We, Being Elephant People?

[00:00] I want to know if we've got an under-googable,
[00:03] I'm going to cleanse my palate a little bit.
[00:12] Should we do an under-googables?
[00:13] That was the play of it.
[00:15] I'm super excited.
[00:16] You told us we had to, sir.
[00:19] You said we signed up for it.
[00:23] In the end, it's going to be better and more true
[00:25] than Google can give you.
[00:28] I'm going to work my noggin a little bit.
[00:31] So I don't know if this one has an answer, really.
[00:37] But it's just something I want to talk about.
[00:41] I don't know if this is under-googable.
[00:42] Probably is.
[00:46] Was talking to somebody this week and said
[00:52] that I was told that elephants do not have natural predators.
[01:02] And I started thinking to myself, elephants are super smart.
[01:08] They've got this super cool trunk
[01:12] that does all this stuff.
[01:18] They're really community-based.
[01:23] They take care of their own.
[01:26] I guess I want to know why every animal isn't an elephant.
[01:32] Hm?
[01:33] Can you rephrase that question?
[01:39] All right.
[01:39] I mean, I guess I went down this rabbit hole
[01:43] and I was thinking, OK, there was a time where
[01:46] the dinosaurs, where things are just really big.
[01:52] And then they died out.
[01:54] And mammals survived the apocalypse
[02:01] for different reasons.
[02:02] They were smaller, and they had fur,
[02:04] and they could deal with the Ice Age, whatever.
[02:08] So I get why dinosaurs died out.
[02:10] But it seems to me that if you're really big
[02:14] and nobody can come kill you and you also take care of yourself
[02:19] and also you're really smart and you have a cool trunk,
[02:23] that's really the way to go.
[02:25] Why isn't everything elephants, is my question.
[02:31] Well, so yes, I guess you're right.
[02:36] Blue whales are similarly just gigantic
[02:39] and have no predators.
[02:42] So apparently, if you're sick or your baby
[02:46] gets out of the herd, a starving animal,
[02:50] I looked this part up because I got really interested.
[02:52] When somebody told me this, like a jackal or a lion
[02:55] or whatever, we'll try to take the baby or a sick elephant.
[02:58] But only starving animals because they
[03:00] know that it's dumb to screw with elephant herds
[03:03] because they'll just get trampled and killed and stuff.
[03:06] And they always try to encircle their sick
[03:08] and they're young anyway.
[03:10] So also same thing with alligators.
[03:12] They just get messed up by elephants.
[03:15] In general, they're good.
[03:17] Nothing's messing with them.
[03:19] They live a long time.
[03:20] They're super smart.
[03:21] They're super caring for their own community.
[03:25] Why isn't everything elephants?
[03:29] Well, I mean, perhaps given enough time,
[03:35] things would go back to being huge, large things
[03:41] like they were in a Jurassic period or whatever.
[03:50] But I mean, the reasons that things aren't always
[03:54] the same is because diversity egg is an advantage
[03:59] or the ability to diversify.
[04:03] And other animals have found success.
[04:07] So once you have success and you have a species that
[04:12] can propagate itself and whatnot, you're
[04:17] just going to continue to have that natural diversity.
[04:21] I mean, I understand that it's kind of a stupid question.
[04:24] Because clearly evolution, you have lots of different things
[04:27] that survive and have success.
[04:30] I mean, insects, they're freaking everywhere.
[04:34] And they're the smallest thing.
[04:36] I get that.
[04:38] But my little rabbit, she's got zero protection at all.
[04:44] She's fast.
[04:46] But a lot of things will eat her.
[04:49] I mean, she didn't have a tough skin.
[04:51] She's a crayon.
[04:52] She's not big, exactly.
[04:54] But so I mean, and I get, but you know, she.
[04:58] What does that world look like when everything
[05:01] has nothing that can?
[05:04] Well, I'm just saying, why aren't we all just elephants, right?
[05:07] Like, why can't we all just be elephants?
[05:08] We all just take care of each other.
[05:10] We're super smart.
[05:10] We got trunks.
[05:11] We, you know, nothing can kill us.
[05:14] That's cool.
[05:16] Like, why isn't elephants more things?
[05:19] So a lot of this comes, a lot of this
[05:22] comes down to resources and reproduction, right?
[05:25] So sure.
[05:27] Elephants are gigantic animals that
[05:29] have one offspring at a time.
[05:31] Yeah.
[05:31] Right.
[05:32] And it's a long, it's a long incubation period, correct?
[05:37] They gestate for two years.
