Would you get naked and ride a crocodile like a bull?
Let's talk about that.
♪ (theme music) ♪
- Good Mythical Morning! - Over 180 million people visit zoos
every year. And why do they do that? Because people like to be around wild
animals. AROUND wild animals. Not actually WITH wild animals.
- Like this. You don't want this. - They like to be safely separated...
- ...from them by some sort of enclosure... - They want this.
- ...at the zoo. - Enclosures are not just to keep the
animals away from you. They're to keep you away from the animals...
- Yes. - ...as well. And I think that some people
- just don't appreciate that. - Like the people we're gonna...
- ...talk about today. - Yes. So let's just get right into 'em.
These really smart people with really great ideas at the zoo.
Lots of lessons learned today, starting with Amanda Hall, back in 2014
at the Henry Villas Zoo in California. She loves girafes. I love giraffes.
- My wife loves giraffes. - Who doesn't love giraffes?
Well, nobody loves giraffes as much as Amanda, 'cause Amanda was willing to
go over the fence into the enclosure, pick up a handful of grass, and extend
- it to Wally, the giraffe. - And what did Wally do?
- And he ate the grass. He ate it. - Oh, good! Okay. We're good.
He ate the grass. And then do you know what he did to say thank you?
- What? Oh! - He licked her. I don't know where.
Maybe the hand, the face. I don't know. He's a giraffe.
- Okay, then just say the hand. - And you know what she said?
She said it was "very sweet," when he licked her. So everything's going well.
- All right. Yeah. - But then do you know what Wally did?
- He kicked her in the face. - (laughing)
- Wally gettin'... a little tamale. - (laughing) You're happy about this?
- Yes, he kicked her in the face. - Their knees go like this.
Now, this could have been incredibly dangerous, because a giraffe can actually
- kill a lion with its kick. - Yeah.
But there was a secondary fence, like a little wooden fence, that she was
reaching over, and his hoof hit the fence and got deflected before it hit her.
So she just ended up with a busted lip and kind of a black eye.
- (Rhett) You can see her here... - (Link) Oh, wow.
...and not a mugshot, even though she did get a citation.
(Rhett) This is actually from the hospital. And then this is Wally's
mugshot. He went to giraffe prison. No, actually he didn't. This is just...
- ...a picture of him. - He's like, (sassily) "What? Yeah?"
"I kicked her. I licked her and I kicked her. It's called the lick-and-kick trick.
- Y'all got a problem with that?" - (laughing)
- "I'll do it again." - Yeah, you think could just...
- That's how he talks. - ...walk up to 'em, but they'll teach...
- Yeah. - ...you a lesson. I mean, you know that.
- You're dressed like a zookeeper today. - (laughing) I know a lot of things, yeah.
I assume you know lots of things about not-approaching giraffes.
- Thanks for seeing that. - Let me introduce you to 32-year-old
- Ellie Quo, a student of the martial arts. - Ah.
Who, after completing a certain level of training, his sensei said to him,
"Now that you have reached this level in your training, you can kill wild...
- ...animals with your bare hands." - Ah, yes. And that's why we all take...
- ...martial arts, right? For hunting. - Well... no.
I mean, Ellie, it turns out, was a very impressionable student.
Okay. It wasn't supposed to be taken literally.
Yeah. What he did was at night, under the cover of darkness...
- Mhm. - ...he snuck into the Melbourne Zoo.
- Okay? - Yeah, just like a kung fu master.
Oh, so far so good. And then he finds an enclosure and he scales it...
- Mhm. - ...and then repels down the there side.
- Oh. I like his methods. - And then he's, like, looking for his...
...opponent, and oh, there he is, coming out of the shadows.
The king of the jungle versus kung fu master.
- A lion. He went in the lion enclosure. - Yes. The dude is facing off with a lion.
And then, all of a sudden, Oh! Turns out that they keep more than one...
- Oh! Who knew? - ...lion in the enclosure.
So here comes another lion. Here comes another lion. it's called a pride.
And they take pride in what they're about to do to him.
- (laughing) - The next morning, the zookeepers
found Ellie Quo in the lion pit. They found both of his arms
with his fists of fury attached. And within the fists of fury was lion fur.
- Hm. - That's all they found.
- So did he live? (laughing) - (laugning)
- They ripped him to shreds. - Oh.
- He lost the match with the lions. - They found his arms, and that's it.
That's it. He did win a Darwin award for that one. Well deserved.
