Joe Rogan Talks Lion-Killing Chimps, Terror Birds, and More

If you go to the Congo, you gotta go walk through the stretch that has that giant chimp living in it. Do you know about that giant chimp? What is it? What's his name? The Bondo Ape. The Bondo. Yeah, it's a larger version of the chimpanzee. It's like six feet tall. Huge, 200 plus pound chimps. Geez. The locals call them lion killers. Really? Yeah, they nest on the ground. We got an image of what we know. They nest on the ground like gorillas. Yeah. Well, this one is not... This is... Images of dead ones. See if you can go to... If you just Google Bondo Ape, there's some really good... See that one in the upper left hand corner, Jamie? Yeah. But that picture, I don't think is real. I want to say that's fake. Congo's giant Bondo Ape. See that one's real. That one's real. Those people with the dead one? Okay. Make that larger, please. You can use... There you go. That's the first evidence of one that they ever found. And then they shot this thing and they took pictures of it, but I believe that was in the 1930s. And then they got another one that they shot at an airport. And these guys are posing with this thing. See if you can find the one... That's it at the bottom, the very bottom. That right there. Bang. Look at that. Go full screen, the one below it. Yeah. Look at that. Make that larger. Make that fucking chimp. So that is this thing that they call the Bondo Ape. And it has a crest on its skull like a gorilla. Yeah. Yeah. It's not like a... The skull is not shaped like a chimpanzee skull. And so... Go back to the picture, please. That's okay. That's big enough. But... Because it's not a very clear picture anyway. So these guys shot this at an airport. And look at the hog on them, too. But the size of that thing... I mean, look at the men behind it. I don't know how big they are. But let's assume they're tiny. And they're 5'5". That thing is 5'10", 5'11". Yeah, yeah, yeah. Probably well north of 200 pounds. The shrimp. And it's a chimp. Oh my God, I've ripped you to pieces. Yeah, easy. But the cool thing is, this is a weird subspecies that's only in this... I think it's called Beelie in the Congo. And they either call it the Beelie Ape or they call it the Bondo Ape. But it's an enormous... Yeah, never hit... But I'm sure I've stopped the picture there where the guys are either side holding it up. I'm sure I've seen that so many. Google Bondo Ape camera trap photo. There's a camera trap photo of one of them walking upright. And it's about 6'6", upper left hand corner. That one. 6'6". Yeah, they said by measuring the stuff around it, they think that that is a 6'6", walking through the fucking jungle. And that's this guy. There's a guy named Carl Amand. He's a... I think he's from Switzerland. He's a wildlife photographer. And he spent a considerable amount of time trying to find these things and take photos of them because of all the descriptions that the natives have of these enormous chimpanzees. They got video of one of them eating a jaguar. They don't know if it killed it or if it found it dead. But the locals... There's mysterious parts of the world. Where abouts in the Congo is that? In Beelie. I think it's called B-I-L-I. It's not a large place, but it's an incredibly dense jungle. So it's very hard to get to. For a long time, it was just legend. But now they have actual video of them. They have photograph, they have scat samples, DNA, and then they have the skulls. The skulls that are not quite gorilla and not quite chimpanzee. Got ya. When they first got it, I'm pretty sure they thought it was a hybrid. They thought like a gorilla fucked a chimp. Like, come here, bro. Yeah. And then now they think it's a totally different subspecies of chimpanzee. So there it is. Ah, there you go. Beelie Yulee Forest. So that's where you gotta go, bro. Yeah, that's not far from the... Is that the source? That looks like the source there. Yeah. Is that... The source of the Congo? Could you go through there? So that area looks small, but it's probably bigger than Florida. The area where these things... I mean, the Congo's so big. The Congo's just always fast. From a young age, you hear all sorts of stories about the Congo, don't ya? Isn't it wider than the contiguous United States? I think the Congo itself is wider than the United States. I think there's more land mass in the Congo. There's an amazing BBC documentary on the Congo from many years ago. I think it was from the 90s. But they spent 29 times... The United States is 29 times bigger than the Congo. Okay, hold on. Stop. Stop. 342,000 square kilometers. But the width of it, I think it's the width. There are only 5 million people living there for the size of it. Oh, that's it. Okay, no, it's not. Okay, it's not as wide. It's something that's close. Big Texas or something. Yeah, it's like... It's bigger than Texas for sure. It's like Texas and California and maybe like one other state smushed in there. It looks like it's like 30% of the United States. Still a lot of wilderness that there was no... Oh yeah, man. And if there's a fucking giant chimp living in there... Yeah. And all kinds of other shit in there. All sorts, all sorts. Have you seen that shoebill bird that lives there? No. Oh my god. It's a 5 foot tall dinosaur of a bird with an enormous face. His face is like this big and it looks like... It doesn't look real. You see it walking around. I think I'd see it with the way that you're describing it, maybe photos, videos. Oh, the face that they have. There's some great high resolution photos of the shoebill where you look at them in the eye and you're like, what the fuck is that? Is that real? They're like the most ferocious looking bird. It looked like that right there. Yeah, I have seen that. Come on, bro. That's badass. Look at that face. Imagine walking through... Waking up and seeing that looking down at you. Yes, or walking through the jungle and you part some leaves and that fucking thing is staring at your face. Oh my god. We came across... Have you heard of elephant birds? No. I think David Attenborough. Elephant birds. Elephant birds. I think David Attenborough first discovered it all went to Madagascar because he was fascinated by the elephant bird, went extinct, I don't know how long ago, but their eggs were