[05:39] Two years, OK.
[05:40] So all this requires massive caloric intake, right?
[05:44] OK.
[05:46] So the speed at which the population can grow,
[05:50] it just has a very distinct ceiling
[05:53] based upon what its environment can support, right?
[05:56] OK.
[05:58] So I need more.
[06:00] I mean, we just need to eat more stuff.
[06:04] We being elephant people?
[06:06] Yeah.
[06:08] So for humans to become elephants.
[06:13] How do we get there?
[06:14] Yeah.
[06:15] We've got to eat more leaves, I think.
[06:17] Sure.
[06:18] No, I mean, yeah.
[06:19] Like, I think that it's every species has their own strategy,
[06:24] if you will, for survival and propagation of species.
[06:28] Like your rabbit, their strategy is somewhere
[06:33] in between an elephant and an insect, right?
[06:37] So insects just have tons and tons and tons of offspring,
[06:41] right?
[06:42] Right.
[06:42] Like, that's their strategy.
[06:43] And most of them are going to die.
[06:45] And then they'll live for like 24 hours,
[06:49] and then they have more babies or whatever, right?
[06:52] And rabbits, similarly, like they have large litters, right?
[06:57] So they don't invest a ton.
[06:59] I mean, they do because they're mammals.
[07:01] They invest a ton of energy and sort of reproduction
[07:05] and whatnot.
[07:07] But they also just have a bunch of them
[07:09] because they know that like half of them
[07:11] aren't going to make it.
[07:13] Or they don't actually know this, but whatever.
[07:15] Their species has been refined.
[07:17] Right, exactly.
[07:18] So like sort of go with that strategy or whatever.
[07:22] So OK, but like I guess it works.
[07:25] It does work.
[07:26] There's a ton of rabbits.
[07:27] But like I guess on some level,
[07:29] I guess it's sort of a larger conversation about why
[07:34] are things not larger, you know?
[07:36] I mean, on some level, the idea if you're a small rabbit
[07:42] and you just have lots of offspring
[07:44] and you can run fast is one strategy.
[07:47] But like also being really big is also another strategy.
[07:52] So it's weird to me that there's not more large things, I guess.
[07:55] I mean, there's one argument is that we killed them all.
[07:58] OK, like the buffalo.
[08:01] Yeah, woolly mammoths.
[08:03] Like we just killed all that stuff because it was.
[08:05] Because they had lots of meat.
[08:07] Yeah, exactly.
[08:07] It was efficient for us.
[08:09] So we killed off lots of big things.
[08:11] OK.
[08:13] Because even though we weren't the largest animal,
[08:16] we became the best hunters.
[08:18] Right.
[08:18] And we're the biggest predator to elephants at this point
[08:22] and now, right?
[08:23] We're their only natural predators, actually.
[08:26] Right.
[08:29] Right.
[08:30] Right.
[08:31] Yeah, and we almost fished the blue whale out of existence,
[08:35] right?
[08:36] It's just how we roll.
[08:37] We're fascinated by big things.
[08:40] Yeah.
[08:41] And they do provide lots of meat.
[08:45] Yeah, although we never ate blue whales,
[08:46] we were just in it for like oil.
[08:49] For the challenge.
[08:50] The blubber.
[08:51] Yeah.
[08:52] For the blubber.
[08:53] Get to the blubber.
[08:56] Get to the blubber.
[09:01] My documentaries are pretty exciting.
[09:05] Do we know why dinosaurs were ginormous?
[09:12] I guess because there were fewer predators at that point
[09:18] that could take them down or whatever.
[09:20] Or is that even true or is that a falsehood in my brain
[09:24] that like dinosaurs are huge, where in fact, most of them,
[09:28] you know, whatever.
[09:31] Normal, quote unquote, normal size or whatever.
[09:33] Chicken size.
[09:34] Right.
[09:35] Yeah.
[09:36] I mean, there certainly were a lot of those, which, you know,
[09:39] because they were living on, you know,
[09:44] the wealth of vegetation during a warm wet period
[09:47] and, you know, geologic history.
[09:51] They then created food for larger meat eating things.
[09:56] Right.
[09:57] And like insects were ginormous as well.
[09:59] Yeah.
[10:00] So that like it's just there's just more fuel around.
[10:03] Yeah.
[10:04] Seemed to be the case.
[10:07] Until like asteroid.
[10:09] Right.
[10:10] Yeah.
[10:11] So if you've got like a brontosaurus or a brachiosaurus
[10:14] or like even like a triceratops, right, which is like,
[10:16] was that the size of an elephant?