- Oh, congratulations. - Improve our gene pool by removing...
- ...themselves from it. - All right, April 2009 at the Berlin Zoo.
Mandy K, a woman who has apparently watched too many Coca-Cola Christmas
commercials, jumped into the polar bear enclosure.
- (laughing) Oh. - And that's when she learned that...
...polar bears don't like Coke. They like woman.
- Oh! - They immediately attack her -- four of
- ...them. - Like jumping in ice water with these...?
Yes. They swim towards her. They begin to bite her. They inflicted some serious
wounds on her. But the zookeeper staff, just like me, acted fast and started to
save her, and this was caught on video, and the BBC has a clip of this.
- Let's watch that. - (laughing) Okay.
This is as they're trying to get her out. You see she's got something wrapped
around her and she's grabbing onto that thing -- Whoa! Nope! She goes right
back in, and the polar bear's like, (funny voice) "Yeah, well there's a woman."
- "Just like a Coca-Cola." - Is that a toilet plunger?
- I don't know what that thing is. - It's like the zoo plumbers are trying...
- Oh! He bit her butt! - Yeah, he did. He bit that butt.
And the zoo plumbers are pulling her up. Giving her a wedgie. Okay.
Yeah, I'll take a wedgie over being maimed by some polar bears any day of the week.
And those are her pants right there. That thing you saw at the end.
- Polar bear pulled her pants off? - Took the pants off.
Went right for the pants and took 'em off. Now, it turns out -- so why would a woman
do this? Well, it turns out that she had lost her job, and she was kind of in
despair and this was a cry for help. And it turns out the polar bears did
- not help. They did not help. - (laughing)
They made it worse. And then the zoo, insult to injury, sued her.
- So sorry. Hope you have a new job, Mandy. - Yeah, you can't do that.
- Fuzhou Zoo in China, 2007. - Fuzhou Zoo?
- Fuzhou Zoo! - Oh, my favorite zoo!
- Zheng Dong, which is, uh... - My favorite name. (laughing)
Yeah, at the favorite zoo. He was taking picture of some macaque monkeys...
...and, you know, cute monkeys. One of monkeys reaches through the fence,
grabs his phone -- I don't know how this fence worked -- but somehow it grabs
- his phone, pulls it in. - Yeah, gotta make a call.
- Gotta make a monkey call. - What does Zheng Dong do,
- at this point? Does Zheng Dong... - (laughing)
...call the officials? "Hey, my phone's in there." Does Zheng Dong cut his
- loses? Zheng Dong don't do those things. - Mm, I don't know.
- (laughing) What Zheng Dong do is... - He don't?
- ...Zheng Dong jump in the enclosure. - This is like the best kids book...
- ...of all time. "What Does Zheng Dong Do?" - (laughing)
He tries to get his phone. What he didn't realize is, uh...
he's about to experience the macaque attack.
- Ooh! (laughing) - These monkeys may be cute, but they...
...don't wanna give that phone back, and they are clawing at this guy.
- They're setting up Twitter accounts. - We do not have... (laughing)
- Setting up Instagram. @macaques. - No, they're attacking.
They're attacking him, and then zookeepers come to his rescue
and they get his phone out, which is totally chewed up.
Oh, they didn't -- okay, no social media.
Was Zheng Dong grateful? Zheng Dong don't be grateful.
- Oh. Hm. Zheng Dong sought compensation for his...
- ...chewed-up phone. - Did Zheng Dong get compensation for...
- ...his phone? - (laughing)
- Did Zheng Dong win? Or did... - No.
- ...Zheng Dong lose? - Zheng Dong lose.
- (crew offscreen laughing) - Dang, Zheng Dong!
- On all fronts. Lots of scratches... - See what I did there? I said,
- "Dang, Zheng Dong." - "Dong Zheng Dong." Gimme another one.
Okay. Bronx Zoo, in the New York region. 2004. A man strips naked
- and dives into a tank of crocodiles. - So far, so good.
The man remains unnamed to this day. You're about to find out why.
So anyway, a guard spots him walking around naked in the World of Darkness
nocturnal animal exhibit. So at least he had the decency to get naked in the
- world of darkness. - Mm. Don't want people to see his...
- Zheng Dong. - Right. Exactly.
- (everyone on and offscreen laughing) - Exactly.
Then he scales the five-foot fence to get into the crocodile tank.
When I'm gonna scale a fence, sometimes I feel like I need to get naked first.
- Yeah, yeah. - Just to make sure nothing gets snagged.
