found that there were animals that beat like our insects that beat the bullet and hands down. I mean we had well. The king horrid king assassin bug was another invertebrate that was I've never felt and that was the most acute pain I've ever felt in my life.
The horror King assassin bad.
Dude, you got to see this thing. It looks like daf mal. The horrid King Assassin bug is found in Africa, and it's like red and black. It's huge, and it's got this giant proboscus that just like just causes unbelievable pain and then just sort of like melts your skin from the in thought out.
Well with the name like horrid King Assassin bug, I mean, they're not making stuffed animals out of those sort of things.
Man.
That's not that you don't think of hugs when you when you hear that, you hear that name.
It's always if you know what you're in for, that's for sure.
Oh yeah, there's a picture of They do kind of look like Darth Maul red, like orange and black and everything. That's pretty yeah, that's pretty nuts. So I'm looking over this list, you know, I'm looking over the list of episodes here. It's on Wikipedia for King of Payne and one of the things that caught my eye. And I've always been kind of curious about this because, you know, I grew up in southern California, and I was always on the fishing boats, you know, fishing Catalina and Clementian,
those islands and stuff. I just love to saltwater fish and one of the things we would catch every once in a while are mantis shrimp, and they're just so beautiful but so dangerous at the same time. Tell me about, just for my own personal, you know, interest in these animals. Tell me about the manus shrimp experience you had.
Well, Saysan two. Was cool because we weren't just doing things that can bite and sting. We're doing things that had sort of a weird defense mechanism. And I don't want to stress defense mechanism. None of these animals wanted to buy to a sting us. We had to really try to get them to do so. So it's not like I don't want to. We didn't want to demonize
these animals at all. But the we did the peacock, mantis, shrimp, and it's well, it's not a peacock, it's not a mantis, and it's not a shrimp either, so it's kind of a weird name, but they are. It was one of the coolest things that we added onto the pain index because just everything about it, the speed in which it punches breaks the sound barrier, like multiple times over, it forms cavitation bubbles like, it creates light. There is that much energy and friction in the water it creates light,
which is insane. Well, we got to put this thing on and I've seen videos of them punching through people's like wet suit boots and into their foot and then you know, blood and stuff come out. So like, okay, this has to be we got to do this. So it took a while to get the thing to punch because you know, it's in a new environment. It was taken out of it It was a captive one anyway, but it was taken out of it's you know, what it's used to and put into like a tank for
the camera, so I just wanted to get away. But we finally got it to punch, and I was like, it didn't get a good punch in because it was like sort of we're a bit too close to it where it couldn't get a full reach on us. But even the punch that it did get on us, I couldn't believe it. I was like, what the hell, Like it hit me so fast that I didn't register that it hit me. I was like, what was that? And there was a big indent in my finger, and I
was like, that was one of the coolest things ever. Like, yeah, it hurt, but it was just so cool to feel something, you know, six or seven inches long produce a punch that would be like you know, someone shooting a bbpel into your finger. It was amazing. It was like that. The trigeel was like that as well, whereas just you're an absolute awe of an animal that can generate power like that.
I imagine a couple people are out there thinking that are thinking that, Okay, well you're are you harassing these animals into, you know, doing something they don't want to do, But there's benefit to what you're doing, Like whether it's anti venom or other other sort of sciencey sort of things. Can you talk about that a little bit.
Yeah, we were worried about that because obviously, if an animal is biting or stinging of something, you have to get it to the point where it feels threatened and has to defend itself like that. So there is and we try to reduce that as much as possible by having multiple animals, so we're not just like because some animals just will refuse to bite a sting you and then you'll swap it out of another one that's ready and ready to go. So like with working with any wildlife,
there is an element of stress to it. But what we found was people instead, Like we were worried that we will demonize the animals because people make people scared of them. But if they get bitten and stung by one of these animals, you know, a tarantula hawk or something like that, which there's plenty of them around the US, instead of them going am I going to die? This
hurts so much? They can go well. I saw in Kings of Pain that yes, it hurts really bad for a few minutes, and then other than that, you know, disregarding if they go into anaphylaxis from an allergic reaction or something like that. But apart from that, it's just going to be pain. We've seen on Kings of Pain. No need to worry because stress and panicking can kill a lot of people driving to the hospital speeding because
they think they're going to die. Like well, we saw in that show Kings of Pain that yes it hurts, and you think you're going to die, but you're not. So it can you know, give people a bit of peace of mind at least, but also give people like looking at the animal and seeing what they are capable of, people will give them a wide berth, you know, respect them. Go Okay, well I'm not going to go, you know, grabbing this thing or anything like that, because I just
saw what it did to these two dudes. I don't want anything to do with it. We're just going to leave it alone. That's why the reticulated path of people. I won't to get bitten by reticulated python. Nobody's going to encounter one of them in the wild. No they won't. But like there's plenty kept in captivity, but most of them are super tame, but you know, the odd one will bite you. No, there's no venom. There is a lot of damage. But if you do come across a
large python, probably best you just leave it alone. It's good for the python and it's good for the person as well.
