Joe Rogan Experience #1240 - Forrest Galante
Forrest Galante (guest), Joe Rogan (host), Guest (secondary, likely producer/assistant reading article) (guest), Guest (secondary, likely producer/assistant commenting) (guest), Narrator
In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, featuring Forrest Galante and Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan Experience #1240 - Forrest Galante explores wildlife Biologist Hunts ‘Extinct’ Species And Survives Untouched Frontiers Joe Rogan interviews wildlife biologist and explorer Forrest Galante about living and working in some of the most remote ecosystems on Earth, including the Amazon, Congo, Galapagos, and African bush. Galante explains how he uses primitive survival skills and modern tools to search for animals considered extinct or nearly so, like the Tasmanian tiger, Zanzibar leopard, rare caimans, and island foxes. They discuss untouched indigenous tribes, medical dilemmas in isolated villages, invasive species, de‑extinction science, and extraordinary animal adaptations. The conversation also dives into human nature, curiosity about cryptid-like animals, and the fine line between science, myth, and spiritual experiences in the field.
Wildlife Biologist Hunts ‘Extinct’ Species And Survives Untouched Frontiers
Joe Rogan interviews wildlife biologist and explorer Forrest Galante about living and working in some of the most remote ecosystems on Earth, including the Amazon, Congo, Galapagos, and African bush. Galante explains how he uses primitive survival skills and modern tools to search for animals considered extinct or nearly so, like the Tasmanian tiger, Zanzibar leopard, rare caimans, and island foxes. They discuss untouched indigenous tribes, medical dilemmas in isolated villages, invasive species, de‑extinction science, and extraordinary animal adaptations. The conversation also dives into human nature, curiosity about cryptid-like animals, and the fine line between science, myth, and spiritual experiences in the field.
Key Takeaways
True wilderness and untouched ecosystems still exist, but are rare and fragile.
Galante describes pockets of the Amazon, Congo, Papua New Guinea, and remote islands where locals have never seen outsiders and wildlife densities are what oceans and forests likely looked like before heavy human impact.
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Intervening with isolated tribes’ health is a real moral dilemma.
His team dewormed an entire Amazonian village with the shaman’s blessing, but he wrestles with whether short‑term help (ringworm meds, asthma treatment) might disrupt their natural disease ecology or create dependency without long‑term support.
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Some animals declared extinct may persist in tiny, overlooked populations.
Forrest has helped document Zanzibar leopards and pursues evidence for Tasmanian tigers, rare caiman, island moose, and the saola, relying on credible eyewitnesses, large‑scale trail‑camera grids, and classic tracking rather than pure “cryptid” lore.
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Predators and prey co‑evolve in astonishingly specific ways.
From spider‑tailed vipers luring birds, to wolves and African wild dogs coordinating complex hunts, to lions evolving huge frames on isolated islands, evolution relentlessly sculpts animals to fill narrow ecological roles.
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Invasive and introduced species can rapidly unravel or reshape ecosystems.
Examples like goats on the Galapagos, pigs and golden eagles on California’s Channel Islands, and deer in New Zealand and Hawaii show how a few introductions can cascade into habitat destruction, species decline, and massive, expensive restoration efforts.
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De‑extinction is technically emerging but ethically ambiguous.
Scientists can gene‑edit living relatives (e. ...
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Belief and ritual can alter a scientist’s mindset in the field.
After a violent reaction to a shaman’s coca‑based nasal snuff in the Amazon, Galante—normally a strict empiricist—admits that feeling “spiritually cleansed” changed his confidence and anxiety level for the rest of the expedition.
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Notable Quotes
“There are these isolated pockets where small populations of megafauna still exist that we don’t know about.”
— Forrest Galante
“You’re hiking through there, you stub your toe on a mammoth tusk…what’s the right thing to do?”
— Joe Rogan
“To me there is nothing more fascinating than the ecological roles animals play and how perfectly balanced it all is—until we mess with it.”
— Forrest Galante
“We are in the sixth mass extinction event, happening at about 80% faster rate than it’s ever happened before.”
— Forrest Galante
“I’m a hardcore academic…I’ve never considered spirituality, and then this jungle shaman blows green powder up my nose and I’m puking, and suddenly I’m attributing my safety to that.”
— Forrest Galante
Questions Answered in This Episode
How should scientists balance respect for indigenous cultures with the urge to provide modern medical help in remote communities?
Joe Rogan interviews wildlife biologist and explorer Forrest Galante about living and working in some of the most remote ecosystems on Earth, including the Amazon, Congo, Galapagos, and African bush. ...
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At what point does searching for ‘extinct’ animals become valuable science versus resource‑draining speculation?
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If de‑extinction becomes reliable, which lost species—if any—should we actually bring back, and who decides?
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How much unknown megafauna is realistically still out there, given satellites, trail cameras, and global human presence?
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Do experiences like Galante’s shamanic “blessing” suggest that scientists should take spiritual and placebo effects more seriously when working in extreme environments?
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Transcript Preview
(laughs)
All right, here we go. Five, four, three, two, one. Yes! How are you, man? What's going on?
Joe, I'm stoked, man. I'm really good. Really glad to be here.
I'm stoked, too.
Yeah.
Nice to meet you. Um...
You too.
Dude, you were on Naked and Afraid.
(laughs) Sure was.
How ridiculous is that?
Sure was. (laughs) Ah, dude, it's so, it's so ridiculous. Like, to say ridiculous is such an understatement.
See, because they oftentimes will have, like, a, an actual survival expert or a wildlife expert, or someone who knows how to live in the woods.
Sure.
And, uh, that was the idea with you, to get a wildlife expert?
Definitely. I mean, I'm, I'm kind of a combo. Like I, I've practiced primitive survival for many years in a means to get closer to wildlife. Like I just got back from the Amazon, and we had to feed ourselves every day. We had to build shelter, blah, blah, blah. And I don't do it, like, for fun. I do it as a means to be out further and stay longer, kind of thing.
But it, it's gotta be a little bit of a conscious effort, right, like to, to have fun, like fishing for your food-
(laughs) For sure.
... and, you know, putting up shelter and stuff. I mean, it's gotta be, like, kinda cool to live like that for a little bit.
It's, uh, it's human nature.
Yeah.
You know? Like we, we intrinsically wanna hunt things and fish things and build a shelter and survive. And so it's totally fun. I think it's like to your core, it's fun. You know what I mean? You just feel it, like you know that you're doing something that's like primal human nature.
Yeah, the Amazon fishing clips that you have on your Instagram page, so it's, it's, it's crazy. Like you just throw a cast out there and you were catching a big fish, like instantly.
Bonkers. Like I fished a lot of places. I'm really into fishing and spear fishing, and every... Joe, I'm not kidding, every single cast was a fish. A peacock bass or a piranha every cast. And, and where we were in the Amazon, super remote, like not a lot of people go there. I'm sure those fish have never ever seen a lure, never seen a hook before.
Wow.
And, uh, it wasn't like sportfishing. It was like, "Okay, let's go catch 10 fish. In other words, take 10 casts and we have enough food." And that was it, and it was amazing. (laughs)
Does it make you think of what the ocean must have been like before people fucked it up?
Of course.
(laughs)
I mean, of course. As a biologist, that's like all I can think about.
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