Name: How to "De-Extinct" a Species (w/ Forrest Galante)
Uploaded: 2025-10-02T15:00:13.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'How to "De-Extinct" a Species (w/ Forrest Galante)' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-10-02. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'How to "De-Extinct" a Species (w/ Forrest Galante)' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-10-02. Transcript available.

How to "De-Extinct" a Species (w/ Forrest Galante)

You mentioned a little bit ago, one of your shows extinct or alive or alive.
Yeah. What,
what was one of your most surprising discoveries while shooting extinct or
alive? Yeah. Um,
the tortoise in that cover image from season two, that was probably the biggest
one. Uh,
it was crazy. We went to this Island in the Galapagos that basically nobody
goes to called
Fernandina. That species of tortoise hadn't been seen in 114 years and only one
specimen in history
had ever been recorded 114 years prior by the California Academy of Sciences.
So to date that
animal that I'm holding in that picture, which has been doctored for the, the
like trailer poster
thing is the rarest animal in the world. There's only one known individual of
that species. And
that's her right there. Damn. And it's a woman, huh? It's a girl. Yeah. Her
name's Fern.
Some, yeah. Women, they, they, they, they're survivors. Yeah. Yeah. They do
chicks are like,
we're talking about survival and stuff. Girls are so much better at it than
guys. It's not even close.
Is that in animal kingdom as well? Oh, I mean, I was talking about humans, but
yeah,
probably in the animal kingdom too. I mean, like, I feel like females, girls,
women, whatever,
they have more to fight for because they have kids to protect, you know,
whereas a male,
I'll just make more kids. You know what I mean? Like I'm not investing all of
my body energy into
raising this one young. Like I'll just go find another mate. Yeah. I'm talking
on like a very base
evolutionary level. Like it's, it's just like, I'm going to spread my seed.
Whereas I, it's incredible
how like tenacious and hardy female animals, women, everything are. It's crazy.
Oh, dude. I think, and also, and also men have that, uh, they have testosterone
in them that like,
you know, it's that I'm going to put my hand in the fire. Exactly. Right there.
You're going to lose
30% of dudes right there because they're trying to taste a fucking car that's
going by. That's,
you know, stick my tongue out. Yeah. Let me look right here in the animal
kingdom are females
generally better at survival than males. Um, and we looked at it on perplexity.
That's what we like
to use. Uh, females in the animal kingdom are generally better at survival than
males in a
large scale study of 101 wild mammal, wild mammal species. Females lived an
average of 18% longer
than males in more than 60% of those species. Um, for most mammals, including
species like
elephants, lions, and seals, females surpass males in longevity. Uh, the
difference in lifespan between
the sexes is often more pronounced in the animal kingdom than in humans where
women, women live about
7.8% longer than men. We're expendable. Yeah. Like think if there's, if there's
one guy and a hundred
girls, you're repopulating the planet, right? If there's a hundred guys and one
woman, you're not,
you know what I mean? Like we are expendable males across all species for the
most part are
expendable. Sorry, bro. No, I just, I felt something was, I knew something was
off. Yeah.
Yeah. That's it. Yeah. Damn it. Should have been a check. I know. I just gotta,
I gotta wander around
with a, uh, I'm gonna get some new knee pads. I'm gonna have to get some
protective armor.
I'm gonna get some new knee pads. I gotta get some protective armor, dude. That's
for sure.
Um, the idea that you're going to find like extinct species is such like, it's
a, it's a
cool sport, right? Because it's like, it's, um, chasing this, uh, Atlantis in a
way kind
of, it's the most ultimate hunting form of hunting. You're looking for the rarest
thing
in the world. So much so that the whole world thinks it doesn't exist anymore.
Yeah. Yeah.
I'm thinking about just thinking about extinction and stuff. It's like, where's
that last day
where people are just standing there with the clipboards and they're just
waiting for the
last, like one of a species to die off. And then they're like extinct.
There it goes. Yeah. Well, it's like, yeah. What classifies something as
extinct?
That's a great question. And that's part of the premise of like why we made
that original
show extinct or alive is like, it's some, for the most part, and I'm oversimplifying,
but
it's some stuffy dude, British dude in a smoking jacket going, no, yes. I
believe this
is gone, you know, and then he like checks a box. And the problem with that is,
is from
a conservation model, the second you check that extinction box, that's it.
There's no
funding. There's no effort. It's gone. Extinct doesn't mean hiding or around
the corner or
there's a few left. Extinct means give up and move on.
We're out 86, the dodo bird.
That's it. Yeah. And so I think it's super arrogant for humans to come in and
go, that's
extinct. I mean, not to, I don't want to belittle extinction. It's a very
severe thing,
but oftentimes we give up too quickly. We go, it's extinct. It's not here. Or
now it's
sort of been reclassified as like lost to science. But for a long time, it was
just like, oh,
it's extinct. Science hasn't seen it in 20 years, 30 years, a hundred years.
Used to be
30 years was the benchmark. And, um, it's just sort of an arrogant thing to
come in and say
like, you know, oh, I went to Borneo for 10 days. I promise you it's not there.
It's
like, shut up, dude. You know what I mean? What the fuck are you talking about?
It's not a game of a clue, you idiot. Yeah, exactly. And I'm oversimplifying it,
but I think that's what ended up happening a lot is all this information, you
know, there's
millions and millions of species of animal out there, tons and thousands of
scientists and
things. And they're like, oh, that one's gone. Move on. You know? And what I
like to do is be
like, well, hold on, let's give the little guy a second shot here, you know?
