adam savage here in my cave answering questions about mythbusters from tested patrons and oh
gary chang sorry i ended up reading another question but gary chang asked the question
that i'm going to answer in this video and his question is what is your favorite
life experience on mythbusters that you don't think you would have done otherwise some things
that come to mind including flying to the edge of space flying in an f-16 swimming with sharks
yeah every one of those was astounding flying to the edge of space in the dragon lady uh uh in the
u2 spy plane we left from beale air force base up here near sacramento and the crew uh the crew
at beale air force base could not have been more amazing to work with and that plane was incredible
i got to be in a plane and look down at california
from such a height by the way my my highest altitude i've been to is a classified number i
am not allowed to tell you what that number is i can tell you that i went above 70 000
feet and that is the exact phrase i'm allowed to say i went above 70 000 feet for reference
when you look up and you see a plane going across the sky at its full height which is
usually 30 to 40 000 feet that's how far below us that plane was when we were in the u2 spy plane
it was amazing it's also a fairly quiet and slow plane all things considered uh it can fly faster
because the air is way thinner up there but it's not like a kind of crazy noise environment
it's almost meditative really it was an unparalleled experience and the f-18
fa-18 hornet flying with the blue angels so insane i broke the speed of sound seven times
i pulled seven and a half g's three times and i only passed out twice
i stayed conscious in a full seven and a half g roll conscious is about all you could really
hope for i mean unless you're one of those one of those blue angels if you're an f-18 pilot man
every one of them is a physical specimen of unparalleled uh uh uh health and uh
rigor what else did you include here swimming with sharks yeah swimming with sharks that's definitely
something i had no desire to do never even occurred to me to think about wanting to do it
when we first went down to the bahamas to shoot for shark week i didn't want to go swimming with
sharks then we were out with doc and his crew at the bimini biological field station and they took
us out to this spot where we're all in snorkels and like holding arms in this big circle and
we're looking down and i can see about i can see all the way to the bottom perfectly clearly it's
only 40 feet deep and there's a sandy white sand bottom and this is often what's really important
for going shark diving you need something to be able to see them against because they're very
well camouflaged and i'm looking down at the sandy bottom and i see the shadow of a hammerhead shark
and i don't know what to tell you except that to see a hammerhead in the world was one of the
most it is an alien and to see it so close to me i still remember like i had to snorkel in and it
sounded my to my head it sounded like this just like i'm holding on to the two people on either
side of me and just like looking at this later on i would be jumping into literal piles of sharks
eating live chum i was so calm and relaxed about it but at that moment it was the scariest thing
i had ever done i have since found diving with sharks to be some of the most beautiful
experience i've ever had in nature sharks are unbelievably beautiful and spending lots of time
underwater getting paid to spend lots of time underwater it's not much better than that my
favorite shark week shoot was the the final one we did where we i wore a suit of armor underwater
we did a whole bunch of tests we actually sailed to a place about 60 miles south of nassau to a
place called tiger beach and i got to see real tiger sharks on the prowl um i got hustled into
a shark cave by safety divers because a big tiger came through i've seen some stuff but
my favorite life experience that never occurred to me that i would get to do or even wanted to do
it's hand feeding an octopus we were uh we were i think is the very first season of mythbusters
or even the pilots i think it's the first season we did octopus pregnancy supposedly uh scuba diver
had swallowed octopus eggs while scuba diving and they grew in the scuba diver's stomach
so to test this we had several things we made like stomach acid equivalent and tried to grow things
in it but we also had to go meet an octopus so we called up the monterey aquarium and they let
me come on down and go behind the scenes and be part of the feeding of one of their
giant pacific octopuses which is which are these are big animals uh and
they're first i mean i've always i've always loved octopuses i've always been riveted by them as
creatures as incredibly weird question loci about sentience and what it means to be conscious what
it means to be a thinking animal yeah they're they're amazing and i was definitely cognizant
how amazing octopuses were um but again like i never imagined i get to be near one i thought
i would just be watching someone deal with the octopus but then i get there and i'm standing
over the tank and by the way every octopus tank is lined in something like 18 inches of astroturf
because it is this one thing that octopuses cannot grab it is like their kryptonite is astroturf
which i think is really really funny um and one of the things aquariums do with octopuses is they
attempt to socialize them because octopuses aren't naturally social they're they're lone hunters and
if you put them in an aquarium tank they tend to want to hide until they can't see anybody
so you do a lot of socializing with them behind the scenes so that they're willing to kind of
move around and they get comfortable moving around while people are there so i was part
of this right they brought me back and then it's time to feed the octopus and they let him know
i can't remember him or her they let the octopus know that they were there by agitating the water
and the octopus came over and you could see the actor sort of eyeing you from under the water
and then the the handler handed me a shrimp and said give this to him and i held it out above
the water and this little tendril comes out and touches it and then i watch as it passes
the shrimp suckered a sucker like every sucker has muscles every sucker has taste buds and it
passes that shrimp all the way down to the beak in the middle of its mantle i think those are
the correct terms um and then the octopus comes back and touches my hand and starts to like touch
my hand more and the handler tells me he likes the taste of your skin like it is they can tell
i ended up spending 45 minutes there with the octopus wrapped around my whole arm they made
sure that i didn't get my hand close to its beak where it could bite me or harm me uh i had hickeys
all the way up to my shoulder my wife i was like showing my wife and i got home all these rounds uh
it was amazing uh the octopus got really playful it squirted water i mean there was there was
when you stare into the eyes of another creature like that it feels a little less lonely i mean
i really think that's why i really think that's why our relationship with dogs and cats and our
pets are our horses and whatever else are pets you have but when you have a pet and you have a shared
life with that pet and you end up being able to really communicate in some important ways with
these animals that don't speak our language but we actually do can we can get to some level of
communication and i think there's something really emotionally uh uplifting about communicating
across the chasm of species and there is this way in which an octopus when it's like looking at you
with one of its eyes and you could just like it's just impossible not to be sure that that eye is
thinking some thoughts about you it's amazing i have since met two other octopuses and they all
had the same reaction to me which was that they like they love the taste of my skin and we spent
lots of time together um the most recent one was under the aegis of rich ross at the academy of
sciences steinhardt aquarium and my wife came along for that mrs don't try this came with me
and she had long known this story about the taste of my skin and octopuses and she loves octopuses
so she was secretly hoping that she'd have the same kind of like natural octopus whisperer skin
that they would really like and so she put her hand out and the act was like wrapping around my
hand and then it reached out attention to her and it touched her hand and went back to mine
i don't i don't mean to ruffle in her disappointment but like i totally understand it
uh it did end up spraying us both with water and i remember this great moment of seeing my wife
like drenched but with just pure joy pure joy on her face um yeah hand-feeding octopuses man
there are a few things weirder and more wonderful and that feel like i'm somehow like i said
bridging a important chasm of consciousness yeah
i don't think i have anything more to add to that i think that's a pretty good uh uh
pretty it's a pretty good answer uh gary chang thank you so much for such a terrific question
i love talking about the octopuses it's not octopi remember that it's never occupied it's
oct activities or octopuses activities um thank you tested patrons for your excellent questions
uh i will keep submitting them and i will continue to keep answering
them in this format thank you guys so much stay safe i'll see you next time