Joe Rogan Experience #1403 - Forrest Galante

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   (singing) And (snaps fingers) what's…

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:00

      (singing) And (snaps fingers) what's happening, brother? How are ya?

   2. FGForrest Galante0:05

      Hey, Joe. I'm good, man.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:05

      Good to see you, man.

   4. FGForrest Galante0:06

      It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:07

      I've been following your exploits on, uh, social media and, uh, the yellow caiman.

   6. FGForrest Galante0:12

      Yes. (laughs)

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:13

      Dude, that is a wild-looking creature.

   8. FGForrest Galante0:16

      Isn't it? It's unbelievable.

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:17

      And it was thought to be extinct?

   10. FGForrest Galante0:18

       Uh, yeah, so this one's... It's a little confusing. It, um... It's a species that was last seen in... When the last one died in a zoo in the '80s, and because of the region that it occupies in Colombia, which has always been controlled by FARC rebels, nobody had been back down there to look for it. And, uh, myself, and there's actually this amazing Colombian scientist named Sergio Riena, were both kind of going and, and prodding and trying to see if we could get in, and, and we both found it within a month of each other.

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:43

       Oh, wow.

   12. FGForrest Galante0:44

       Yeah. (laughs)

   13. JRJoe Rogan0:44

       Now, it's a... It was a beautiful-looking creature. Look at that thing.

   14. FGForrest Galante0:47

       Right? (laughs)

   15. JRJoe Rogan0:48

       Such a wild, green, yellow color. So wild-looking.

   16. FGForrest Galante0:52

       It's u- super unique. I mean-

   17. JRJoe Rogan0:54

       Dude, you're just holding that thing by the neck?

   18. FGForrest Galante0:56

       Yeah. We just had a little wr- wrestling match, him and I, so... (laughs)

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:00

       You don't even have body control. Don't you wanna take mount here, maybe get a back mount, get some hooks in?

   20. FGForrest Galante1:04

       (laughs)

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:05

       (laughs)

   22. FGForrest Galante1:06

       No, he was, he was good at it. You know, reptiles, they tire out, so they're not like mammals.

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:10

       Oh.

   24. FGForrest Galante1:10

       Um, once they expend all their energy, that's kind of it. Um, but yeah, absolutely amazing.

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:15

       D- Are they similar to regular crocodiles or alligators in that they don't have to eat for, like, a year?

   26. FGForrest Galante1:21

       Yeah. The... So, caiman... I mean, caiman don't have the... as slow of metabolism as certain other species, but they are... They're a member of the alligator family, so to speak, and they can go very long times without food.

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:33

       What a crazy animal. Like, looks like a monster.

   28. FGForrest Galante1:37

       Yep.

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:37

       I mean, look at-

   30. FGForrest Galante1:37

       Look at it. (laughs)
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Yes. …

   1. FGForrest Galante15:00

      Instagram are there where people are chugging vodka-

   2. JRJoe Rogan15:02

      Yes.

   3. FGForrest Galante15:02

      ... and jumping off roofs and slamming tables and all this other stuff?

   4. JRJoe Rogan15:05

      Oh, yeah.

   5. FGForrest Galante15:05

      Is everybody looking at that being like, "Hey, I'm gonna jump off a roof onto a table"?

   6. JRJoe Rogan15:08

      Yeah.

   7. FGForrest Galante15:08

      (laughs)

   8. JRJoe Rogan15:08

      There's so many of those pages.

   9. FGForrest Galante15:10

      Yeah.

   10. JRJoe Rogan15:10

       There's so many of those videos.

   11. FGForrest Galante15:12

       Right.

   12. JRJoe Rogan15:12

       People breaking their legs, jumping off balconies, like, oh ...

   13. FGForrest Galante15:15

       Just don't do it.

   14. JRJoe Rogan15:15

       Yeah. (laughs)

   15. FGForrest Galante15:16

       (laughs)

   16. JRJoe Rogan15:16

       I think it's probably good to see people do stupid shit-

   17. FGForrest Galante15:19

       Right.

   18. JRJoe Rogan15:19

       ... so then you don't do it.

   19. FGForrest Galante15:20

       Right.

   20. JRJoe Rogan15:21

       You know?

   21. FGForrest Galante15:21

       Yeah. And I got the scars to prove it, you know?

   22. JRJoe Rogan15:22

       Yeah.

   23. FGForrest Galante15:22

       Like there's, there's shots of me getting bitten by sharks and all this other stuff, it's like, "This is why you don't do it."

   24. JRJoe Rogan15:27

       You've been bitten by a shark?

