Episode 186: Where do sabertooth tigers come from? The past … or Antarctica? (X-Men #10) -- March 1965

Apologies for no episode last week. Here in 2022 we are also shutting down for the Christmas holidays. We should be back the first week of January.

Also: Welcome to all the new listeners. If last episode was your first with us, we would love to hear how you heard of us. Apparently we are now the #25 top Marvel podcast, but that was published on December 11th, and we picked up many new listeners on November 30th. Where did you all come from? If you subscribe at www.SuperSerious616.com you can reply to the email we send you and you can tell us. We would appreciate it if only to satisfy our curiosity! See you in the New Year!

In this episode:

Mike and Ed discuss the mind-bending news that a sabertooth tiger has been found in Antarctica. Does this mean that other previously assumed extinct animals are not actually extinct? What about dinosaurs? Questions abound!

Behind the issue:

This is the first appearance of Ka-Zar and the Savage Land, which will go on to be a major environment in X-Men comics and the Marvel Universe more generally. There are rumors that the Savage Land and Ka-Zar may make an appearance in the MCU during the Thunderbolts movie due out in a couple of years. This is where it all began.

In this issue:

The evening news broadcasts a video from Antarctica of a Tarzan-like figure with a sabertooth tiger fighting explorers to the frozen continent. The X-Men suspect that this wild man may be a mutant, and they decide to investigate. They head to Antarctica and find a secret passageway through the frozen environment to a tropical land filled with dinosaurs and other strange creatures. They also encounter warriors fighting with preindustrial weapons. The wild man Ka-Zar and his sabertooth tiger Zabu come to their aid and help turn the tide of the battle. The X-Men leave, having made a potentially valuable ally.

Assumed before the next episode:

People are still wondering whether the sabertooth tiger is real, and if so, whether other extinct animals may return from the dead.

This episode takes place:

After the amazing news that a sabertooth tiger has been cited has been somehow lost in the new cycle.

Full Transcript

Edward: Mike, when did Sabertooth Tigers go extinct?

Michael: I don't know exactly, but I thought they were prehistoric. Did they not go out at the time of the Willie Mammoth? Think so. 2000 years ago.

Edward: I feel like, my understanding is that they, ex, number one is they existed. They're not like a unicorn. Unicorns never did exist. I know some people think that unicorns went extinct, but they did not. There was never a unicorn as far as we know. But sabertooth tigers, which kinda. Kinda unicorns. Cause they have giant, huge, giant teeth that kind of stick out. They existed and I think they were North American. I think they existed in North America. Yeah. And then when people came across that the land bridge into Alaska and then came down through the continent, there were all these crazy animals there. And humans just basically killed them all. By the time the Europeans got there, there weren't many of these big animals left. There were still bison and there were cougars, but, things like the mammoths and the sea two tigers were all killed off.

Michael: Were they killed off or they just die? I don't know if there's historical record for it being killed off by humanity, but I thought,

Edward: I think the record is, they overlapped with humanity. So humanity was there at the same time as they were. And, humanity lasted and they didn't. So they died off at some point after humans were there. And it turns out humans liked to eat animals. So there's a possibility that humans. Them all.

Michael: I thought it'd be more temperature. I thought it'd be more temperature related.

Edward: It could again, maybe, maybe Was Willie Mammoth ? Well, there's, there's wooly mammoth in Europe I think as well, but they also went extinct. And we know that humans ate those things for sure. Mm-hmm. , I think there's a lion, but regardless Europe, there's a lion in Europe too, and that, that also went extinct and we know that humans kind of wiped that out. I think I was curious what's going a lot of these animals in, in North America, they basically, they didn't have a defense against humans. Like all the animals in Africa. They evolved along with humans and the ones, and so they had defenses against humans. But I think all those animals in North America, we were an invasive species and we showed up and the animals had never seen us before, so they didn't know what.

Michael: That's interesting. Well, anyways, you asked me, but going back to the beginning. Yeah. So Saber Tooth Tigers haven't been around for a long, long time.

Edward: Except now they are.

Michael: Except now they are. Yeah, I mean, like

Edward: they're back baby. They're back.

Michael: They're back. They're back. And they're better than ever. So the people, uh, they watch this

Edward: not just as a sports team logo, basketball. No.

Michael: Well, like, so what we're talking about,

Edward: I feel like there should be though, shouldn't there be, why isn't there a sports team with like the Philadelphia Sabertooth Tiger.

Michael: Well, I, support it, but now they could probably get one maybe, but, for people that aren't, that haven't, haven't watching the news lately, what it is, is that there's a recording, a video recording of a man who looks like Tarzan walking with a sabertooth tiger who's attacking people in Antarctica. And it's like, it's so,

Edward: can interrupt that

Michael: crazy.

Edward: He looks like Tarzan. What does that mean? That means he, that means what does Tarzan even look? You mean like the drawings, the things that were on the covers of his books like a hundred years ago.

Michael: Yeah. Like a bear chested, loin, loincloth, guy walking around Antarctica, which is odd with a se tiger.

Edward: When you're saying he looks like Tarzan, you're basically saying there was some dude without clothes on.

Michael: It's for our younger listeners. I didn't wanna get too graphic, but Yeah. Some, some dude is basically wearing Speedo, walking around Antarctica with a sabertooth tiger.

Edward: Mike's gonna go to the next swim meet and he's gonna be like, Tarzan Tarzan's everywhere.

Michael: Well, that's what comes to mind when there's a man dress in a loin cloth with a prehistoric animal. Yeah. It kind of makes sense. Or with a big cat, like a saber tooth tiger. But there's a saber tooth tiger.

