Mindless Nature Scares

[00:00:10] What you got for me today? 168 168 Alright I was trying to look up something that I remembered about Africa Okay Have you heard of like this Greenbelt or Greenwall Initiative? Greenwall, it sounds familiar but I have no idea what it is

[00:00:38] Yeah, I think it's a great idea Why did the internet suddenly decide that it doesn't want to work correctly? Okay Sorry, I'm trying to pull up the article and I'm like So it was originally launched in 2007 but it's recently been getting a lot of attention because so many more trees have been planted but basically the Great Greenwall is the idea to plant so many trees across

[00:01:06] all across Africa like through a ton of different countries to stop the progression of there's a word for it but it's like desertification basically where like the ground dries out the air dries out Oh yeah if there's not enough like plant life to help sustain it Yeah So they've introduced this wall to help protect fertile land It says it'll create

[00:01:34] a hundred million hectare Is it hectares or hectares? How do you say it? Depends on if you're in like a space film or not hectares it just sounds like you're going to a different planet Okay Well Hectares Hectares of degraded land It'll help sequester 250 million tons of carbon and help create 10 million green jobs by 2030 but basically they're going to grow more fertile land

[00:02:02] It'll create economic opportunities for the youngest population It'll create food security for millions that are going hungry It'll also create climate resilience in the place where apparently temperatures rise faster there in these countries in Africa faster than anywhere else on the planet and it'll also create basically a new world wonder So I think that's really cool Yeah There was also a couple It is really cool that they're going to try on that

[00:02:31] There was also a couple I think it was in South America somewhere that planted like a million trees or close to like millions of trees Yeah And they got I think their land got bought and like named as like a heritage something or other like a protected area Oh yeah We talked about that a few episodes ago I don't think it was a few but maybe I remember talking about it because it was the Chilean president he was leaving

[00:02:59] and so his last act in office was to name this gigantic area of land as like a wildlife refuge which is incredible because I guess it holds I think it said 10% of the world's biodiversity in this area alone So that's really cool I've just been looking at positive news because sometimes I know I'd be I'd be looking down on the dark side of things but Sometimes Just sometimes And then Oh one thing I thought was so cool

[00:03:29] this little coffee shop called Little Joy Coffee they have this best selling latte recipe and they were like yeah anybody can steal this recipe it's awesome and so all these other coffee shops have taken this recipe and are selling them now and Interesting The owner said if all independent shops do better we all do better it's in Minnesota and it's a raspberry Danish latte that does sound really good I would drink that Okay

[00:03:58] Okay Right? Like it's made with house-made raspberry syrup whole milk a double shot of espresso and fresh cream cheese cold foam it Okay creates a velvety fruity caffeinated beverage I kind of want to go to Minnesota now but just looking at little joys like that makes me happy Hmm Fruity tangy flavor and become a symbol of the latte travel trend I just like

[00:04:28] I'm on the Today website they just share a bunch of good positive news That is cool though Like this one woman raises one million dollars for a 78 year old DoorDash driver but after this he said they set my wife and I up so we can live a more comfortable life but that he continues he plans to continue delivery driving just cause he likes it That's always nice too cause I see a lot of stories like that where they're like I just enjoy doing it like okay

[00:04:59] I like enjoying many people I saw a video the other day of a guy getting into an Uber in probably in the UK somewhere or a taxi in the UK I guess and he the guy sitting in the back seat goes what's your name the guy in front seat tells him he goes I thought it was you he turns around and like fully looks at him for the other time and he's like no way and they're like I haven't seen you in like 20 years how you been like he was like oh reconnecting over a little little ride I'm like that's funny

[00:05:28] That is really cool I feel like I would see somebody and be like oh no oh no from 20 years ago sometimes you just gotta like look on the bright side of life you know for anyone who's watching this is your first episode just go back and watch any other episode and just see how she has not lived up to this mantra that she's presenting

[00:05:58] to you right now I said sometimes just just pick any any episode any one of them just watch through one other episode and you'd be like this is a different person this is I think my meds and stuff have been working really well that's good okay though small rant about my doctor this man will not stop sending one of my prescriptions through that's for like emergency anti-anxiety you know

[00:06:28] and I've told him over and over and over to please stop sending it to Walgreens I have an entire bottle that I have not used in maybe a year was the last time I needed this and again he sent it to them so I'm gonna have to go up there and piss off the Walgreens people because every time that they fill a prescription they don't need to fill they're like why didn't you tell us and I'm like I fucking told my doctor you know so that's gonna be a fun conversation yeah I'm just looking at odd news and things like that and I read this

