Thomas Jefferson felt incredibly self-conscious about American wildlife.

You see, back in the 1700s, Europeans considered America to be an inferior natural environment to the lands of Europe, Africa, and Asia.

They believed America to be an unhealthy region of the world by comparison. Now, of course, this was a

faulty idea, partially based on outdated scientific theories, partially based on racist, colonialist,

political commitments, and it was partially out of a genuine anxiety that America was this

nascent world power, and invalidating the strength of their

animals was one way you could comfort yourself about that. But regardless of why,

Europeans believed America to be naturally less conducive to robust organisms than the

lands on the eastern side of the map.

Among the chief peddlers of this theory was a French scientist by the surname Buffon,

who helped write entire natural history books, essentially dunking on America and its weak animals.

And these books wrote themselves. I mean, on this side of the ocean,

we have lions. On that side of the ocean, they have cougars. On this side of the ocean, we have

elephants. On that side of the ocean, they have tapers. Now, Thomas Jefferson hated this idea. He found it personally insulting, and he dedicated an

inordinate amount of time and resources to proving buffon a buffoon. He would incessantly write

buffon snarky letters talking about how great American animals are,

and he would spend obscene capital to acquire and ship specimens all the way across the ocean for Buffon to look at.

You have to understand. Jefferson really cared that this respected European scientists didn't respect the

animals in his neighborhood, and he totally let it get to him. Buffon lived in Jefferson's head rent-free.

And Jefferson, in his counter-arguments, was not at all above fudging the data in his favor.

He cared so much about this that he was willing to exaggerate in order to prove a point.

Instead of making a fair comparison between American deer and the deer of Europe,

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