Lex Fridman PodcastPaul Rosolie: Jungle, Apex Predators, Aliens, Uncontacted Tribes, and God | Lex Fridman Podcast #429
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,010 words- 0:00 – 2:07
Introduction
- LFLex Fridman
Where are we right now, Paul?
- PRPaul Rosolie
Lex, we are in the middle of nowhere.
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs) It's the Amazon jungle. There's vegetation, there's insects, there's all kinds of creatures. A million heartbeats, a million eyes. So, uh, really, where are we right now?
- PRPaul Rosolie
We are in Peru, in a very remote part of the Western Amazon Basin, and because of the proximity of the Andean cloud forest, to the lowland tropical rainforests, we are in the most biodiverse part of planet Earth. There's more life per square acre, per square mile out here than there is anywhere else on Earth. Not just now, but in the entire fossil record.
- LFLex Fridman
The following is a conversation with Paul Rosolie. His second time on the podcast, but this time, we did the conversation deep in the Amazon jungle. I traveled there to hang out with Paul, and it turned out to be an adventure of a lifetime. I will post a video capturing some aspects of that adventure in a week or so. It included everything from getting lost in dense unexplored wilderness with no contact to the outside world to taking very high doses of ayahuasca, and much more. Paul, by the way, aside from being my good friend, is a naturalist, explorer, author, and is someone who has dedicated his life to protecting the rainforest. For this mission, he founded Jungle Keepers. You can help him if you go to junglekeepers.org. This trip, for me, was life-changing. It expanded my understanding of myself and of the beautiful world I'm fortunate to exist in, with all of you. So, I'm glad I went, and I'm glad I made it out alive. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Paul Rosolie.
- 2:07 – 4:25
Amazon jungle
- LFLex Fridman
I can't believe we're actually here.
- PRPaul Rosolie
I can't believe you actually came.
- LFLex Fridman
And I can't believe you forced me to wear a suit.
- PRPaul Rosolie
(laughs) That was the people's choice. Trust me.
- LFLex Fridman
All right. We've been through quite a lot over the last few days.
- PRPaul Rosolie
We've been through a bit.
- LFLex Fridman
Let me ask you a ridiculous question. What are all the creatures right now, if they wanted to, could, uh, cause us harm?
- PRPaul Rosolie
The thing is, the Amazon rainforest has been described as the greatest natural battlefield on Earth because there's more life here than anywhere else, which means that everything here is fighting for survival. The trees are fighting for sunlight. The animals are fighting for prey. Everybody's fighting for survival, and so everything that you see here, everything around us will be killed, eaten, digested, recycled at some point. The jungle is really just a giant churning machine of death, and life is kind of this moment of stasis, where you- you maintain this collection of cells in a particular DNA sequence and then- and then it gets digested again and recycled back, and renamed into everything. And, uh, so- so the things- the things in this forest, while they don't want to hurt us, there are things that are heavily defended because, for instance, a giant anteater needs claws to fight off a jaguar. A stingray needs a stinger on its tail, which is basically a serrated knife with venom on it, to deter anything that would hunt that stingray. Even the catfish have pectoral fins that have razor-long, steak knife-sized defense systems. Then you have, of course, the jaguars, the harpy eagles, the piranha, the candiru fish that can swim up a penis, lodge themselves inside. It's the Amazon rainforest. The thing is, as you've learned this week, nothing here wants to get us with the except for- exception of maybe mosquitoes. Every other animal just- just wants to eat and exist in peace. That's it.
- LFLex Fridman
But there is, each of those animals like you describe, have a kind of radius of defense.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah.
- LFLex Fridman
So if you accidentally step into its home-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah.
- LFLex Fridman
... into that radius, it can cause harm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Or- or make him feel threatened.
- LFLex Fridman
Make him feel threatened. There is a defense mechanism that is activated.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Some incredible defense mechanisms. I mean, you're talking about 17-foot black caiman, crocodiles that with significant size that could rip you in half. Anacondas, the largest
- 4:25 – 15:51
Bushmaster snakes
- PRPaul Rosolie
snake on Earth. Bushmasters that can grow up to be 9 to, I think, even 11 feet long, and I've caught bushmasters that are thicker than my arms.