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See website for full details, restrictions and important safety information. Well, you have a podcast, We should probably plug that a little bit. It's called Thorn's Jungle, and it's not a regular weekly sort of thing. We were talking before we started recording. Apparently just kind of put it out whenever you have a good episode and it's worth it. But and you delve into lots of different topics on your podcasts, and I was kind of scrolling through, I see something
on orangutans. And you're also interested in cryptozoology, which of course jives really well with what we're doing here Bigfoot and Beyond and living in Australia on the West Coast of Australia there, I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you about if you are aware of any yowi sightings or yaowi encounters in your neighborhood.
Yeah. I mean I love cryptozoology. I always have. I've always been fascinated by it, and I've always been going, okay, this one is most likely to maybe exist, this one
maybe not so much. And there are a few that I go okay, this is there is you know, a good chance that this animal does exist, and we with the yowi for example, most of the sightings are sort of Eastern states around like the Blue Mountains things like that, but there are actually a surprising amount of sightings in Western Australia around sort of like the Jaredale area in West which is only about thirty forty minute drive from where I am, and I was looking through the Yowi
website where they log the sightings, and I couldn't believe how many sightings there were in Western Australia. And you know these are people, you know, truck drivers, things like that, and Australians in general, most of them are they do they wake up, do their jobs.
Come home?
They don't really. They don't want to be known as the guy that saw a yowie. So I tend to believe that what they're seeing is something. They're seeing something, whether or not it is a giant bipedal comminid or whether or not it's it's something else, but they are seeing something. So it's definitely interesting. And especially with the like the thermal images I've seen with the the Yowi Hunters group, some of them thermal images, I'm like, wow,
that that is that's very that's very interesting. So I do I do think there's something? Yeah, Yeah, there's something there.
Yeah, And especially like he said, they don't want to report it in Western Australa because, as I know, Australians are if you're in a report like that, he told you your bitch down with the power of your neighbors, they're going to take the piss.
I will say that Australians are a rough and tumble breed man. You guys are just heckle each other ruthlessly and anybody else within earshot. Yeah.
Yeah, that's Australians, like our best mates. Like if you if you're hanging around your mates and you didn't know that will mates, you will think we're worst enemies the way we talk to each other.
Yeah, very very rough and tumble.
You don't want to hand out ami because we're already shooting enough enough.
So what other cryptids undiscovered animals do you think that there's a reasonable chance or or if you're completely certain that they are in existence, what are some other ones that really grab your attention?
I think some of the cryptid apes are definitely interesting to me. I am fascinated with Bigfoot, always have been fascinated, And I remember seeing the Patterson Gimlin film and going first time I saw it, I went as a dude in a suit, and then for years that's just what I thought. I think that's what the majority of people
see when they watched that. And then you know, maybe ten years ago I was like, well, I'm going to have another look at that they'd remastered it and zoomed in and I was like, the muscles are rippling, the quads are flexing, there's a webbing of skin between under the MP I'm like, how did two guys in the sixties do this? Like this is actually this is crazy?
Like and that completely changed my mind about well, the Patterson Gimlin film in general, but also Bigfoot, and same with the Yooi's as well, Like the amount of sightings people are seeing this thing like that you could one hundred percent. People say, yes, there is room for mistaken identity and people just making up stories. But even if zero point zero one percent of sightings is a sasquatch, that means there's a sasquatch, you know. That means that
it exists. So I've always been fascinated with Bigfoot, but I love the other cryptid like the o tongue in the Naisna Forest in South Africa. I think that is super fascinating. The Vietnamese rock apes that were cited throughout the Vietnam War, that is very interesting, and I don't buy into the oh, they were just hallucinating on opioids or whatever. That's insane to me because like hundreds of people,
dozens were seeing them at the same time. It's like, that must be a pretty strong thing if they're all having the same hallucinations here. But the one I like the most and I'm interested in the most is the Irang Pendeck in Sumatra, and that's the that's the cryptid I've actually gone out looking for.
Where'd you look for them?
Gooding Touju?
Yeah, yeah, the Lake of Seven Peaks, right same place said I went during the episode.
