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Short Stuff: Alligator Gar · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, I'm welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and Jerry's here for Dave. So this is
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: short Stuff as usual. Let's go. So can I tell
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: you my inspiration for this was? I was I was
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: at the lake the other day. We we got to
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: a lake here in Georgia. I'm not gonna name it
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: because I don't want to be stalked, okay, like no name,
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: like no name. Uh And I was at the lake
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: the other day doing a project and I was very hot,
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: because it's very hot in Georgia right now, and I
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: went to jump in to cool down. And right as
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: I was going to take a leap off the dock,
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: I saw a very large, like a two and a
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: half foot garfish kind of treacle towards the surface. And
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: I I've seen him before out there occasionally, but it
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: just scare the life out of me because it is
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: a terrifying looking fish. If you don't know what a
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: garfish looks like, just do a little uhm search and
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: they have these long, very sharp toothed snouts and they
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: are terrifying if you It looks like something that you
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: would find in a river in South America. And not
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  Speaker 1: the one that you would jump into a lake in Georgia. Right.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: And also, um, you travel back in time fifty million
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: years too, because they definitely look prehistoric for sure. Oh
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: absolutely uh. And this is specifically about the alligator gar.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: And this comes from our old friends at House Stuff
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: Works in Michelle Konstantinovski. Great name, very nice, but the
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: alligator gar is super old, right, Yeah. They think they
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: found fossils as old as a hundred million years old,
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: not just fifty um. And they actually the reason that
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: it's called an alligator gars because it has a long
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: snout too, but rather than being pointed like most other gar,
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: it's flattened, giving it kind of like a shovel like
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: appearance or actually like an alligator snout. And the Latin
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: name for it is attracto status spatula. And that's right, spatula.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: It's the spatula fish is another way to put it.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: And it I mean it really does look like an
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: alligator snout when you see a picture of these things. Yeah,
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: they are huge. There um seven living species of of gar,
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: and the alligator gar is the largest by far. Uh.
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  Speaker 1: The other way you can tell a diff is they
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  Speaker 1: have two rows of teeth alligator gar on the upper
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: jaw instead of just the one row of teeth of
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: the regular gar. And I think their head is a
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: bit wider, yeah, And I think normally there um something
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: like about a hundred and sixty pounds too, maybe six
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: ft long, which is enormous for a fish. Um. But
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: they have been I guess found up to three fifty
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: pounds and ten ft long, which is even more enormous.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: I think the record, at least in Texas is three
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: and two pounds. That was back in And the reason
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: we bring up Texas because a YouTuber named hating More
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: he's a conservationist, posted a video on his channel wildlife
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: Um last May because he caught one of these things
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: and it was eight ft long and probably about three
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: hundred pounds. Did you watch that video? I did not.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: It is a very large fish and uh he likened
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: it to um kind of hanging onto the end of
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: a car that's trying to roll down a driveway. I
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: don't see how you bring in a fish like this
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: that that's that heavy, But he knew what he was doing,
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: and it's it's just enormous, man. It's I think at
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: the end he had that. Uh you know, he obviously
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: released it, but he was kind of um measuring it
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: and showing it off for the camera, and this thing
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: just like whipped around to sort of wriggle and just
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: like just it's so strong. It just knocks this guy
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: over and then swims away. And he's like, well, you know,
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: I guess I I was gonna let it go, but
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: apparently that just happened now, right, Good for him for
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: letting it go, or at least planning to. You know, Well,
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: you do let them go because apparently they're not good
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: for eating. Uh. They for a couple of reasons. They
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: don't taste great. Uh. And they are covered with these
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: uh it's almost like an armored scale. Uh. They're called
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: annoid scales, and it's like that um sort of um
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: like an armor you would see on a dinosaur basically, right. Yeah,
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: they're very dinosaur like. And yeah, and the the even
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: if you can dress them or I should say clean
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: them to eat, like the meat that you get off of,
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: it's not going to be very good. And if you
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: find any row or fish eggs in a guar, you
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: want to leave those alone because they're toxic no matter
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: what gar species you're dealing with. So yeah, not really
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: a delicacy in any way, shape or form. Should we
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: take a break, I say, we take a break and
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: then we'll come back and talk more about alligator car
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: so um, chuck. I found out some pretty interesting stuff
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: about them. That an alligator gar is a an opportunistic
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: eater and it will eat basically anything. I saw that.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: They'll eat deer and raccoons if they get a chance.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: They'll eat waterfowl, turtles, crabs, other fish. Um. But one
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: of the ways that they catch some of these things,
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: especially some of the harder to harder to catch ones, um,
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: they play dead. They ambush their prey by playing debt.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: They'll float and make another fisher, a raccoon or something
