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Short Stuff: Drop Bears · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and it's just us. No Dave, no Jerry,
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: no nothing. But we are here and being tourists walking
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: through the Australian bush right now. We need to be
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: careful of drop bears.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: That's right, because you know, if you're especially a tourist
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: or maybe a foreign soldier you're walking around the outback,
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: look up, because if you walk under a tree, a
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: drop bear might drop down, knock you on the head
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: and each each.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Your head, yeah, might bite your skull open with its molars,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: might use its bangs to bite your neck, and you're dead.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: You're dead when a drop bear drops on you, because
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: they can get fairly big. I saw about the size
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: of leopards. Leopards average something like six feet long, seven
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: feet long, laying between one hundred and two hundred pounds.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: This is a big animal. The thing that makes it
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: so crazy is that it looks a lot like a koala,
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: except with orange, wy, wiry hair.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and luckily, you know, we toured Australia and did
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: some great shows all over that wonderful country and we
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: both checked in as safe at the end of it.
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: From drop bears. Thank god it didn't happen.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: No, we made it out alive, basically, because if you
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: get dropped on by a drop bear, who are They're
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: very patient, they're very quiet. They'll wait for hours up
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: in the treetop for someone to pass by, and then
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: they drop out right on top of you. Like you said,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: you're dead, You're you're toast. So had we met a
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: drop bear, one or both of us would not be
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: sitting here today.
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: I'm genuinely wondering how many Australians think that we're being
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: serious right now.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: I hadn't thought about that.
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they're like, don't these guys now.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Man that you do the best New Zealand accent?
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: That was it? Okay?
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Sure it all sounds like Murray Mary. Yeah. So yeah,
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: we should probably tell everybody who isn't from Australia that
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: drop bears are made up. They're a myth. They're a joke, really,
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: a long standing pranky joke that Australians play on newcomers
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: and tourists and travelers and visiting military that kind of thing.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of people think it started in either
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: Sydney or South Wales the early early settlers there, you know,
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: playing pranks on people who came, probably because they didn't
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: want them there, it would be my guess.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: Sure, or just to humiliate them out of boredom.
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: Apparently the Australian Museum over the years has kind of
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: kept this joke going by fabricating sightings.
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: It's sort of like a like here in America, like
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: a jackalope.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you know, like creating these creatures, not like
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: a bigfoot. It's not a cryptid, but I guess a
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: jacolobe probably technically is. But you know, just sort of
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: a humorous thing to keep going, and the official government
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: even gets involved and kind of plays along.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: Well. I saw one of the things that as part
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: of this legend is that the Australian government does recognize
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: the existence of drop bears in reality because they don't exist,
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: but as part of the legend, it's because the Australian
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: government is covering up their existence because they don't want
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: to harm the tourist industry in Australia because again they
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: jump on tourists basically people who don't have Australian accents.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: Well, and I'm sure they're also like there's all manner
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: of things that'll kill you, like the last thing we
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: need is a made.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: Up thing exactly, So we said. The Australian government is
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: part of it. So a lot of other institutions have
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: contributed to kind of keeping this idea alive. I saw
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: an article in The Conversation about drop bears and surviving
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: drop bear attacks and it was totally straight from starting
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: to finish. There wasn't even a little disclaimer in italics
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: at the end. And they've even been given a scientific
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: name thy larctos plumatists. That's pretty funny, it is. It's great.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: There actually is like evidence that there could have been
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: some sort of ancient animal in Australia during the last
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: Ice Age that is similar to a drop bear that
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: does have a real scientific name, Thyloclio carnifex, or a
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: marsupial lion. Apparently the skull does resemble a koala or
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: maybe a wombat, but instead of grinder teeth, they have.
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: Shearing teeth and apparently at once belonged to a group of.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: Marsupials called the dipper toodonts, and with today's koalas, they're
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: in that same group of marsupials. So possums, wombats, kangaroos
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: and koalas. They were all part of this group back
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: in ancient times. But whatever this more fearsome one was
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: a It wasn't a drop bear, but it was similar
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: enough for people to reference it at least.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and people were living at this time. This is
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: during the last ice Age, so there were people in
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: Australia at the time. Aborigines were there and they would
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: have seen and possibly interacted with this marsupial lion. So
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: it raises the question like, is this actually like an
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: echo from the past, Like this is this drop bear
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: prank is actually based on like a human knowledge of
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: the fact that there was something similar years back into
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: this got passed down all this time and then morphed
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: into the prank. Some people say, no, I think there's
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: a possibility. It just seems weird to have come up
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: with that independently. I could also be overthinking it.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: Oh maybe, who knows. The first official mentions that people
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: know about were in the beginning of beginnings of the
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: nineteen hundreds, and it wasn't in a newspaper like the
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: words drop bear until nineteen eighty two, apparently, when there
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: was a message in the twenty first Birthday's column of
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: the Canberra Times on thirty one July. You know it's
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: from a different country if they say thirty one July, right,
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: we say July thirty first over here and apparently, yeah,
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: I say canber And.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: That's not right either, right, I think it's Canberra, Canberra, Okay,
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: I think not even Borah bruh like bruh.