Actually, yeah, it's a great area. I mean, I love the jungle. I spend a lot of time in the jungle. It's my favorite place on Earth. I go to the Malaysian jungle all the time. But the Sumatran Jungle was It was the first jungle I've been into that hasn't been like baking hot, humid, so it's kind of a pleasant, pleasant change. But it is, man, it is tough jungle. It is immense jungle. So I was like, Okay, this is going to be a challenge.
You know what struck me when I was there is I didn't see the animals. I heard them. I think the entire time I was there, I saw some given some signings, I guess across the lake, and from a great distance I saw them moving around in the trees. And other than that, I saw a flash of brown near the forest floor at one point, and I'm still not sure what it was. My guide said it was
a small monkey or something like that. I guess you got a better look at it, But I didn't see the animal life, although there is sign everywhere, And it makes sense because everything in a jungle is either trying not to be eaten or trying to eat something else, So it makes sense you don't see a lot of the animals there unless you know where to look. But yeah, jungles are really something. It took a little bit of
the romance of it away from me. I know you said you love jungles, but they are horrid places where you can see that you've got to be pretty tough to survive.
Yeah, as soon as you enter a jungle, you're decomposing, essentially, the jungles trying to eat you. But you're right, Cliff, like jungles, you don't see that many animals. It's surprisingly you don't. I mean it's so thick and everything is hiding because everything's trying to kill each other. So a lot of people think when they go into the jungle it's going to be like tropical paradise waterfalls, you know, standing there with a bowl constrictor around your neck. It doesn't.
It's not like that. I mean even in the Bolivian jungles is the same as well. I mean there is lots of species, different species, but individually each one of them species is so hard to see. The only animals I saw there was me spoiler alot. I didn't see a ring pen deck, but I did see see a man. I did see sumatrans surreally, which is might what might have been the monkey that you caught a glimpse of
cliff a sou Martians surreally. They're kind of like a roofusy brown color and they're endemnic to smart, so they're actually a really cool monkey to see in general. But no, I didn't see the irrang pen deck, and but I did find potential evidence of it, and pretty cool evidence.
So well, tell us about that, Like, what were you doing at the time and what did you find?
Well, it was just me and a guide, and this guide doesn't he's never done taking someone out looking for a rain pen deck. Before he was sort of surprised.
This wasn't for TV. This was just like a personal trip. You don't have a camera crew.
Just a personal trip. I went, I'm going to smartra, I'm going to look for it. I do it all the time, just head off to the juggle by myself. And I was like, Okay, well, this is going to be cool because it's Sumatra, cool jungle, and I've I can look for this for this, for this ape. And I don't think there is a chance on earth that you're going to find something with a large group of people or talking and things like that. I think that
that will yeah, it will be so so hard. So I was like, okay, just two people, me and a guide. And my guy didn't really he didn't. He wasn't a skeptic about Iran pen deck, but he was under the impression that it was an animal and it's probably extinct now, which might be the case, who knows, but well maybe not because I found footprints of it. But he was sort of like he pulled me aside and he was like, look, I'm sorry, but we're probably not going to find this thing.
And I was like, I know that, I know there is no chance that I'm going to see this thing like it will be so rare. And from then on he was like, oh, thank you for saying that, because he was under pressure, like oh, you've got to find this guy at the Iran Pendeck and he was like, okad, I can't do that. So after that he was like, all right, cool. It was a relief for him. But
I've spent a week in that jungle. And we went over to the other side of the lake, the flooded cold Era, and we're trying on the other side, and I found a few footprints that I was like, well, it shows signs of you know what a ring Pendec footprint is said to look like from a lot of the casts I've seen. A lot of the ones I look at is sort of like the Adam Davies cast, and I know there's been a lot of conjecture it
might be a handprint or whatever. So I was sort of like, all right, well that's what I'm looking out for a footprint like that. I found a few ambiguous ones and I was like, well, I'm not going to say for sure what that is, because it is it could be tape, your footprints overlapping. Then the last day I was there, we had about an hour before we got an to the canoes and headed back across the
lake because there was weather coming. You know, you got you know what Karinchi is like, it rains all the time, you know, on and off. My guide was up machetting away a path through and I'd found a bird's nest on the floor. So I was looking through it and I was filming myself and I was like, you know, you can find hairs in birds nests because birds use the hairs to build their nest. And as soon as I said that, I looked over and about six feet
away is this print. I was like, wow, walked over to it, and it was just like obvious to me I said this. I was like, I said this to myself. If I was in Uganda and saw that, I would say, that's just a chimpanzee footprint. But I'm in Sumatra. There are no chimpanzees. There's no orangutans in that area either, as far as we know. I couldn't believe. I was like, wow,
that is exactly what I've been looking for. And then there was a whole trail of footprints from there, and it was like you could see how this thing had walked. It had walked bent saplings over us, like sort of part of them. As it walked. There was slide marks where it had slipped on a bit of rotting fruit, and then there was like a big leaf where it
had kicked mud up as it walked. And my guide come over and I showed him and he was like, well, what the hell, because again he was on the fence about whether or not the Rangpendex still exists or exists in first place, and he was so confused by it, and just seeing his face and his curiosity, and he actually found more tracks as well. As we walked. It's that same old thing, mate. I didn't have time to cast it, and it was the rain was coming in. We were just about to leave. It was the last
sort of day. But what I did, I got my camera and filmed all the inside of it and all around and that when I got back to Perth, I converted that into a full three D image of it, because it separates them into images and makes this really cool three D thing and you can even look at the underneath, so you can see the impression from the underneath. And that was like, that was amazing. I was like, Wow, this is six and then I got it printed out three D printed out because I was like, I'm getting
that cast. I'm going to cast the three D print. And then I was like, I'm probably going to ruin the three D print if I cast it, but it actually came out.