Well, actually I think that's the exact opposite thing that could happen.
True. Not that I've said it out loud, I never will do that.
Right. That's why you do remain clothed when getting into the...
- It was actually Cayman exhibit... - Okay.
So real, big crocodiles is what you're picturing, but it's actually Caymans,
which is a smaller crocodilian. But still not the kind of thing you wanna swim
- with, or swim naked with. - Mm-mm.
Lots of targets opened up in that situation. Apparently, according to
James Ricker, Sergent James Ricker -- apparently he's a policeman -- who's like,
(New York accent) "He ran through the water. And I tried to grab him.
At one point, he was actually straddling them!"
- What? - The Caymans. He was trying to ride a
Cayman like a bull, while naked. That's why I said that thing in the teaser.
- They're not smooth. - Because of this, right here.
They're not smooth on their back. Just a note there.
So he's in there, in the enclosure, trying to ride naked -- (stammering)
- They're naked. He's naked. - Actually, everybody's naked!
- (both laughing) - The crocodiles are naked. He's naked.
- They put in a divider... - "Bring in the divider!"
...a wooden divider. It's like this happens all...
"We got another naked dude riding crocs in the pool!"
Exactly. They've got a divider, like, on standby.
- It's like, "Bring it down!" Creak! - It turns out, he does not get bitten,
and it kinda makes sense, because Caymans are... usually they eat, like, frogs,
birds, and rodents, and apparently nothing on him looked like a frog, bird...
- ...or rodent. - "Get on the other side of the divider!
Don't get on the same side as the Cayman! You gotta be divided by the divider!"
- "Don't be on the same side." - Zookeeper John Behler says,
(New York accent) "Lucky for the fella it wasn't breedin' season."
This zookeeper has seen unspeakable things.
- (both laughing) - Because I don't know what he's talking...
- ...about. But that's what he said. - Oh, man.
Okay, in order to cleanse ourselves from that, why doesn't everyone in the comments
share, like, a really nice zoo story. Make it up! Just make up a really nice,
- concise zoo story. - I got lots of nice zoo stories.
- I'll tell you in Good Mythical More. - No nakedness. No chewies.
- No bloodness. None of that. - Mm, no chewies.
- I got quite a... quite a... - Thanks for leaking... leaking...
(laughing) Thanks for leaking those comments, liking, and subscribing.
Yeah, your... your... it's making a noise.
- Yeah, I've got... I'm sorry. - So what, zookeeper Rhett.
- (both) You know what time it is. - My name is [Selee]. I'm from...
Stockholm, Sweden. And it's time to spin The Wheel of Mythicality.
Make sure you like us on Facebook. We have exclusive videos over there.
That means videos you can only see on Facebook. Facebook.com/rhettandlink
Click through to Good Mythical More. I've got some more crazy stories
of zoo break-ins, but Rhett also has, like, a really nice zoo story...
- I got a nice zoo story. Mhm. - ...from his own experience.
(Rhett) "Ghost: The Musical"
♪ (Well, I'm just walking around and living my life, like a...) ♪
♪ (Where is your pottery? I want to do the pottery...) ♪
- ♪ (Looking for my pottery thing.) ♪ - ♪ (...thing with you!) ♪
- ♪ (Yeah. Sit down.) ♪ - ♪ (Can you bring out the clay?) ♪
- ♪ (Here it is.) ♪ - ♪ (And put some water on it?) ♪
- ♪ (And spin it around?) ♪ - ♪ (Yeah! I can do that...) ♪
- ♪ (I'm gonna touch your hands, but...) ♪ - ♪ (...for you!) ♪
♪ (...you're not gonna feel it, 'cause I'm a ghost.) ♪
♪ (I can feel it even though you're a ghost.) ♪
- ♪ (How does it feel?) ♪ - ♪ (A little bit awkward.) ♪
- ♪ (Yeah! I love you.) ♪ - (crew offscreen laughing)
- ♪ (Really awkward.) ♪ - ♪ (You say, "Ditto." I know you...) ♪
♪ (...haven't seen the movie, like a lot of movies from the past you...) ♪
♪ (...haven't seen. I just spit a little bit in your ear. I'm sorry.) ♪
- (crew offscreen laughing) - ♪ (I love you.) ♪
- ♪ (Ditto!) ♪ - There you go.
- No, I mean I just spit in your ear, too. - Oh!
[Captioned by Kevin: GMM Captioning Team]