And I think why we
were successful, why we found eight animals that were previously lost to
science was because we
didn't give up after 10 days. Like some of those expeditions were two months
long, you know,
living in tents, filming every day, like setting camera traps, going out, baiting
stuff. You know,
it's, they were, they were hard work. I love the work, but they were hard work.
And then it's like,
oh, there it is. We found it, you know? And the first time was like utterly
shocking, but then we
did it seven more times and it was like, oh wow, there is a pattern here. And I
don't want to say
it's just like our show and the work I did, but between that and some of the
conservation
organizations and stuff, there was a little bit of a mentality shift of, oh,
wait a minute.
It's not extinct. It's like a lost species. It's been lost to Western
scientists studying it or
finding it. So now we'll put in campaigns to find lost animals as opposed to
just decide they're
extinct and move on. And that's sort of changed things a bit. It's kind of like
cold case files
of animals. Yeah, totally. It's like, go back in, you know, check, check the
records. Yeah.
Yeah. It's like, ah, I don't think we had a, let's see if we have a better DNA
sample
now. Yeah, exactly. And the technology has come so far. Dude, this sounds just
like cold
case files. It is. It is, man. It's the same thing. It's forensics. It's animal
forensics.
Yeah. Yeah. Wow. It's cool. Are there animals out there who are, that are
almost extinct? Like,
do you believe? Are we get like, does extinction happen every week on the
planet and we just
don't realize it? How common is it?
3000 species per year. Nuh-uh. You're lying. You're lying. That's the estimated
number. Yeah.
And a lot of things, a lot crazy, right? The fucking what? Bro, a lot of things
are going
extinct before we've even described what they are. Like in the Amazon where
there's all this clear
cutting and stuff. Yeah. There are little species of, and I'm not saying they're,
I'm not talking
about a buffalo. You know, I'm talking about a bug this big or a little orchid
or something.
But before we've even described what it is or looked into the medicinal
properties of it or
try to conserve it, it's gone because we wipe out that chunk of habitat.
Wow.
There you go.
The estimated number of species that go extinct every year ranges from about 2,000
over 100,000,
depending on which scientific estimates and total species counts are used.
Yeah. We, we, we, I know this is the chat GPT answer or whatever perplexity
answer, but we dug
into this pretty heavily across a bunch of organizations and we estimated it
was close to about 3,000.
Now, most of that as in like 2,500 are plants, but the other five to 700 or so
are, are animals
that are going extinct every year.
But to think that we're losing plants, which are, I mean, unbelievable, just
the things that
they're, the medicine and stuff that they're finding in plants, the
possibilities.
And it's, it's again, going back to the technology standpoint, the more that we
advance our technology,
the more we use that technology to realize that old ancient ways of medicine
and herbal
medicine and stuff actually is really effective.
Look at the sups game now, right?
Like you go on, it's like supplements, you know, every supplements like, oh,
this is, I
am making all this up, but like berberine, which is a derivative of an almond
shell or whatever,
you know?
And it's like beetroot, beetroot.
You're like, that's medicine.
Yeah.
You know, we, it's so crazy.
Cause I think medicine swang, swung so far away in the pendulum where it's like,
it has
to be fully synthetic and it's like, oh wait, half the shit isn't working,
giving you terrible
side effects.
Well, look over here.
Beetroot actually is a great detoxifier.
Why don't we just do that?
You know, it's like, it's like the pendulum swung too far and now it's swung
back a little
bit where it's like, yeah, all these, all these natural things actually help us.
And when you're losing 1500 species or so of those a year, I'm not saying any
of them are
going to cure cancer, but they might, you know, who knows?
Like we haven't tested it.
Yeah.
It's fascinating.
I mean, it's crazy to think that that's, that, um, that that's where we are and,
and,
and, and how much of that is just evolution and how much of that is man-made do
you think
or man like, uh, uh, involved that, uh, that's, that we, that species become
extinct?
It's a little bit of both.
And I think the pro one of the things that we see a lot is people are like, oh,
it's all
humans fault.
That's why everything's going.
Extinction's been around forever.
You know, like extinctions aren't like, we're not going to get rid of
extinction and we
shouldn't, but what we shouldn't do is accelerate it.
And that's the problem.
Yeah.
You know, extinction been around it.
I've been getting rid of these hoes forever.
You feel me?
That's it.
I'm just joking.
Sorry, hoes.
I'm very respectful.
Um, yeah, but it's, it's, uh, it's interesting because I think man-made
extinction.
So they say that we're in the sixth great mass extinction event right now.
There's been five others throughout history, like when the dinosaurs went
extinct, when
the, when the earth froze over the grape freezing or whatever it's called.
Um, I don't, I'm not an anthropologist, paleontologist.
I don't really understand that as well, but they say right now we're in the
sixth great mass
extinction event.
And that is, that is directly caused by human beings.
So my thing is like, we shouldn't end extinction.
We shouldn't stop extinction.
We just shouldn't be like racing towards it as much as we can.
And when you're killing like, you know, a million, 8 million sharks a year or
whatever
it is we're fishing and cutting down a thousand acres of rainfall, I'm making
all these numbers
up a thousand rain acres of rainforest a day.
We're like racing towards extinction.
We're like, how fast can we get rid of these things?
You know?
And that's the problem.
Like, that's where we need to just reassess.
I'm all for human growth and development and everything else.
We need it.
Like we need to make the planet sustainable, but we got to d