[00:06:58] it reminded me of a story that I read the other day where I think it's Colombia just voted to kill a bunch of cocaine hippos so hippos not native to Colombia were brought there by Pablo Escobar fucking asshole like hippos are awful and since

[00:07:27] he's no longer around right there have been reports of like over 180 that have just bloomed and they have no predators in Colombia that reduce their population so they're basically going around and just like killing manatees and like things in the water and like other other fish species and like wrecking ecosystems so they just voted to

[00:07:56] basically I think they said call like 60 of them like get rid of a bunch of them right to slow the spread they're not talking about wiping them out entirely just slow it down because there's no predators population control right and the amount of backlash that they're getting from like animal rights activists is crazy and the people are like I've seen a lot of them basically saying like no it's not NRI it's like it's way more costly to try and

[00:08:26] relocate them somewhere else to a place that they don't know about and that they can't survive in but if we keep them here they're literally like destroying the ecosystem you know like this is not yeah I was looking up so apparently adult hippos have virtually no natural predators but lions crocodiles and hyenas occasionally prey on calves sick individuals and rarely adults it's that humans are

[00:08:56] their primary threat while elephants and rhinos can kill them in territorial conflicts also they're not like walking through the streets and just shooting them like what they approved was sedating them giving them lethal injection and then burying them yeah that's pretty much what I assumed are people thinking they're just out there whacking off hippos I think that people when they read like they're gonna go take care of population control they just think they're just like saddle up boys we got the rifles and everybody's

[00:09:25] like on a horse just like with fucking rifles just I'll get this one no I mean I was pretty much picturing euthanasia okay but so this reminds me the hippos I watched that movie thrash yesterday that's on netflix that's been going viral because it's very it's just like a cheesy thriller movie right I love it there's one part where Phoebe Divener she has to like she gives birth to her baby and then

[00:09:55] she grabs a fucking like a piece of wood and she goes mommy's here she just has to go fight some fucking sharks but the one thing that you reminded me of there's this guy he's from Mozambique and he studies sharks in the movie and of course there's always a scientist well he's trying to go rescue his niece who was alone while he was at work on the bay you know but one of the guys that is helping him get up the place to go get his niece asked him

[00:10:25] why he decided to study sharks and he talks about how when he lived in Africa there was a hippo that tried to attack him and like he thought he was gonna die he was so scared and then he said a great right shark came up and like destroyed the hippo and he was like that was the only time I've seen fear in a hippo's eyes but this other guy goes so what did you do did you go back to your hut and like grab a stick or like and the guy goes no I went back to my house

[00:10:55] called the police and had a pizza it's fucking Mozambique not about about these women who everybody always asks them questions because they live in Africa

[00:11:25] and they're like how do you get food in Africa do you have grocery stores and stuff and this woman she's sitting there against a tree eating a bag of cool ranch Doritos and she's like no we have to go and fight them ourselves and attack these animals and stuff the whole people think that other people in countries are savages and don't have modern things but no

[00:11:55] they're just people they live in a different country you know I always think that's funny I still want to know what can kill a hippo what can't kill a hippo fucking disease old age sleeping too much I don't crocodiles are the main animal that will fuck a hippo up apparently yeah that makes sense probably just because their bite force and like tearing off legs or something I don't know crocodiles are a perfect animal they haven't changed in a long time

[00:12:22] I'm reading more into these hippos in South America apparently a judge in Ohio in 2021 ruled that the hippos were interested persons under US law making them the first non-human animals to be granted legal personhood in an American court this decision carries no weight in Columbia yeah why would it okay I think it's

[00:12:52] because the hippos were originally bought from a Dallas zoo and shipped to Columbia for Pablo Escobar how long ago they were originally shipped down there in the 80s so they've been there for like 40 years 1981 there's a Yahoo article that says the rise and fall of Columbia infamous cocaine hippos so why do they call them that just because of Pablo Escobar or like yeah

[00:13:22] they're not like on cocaine it's literally like they were brought here for cocaine reason he bought a male and three females and in 1981 kept them in an artificial lake alongside his pet rhino and elephant I'm sure that caused no problems whatsoever in 93 the rhino when he was killed the rhinos and elephants were relocated the hippos which can weigh up to three tons somehow escaped to the nearby river

[00:13:53] Columbia's largest waterway the hippos became known locally and later internationally as Escobar's cocaine hippos none of these hippos have ever been observed actually doing cocaine thank you for specifying I was really worried like how are they going to get them to rehab you know okay this article goes which is it says which is unfortunate because in America there are cocaine bears that star in their own movies and they could potentially team up I love when we wrote this article this one says