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: that's going to swim past, think that it's dead. Then
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden it grabs it out of the
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: water and that thing is dead. And uh, they do
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: eat all those things, and they have those huge alligator
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: like mouths and teeth, so they're super scary, but apparently
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: they're they're not gonna come after you. Um. I was
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: just being a little, uh, a little baby boy the
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: other day when I got scared and wouldn't jump in.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: If I would have jumped in, this thing would have
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: scattered and gone far away. It wouldn't have said, you know,
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: human arm must eat. Uh. They're they're just not going
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: to come after you, so you don't need to fear.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: I think there's never been on record a case of
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: I'll get her guard attacking somebody, right right, Yeah, that's
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: what I've seen as well. But I mean, I guess
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: if you had seen a gar that was floating, you
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: would have wanted to steer clear that one, because maybe
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: it wasn't ambush your arm. You know, you said that
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: you saw him in your lake. I'm taking it that
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: your No name lake is freshwater, right, I know it's
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: a saltwater lake in the middle of Georgia. You never know. Uh,
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: there's some saltiness in Georgia for sure. Uh. Yeah, it's
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: it's freshwater. Uh. And they're they're only in North America,
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: which is pretty surprising. Yeah, but they used to be
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: Remember we said that their fossils have been data back
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: to a hundred million years. They used to be found
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: all over the place. But yeah, now they're only in
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: North America. There are freshwater species and they tend to
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: like um, parts of like bodies of water with poor oxygen,
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: so like um, say like maybe a cove where you'd
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: launch a boat, um, or a backwater of a river
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: that's kind of outside of the turbulence, or even swamps
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: or bayous. And one reason they can survive in these
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: kind of lower oxygen environments is they have an air
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: bladder that not only helps them float, it also distributes
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: oxygen to their blood. Uh slowly but surely, so they
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: don't have to take in that much oxygen because they
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: can hold a bunch at once. Yeah. And I think
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: it's I think they're in Central America too. I just
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: want to put that on the record. So let's say
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: the Americas, but not South America. Men, these these alligator
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: are are really tough to pin down. I think North
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: and Central America because I did seek something about Costa Rica, uh,
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: which is okay, So the America's okay. Um. So people
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: just because you don't eat them, people still do fish
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: for them, like this guy. I think they are sort
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: of um. There are a lot of regulations in place
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  Speaker 1: because they are really slow to to reach the age
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  Speaker 1: where they can make little gar um. They spawn in
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: very specialized areas, so they're very ripe for over fishing
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: and for you know, like shrinking of species. But um,
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: for that reason, they're highly highly regulated and you're basically,
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: at least in Florida and I think a lot of
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: other places, you're only going to be given a permit
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: to fish for these things if it's scientific research or
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: you're working in like managing the species or something like that.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: I tittered earlier, by the way, I want to say,
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: at an inappropriate time, but it was because you said
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: they're ripe for over fishing, and I just thought of
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: a ripe car and that sounds so gross. They're scary looking. Uh.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: Early on though that, like you know, early earlier humans
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: would fish for them and do all sorts of things
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: that arm are like those armor like scales, those gonoid scales.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: They made jewelry out of them and tools and things
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: like that because they're really tough. And I think they
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: would use their their skin for products and the skin
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: oil for different things. Yeah, who knows, what, do you
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: have anything else? I don't have anything else. I think
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: we've talked alligator alligator car to death. Well, I guess
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: the last thing we should mention is is that they
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: um even though they do our opportunistic eaters. I think
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: there used to be an idea that they would devastate
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: other fish populations, and that's apparently not the case. Right, Yeah,
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: that's right. So they were over fished because they were
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: considered a nuisance fish. So they were trying to protect
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: the fish that they wanted by fishing the car alligator
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: car out. But it turns out they were wrong. I
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: do have one more thing. Okay, the name gar for
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: these fishes comes from the Anglo Saxon word for spear.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: That is good. And I've got one more thing. I
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: cannot help but think of a gar fish without thinking
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: of the great great documentary Vernon Florida, my favorite documentary
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: of all time, but the great Errol Morris and uh,
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: one of the characters, the guy that talks like this,
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: He talks about swimming in the river and oh, you
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: come u up on one of those garfish. You're a
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: better lookout brother. Really. And I saw that movie in college, right,
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: I didn't know what a garfish was. And it it was
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: many years later that I saw a guar and I
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: was like, oh, I get it now, I gotta see
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: that movie. It's just there's nothing like it. Yeah, uh,
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: you got anything else? I think, Yeah, you got anything else?
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: I got nothing else? All right, Well, that means everybody's
• 10:41
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• 10:47
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