Describe the hypothetical foot that made that impression.
Well, it looks I mean, I've got four potential at ring Pendet casts here that have been cast by other people, and it looks closest to the Adam Davies cast, but a more prominent, divergent big toe like it looks like almost it looks like almost chimpanzee. I mean, it's not a whole lot different to the other cast, but it's
still different. Does have like a bigger toe, longer than the other cast I've seen, But I was thinking a lot my feet compared to a couple of my mate's feet, Like my mate's feet look like flippers, their toes are as long as fingers, and like my toes don't look like that. So there is obviously going to be each individual have different toes. To some extent.
On this podcast, we say halex not big totals we're learned men of science.
Yeah, okay, yeah, so yeah, it looks different, but not stupidly different. And then I sent the three D image to doctor Jeff Meldrem as you would, and he said, well it looks. It was like, looks interesting. It does, and it was like impressed with the three D image of it, was like, wow, that's actually pretty cool. It was like, looks looks kind of like a handprint. And I was thinking, it does, absolutely, but unless this thing was walking by a handstand through the jung, it's probably not.
It's probably I'll say it's a footprint. But then I was thinking, well, what has feet? You know, simang have long toes. But if you actually see them and gibbons walk bipedally when they're on the floor, thirteen percent of their locomotion is bipeded locomotion. They're the most bipedal primate apart from humans. And if you actually see when they walk, they tuck that in when they walk, or they haven't
splayed out as they walk, depending on the surface. So when I was thinking like, well, some of the prince people find they describe more like human prints. When gibbons tuck the halex in, it almost lines up with the other toes, so it would look like a foot like it wouldn't have the halex pointing out the side like that, and they do walk with it out, and that could explain why we're finding prints that have the halex pointing out of that and also could blame why sometimes it
resembles a human food. And obviously being a walking you'd say, as an obligate biped it would tuck that in so it doesn't get caught on sticks and things like that. And also the toes wouldn't be as long as other gibbons toes because it it's not completely arboreal. I would say it would still be arboreal, but not to the
point where it's in trees most of its life. So that's why the theory come to me that maybe this thing isn't a bipedal orangutan that a lot of people described as, but more of a robust, more terrestrial type of gibbon. And once I thought about that, I was like that it makes sense because also the descriptions of irang pendeck. The varying color of hair was also interesting as well, because we know gibbons, especially the lar gibbn it can be from jet black to like a bright
blonde color. And it's not a sexual dimorphism thing there. It's both male and female can be that color. And Iringpendex been described as being either like sometimes black, sometimes a chestnutty brown, sometimes blonde. So well that that that is interesting, like and that's what made me sort of start to think that maybe it is a type of given.
Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bogo will be right back after these messages. It's a very interesting idea. I mean, gibbons are plentiful in Somatra and I'll probably author out Indonesia. I don't know, but it makes sense that, yeah, okay, there's a there's an ecological niche open for some sort of you know, some terrestrial advantage that that you know, give them, I don't know,
give them millionaires. I'll figure it out. You know, there's a reason why they can't be a bipedal because they they've been seen in trees, and they're obviously very good at up in trees. I ring Pendex set is, but why not why not have them walking around on the ground. That's a very interesting theory. It'll be interesting to see how that pans out with future research.