   25. FGForrest Galante15:28

       Just this year. I mean, it's pretty minor, but just this year I, I took a single tooth-

   26. JRJoe Rogan15:32

       Ay-yi-yi.

   27. FGForrest Galante15:32

       ... from, uh, a lemon shark while I was working in the field with one.

   28. JRJoe Rogan15:35

       Dude, lemme see that. Fuck, man.

   29. FGForrest Galante15:38

       It's actually, it's on my Instagram page, I think. You can pull it up.

   30. JRJoe Rogan15:40

       What's, uh, what's below ... What's the scar below it?
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Oh, wow. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan30:00

      Now even the Northern states aren't safe. The swine have established themselves in Canada-"

   2. FGForrest Galante30:04

      Oh, wow.

   3. JRJoe Rogan30:04

      "... and are encroaching on border states like Montana and North Dakota." Fuck, man. If they get into Montana...

   4. FGForrest Galante30:09

      They'll do so much damage. You know what's crazy about the feral pigs in the United States? They were brought here by, I believe, Christopher Columbus, starting with six animals.

   5. JRJoe Rogan30:19

      Whoa.

   6. FGForrest Galante30:19

      So the entire 200 million or whatever it is across the US, I don't know the number, it was like, six or eight or 10 original pigs that were brought in by Christopher Columbus and dropped in Florida.

   7. JRJoe Rogan30:30

      That's insane.

   8. FGForrest Galante30:31

      That's... You wanna talk about how crazy they can reproduce and how much damage they do? Like, think of the biomass of those animals s- stemming off of, like, six of them.

   9. JRJoe Rogan30:39

      That's insane.... and they're so tough, you can put them on a boat and they'll make it across the ocean.

   10. FGForrest Galante30:44

       Oh, yeah. No, they're amaz- I, and, and, and they are terrible for the environment.

   11. JRJoe Rogan30:48

       Yeah.

   12. FGForrest Galante30:48

       Like, they do so much damage to native species, to riparian habitat. I mean, they're... I, like you said, we were talking about it out there briefly and, um, it's, it's a good thing. People should realize that invasive species like that should not be in an ecosystem.

   13. JRJoe Rogan31:02

       Well, they certainly shouldn't be in an ecosystem when there's no balance, right?

   14. FGForrest Galante31:05

       Correct.

   15. JRJoe Rogan31:05

       If there are like warthogs and they're in Africa, there's a system for that.

   16. FGForrest Galante31:08

       Exactly.

   17. JRJoe Rogan31:09

       Like, they're all, they're supposed to be there. Warthogs are wild looking-

   18. FGForrest Galante31:12

       (laughs)

   19. JRJoe Rogan31:12

       ... creatures, aren't they?

   20. FGForrest Galante31:13

       They're amazing.

   21. JRJoe Rogan31:13

       Have you ever seen one? You've seen one in, in person?

   22. FGForrest Galante31:14

       Yeah, yeah, I grew up there. I grew up in Zimbabwe.

   23. JRJoe Rogan31:16

       Oh, that's right.

   24. FGForrest Galante31:17

       Yeah.

   25. JRJoe Rogan31:17

       That's right. Yeah.

   26. FGForrest Galante31:18

       So I got, I actually got a pretty funny story about a war- warthog. Uh, my uncle, uh, my, my mom's brother, we were out on safari one time and he was, he was young. You know, he's m- he was much younger than my mother, so he was maybe a teenager or something, and he grabbed this plum and started going for a walk across camp. And anyway, this warthog decided it wanted this plum, and so it came trotting after my uncle and started chasing him in circles around this tree. But my uncle was so panicked by this thing chasing him around this big baobab tree that he wouldn't drop the plum.

   27. JRJoe Rogan31:49

       Oh, Jesus.

   28. FGForrest Galante31:49

       So he's just in this perpetual cycle of being, of being (laughs) chased around this tree until he eventually threw the plum and the warthog just veered off and went for the plum. (laughs)

   29. JRJoe Rogan31:58

       Lucky it didn't want him.

   30. FGForrest Galante31:59

       Yeah. (laughs) They're, they're very funny, very mischievous. I love the way their tails stick up through the grass when they're running around.
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   I know, it's- …

   1. JRJoe Rogan45:00

      bad.

   2. FGForrest Galante45:00

      I know, it's-

   3. JRJoe Rogan45:00

      I'm such a moron.

   4. FGForrest Galante45:02

      (laughs)

   5. JRJoe Rogan45:02

      I'm such a moron when it comes to this stuff.

   6. FGForrest Galante45:04

      Ah.

