Speaker 1: Good morning, Forrest. How are you doing today?
Speaker 2: Hey, how are you? Man?
Speaker 1: Fantastic? Don't you think that Shark Weeks should actually be
a national holiday?
Speaker 3: I think we're pretty close, you know, after thirty five,
thirty six years. I mean, I know people that take
off days for work just to go and enjoy Shark Week.
Speaker 1: So I'm all about it absolutely. Now I learned something
this year from you. I did not know that there
are sharks that have ven them What are you talking
about here?
Speaker 3: Isn't that cool? So yeah, it's exactly what you just said.
Some sharks evolved to be huge, Some sharks have allved
to be fast, most sharks have alved to have big
shark teeth to eat things, and some sharks evolved venom
as defense. And so this show is about looking into
that incredible unique adaptation that these sharks have and bringing
that into the homes of millions, just like you said,
you know, allowing people to learn about this.
Speaker 2: And it's it's really cool.
Speaker 1: You use the word defense. That tells me that the
shark has enemies. I mean, I mean, who's who's going
to go after a shark?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well you're probably thinking of a shark in terms
of jaws, you know, a big old great white shark.
These sharks that I'm mentioning, these venomous sharks are two
feet long. They're not a big animal. And so yeah,
when you're two feet long in the ocean, you're on
the menu for a lot of things. And so with
that being the case, they have to evolve some way
to evade predators, whether that's speed or hiding or in
this case, a really venomous fine. And that's what we
look into Inests down Under. The silliest title ever for
a little, tiny, two foot shark. But it's a great show, nonetheless,
and the venom is an incredible factor. And because it's
a deep water, rarely seen shark species, it's something that
we know very little about. And thus we caught the shark,
we isolated and purified and diluted the venom, and tested
it on myself the human body, to see what would happen,
which was not great fun, but it was a cool show.
Speaker 1: Did you at least catch a buzz from it or
anything like that?
Speaker 3: No, I mean maybe if you call being an excruciating
pain for twenty minutes a buzz, then yeah, I guess so.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Well, how did you prep your body
to go that deep in the water. I mean, I
realize you're a pro, but you went deep into the water.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a good question. So we always dive deep.
My team and I are pretty experienced divers. However, this
shark we were not able to find.
Speaker 2: On a dive, so we ended up having to catch it.
Speaker 3: So we fished deep and brought the shark to us,
which was much better because I don't know how we
would have centrifuged venom at one hundred and fifty feet.
Speaker 1: Now, I've always been convinced, and this is just my
own stupid research, but I always believe that these tropical
storms and hurricanes bring the sharks from Florida up to Carolina.
Is any that true?
Speaker 2: I think so, you know, I really do. It's sharks
are like us.
Speaker 3: In the sense of if the weather's nice somewhere, they'll
go there. If the weather's bad somewhere, they're going to
avoid it. You know, if there's a big storm coming,
they probably don't want to be in that storm. And
so when a big cyclone comes in, moves water around,
displaces things. There's better weather further north or further south,
those animals are gonna move, and they're gonna occupy new areas,
and that's when people end up encountering things that they're
not expecting.
Speaker 1: You just planted something inside my imagination. I never even
thought about what's going on beneath the surface of the
ocean during a hurricane.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, It's it's crazy how more tuned in with the
world some creatures are than us. You know, we rely
on the news to tell us when a storm's coming,
But a shark that has a special organ called an
ampulae of Larenzini that picks up electrical fields and can
sense pressure changes can tell us storms coming long before
we do.
Speaker 1: That's so funny you say that, because I mean in
this forest that I live in, I sit there and
study the animals every single day because they, to me,
are predicting the weather, forecast, whatever that cardinal is doing.
If I'm not seeing the deer, something is up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. And you know, sometimes that could be a
predator in the woods. It could be a bit, it
could be a car honking, who knows, And sometimes that
could be an indication of bad weather or a low
pressure system or something like that. And the animals know
and it's we we think. I feel like we as
human beings think in today's world that we know everything,
but we really really don't and we don't even we
don't even partially understand how that happens.
Speaker 1: Please do not move. There's more with Forrest Gollan coming
up next. Hey, thanks for coming back to my conversation
with Forrest Golant. A couple of years ago, there was
a movie that hit the theaters that was about a
bear that got super high and went on went on
a rampage. And then to hear that you came there,
Oh my god, dude, and now you're doing animals on drugs.
I mean this, this is just amazing because the human
is the screw up here, and it's because people are
putting their drugs into the toilet or the water system.
Speaker 2: Exactly right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a it's it's a it's a loud title.
I'm hoping it gets people to tune in, but the
it is a very timely show. You know, animal don't
have a choice. We have a choice whether or not
we want to try, you know, meth and fetamines. But
when a meth lab gets blown over by a hurricane
or a cop us a house and they end up
flushing all the drugs down the toilet. Those animals in
those waterways do not have a choice. And it's how
that stuff bio accumulates through the food chain. How fish
infected by little tiny particles and then you eat one
hundred fish as an alligator, how that adds up in
your system.
