Forrest Galante: Crocodiles DO Hunt Human Beings

Well that's what's interesting to me is how some animals, their progress or their evolution remains stagnant like crocodiles. They're essentially the same way they were tens of millions of years ago. Whereas humans, it's this market change over the last half a million years, a spectacular change. Or two million years ago, the doubling of the human brain size really quickly. Special moments in evolution. But then other things don't grow at all. But then you have these lions that get trapped on this island. Like okay, we got to get way bigger. And they go, we got to fuck up these buffaloes. The only thing we can eat, you can't fuck up a buffalo if you're little. And the bigger survived and those are the ones that bred. I mean it's so interesting to see how this stuff sort of plays out. And that we're studying it and really over the last only few hundred years are really getting an understanding of it. Even less than that. I mean we're really only starting to understand it on a big picture now. Wow. Yeah it is amazing. Everything in between, like you said, these crocodiles reaching their pinnacle of evolution tens of millions of years ago and us constantly evolving. It's insane. The world, the living world is so fascinating. Have you ever seen the video of these people, they're in a crocodile park and they're feeding these crocodiles and this lady's like chucking chickens, like chickens out. Oh yeah. And then one crocodile bites the other crocodile's leg off. And does the death roll and the leg comes straight off. And the other one straight off even moves. It's just like man. Leg comes off and it just was like what the fuck bro. It doesn't even move. It doesn't react in pain. Nothing. I know the exact video you're talking about. It went totally viral. Yeah. It just rolls and the leg just pops right off. And he swallows his foot. Swallows his buddy's foot like fucking A. It's nuts. It's absolutely nuts. That is a clean up machine. That's a 65 million year old clean up machine. And they figured out, this is a great, it's like a hammer. You know how to make a hammer right? There's no new hammers. Hammer's like this is it. There's a stick and then the end there's a metal thing and bang bang bang. It's a hammer. That's a hammer. And it's a perfect tool. Yeah it's perfect. I mean there's different size hammers. You got a caiman. You got a Nile crocodile. Exactly right. That is a very good analogy. I'm going to use that the next time that someone asks me to explain that. Please do. Because that's genius. This is a hammer. It's like they nailed it. There's no reason to make another knife. Knives are knives. Right. The strap edge, handle the bottom. Got it. Right. It's exactly right. Now I love crocodilians. I think they're just so interesting. I don't know if I told you this story. When we were in Myanmar we were retracing the Ramri massacre. Are you familiar with the Ramri massacre? No. You'll love this. So during World War II when the Japanese were holding Ramri Island in Burma, Myanmar, the allies came in and started making the Japanese retreat. In the course of like two days, a thousand Japanese soldiers were eaten by crocodiles, by saltwater crocodiles. What? Yeah. So they were treated in two days. In two days? I mean, some reports say it was over a couple weeks, but the general consensus is a thousand soldiers were eaten by crocodiles in a very short amount of time. And it was this kind of perfect storm of situations where because there were all these soldiers, they were eating all the prey. All the crocodiles were particularly hungry because of that. When the allies pushed all the Japanese back into the swamps, you know, they started screaming and one scream would trigger all the others, just like all the crocodiles to get into a frenzy. And it just wiped out this entire populace of people that ran through the swamp. So we went to retrace these steps to figure it out. We're like, why did this happen? To try and understand it better. And while we were there, this kid got attacked by a crocodile that was 100 years old. So probably the same animal that had eaten people during World War I or one of them, right? And we saved this kid's life. We got to the village and he had just been pulled out from this crock attack. His arm was broken in like 25 places. He was torn up. He had lacerations all over his leg, his ankle, his arm. And how'd you get him out of the crocodile's mouth? We didn't. So he fought off the crocodile basically. And then the buddy he was with fishing pulled him into the boat and got him back to the village. What a savage that kid is. Totally. He fought off a fucking crocodile? And a big one. How did he do it? We don't know. We were so focused on saving the kid because myself and one other guy had medical training. So we were stopping the bleeding and bandaging him up. And we had the only speed boat because we had to get to this island. And this is very, very remote. So we got this kid on the speed boat and got him back to a hospital and he lived. I think he lost the arm, but, you know, he was just going to bleed out and die right there in the village. A hundred year old crocodile. There probably was one of the crocodiles that ate the Japanese people. During the mass at Ramarit massacre. Fuck. Yeah. God damn. My friend Jim Shockey was in Africa and they had hired him to hunt crocodiles that were terrorizing this one village. These people had fenced off this area where they could get water and clean and crocodiles had figured out a way to get through that. And everyone in the village had like a bite mark here, a missing hand, a bite on their head. Like so many people had lost loved ones and friends. While he was there, a woman who was washing clothes got killed by a crocodile while he was in the village. And these are Nile crocodiles. Right. Enormous. Yep. 20 foot long plus huge killing machines. And these are, you know, I try and dispel anybody that says to me, Oh, these animals were hunting people. And I'm like, no, they were not. Crocodiles are, do you know what I mean? Crocodiles will hunt human beings. They will lock in outside of a small village or an area that someone's collecting water. They'll spend weeks watching, studying the pattern, learning the behavior, and just wait for the perfect time where they can sink under, sit right there waiting for someone to gather water. In my opinion, they're not distinguishing that from another prey animal. They just know this thing's coming to water here at this pattern and they will absolutely target people. 100%. They don't care if you're a person. No. Exactly. That's the weird thing about people. We feel like we have some sort of a deal. Right. Well, they're not really after you. Sharks aren't after people. Right. They're trying to eat. Do you have a treaty with sharks? What are you talking about, Matt? People have this weird thing about animals. When animals find out how easy we are to eat, then it becomes a real problem. Yeah. I mean, Lions of Savo, those famous lions, they were targeting people, the Ghost in the Darkness. That's a great movie. Fantastic movie. So scary. And they were targeting people. They knew that people were easy prey and they're like, cool, we're going to keep eating them. Once they get a few meals, and they're like, not bad. And fucking real easy to catch. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. It's the opposite of fast food. Yeah. With like muscles growing on the beach. Yeah. Just pluck them. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.