   7. JRJoe Rogan45:04

      I believed in Big Foot for so long, I wanted to believe so bad.

   8. JVJamie Vernon45:06

      They estimated it was between 80 and 150 centimeters, which is somewhere between 30 and 60 inches tall, so that's three-

   9. JRJoe Rogan45:13

      Tiny.

   10. JVJamie Vernon45:13

       ... to five feet. Three to four feet, yeah.

   11. JRJoe Rogan45:14

       Little thing. Tiny little thing.

   12. FGForrest Galante45:16

       It's amazing.

   13. JRJoe Rogan45:17

       Tiny little person. I hope it's real.

   14. FGForrest Galante45:17

       Yeah, I do too.

   15. JRJoe Rogan45:18

       Yeah.

   16. FGForrest Galante45:18

       I do too. Yeah. I mean, it's fantastic.

   17. JRJoe Rogan45:20

       But do you hope ... Would you rather not knowing and it lives, or someone kills it and you find out that it's real?

   18. FGForrest Galante45:28

       I'd rather not knowing and it lives.

   19. JRJoe Rogan45:29

       Me too.

   20. FGForrest Galante45:30

       For sure. Yeah.

   21. JRJoe Rogan45:31

       Me too, but I feel like a bitch.

   22. FGForrest Galante45:32

       (laughs)

   23. JRJoe Rogan45:33

       Like, I wanna know, but I don't want it to die.

   24. FGForrest Galante45:36

       Right, right.

   25. JRJoe Rogan45:36

       You know? Like, come on, man. Just tell me.

   26. FGForrest Galante45:39

       And how blurry does the line get in that situation? Because it's- it's humanoid, right?

   27. JRJoe Rogan45:44

       Yes.

   28. FGForrest Galante45:44

       So it's like-

   29. JRJoe Rogan45:44

       Right.

   30. FGForrest Galante45:45

       It's not like you're catching them and putting them in zoos.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:05:47

   Mm. …

   1. FGForrest Galante1:00:00

      they're, they're putting them in other habitats and ecosystems in parts of Africa. And then you have ones that are supposed to be managed properly both from ecotourism and hunting dollars, and they're just, uh, they're funding people's pockets, the animals are getting devastated, it's super unethical-

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:00:14

      Mm.

   3. FGForrest Galante1:00:14

      ... and it's, and everything in between. And that's the problem with Africa is like, you know, I'm all for hunting as a tool for conservation if it keeps the species around and keeps the, the animals up, but you gotta be careful where you're going and where those dollars are going because it's so easy to line someone's pocket and it never returns to the species.

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:00:30

      Yeah, there's a giant issue with corruption there.

   5. FGForrest Galante1:00:33

      Huge.

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:00:33

      Yeah.

   7. FGForrest Galante1:00:33

      Huge. Yeah. I mean, the, the-

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:00:35

      Then we have poverty, right?

   9. FGForrest Galante1:00:36

      Yeah. Uh, where I grew up in Zimbabwe, the Mugabe regime, I mean, it's, it's notorious for being as corrupt as it was, and you know, created violence and, um, uprisings, and that's why my family came here because we got thrown off our land and like, crazy stuff. It's, it's very, very corrupt. (laughs)

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:00:53

       Yeah, it's, it's a wild place, man. You know-

   11. FGForrest Galante1:00:55

       Yeah.

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:00:56

       ... my buddy Justin Bran runs this charity, uh, do you know who he is?

   13. FGForrest Galante1:00:59

       I don't, no.

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:00:59

       Runs Fight for the Forgotten. They build wells for the Pygmies and-

   15. FGForrest Galante1:01:03

       Okay.

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:01:03

       ... we work with them with the Cash App and they built-

   17. FGForrest Galante1:01:06

       He came back with a terrible disease.

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:01:08

       Yes.

   19. FGForrest Galante1:01:08

       I heard that on one of your podcasts.

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:01:09

       Yes.

   21. FGForrest Galante1:01:10

       He...

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:01:10

       He doesn't know what it is. They don't know what it is. He's got some crazy parasite in his-

   23. FGForrest Galante1:01:13

       Ugh.

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:01:13

       They think it might be in his brain.

   25. FGForrest Galante1:01:14

       Oh, boy.

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:01:15

       Not only that, he goes so deep into the Congo that they feel like it might be an undiscovered parasite.

   27. FGForrest Galante1:01:21

       (laughs)

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:01:22

       Yeah, like he might be the first one, so it'd be-

   29. FGForrest Galante1:01:24

       I shouldn't laugh. It's like that's the worst way to find a new species ever.

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:01:27

       That's terrible.

Episode duration: 2:46:03