Speaker 2: And that's just one instance. You know, cocaine.
Speaker 3: We have cocaine hippos which Pablo Esco are brought in,
which are altering the environment. We have bears that are
drinking alcohol, and the list actually goes on and on.
There are a lot of animals, I believe it or not.
Texas A and M just put out a study about
dolphins on fentanyl.
Speaker 2: You know things. There are crazy things happening in the
world and the animals have no control over it. And
it's pretty sad.
Speaker 3: So the show's very I don't want to be sad,
but it's sad that those things are happening.
Speaker 2: And this show.
Speaker 3: Digged into that and sort of allows the viewer to
understand how to be a little bit more responsible. So
hopefully these animals, which are innocent bystanders, are not ending
up in these situations.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, yeah, it's sad, but what
you're creating is awareness, You're creating conversation. This is how
we make changes.
Speaker 2: Exactly right, exactly right.
Speaker 3: By if we're talking about it, we're doing something right
and then we can fix it.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about those those hippos with Pablo and
how are we going to change that? And can it
be done?
Speaker 3: That's a very good question, aro To be honest, I
don't know the answer, you know. So we went down there.
We worked with the Colombian government, which was an absolute joy.
Bornarre is the organization down there, and we help formulate
a blueprint for how to mitigate the situation. You know,
it's not going to resolve it, but it's going to
slow it down. The if you read online, you'll read
that there's one hundred and forty hippos that are stemmed
from four. The truth is there's closer to, if not over,
two hundred hippos, and I can tell you that from
firsthand experience. And the problem is it's exponential growth. You
start with four, four becomes eight, eight becomes sixteen, and
so on and so forth. And now the hippos have
no natural predators. They're literally literally killing people because hippos
are a very dangerous animal. They're altering the environment things
that people don't talk about, like the endemic species of
real magdalena turtle which nests on sandy beaches.
Speaker 2: The hippos are crushing their eggs, you know. So they're
a big problem down there.
Speaker 3: And because it's such a difficult environment, I mean you're
literally talking about, you know, the South American jungle, like
think Amazon jungle, and it's impossible to track and catch
all these hippos. So we came up with a sorry
if I'm boring you, but we came up with a
three tiered approach where we have chemical castration, sterilization, and relocation.
So you catch some hippos and move them to zoos.
You use a thing called gonocon which is a chemical
to stop mature hippos from sexually maturing, and they still
grow up, but their gonads don't develop. And then you
catch the big ones and cut their nuts off. And
we did all three of.
Speaker 2: These things, and it was it's an adventure. I'll tell
you what.
Speaker 3: When you're catching a hippo to choppa's nuts off, he's
usually not very friendly about it.
Speaker 1: Now there's one area of this world that I'm really
worried about, and because you're so close to all animals,
all living things. Alcatraz, Alligator Alcatraz is scaring the hell
out of me. And the reason why is because you're
messing around with something that's completely natural and you're putting
the human being there.
Speaker 2: Yes, but we've done it for a long time, you know.
Speaker 3: That's what Alcatraz was, That's what Robin Island in South
Africa is, you know where. It's kind of interesting if
you think about it. What we're doing is using a
natural system to create a barrier, you know, and that
system is one of a lot of predators that if
human beings enter into that system, they can end up
dying and it creates a fearful situation where people try
not to escape. So, you know, I'm not like throw
alligator Alcatraz or anything like that, but I can understand
why people use these systems to enforce containment because I personally,
well I personally would like to go and see if
I can get away from out later Alcatraz, but I
wouldn't like to have done that. Swim for Robin Island
knowing the population of white sharks out.
Speaker 2: There, you know, I wouldn't have made it.
Speaker 3: I know that, and that seems scarier than trying to
crawl over a barbed wire fence to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But the thing that scares me, though, is because i'd
be here in the Caroline is we have these things
called flat land swamps, and I really want to take
care of the life that lives inside these flat water swamps.
And that's what reminds me of what's going on down there,
is that it's like you're messing around with nature.
Speaker 3: Sure, sure, and that's understandable, and you know, it's it's sad,
really because the Everglades ecosystem is such an incredible wetland
ecosystem and it has been so ravaged by people, not
just in the sense of development, which is a big component,
but invasive species. You know, if you go drive around
the Everglades, you're more likely to see things from South
America and Asia than you are to see things that
are from that part of the world because that system
has been so disrupted by people. And it's it's it's
sort of crazy what we've done. But at least for
the most part, taking alligator alcatraz an invasive species out
that we are on a whole working to protect it,
which I think is a good thing.
Speaker 1: I love it. Man, dude, you got to come back
to this show anytime in the future. I love that
you love animals and I'm an animal freak.
Speaker 2: Well I love that. So there we go. We make
a good team.
Speaker 1: Will you be brilliant today? Okay, sir, Yes, sir.
Speaker 2: Thanks