[10:19] Sure.
[10:20] Size of a ford, I think.
[10:24] Big ford.
[10:24] It's Bill Ford tough.
[10:25] Bill Ford tough.
[10:30] And then you don't and you only have a few large meat
[10:36] eating animals, right?
[10:37] Like you have the T-Rex and then the Aladon or whatever.
[10:43] Velociraptor.
[10:45] Velociraptor.
[10:45] But those guys are small, right?
[10:47] Are they taking down a brontosaurus?
[10:51] I doubt it.
[10:52] I don't think much was taken down a brontosaurus.
[10:54] Right.
[10:55] Yeah.
[10:55] It's sort of like the modern elephant on some level,
[10:57] right?
[10:59] Somewhere in between that and a blue whale
[11:00] then it's been like 80% of its life in water or something.
[11:03] Oh, that's a fun fact.
[11:07] I don't know if it's a fact.
[11:08] It's a fun supposition.
[11:11] Is the brontosaurus the one that got renamed?
[11:14] Yeah.
[11:14] The Allosaurus or something?
[11:16] No, I thought the Allosaurus was the,
[11:19] it's like a Tyrannosaurus, but just has a longer bill
[11:24] and more like alligator type teeth.
[11:25] Yeah.
[11:26] I think they call it the brachiosaurus now.
[11:28] Brachiosaurus.
[11:29] OK, gotcha.
[11:30] I felt like when I was a kid, they would always,
[11:32] you know, I'd learned my dinosaurs, which
[11:35] I was very interested in.
[11:37] And then every so often, I would
[11:38] read some story about this, like, oh,
[11:40] that one that you thought was big,
[11:42] we found one that's like 50 times bigger.
[11:44] Right.
[11:44] And that happened like every couple of years
[11:46] that there was one that was just,
[11:48] that dwarfed the previous biggest one.
[11:52] Yeah.
[11:53] Yeah.
[11:54] And then there was like Megalodon or something.
[11:57] Yeah.
[11:57] Zugliodon.
[11:59] Yeah.
[12:01] Jigglyodon.
[12:03] And then there was a, what was the Jurassic Park,
[12:05] Jurassic World thing, the combo?
[12:10] They made that up, though.
[12:13] Come on.
[12:15] Felt so true.
[12:16] That was based on a real eight-year-old's story.
[12:19] That's right.
[12:20] They got to write.
[12:21] Nightmare fever dream.
[12:26] Well, I think to get back to your original question,
[12:28] if everything's an elephant, then there's not
[12:30] enough diversity.
[12:32] Sure.
[12:33] Then, you know, then these humans pop up
[12:35] and they just kill all of them.
[12:36] Or, you know, pick another.
[12:39] Or, yeah, the, I suppose, the flora and fauna
[12:45] probably has trouble surviving if.
[12:49] Right.
[12:49] Yeah, the elephants are just foraging everything.
[12:52] Right.
[12:53] That's right.
[12:53] That's right.
[12:56] So it's all a delicate balance.
[13:00] Right.
[13:01] And ecosystems are at their best if there's
[13:05] a diversity of things going on, right?
[13:08] So that way, if any one thread gets pulled,
[13:12] then other things can survive, right?
[13:16] Yeah.
[13:16] If everything's hunting one thing, that thing will just die.
[13:19] Right.
[13:20] And then it's gone.
[13:22] Yeah.
[13:23] Unless it gets adopted and put in somebody's apartment
[13:26] and then given a bell.
[13:27] That's correct.
[13:30] Just throw out examples.
[13:32] Sure.
[13:36] You look at some of these animals and like some
[13:38] of these dogs and it's like, how are you
[13:41] going to survive out in the wild?
[13:43] Yeah, no.
[13:43] Evolution did not do that.
[13:45] We did that.
[13:47] We made teacup dogs.
[13:50] Fits in a purse.
[13:54] That's our fault.
[13:54] I feel like you look at those dogs.
[13:56] I've done this before is one of these little dogs
[14:01] is like just acting out of line.
[14:04] You just look at them as like, I'm the only reason you're
[14:07] not dead right now.
[14:09] I'm keeping you from the grave.
[14:13] Is that the only way I don't get it?
[14:15] I was going to say, is that there's nothing.
[14:17] Kind of a stern talking to you there, Joey.
[14:19] Yeah.
[14:22] Yeah, one of the reasons they wouldn't do well in the wild,
[14:24] they're pretty dumb.
[14:29] Apparently, my information on sauropods is outdated as well.