[00:14:23] hippos are not small creatures oh I didn't know that how fascinating they have some really good pictures of hippos in this article though yeah when I was in Africa we were standing we got off like the I don't want to call it a bus but like the safari jeep kind of thing right and it was in this little dirt area where they had enough space to turn around so they stopped there and then we got out and

[00:14:53] he's telling us about the animals that we can see and then he's like you can walk around and he go if if you go over the rocks and a hippo gets mad the

[00:15:22] hippo will get to those rocks faster than you can get back to the bus and we're like oh okay how fast can hippos go it's fast as fuck I kilometers per hour so 19 miles per hour okay so even still 19 miles an hour like I don't know if you were

[00:15:52] set a treadmill to 19 wait is that what the numbers mean like yeah that's miles per hour like I do long distance at like 6.8 usually the fastest I go is usually like six and a half seven because at that point my legs physically cannot keep up with me yeah that's miles per hour that's what that is they run 19 on a treadmill like go to a high most most regular treadmills won't go that high like

[00:16:22] you'll need like a high speed like sprinters treadmill to do like that speed what's like yeah 19 miles an hour is gone like so let's see how fast so Usain Bolt's top speed was nearly 28 miles per hour yeah but Usain Bolt could probably outrun a hippo yeah but that was like 100 meters I think yeah for 100 meter and 200 meter sprints his meter his

[00:16:52] 100 meter record from the 2009 Berlin world championship remains unbroken

[00:17:25] also yeah don't don't don't don't sit with their nose and head above sometimes and you can't see them depending on what surrounds them if it's like that picture you just showed me where there's a lot of vegetation it would be very difficult to see them yeah but the majority of the time they'll just sit there and you'll be able to see their heads poking out the thing about the manatees makes me really upset because manatees are still endangered I'm pretty sure and they're like the most gentle animals like they want nothing more than to play with people and people aren't allowed

[00:17:55] to touch them because of their conservation status but manatees will come up and hug you and shit and people are just like there's videos of swimmers being like it wasn't me the manatee came up to me I didn't touch it but manatees are such sweet animals fuck those hippos hippos actually can't swim nope they just kind of bounce off the bottom of rivers how fast are

[00:18:31] fast in the water a lot of times like if you go back and watch what is it Tarzan like the animated one you'll see them like sitting in the water like and then when they move they literally like bounce underwater oh yeah I

[00:19:01] what are you categorizing as dangerous like kills the most people mosquitoes mosquitoes are the most dangerous because they cause 725 thousand to a million deaths annually by transmitting diseases such as malaria dengue fever and zika yep it's always mosquitoes dude I don't think there's any positive effect that mosquitoes have also for anyone knowing if you wear was it royal blue they're attracted to that

[00:19:31] color so like if you're in an area that has more mosquitoes don't wear blue I guess wear red every animal hates red so the animal on like actual animals though hippos are number one or number 10 at 500 deaths per year let's see elephants are number nine also 500 deaths per year that makes sense they're big and they're mostly gentle but elephants will fuck you up

[00:20:01] yeah I think I think it's mainly just because people don't understand like on safaris and things like they charge at vehicles and if you're just standing there like trying to take a picture they're not gentle they're territorial they'll try to kill you or at least stampede over you number eight is saltwater crocodiles at a thousand deaths per year I did also read that elephants are one of the few species we've observed that have names for each other and they've the way they found that out is they recorded

[00:20:31] like sections of like grumbles and like you know like vibrations that elephants make and they've identified they don't know what they mean but they've identified certain patterns that were repeated and when they would like play it for a group of elephants it would always be the same elephant that would turn around to look and who's calling him that's cute this next picture really grossed me out number seven is escaris roundworms 2,500 deaths per year I can't

[00:21:00] stand looking at pictures of worms even like they fucking gross me out cannot stand it yeah the roundworms are bad number six is scorpions with 2,600 deaths per year makes sense I've been stung by a scorpion it was not my favorite the most lethal scorpion in the world is said to be the indian red scorpion haven't heard of that but I don't want to nope number five is assassin bugs I've heard of them before but I don't know anything about them

[00:21:30] I don't either they have 10,000 deaths per year it says they spread disease and death through their bite and that's why they're named the assassin bug they spread chagas disease a tropical parasitic disease that kills 10,000 people per year they are often called kissing bugs as they tend to bite people's faces when they sleep number four is the soft scaled viper at 138,000 deaths per year it holds the record

