Ben Lamm

And what's interesting, though, is that when they scratch and bite each other, they'll transmit this cancer, this facial tumor disease.

It eats away at the face.

It's awful.

Don't Google it.

It's terrifying.

You'll die.

It's like that's the movie that someone needs to make, right?

It's the horror movie.

It's terrifying.

Well, what's crazy about that, though, is that predators like wolves, or in this case, the thylacine, they mostly prey on the weak animals.

the sick and the old right and so it's truly survival of the fittest and so i'm sure there's some luck in there but when predators go out uh to make a kill it's about energy expenditure right so so they're doing some type of internal calculus of can i kill that animal right like they do they you see this in africa with cheetahs is that if they miss so many preys the likelihood that they're going to die is high because the energy expenditure to take down like a gazelle is quite high right and so

They have to be thoughtful and time it right.

They have to sneak up right.

They got to learn all the right hunting behaviors.

But then they also have to ensure that, you know, they're going after the right target to begin with.

Right.

And mostly it's the young, the sick and the old.

Right.

And so when you have an absence of a predator in an ecosystem, it actually has this effect where you get more sick animals.

And so they're actually doing a huge service to the entire ecosystem, right?