[14:32] They were probably almost wholly terrestrial.
[14:37] OK.
[14:41] Sauropods.
[14:42] Which one did we used to call that one?
[14:43] Was that the brachosaurus?
[14:45] It's like the family in which, yeah, brachiosaursus.
[14:50] Brachiosaursus.
[14:52] Probably brachiosaursus back then.
[14:54] Man, there's hell of a dinosaur.
[14:58] Things changed since I was a kid.
[15:01] Yeah.
[15:05] When I was a young man, I spent a lot of time
[15:07] reading about these guys.
[15:09] Akylosaurus.
[15:13] And sometimes, you know, they realized at some point
[15:18] that this thing that they thought existed
[15:21] was actually two different species that just happened
[15:24] to have their bones together.
[15:25] Yeah, right.
[15:26] Oh, yeah, by the way, that was not even close.
[15:30] Here's two boring creatures.
[15:35] Well, I mean, I guess the point of this
[15:37] is that the elephant is the modern day dinosaur.
[15:43] Is that what we learned?
[15:44] What way?
[15:45] I did not learn that.
[15:47] Just because it's big?
[15:50] Yeah.
[15:51] OK.
[15:52] Sure, I learned that.
[15:55] Brontosaurus was named in 1879.
[16:00] After Emily Bronte, actually, fun fact.
[16:04] Really?
[16:05] No.
[16:06] Oh, gummy.
[16:14] Yay, look at these artists' renditions
[16:16] of dinosaurs these days.
[16:18] And you really see the connection to birds.
[16:21] Yeah, apparently, lots of them were fluffy.
[16:24] Yeah.
[16:26] Maybe even T-Rex.
[16:27] And lots of them, like, look like T-Rexes.
[16:29] Yeah, like, they have these short arms and, like, it's crazy.
[16:35] So Apatosaurus, I think, was the brontosaurus.
[16:41] Eats puzzle grass.
[16:43] Because he has an Apatosaurus.
[16:46] I'm sorry.
[16:48] Interesting.
[16:50] They weighed from between 36 and 49,000 pounds.
[16:55] Whoa, that is a wide range.
[16:58] Oh, wait, no, 36,000 to 40.
[17:01] Oh, yes, 36,000 and 49,000.
[17:07] One of the stats on there is what it was eaten by.
[17:11] It was a Torvosaurus, which I'm not familiar with.
[17:15] But it looks kind of like a slimmed-down T-Rex.
[17:22] They're only about 8 or 9, 8 to 10,000 pounds.
[17:28] Yeah, 33 feet long now.
[17:31] Yeah, 33 feet long.
[17:34] Torvosaurus.
[17:35] It was a genus of a carnivorous megalosauroid theropod.
[17:46] When I was in high school, I drove around a Ford Taurusaurus.
[17:52] It is time to get going.
[17:56] Do we answer your question?
[17:58] It was Ford Strong.
[18:00] It was Ford Tough.
[18:02] I screwed up their motto.
[18:05] Oh, Ford is no longer going to be a sponsor.
[18:08] And there goes all that sweet endorsement money
[18:11] calls and things.
[18:12] Just lost that Ford money.
[18:16] Oh, no.
[18:18] I love this sentence.
[18:19] So they lived, the Torvosaurus lived approximately 153
[18:23] to 148 million years ago during the late Jurassic
[18:25] period in what is now Colorado and Portugal.
[18:38] Plate tectonics are weird.
[18:41] Something crazy went down.
[18:47] The Majungasaurus?
[18:50] Ooh.
[18:51] Yeah, apparently, we're running out of names for dinosaurs
[18:53] because there were so many.
[18:55] Majungasaurus.
[18:59] I mean, that doesn't sound right.
[19:02] Large theropod.
[19:03] Ooh.
[19:03] There's the afrovanator.
[19:06] I like that one.
[19:09] Afrovanator?
[19:10] Yeah, A-F-R-O-V-E-N-A-T-O-R.
[19:13] Whoa, look at that guy.
[19:16] It all happened after I was a kid.
[19:19] Right.
[19:19] I used to have flashcards, dinosaurs, back in the day.
[19:23] A little like a library index.
[19:27] Male nurse.
[19:31] But I did not have the afrovanator in there.
[19:36] Because it didn't exist.
[19:38] Yep.
[19:40] I mean, it did.
[19:40] We just didn't know about it.
[19:42] Right, it didn't exist.
[19:45] If the afrovanator lives in the woods,
[19:49] but nobody knows about it, does it exist?