[00:22:10] making it more deadly than the most toxic snake that is shy due to its aggressive nature with its potent venom and highly in its presence in highly populated areas it's a big snake to fear freshwater snails are number three yeah 200 deaths per year pick up 200 200,000 deaths fresh freshwater snails are crazy like they're not

[00:22:40] good to pick up apparently they typically have these really bad parasitic flatworms known as flukes there are 24,000 different species of flukes and most of them are parasites to vertebrates and mollusks a particularly nasty one that the snails have is called schistosoma it lives and develops within the snail and then is released into the water humans get infected from the contaminated fresh water because they can penetrate the skin

[00:23:10] which is responsible for a deadly human disease called schistosomiasis I can't say that word also known as snail fever I think for short usually it's just like schisto isn't it it says after malaria this is considered to be the most socio-economically devastating parasitic disease number two humans 431 deaths per year 431 000 deaths per year keep leaving off the end there

[00:23:39] it says it's a cliche but aside from mosquitoes the most deadly animal is ourselves homicides account for an estimated 431 000 human deaths a year okay but like what about like war and stuff does that include other people that are like murdered in that kind of situation or is it just how many people you think are murdered in war like it's not it's not like world war one and two where like millions are dying world war one is the most deadly war in history right i think more people died in two i could be wrong

[00:24:08] but like you're talking about the entire course of like four years oh yeah you're right world war two is the deadliest conflict in human history with an estimated 70 to 85 million fatalities yeah that's crazy followed by the mongul conquests which killed 20 to 60 million people and the taiping rebellion which killed 20 to 70 million like 85 million people divided by like the what four years of war is 21 million people

[00:24:38] a year like compared to that we're doing great with the 470 we're not doing amazing we could lower that number definitely but uh you know that okay it's even crazier when you put it in percentage um world war two s like resulted in killing off roughly three to four percent of the world's global population how much was the black plague because it killed off like a huge portion of the killed off like two-thirds of europe at the time

[00:25:09] i also read that most um like projections of the world population may be underestimating because most of what we use to estimate the world's population like current population is census data and like satellite mapping with like density algorithms but it doesn't work as well in like uh less congested rural areas so then

[00:25:38] like they uh the the real estimate of what they are now trying to like uh account for is off by they think it's like they're off by like several hundreds of thousands if not like millions of how many people are actually alive i saw that it said 70 the black plague had 70 to

[00:26:16] live has black plague dna but many people of european descent carry genetic mutations that helped their ancestors survive the 14th century plague pandemic these genetic adaptations are now linked to a higher risk of modern autoimmune diseases that makes sense like yeah you survived but it says the same genes that protected these people 700 years ago provide stronger immune responses but can cause autoimmune disorders like crohn's disease or rheumatoid arthritis

[00:26:45] the plague exerted intense immediate pressure on the human genome which has caused a lasting impact on how our immune systems work yeah that makes sense damn nature you scary that was the end of the thought damn nature i don't know i think the sickest i've ever been was uh covid like uh had it one time do you not want to do it again i would rather have the flu

[00:27:15] the flu made me feel like i was dying covid i would have been dead and i wouldn't have even known it like like when i had covid i literally just stayed in bed for like a week straight i didn't even i wasn't watching movies playing games like i was sleeping and i'm never too sick to play video games okay or even like the last time i got sick with that respiratory infection i just watched k-dramas the whole week you know but i still had enough energy somehow i watch a lot of anime okay

[00:27:46] i had nothing else to do no couldn't have besides feel like shit research stuff nah i didn't even like eat that week remember like i was mostly having like broth and tea and then i got a cold a few weeks ago man i don't understand my immune system's never been this bad before yeah i keep telling you to like go outside and you're just like no i'll hug a cat and feel fine like yeah i guess that's true well i think that's about it unless

[00:28:16] you got any other thoughts you want to share with the class one six eight one six eight all right get out there um before we end i just wanted to give a shout out to caleb uh jordan and i appreciate you for listening and watching every single week and we hope that you know how much you are appreciated so shout out to caleb it felt really heartfelt and then right at the end it was just like that is heartfelt it was regular birthday right at the end

[00:28:45] that's what it felt like no i was just trying not to be too loud since we're like in the apartment so i was like excited but like you know yes yes that's how it felt i get it was radiating this way the genuineness is okay but caleb you know you know we appreciate you thank you all right that's gonna do it for this week's episode of mindless prattle don't forget to like subscribe

[00:29:15] and we'll see you next week goodbye bye you