Yeah, because another thing as well is like, well, why would it be a volved to be terrestrial with there's still a threat of tigers because we know that so march and orangutans are way more are boyal than born in orangutans because of the present the presence of tigers. But just because there's a predator in the area doesn't necessarily wouldn't necessarily cause it to evolve any differently. I mean,
humans are bipedal and there's still plenty of predators. Even when we were, you know, living in the savannah and we are bipedal and there were still predators, So it wouldn't really make a difference in the like in the evolution of the anatomy of this animal. And then you know, you look at something like Ardipithecus. It still had that opposable hallix that displayed grasping big toe, and it was an obligate biped but also spent a lot of time in trees. And I feel the same way about a
ring pendeck. Yeah, it's been sighted up trees, absolutely, but yeah, it would be it's just because it has that opposable howlex doesn't necessarily mean it's not an obligate biped don't spend the most of its time walking on two legs through the jungle. Because we look in the past there are animals that have had feet like that and were obligate bipeds well.
And of course in bipedalism started in the trees. It's now a thought that that's the origins of bipedalism, is walking on branches on two legs while using their arms to steady themselves on other branches and things. And you mentioned something a few moments ago. It kind of hinted at something, and I wanted to follow up on that a little bit. Now, sameings have pretty long toes for
grabbing on trees and whatnot. And though the ring Pindeck casts that we were able to obtain through the ring Pindeck project, they seem to have shorter, stubbier toes, which would make sense for a biped of this sort. Did you find that to be true on the footprints you found as well.
Yeah, so the toes on mine are still short. The toes are like probably consistent with the other cast, except for the halls. It's longer than what I've seen in the other casts, but that could be just like depending on how the animal is walking, what terrain is walking on, could just be tucked in more in some of the casts and splayed out more like it is in my cast, my three D print. If you look at videos of gibbons walking, it is like sometimes completely tucked in, sometimes
fully out. I think depending on how far it's tucked in, well, you know, because we'll still poke out to a certain degree, may make the toe look shorter or longer depending on how far it's played out. I mean, I'm not a foot expert, but that some of the casts I have are like if I trace that aleck's back like well you would, you wouldn't really able to be fully seen an impression if it's tucked in, because it'll be so
tucked up against the side. It'd be very hard to see that in a In a foot cast, you know the gap that that toad would would have if it was tucked in more. But who knows. Like I said, with people, the difference between toads are crazy big for cast.
Their toes definitely spell out, like when you know they're going up or downhill or muddy. If it's muddy terrain, the toes splay out a lot more and look longer.
Yeah. And another thing as well, when I was interviewing a witness. We didn't pay him anything. We didn't pay him a cent. He was just a real He was an old neighbor of my guy, and he was like, oh, yeah, I think one of my old neighbors saw one. So I went to his house and was talking to him about it. He got a really good sighting of one. Like five minutes. He was watching this thing. This was in nineteen eighty, and the way it was describing I was like, Wow, this is amazing. This guy saw it.
This guy saw in a ring pendeck and then it was calling to another animal over the hill and you could hear the response, and I was like, this is gold. This is great. And then he did the old which happens so much with these these cryptid apes for some reason, the whole feet pointing backwards thing. And as soon as he said that, my it's a weird motif. Yeah, my
heart kind of sunk. I was like, oh no, because I've heard that time time again, and I mean to me, it kind of like discredits it a little bit, because I think there is it's a very folklorish thing maybe where it's feet point backwards so you don't know which direction it's going. But I've heard this said before. If you see well, for example, gibbons or chimpanzees is like walking by Beatley with a halick sticking out like that.
It looks weird from behind. If you're looking at it from behind as it walks and seeing that pointing out, it looks like a weird foot like, it looks like it looks different, not necessarily pointing backwards, but it looks like it's bent in a weird sort of way where it's you know, you could mistake that for it pointing backwards. That's sort of like what I was, you know, hoping, because the it's like, for example, when you use hear a bigfoot stuff like oh yeah, great witness. It was
described perfectly that that's really good sighting. Then all of a sudden it got into a UFO and flew off. Your heart would sink. You're like, oh no, sort of like that when I hear about the feet pointing backwards. But there could be an explanation for that.
You know, that's such a peculiar thing that that is a worldwide motif on hairy harmonoids like the yetty the Yeah, Like there's so many different unknown ape species that have that attribute as part of the yowi too yowie. Yeah, it's just so peculiar that that arose and has become part of the gig.
Now.
Yeah, And I don't understand with things like like the yowie and stuff of that, because their feet are described to be like ours, not that the helix pointing out to the site or anything like that, So that wouldn't explain why they're saying that it looks like the feet are spun around because their feet are said to look similar to ours, so that that is a confusing thing. Well, it doesn't make sense for a lot of the hominids that are sighted then.