- LFLex Fridman
So for people who don't know, bushmasters, snakes, what are these things?
- PRPaul Rosolie
These are vipers. It's the lar- I believe it's the largest viper on Earth.
- LFLex Fridman
Venomous?
- PRPaul Rosolie
Extremely venomous with hinge teeth, tissue destroying venom. Like, if you get bitten by a bushmaster, they say you don't- you don't rush and try and save your own life. You try to savor what's around you. Look at- look at- look around at the world. Smoke your last cigarette, call your mom. That's it.
- LFLex Fridman
So that moment of stasis that is life is going to end abruptly when you interact with one of those?
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah. I even have- even this- this seemingly-
- LFLex Fridman
Can I just pause at how incredibly beautiful it is? That you could just reach to your right and grab a piece of the jungle?
- PRPaul Rosolie
(laughs) It's like- it's like a... Even this seemingly beautiful little fern. If you- if you go this way on the fern, you're fine. As soon as- ow... As soon as you go this way, there's invisible-
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- PRPaul Rosolie
... little spikes on there, if you wanna...
- LFLex Fridman
Oh, I see.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah.
- LFLex Fridman
I feel it.
- PRPaul Rosolie
See that? So, like, everything is defended. If you're driving on the road and you have your arm out the side or if you're on a motorcycle going through the jungle-
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- PRPaul Rosolie
... and you get one of these, it'll just tear all the skin right off your body. It's kind of doing that to me now.
- LFLex Fridman
So what- what would you do? Like, we were going through the dense jungle yesterday, and you slide down the hill. Your foot slips, you're sliding down-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah.
- LFLex Fridman
... and then you find yourself staring a couple feet away from a bushmaster snake. What are you doing? You're, for people who somehow don't know, are somebody who loves, admires snakes, who has met thousands of snakes, has worked with them, respects them, celebrates them. What would you do with a bushmaster snake?... face-to-face.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Face-to-face, this has happened.
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- PRPaul Rosolie
Um (laughs) , I've been there.
- LFLex Fridman
It's nice.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Um, I've come face-to-face with a bushmaster and... There's two things, there's two reactions that you might get. One is, if the bushmaster decides that it's vacation time, if it's sleeping, if he just had a meal, they'll come to the edges of trails or beneath a tree and they'll just circle up, little spiral, big spiral, big pile of snake on the trail, and they'll just sit there. And one time, there was a snake sitting on the side of a trail beneath a tree. For two weeks, this snake was just sitting there, resting, digesting his food out in the open, in the rain, in the sun, in the night. Didn't matter. You go near it, barely even crack a tongue. Now, the other option is that you get a bushmaster that's alert and hunting and out looking for something to eat, and they're ready to defend themselves. And so I once came across a bushmaster in the jungle at night, and this bushmaster turned its head towards me, looked at me, and made it very clear, "I'm gonna go this way." And so I did the natural thing that any snake enthusiast would do and I grabbed its tail. Now, 11 feet later, by the head, the snake turned around and just said, "If you wanna meet God, I can arrange the meeting. I will oblige." And I decided to let the bushmaster go.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
And so, it's, it's like that with most animals. You know, a jaguar will turn and look at you and just remind you of how small you are.
- LFLex Fridman
Like, what did you see-
- PRPaul Rosolie
And keep going.
- LFLex Fridman
... in the snake's eyes? What, how did you sense that this is not the right, this is not, this is gonna be your end if you proceed?
- 15:51 – 34:11
Black caiman
- LFLex Fridman
process. Uh, let's talk about caiman.
- PRPaul Rosolie
For sure.
- LFLex Fridman
We've seen a lot of different kinds of sizes. We've seen a baby one, a bigger one. Tell me about these, uh, 16-foot plus apex predators of the Amazon rainforest.