about half a foot. Like a football. Yeah, almost like a rugby ball, football in size. There we go. Oh my god, look at the size of that egg. That would be painful. That's so big. Look at the size of that fucker. There you go. Look at that comparison with an ostrich. Oh my god. There you go, yeah. Holy fuck. And these were big, but I came across the elephant bird eggshells. They're about this thick as well, maybe quarter, half a centimeter in thickness and they're just scattered across the southern beaches of Madagascar and there are thousands still there. So this thing is still alive? No, this is going to be extinct. It's just the eggs. But the eggs are still there. Yeah, there you go. There's David Attenborough. I think he bought one back. It's in Cardiff, which is the capital city. Is that many of them? You can just go get one? This thou, yeah, just crushed because they're so thick. Oh, look at that comparison. They just last forever. Wow. They just last forever. Holy shit, they're huge. Forget how many years ago they went extinct. It was a couple of thousand. How many of these things have been collected? I'm not too sure. I don't know how many eggs. Why do the elephant bird disappear? What does it say? Human people what? Yeah, I believe it was the humans. Wasn't it hunting them? Scroll down. Humans may not be to blame. Oh. Goddamn pop ups. Get us every time. Wow. Immense. That's huge though, isn't it? Yeah. But did you ever see the ones they had in North America, the terror birds? No. Oh fuck. Seven feet tall, murderous, carnivorous birds that couldn't fly running around North America. Jeez. Yeah. Pull up terror birds. Jamie's. He's searched overtime on this episode. I'm just trying to scare you with all the shit you've seen your whole life. These were enormous birds. There's one that shows the... Look at the size of that thing. There's one that shows the... Go back to that National Geographic thing that you just had right there, Jamie, in the middle. Yeah. That was like a CGI documentary that they had done on one. It says versus wolves. I don't even want to click on that. Oh. That's awful. I don't know. Well, I think they're so much bigger than the wolves. They probably hunted them down and killed them. There's a size comparison there, isn't there? See, next to a human. Yes. There is. It's far left. Nice of a well-built one. Yeah, it's crazy. Chasing horses and shit. Can you imagine exploration back there? Oh. It'd be a whole different ballgame, wouldn't it? Oh, you had no idea. So much more. Excited but dangerous as well, you know? Well, when you're talking about people that believe in witches and people that believe in witchcraft, like back then, you almost had to have some belief system to keep you going because you had no idea what was around the next corner. So these terror birds were alive, I believe, when human beings were alive, right? When were these things alive? If I had a guess, I'm going to guess they died out a million years ago? Half a million years ago? 62 to 1.8 million years ago. Whoa. 62 million to 1.8 million? It says the temporal range covers from 62 to 1.8 million years ago. So I think that's 62 million, not 62 years ago. Okay, so no people. 62 million, yeah. So definitely no people. Dinosaur, dinosaur age. Yeah. Cinnozoic era. Cinnozoic, oh. So just some kind of monkey chimp type thing was all we had back then. I think that was like Australia Pythagus or something like that. What year was that? Okay, I'm over-googling you. Still stuff living with us though, isn't that? That's terrifying. Have you heard of the camel spider? Yes. Where it injects you with like an anesthetic. Yeah. And they're like stories of soldiers waking up, half an ear missing, because they've been being injected in the middle of the night by this big ass camel spider. So that's a dinner plate, isn't it? What is this, Jamie? Mammals of the mice have seen, which are I guess the same era. So it looks like giant sloth time period, that North American bear time period. Look how small the horses are. Holy shit. Compared to those giant sloth things. It's like Avatar, isn't it? Oh, that's a short-faced bear. That's what that is. That's that enormous bear. You've seen that thing, right? The short-faced bear? Short-faced bear. Have I seen it? No, bro. The short-faced bear was the most terrifying bear in all of history. Short-faced bear was way bigger than a polar bear and super carnivorous, and they think it might have been the thing that kept human beings from successfully navigating the trek through the Bering landmass until they went extinct. They're huge. There's a picture of a guy standing next to a recreation of a short-faced bear. And it's fucking crazy. It's so big. They think people probably hunted him off to extinction, or they don't really know. Did you get an image of a short-faced bear? That's a ridiculous animal, but I didn't even know it existed until a few years ago. Oh, there's probably so much. That's why that's sapien. I don't know if it goes into the details. Sapien. Sapien. Does it go into the details of this? Go with the one in the far right corner. Upper right. Look at that. Yeah. That's what it looks like. Oh, man. You just would not venture outside with you. Just fucking imagine how big that is. That's a brute, isn't it? It's like a cartoon comic book version of a bear. Like you can't believe. We're looking at this thing where literally this thing is standing up. These gentlemen, let's just assume they're somewhere in the neighborhood of six feet tall. This thing is their entire height plus a couple of feet. So double their entire height, I should say, plus a couple of feet. That's ridiculous. Like their head, this thing standing up and their heads are like right around where his hip bone is. Although he is on a little bit of a mound. I'm counting. It's pretty close to 14, 15 feet maybe staying outside of the legs. Yeah, but why they have him on a mound? Listen, bitch, we know he's tall. Put him on a mound. You're exaggerating. You're making it look more ridiculous. It's ridiculous as it is without him being on a mound. Why do you have him? You're trying to make it even crazier. It's crazy enough, but super predatory. Short-faced bear. Yeah. Between that and Sabretooth Tigers, there was an African lion that used to live here.