Edward: Yeah. But, Tarzan was never a, didn't have prehistoric animals in those books, did he? He was just, it was a chimpanzee, elephants,

Michael: the lord the jungle. No, he's in charge of the jungle and this guy's in charge of, it looks like from the video that he's in charge of the sabertooth tiger. And so, no, that's why, that's my connection, . But anyways, the Tarzana, the tar side. What I'm really getting at is that it's nutty.

Edward: Don't get confused by the Tarzan reference. Tarzana is not evolved.

Michael: I'm moving on from it. Moving on from bit, but here it is. So a sabertooth tiger. And, 10 years ago we would be, it would've blown our. If there's a video of a saber tooth tiger, that would be the front page of the news. I don't think many people know about this. Number one, and number two, we can't. We, you and I were talking before our show. Neither of us can totally agree on what is the most likely reason. There's a sabertooth tiger right now.

Edward: Yeah. There's a couple of things going on. Number one is, there's a sabertooth tiger. They went extinct thousands or tens of thousands of years ago, and now there's one back. So that's weird. Number two is it didn't appear in North America where they were last seen. It appeared in Antarctica. , which is like a weird place for it to be. And then number three is of all the, the weird places for it to appear. How does it survive in Antarctica? Like nothing survives in Antarctica. There's penguins.

Michael: And, and then so you say, well, where would it have come from? Because presumably, if there's been a line of savory tooth tigers for thousands and thousands of years that we didn't know about, there would be some evidence of that. And, people that investigate these things and the study of prehistoric animals just got it wrong and missed it and missed the evidence of years and years and years of sabertooth tigers prowling around or, the evidence, their bones or whatever

Edward: Be fair fossils if sabertooth tigers were really prowling around Antarctica this whole time, we haven't spent much time in Antarctica. I just think the evidence that any animal could survive in Antarctica is so low. That's the reason why we haven't been exploring Antarctica, is it's not really a place where animals survive.

Michael: Well, so that leads, okay, so number one, sabertooth tigers can survive in Antarctica. That's number, that's the first question, but it doesn't make a lot of sense because there are mammals, they're furry mammals that would live in,

Edward: they're predators. They have to eat other animals. If this sabertooth tiger is surviving in Antarctica for any period of time, that means there are prey animals living in Antarctica for some period of time. And I don't think it's just penguins. Like I think we've studied penguins in Antarctica as far as we know they do not have lions preying on them.

Michael: No, no. And so, it's kind of odd, but that's the most logical thing is that just it, we just happen to have missed it. And that's the conclusion that we'd have to draw if this was 10 years ago. But we have to entertain other possibilities. Could it be that we know time travel exists? So maybe it's a time travel thing.

Edward: That sounds a really easy answer, right? Like if, Kang who came here and tried to take over our timeline, take over our world, what would stop him from just going back in time and picking up a caveman in a sabertooth tiger and bringing them into our time. That sounds very reasonable.

Michael: It's a possibility or maybe it's another dimension that overlaps with our, we know that there's other dimensions and overlaps with ours and just maybe that. There's a crossover point down there. Maybe,

Edward: maybe in that dimension, Antarctica is like hot and bombing because we also know that a long time ago in humanity, Antarctica was hot and bombing, it was a nice warm right place with lush forests and so on. Maybe there's another dimension where that never changed and we got a portal to that dimension and these guys hopped through.

Michael: Maybe it's an alien because we know that there have been alien attacks and they seem to be similar. The aliens seem to be relatively similar to how we look, so maybe there's versions of mammals on other planets and this is just an alien either left their sabertooth tiger here, or maybe the sabertooth tiger is an intelligent species from another planet and we just haven't found the spaceship .

Edward: And he brought along his prehistoric man as a pet .

Michael: That's right. That's what it is and then maybe the other one I was thinking maybe it's from Asgard or something. Maybe it's from where Thor comes from. Because just a magical beast just like Thor's a magical Oh, that's true. God, I don't know.

Edward: And then this magical beast might be tens of thousands of years old. It's an un aging magical tiger.

Michael: Yeah, but the point is that we don't know. And so,

Edward: oh, I have another, I have another possibility.

Michael: What's that

Edward: robot? You know what I mean? We've had robots be we're we thought they were aliens. Turns out they were robots or we thought it was Iron man. Turns out it was a robot. It feels like robot impersonators are a thing. Why not just make a robot cat?

Michael: How about, and that's a good idea. But how about this also, it came from underneath the earth.

Edward: Oh, we, Atlantis is we know there's, there is an Atlantis underneath the earth. That could be a, it's almost like another dimension at this point, but yeah, that makes sense. Totally.

Michael: Boy, this all leads though. Is that

Edward: Maybe this old Atlantis kidnapped primitive humans. Mm-hmm. and and, giant cats and mammoths and stuff. And then breeding them underground in zoos. And these ones just escaped from the zoo.

Michael: Well, the point is that these are all now equally logical. , right, because it's just because there are of the

Edward: broadest sense of the word .

Michael: Well, but there are, there, they, we know that there's these are things that are, have happened last few years and so it, it doesn't stretch the imagination to believe that this is that there are sabertooth Tigers through any of these various reasons. So this is why you and I have been doing what I consider to be the hard news Ed, where we've been talking about the real stories. And I do think, these things have to be studied so that people, we, we could turn to, a more scholarly academic source to say, oh no, we've looked into this and turns out the robots who promote it, and now that people can study it

Edward: like mad scientist, it's a mad scientist who found ancient DNA and recreated primitive man and and tigers.

Michael: Oh my, I love it. I love it.

Edward: It's, it's The Thing. It's The Thing for an academic to dive into.

Michael: Yeah. Well, you know, Ed, if you and I, if our legacies that we're encouraging scholarship, so be it.

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