- PRPaul Rosolie
The big bad black caiman, which is the largest reptilian predator in the Amazon except for the anaconda. They kind of both share that, that, that notch of apex predator. They were actually hunted to endangered species level in the '70s 'cause they're, they're leather, black scale leather. But they're coming back. They're coming back and they're huge and they're beautiful. And I was, I was walking near a lake and I never understood how big they could get except for I was walking near a lake last year, and I was following this stream. You know what it's like when you're following a little stream and there's just a little trickle of water? And all of a sudden, this river otter had been running the other direction on the tre- on the stream. River otter comes up to me, and I swear to God this animal looked at me and went, "Hey." And I went, "Hey." He like didn't expect to see me there.
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- PRPaul Rosolie
And he turned around. He like did a little spin.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Started running down the stream. Then he turned around and he, you could tell he was like, "Let's go." And I s... You know.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
I'm not anthropomorphizing here. The animal was asking me to come with him.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
So I followed the river otter down the stream. We started running down the stream and the river otter looks at me one more time and is like, "Yo." Jumps into the lake, and I'm like, "What does he want me to see?" Now in the lake, there's river otters doing dives and freaking out and going up and down and up and down and, and they're very excited. They're screaming, they're screeching. All of a sudden, and I've never seen anything like this except for in like Game of Thrones.
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- PRPaul Rosolie
This crock head comes flying out of the water.
- LFLex Fridman
Oh.
- PRPaul Rosolie
All of the river otters were attacking this huge black caiman, 16 feet.
- LFLex Fridman
Wow.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Head half the size of this table. And she was thrashing her tail around, creating these huge waves in the water.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Trying to catch an otter and they're so fast-
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- PRPaul Rosolie
... that they were zipping around her, biting her, and then going around. And this otter, swear to God, interspecies, looked at me and went, "Watch this."
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- PRPaul Rosolie
"We're, we're fucking with this caiman."
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- PRPaul Rosolie
It was amazing. And I, for the first time, I got to stand there watching this incredible interspecies fight happening. They weren't trying to kill the caiman. They were just trying to mess with it.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
And the caiman was doing his best to try and kill these otters. And they were just having a good time in that sick sort of hyper-intelligent animal, like wolf sort of way where they were just going, "You can't catch us."
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah, like intelligence and agility versus like raw power.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Uh-huh.
- 34:11 – 37:25
Rhinos
- PRPaul Rosolie
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah, in the water, I mean, we- we talked also about hippos. Those are interesting creatures from all the way across the world, just monsters.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah.
- LFLex Fridman
Hippos and rhinos. Hippos are bigger usually, or rhinos are bigger.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Rhinos.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Rhinos is the- after elephants is the largest, white rhinos.
- LFLex Fridman
They can be terrifying, too. Again, when you step into the defense.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Absolutely, but I have to tell you, after being around so many rhinos-
- LFLex Fridman
You have friends- you have friend rhino-
- PRPaul Rosolie
... I have rhino friends.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Black and white rhinos.
- LFLex Fridman
Yep.
- PRPaul Rosolie
And, uh, they're all sweethearts.
- LFLex Fridman
Awesome.
- PRPaul Rosolie
And I mean- I mean sweethearts. And I mean when you look at a rhino, it's like a living dinosaur. I know it's a mammal, but somehow it screams dinosaur 'cause it seems like Pleistocenic and- and-
- LFLex Fridman
It is.
- PRPaul Rosolie
... and from another age with the giant horn. And they're so much bigger than you think. Like, they're minivan-sized animals. Like you're- you're- we're not taller than they are. A- at the shoulder, and they have this strange shaped head and the huge horn. And they sit there eating grass all day. So if a rhino is dangerous to a human, it's because the rhino is going, "Don't hurt me."
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- PRPaul Rosolie
"Don't hurt me. Don't- don't hurt my baby." And then they're like, "You know what? I'll just kill you. It'd be easier 'cause you're scaring me right now."
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- PRPaul Rosolie
"You're too close to that rhino."