So have you seen that footprint cast that Debbie Martyr pulled out of Somatra of the ring Pendeck. Have you ever seen a photograph of it or anything.
I've never seen Debbie Martyrs. No, I've read about her sighting and everything. I would love to see that cast because I've never actually seen it.
Well, I don't have a really good photograph of it, unfortunately, but there is a photograph in doctor Gregory Forth's book Images of the Southeast Asian wild Men of that cast, and one of the things that stood out to me it contrasts really well against the footprints set I was able to get through the ring Pindeck project in that the Halex the big toe there was quite a bit larger and not like more robust, but just longer than the ones that I was getting. So it kind of
sounds like what you're describing here. So I think I have a scan of that somewhere in my computer and I will be happy to email that to you so you can kind of compare yours to it.
I would love to see that, yeah, because yeah, that sounds similar to mine and mine bend's a bit as well, like like how a chimpanzee would footprint would as well. It curves inwards, which I think there is another cast that they call is like the Banana cass or something where it does do that. So yeah, that'd be really cool. Because Debbie Martyr is i mean, her sighting and the stuff she's done with the ring Pendeck. That was one of the reasons why I was like, well, this seems
like a thing that could exist. And then Jeremy Holden saw it as well working with Demi Mate. I think actually Debbie Singh caught eyes on the irang pandic a few times.
As well, like three.
I think, wow, Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, I mean because the way I thought about it, Somatra is huge. I mean, there is definitely room for an undiscovered species. I mean you look at the Tapannuli orangutan. This orangutan was first sighted in like nineteen thirty seven, so they knew there was an orangutan population there south of Lake Toober. They didn't rEFInd that population until actual it was thirty nine when they when they found it, and then ninety
seven when they rediscovered it. So it took them almost sixty years to rediscover this thing, this population of orangutan.
There's a twenty five hundred rate. Was there over two thousand of them?
Yeah, and in an area a thousand square meat square kilometers, the whole entire population exists. And then obviously in twenty eighteen with DNA tests they were found to be a separate species. But it took them sixty years to refine this population in an area one thousand square kilometers, well, the area that the irang pen deck is said to
live in is fourteen thousand square kilometers. So if it took them that long to rediscover this population of orangutan, you know what chances are you of laying eyes on a rang pen deck in an area fourteen thousand square kilometers. It's very difficult.
How do the orangutans are they on the scale of like looking for primates, They're pretty They're pretty easy to find general, don't they vocalize and things like that.
Yeah, you can hear them. They'll do long calls things like that. You can also find nests in the trees, but because they are mostly solitary animals, they're harder to find their things like chimpanzees and gorillas, where you'll find loads of nests and their ground nests as well well for gorillas. But with the orangutans, because it's normally just you know, a female and an infant and then like a lone male, you really have to just track an individual and hopefully you find it. I mean, I found
one in Borneo, but it was pure accident. It was one of the most pleasant surprises I've ever had in my life. But I think once you know they're there and know where they slept at the night, you can track them again, but refinding them because they're spread out, you know, over you know, a thousand square kilometers, it would be more difficult than your other great apes.
Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and Bogo will be right back after these messages. I did ask the head of primatology or the primatology department, I think at the Connecticut Zoo, if your orangutan got out here in Connecticut, how often would it be seen? And his answer was pretty much never, you know, because they'd find it again, but it'd be very, very difficult to see ever.
Yeah, I mean, how do you spot a two hundred pound red like ape up a tree? It's well, you do like you.
Won't in the fall? Yeah, you know.
Well, just for comparison to there was a I think it was six hundred pound tiger was loose in La County on the Ventura border, like you know in La the hills out north of there, and a three three by five mile I think it was three by five miles fifteen square mile area. Thing lasted, I mean, with millions of people living around there, it made it three weeks before they were able to catch it.
Yeah, and that's an animal you want to catch pretty dawn quick.
The best trackers in California, like ten teams are the best tracking teams with dogs.
They couldn't catch that tire for three weeks in La Jeez. Yeah.
Tiger's are any animal that lives in a jungle, and especially ambush predator. You think it will stand out like I saw a thumb being colored like that, but they blend in unbelievably. I remember when I was in the Malaysian jungle. I was by myself deep in the jungle for a week, just sleeping in a tent as you do. And one night I was kept on getting woken up by something pushing on my head through the tent. And I was like, I was, you know, turning on my flashlight, yelling,
going got away, you got away. But it kept on happening. So what is that keep pushing on my head? I'm trying to sleep, get up in the morning, walk out, and there's like gigantic tiger footprints all around my tent. Oh no, oh god, this thing is having a sniff of me through the tent.
It's good that you didn't smell delicious, I know.