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: What's up? Bro?
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what's up Canbra?
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: Okay, I got you.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: But in this message, regardless of pronunciations, it was Tam tam,
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: Beware of drop bears in the future for sure, totally
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: love Clint. And no one knows who these people were.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: We'll never find out who this who these people were.
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: But the words drop bear first time in print apparently.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But the year before a post punk band called
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: the drop Bears had formed back in nineteen eighty one.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: I went and looked up one of their videos for
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: a song called fun Loving Good. Yeah it's not bad, okay,
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: jump it out. But yes, so drop like drop bears
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: somehow just came out of nowhere. That term did. But
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: there had been this idea of a koala like animal
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: dropping from trees and attacking people that had been around,
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: at least in print since the nineteen twenties. It seems
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: to have been a military prank like that's where it
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: kind of was kept alive all of the decades, but
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: it eventually made the leap to pop culture thanks to
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: a guy known in Australia as Hogues. His name is
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: Paul Hogan. Here in the United States, we know him
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: as Crocodile Dundee.
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: I say we take a break.
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: That's quite a cliffhanger when you got Crocodile Dundee hanging
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: out there. And we'll be right back after this, all right,
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: we promised talk of Crocodile Dundee. In nineteen eighty one,
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: on his show The Paul Hogan Show, he did skit
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: where he starts talking about the untold horrors of the
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: Australian bush and although he didn't use the word drop bear,
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: he talked about killer koalas silently sitting and then dropping
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: out of trees and killing people.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so within a few years this thing crosses over
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: to the mainstream. Drop bears are attached as the name,
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: and it just becomes an institution in Australia.
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: Apparently that's right, and we've gotten real tips because you know,
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: they like to play along with this stuff, and so
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: you can actually get real published tips on how to
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: avoid being killed by these.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: Right apparently one so remember they're telling like soldiers in
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: Australia are telling like some American detachment that's visiting or
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: doing training exercises or something to do these things. Yeah,
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: and apparently they do. Sometimes One is to put dabs
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: of toothpaste behind your ears, James, I mean toothpaste, of course. Yeah.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm surprised that's all it was, because why didn't
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: they say like human feces or something they want to
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: kick it up?
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, but I mean just the fact that you
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: did something that they can demonstrate you did that. That's
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: that's enough. When they tell you that this whole thing's
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: a joke and you're a total moron.
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess so.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: I guess they got a little closer to human feces
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: on the next but a little bit. Uh. They said
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: that you got to smear your cheeks and forehead with vegemite. Boy,
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna get killed for that one. You are, but
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: I'm so sorry.
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: Australia.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Australia, you should know by now, no one outside of
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: Australia likes vegemite. That's just your thing, that's.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: Right, And you've all got great senses of humor, so
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: I know you'll take that with a plumb.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: That's right. So another one was putting forks in your hair,
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: which I mean you'd have to have thick, curly hair
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: to hold a fork in your hair.
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, fork would fall right out of my hair.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: Same here. Yeah. And then you could wear a neck guard.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: That would be the funniest one to me. That's what
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: I would try to get people to do. Remember, like
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: the old school neck guards that like in that episode
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: of The Brady Bunch where there's the car accident, the
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: person that Mike Brady hit was wearing like a neck
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: protector to keep them from turning their head.
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: Uh huh.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: And then he throws the briefcase and they look really
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: quickly and Mike Brady Pruss's cave foiled. Yeah. Yeah, if
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: I could get somebody to wear one of those to
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: protect against a drop bear attack, I would feel pretty
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: good about myself. Yeah.
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: And if all these things fail, I believe so much
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: of what you say. If you told me I needed
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: to wear that for any reason, I probably would all right.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: Well, keep sharp, man, because I'm going to try it sometime.
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: You know, if you want a podcast, better put on
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: a neck break.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: Apparently, if none of those things work, though, and you
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: were a visiting military soldier and you are attacked, to
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: protect yourself, curl into a ball and protect all of
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: your major internal organs and major arteries.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty great stuff, chuck.
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, No, I mean that was kind of sad.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: If you look up drop Bear, there's some funny pictures
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: of like just photoshopped qualas that looked super scary And mean.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: What do you mean what was sad?
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: No? No, no, no, did I say sad?
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah? You said it's kind of sad? Did I either
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: that or I've just totally lost my mind?
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: Finally, in my mind, I said funny.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: I guess only the listener will know the truth of
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: which one of us just had a stroke.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: Maybe you guys can write in and tell us in
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: the meantime, everybody short, Stuff is out.
• 11:28
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• 11:31
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• 11:34
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• 11:35
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