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- PRPaul Rosolie
And so, like there again, I just think it's funny 'cause humans were so quickly to go, "Which snakes are aggressive?" There are no aggressive snakes. You know, rhinos can be dangerous, eh, if provoked. Otherwise, they're peaceful, fat grass unicorns.
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- PRPaul Rosolie
You know, like they're- they're really pretty calm.
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs) Yeah.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Then we had these incredible giant animals and the largest animals on our planet, the black caiman, the rhinos, the elephants, all the big beautiful stuff is becoming less and less.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- 37:25 – 1:07:42
Anacondas
- LFLex Fridman
So, it's interesting, you mentioned black caiman and, uh, anacondas are both apex predators.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Mm-hmm.
- LFLex Fridman
So, it seems like the reason they can exist in similar environments is 'cause they feed on slightly different things. How's it possible for them to co-exist? I read that anacondas can eat caiman but not black caiman. How often do they come in conflict?
- PRPaul Rosolie
So, anacondas and caiman occupy the exact same niche.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
And they're born at almost the exact same size. And, unlike most species, they don't have, sort of, a size range that they're confined to.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
They start at this big. Baby caiman are this big. Baby anacondas are a little longer, but they're, they're thinner and they don't have legs. So, it's the same thing in, in terms of mass. And they're all in the streams, or at the edges of lakes or swamps. And so the baby anacondas eat the baby caiman. Baby caiman can't really take down an anaconda. They're, they're going for little insects and fish. They, they have quite a small mouth. So, they, again, it's in their interest to hide from everything. A bird, a heron can eat a baby caiman, pop it back.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
And so they have to survive. But the anaconda and the caiman kinda, kinda joust as they grow.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm. Can you actually explain how the anaconda would take down a, a caiman? Like, would it first, uh, use constriction and then eat it? Or what, what's the method- methodology?
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah, so anacondas have a, kind of a, I don't know, like a three-point constriction system where their first thing is anchor.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Something like jiu-jitsu. So, the first thing is latch on to you.
- LFLex Fridman
I like how I'm writing this down, like, "All right."
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yes.
- LFLex Fridman
"This is jiu-jitsu, like, uh, masterclass here."
- PRPaul Rosolie
(laughs) This is for when you're wrestling an anaconda, just in case.
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- PRPaul Rosolie
(laughs)
- LFLex Fridman
And you'll be like the coach on the sidelines screaming, "Run it up."
- PRPaul Rosolie
You got it, Lex.
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs) Yeah. Uh-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Don't let him take the back.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah (laughs) .
- PRPaul Rosolie
All right, so, so one time, me and JJ were following a herd of collared peccary and JJ's teaching me tracking. So, we're following, you know, the, the hoof prints through the mud, and we're doing this, and I'm talking about no backpacks, just machetes, bare feet, running through the jungle. And we come to this stream and JJ's like, "I think we missed them. You know, I think they went." And I'm like, "No, no, no. They went here, look." And not 'cause I'm a great tracker, 'cause I can see hun- you know, a few dozen footprints, hundreds of individual footprints right there, and I'm going, "No, no, they just crossed here." And JJ was like, "You know what? We're not gonna get eyes on them today." He was like, "It's okay." He's like, "We did good. We followed them for a long time." And I was like, "Cool." And then I was trying to gauge, like, "Can I drink this stream?" And I see a colpa. And a colpa is a salt deposit where animals come to, to feed, 'cause sodium is a, is, is a deficiency that most herbivores have here. And all of a sudden, I just hear, like the sound of a wet stick snapping, just that bone crunch. And I look down and there's about a 16-foot anaconda wrapped around a freshly killed peccary-
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
... wild boar. And what this anaconda had done was, as the, all the pigs were going across the stream, the anaconda had grabbed it by the jaw-
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
... swiped the legs, wrapped around it, bent it in half, and then crushed its ribs. And that's what the anaconda do, whether it's to mammals, to caiman, it's all the same thing. It's grab on. They have six rows of backwards facing teeth.