I would have smelled horror. I smell horrible, like just to myself. I could smell myself a mile away.
You know it's bad when you can smell yourself.
Yeah, yeah, like, oh I love to smell on my own broue. No, I don't. Not this time I was. I was swimming in the river as well because of that stank. I was swimming in the river, and I'd set up my camera to do like the auto photo thing of me so I could get a photo me swimming in this river, Like, oh yeah, that's a good photo. Get back to the tent, have a look at it.
I'm like, wait, what's that in the background. Zoom in and there's a massive false garil, which is a large crocodilion right behind me.
No, oh gosh, damn, that's the hell out of me.
Yeah, I don't think I would have swam in that river knowing that it was were there not a bit It.
Was in the water on the land.
It was in the water like six feet behind me. It just sees eyes and nostrils.
Did you think it was?
It was huge, like false gariles get massive, like over fifteen feet quite red. And yeah, this one would have been about that size, and it was only recently as well they found out that people have been eaten by false garyles because a lot of people like, oh they don't eat people because the shape of their jaws. They're not as long as as like the like the Indian garriles. But yeah, they have found fishermen inside of them.
Oh they're real narrow. They have a really narrow jaws, those ones.
Yeah, real narrow more for fish, but yeah, they absolutely have taken humans.
You know, what's your thought on the Thylocene.
I think the Thilo scene, I think it might there is there is a chance it's still there in some parts of Tasmania. I don't really hold much credence to it still being on mainland Australia. I know there are a lot of sightings of it still, but definitely in especially in the western part of Tasmania, there is a huge bit of forest there, so they definitely could hide file scene for sure. But I think, to be honest,
best chances of Papua New Guinea. There are some pretty incredible witness accounts of people seeing the striped dog up in Papua New Guinea, and I mean there's like the singing dog and things like that. That is unbelievably elusive. So I think there's a good chance that it might still be living in Papua New Guinea, more of a chance of staying hidden in Papua New Guinia than it does in Tasmania. But yeah, I think it would be an animal that I wouldn't be surprised if somebody found one's hope.
So have you ever met Gary Opitt, another Australian cryptozoologist.
No, I haven't.
No.
I think he lives in the Eastern State. He does a lot of that. He's part of the Yowi group, right.
Yeah, he's an older gentleman and he's a witness of the Yowi and as well as a number of other strange animals, and I was very impressed with them when we got the chance to meet him in US real you can't go for a walk with the guy because it takes forever, because he's alway stop and down and oh this plant here, and he'll tell you like a ten minute story about the how amazing this plant is in the natural history of it and the indigenous uses
and the medicinal use it. He just goes on and he is such a wealth of knowledge you never get anywhere by taking a walk, but you learn, You learn more than you would in a college class. He's just amazing this wealth of knowledge. And I bring him up not only because he's interested in all sorts of cryptids in general and has seen some very peculiar things in
his life. But one of the things he saw and he shared with us while we were there, is that he saw a sasquatch or you know, basically whatever the equivalent would be in Papua New Guinea.
Wow.
So I have a feeling that that island there probably holds a lot of secrets.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
He was way up, like he was about seven thousand feet way up in the mountains, and when he saw there's a black one about seven and a half foot tall.
That's interesting. I never heard that. I mean, it wouldn't surprise me this they find. They mean, they're still finding loads of new species of animal and Papua New Guinea and not small ones either, like a large animals. So I think places like Papua New Guinea, Myanmar, the Congo, they're just so vast and it's just very hostile terrain. Not many scientists are out there surveying because of that especially Meanma, because it's hard for scientists to even get
into Mianma. That's where they think they're still wilt populations of like the pink headed dark and things like that. So yeah, that really wouldn't surprise me. And even North America. I mean, I don't think people understand this, just how vast some of those forests and natural areas are. I mean, if there is an undiscovered animal anyway, I mean, North America could definitely harbor one for sure, and probably does.
Oh yeah, most assuredly does at least one.
Yeah.
Yeah, from the most southern area of North America to the most northern as well. I mean we get reports from Mexico in Central America as well. It's not as many as up here in the more northern latitudes, it seems, so yeah.
I mean there's still even the occasional sighting of a wooly mammus up in Alaska, I believe.
Well there's some stories of that, there's. Yeah, and there was actually one video of a supposed video that I was asked to comment on for a TV show, and I think it was actually.
A bear holding like a salmon hanging out of his mouth.
Something like that. Yeah, yeah, I think that's what it was or whatever, but that was circulating online for a second, so.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, it's interesting, especially like where willly mammisonly went extinct on Wrangel Island there about four thousand years ago, which geologically speaking is a blink of an eye.