- 1:07:42 – 1:19:48
Mammals
- PRPaul Rosolie
found.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah. The, the mammal papers, looking at the diversity of life in this one region of the Amazon, what kinda... Can, can you talk, talk more about that paper? Mammal diversity along the Las Piedras River?
- PRPaul Rosolie
Once again, the mammal paper, Pat Champagne, the prodigy, um, he was sort of leading on this with a bunch of other scientists who have worked in the region, including Holly O'Donnell out of Oxford. Uh, myself, I really just made a few observations. The Jungle Keepers Rangers got featured because they're the ones that spotted a pygmy marmoset that had previously been unrecorded on the river.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
I got to, I got to contribute because I had, I had the only photograph that I believe anyone has of an emperor tamarin on this river. It's the first proof of emperor tamarin on this river, and that's exciting. It's exciting because, um, you know, you'll... You can post, post a picture or share a scientific observation or write about something, and then what happens is you get these, these, like, couch experts, these armchair experts who, who will come and say, you know, "No. No, you don't get blue and yellow macaws there. I can tell from my bird book, it says they're not there." And they'll tell you you're wrong, you know. "No, you don't get woolly monkeys there or, or emperor tamarins." It's like-
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- PRPaul Rosolie
... but, but we, but we have proof. And so we're coming together to try and add to that knowledge.
- LFLex Fridman
My general sort of amateur experience of the species I've encountered here is like, this should not exist. Whatever this is, (laughs) this is not real. (laughs) This is CGI. (laughs) Like, what? Just the colors, the weirdness. I mean, there's, uh, I think I called it the, the Paris Hilton, uh, caterpillar-
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah.
- LFLex Fridman
... because it's like fur... It looks like a-
- PRPaul Rosolie
(laughs)
- LFLex Fridman
... one of those little-
- PRPaul Rosolie
It sounds like Paris Hilton's dog.
- LFLex Fridman
Like, yeah, yeah. It, it's like really furry and it's transparent and, and, and sort of... It's transparent. All you see is this white beautiful fur and it's just like this caterpillar. It doesn't, doesn't look real.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah.
- LFLex Fridman
Do you think there's species... Like, how many species have we not discovered? And is there species that are like extremely badass that we haven't discovered yet?
- PRPaul Rosolie
If you look up how many trees are in the Amazon rainforest, it's something in the order of 400 billion trees. There's something like 70 to 80,000 species of plants, individual types of plants here, 1,500 species of trees. It's, it's so vast that it, it, it, it's comparable, like the, the scale is like only comparable to the universe in terms of stars and galaxies and, and, and, and for the sheer immensity of it. And so we're, we're, we're describing new species every year. And just walking on the trail at night, you and I have seen, you know, you see a tiny little spider hidden in a crevice-
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
... and has the scientific eye ever seen that spider before? Has it been documented? Do we know anything about its life cycle? There's still so much that's here that is completely unknown.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
You know, we have pictures of all these butterflies. Somebody went out with a butterfly net and caught these butterflies, took a picture of it, gave it a name, put it in a bu- a butterfly book-
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
... but what, what do we know? What host plant do they use for their caterpillars? What's their geographical range? What, what do we actually know? Not that much. So are there creatures out here that haven't been described? Absolutely.
- LFLex Fridman
And some of them could be extremely effective, uh, predators in a niche environment.
- PRPaul Rosolie
Yeah, absolutely.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
I mean, certainly, certainly in the canopy. 50% of life in a rainforest is in the canopy, and we've had very limited access to the canopy for all of history. You know, if you wanted to get up into the rainforest canopy, you basically have to climb a vine-
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- PRPaul Rosolie
... or what scientists... When I was a kid I always used to see them with like the slingshots or the bow and arrows, they would, they would shoot a, a piece of paracord over a branch, pull the rope up and then, you know, do the ascension thing. And then you're up in this tree getting swarmed by sweat bees, getting stung by wasps, you're trying to do science up there in that environment-
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
Episode duration: 4:01:51
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