Yeah, it's amazing the Egypt of the Pyramids remade while wooly mamms were still around.
Yeah, that's crazy to think they.
Only got wiped out due to just in bridging, I think too. Isn't that the reason they went out on a wrangle?
Yeah, I mean it's such a small island and they were they were small amounts because of insular dwarf ism. But yeah, when you get a large it's still a large animal like that on a small island, and yeah, you've just funneled like you've just got a genetic bottleneck there. So yeah, it's not going to be good. And it's sort of like, I don't know if you've what do you think about the Gigantopithaca's bigfoot theory, because yeah, at
one point it was connected. There was land bridges and there was a way for them to get up there. But I mean, I'm not. I think just because there's two giant apes doesn't mean they're the exact same thing. But who knows. It's a cool theory, and I like reading about it, and I mean, we don't even show Gigantipitheca was by pedals.
Now, yeah, that's the problem there, or that's one of the problems is we don't know enough about giganos to say much about it.
Yeah, exactly doesn't.
So, but we do know that they were in the line between Sheverpithecus and orangutans, and both of those apes lack of brow ridge, and sasquatches are pretty uniformly reported to have a good brow ridge on them, So of course it could have evolved separately. That's too big of an issue or anything. But there are some things about it that I think it's I'm taking a wheat and sea sort of attitude towards that one. My money is still on parathis right.
That's what attracted me to things like a ran pendeck and some of the smaller ones, because the only thing that makes it weird and would make people sort of skeptical of it is the bipedalism. If you said, I think there might be a robust species of gibbon that hasn't been discovered before in Sumatra, people wouldn't bat nihilily. They go, oh, yeah, that sounds about right. The moment you say bipedal, they're like, oh, I don't know about that, So,
you know, bipedalism. I don't get why people think it's such a deal breaker, because it's happened. We're bipeole. We know what happens in primates, So I don't really get why that is like the deal break, and I can't believe it now. Gibbons do walk by peoedle quite a lot.
Do you think that has something to do with just a human exceptionalism sort of thing, or that we think we're a little bit more special than we are on p.
Yeah, I think so. I think, well, we're bipedal primates. There isn't room for another bipedal primate. That's too icky. You know, it's a bit creepy for me. That's why a lot of people when they see some of these cryptids faces, it really freaks them out because of a bipedal animal that is so similar to us. It makes people uncomfortable.
It makes me comfortable personally. I kind of like knowing them a part of the larger animal kingdom.
Yeah, I mean, we don't want to be the only bipedal lpes walking around. It's the lonely planet.
Should we kick it over to the overtime?
Yeah? Yeah, you know, if you don't mind an if you can stick around and do a members episode with you and then talk to you, talk to you more about some interesting cryptids and some of your adventures, if you have the time, if you're okay without fantastic, then so, listeners, thank you very much for tuning into Bigfoot and beyond. We've got shwag. If you want to share, go to sasquatchprints dot com. We also have a member section. We're gonna be talking to Adam over there in a few moments.
It's five bucks a month and you get an extra forty five minutes to an hour every single week. If you can't get enough Cliff in the bobes, well you can now through just five bucks or whatever. It's a Patreon thing, and it helps us put all this stuff together and pay for the software we have to use microphones and all that sort of stuff. We really appreciate all the support. Yeah, So Adam Thorn has been our guest today and his website is www dot Biothorn dot
com dot au, an Australian website. Really interesting things are happening over there, and of course his show King of Pain is on History Channel. You also, I mean, you guys are I mean clearly you're listening to our podcast. You like podcasts, why not subscribe to Adam's podcast as well. It's called Thorn's Jungle And there's a lot of interesting topics or talk about. I'm just like scrolling through right now.
There's a ring and Tan stuff, there's Walrist stuff. There's a bunch of primates and snakes and all sorts of cool things. And am I missing anything? Adam? Anything else you want to mention?
I mean, yeah, now you nailed it, Cliff. You can follow me on Instagram as well, Adam underscore Thorn. That's probably the main social media I used. But yeah, apart from that, the website and check out the podcast.
All right, I'm going to follow you right now on Instagram Adam underline Thorn. Cool. Right on, Well, Bobbo, take us out of here and start the members episode.
Yeah, I want to ask at when we get to the members section, if you can recommend any local licors or any specific beer or whiskey that was good for numbing the pain.
We'll get to that in a minute.
Oh, we'll get to that the overtime. Yeah, the bonus.
Okay, folks, Well, thanks again, thanks to Adam for joining us. Thank you for listening. We appreciate it. Until next week, y'all, keep it squatchy.
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