The Twisted Tale of Travis the Chimpanzee

Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks

Tooth & Claw

True Crime, Nature, Science, Comedy

4.8 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 12 January 2026

⏱️ 83 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Wes tells the horrifying and tragic story of Charla Nash, Sandra Herold, and Travis the chimpanzee. ~~ MasterClass: Get 15% off any annual membership at MasterClass by visiting https://masterclass.com/TOOTH and using promo code TOOTH Ollie Pet Food: Cozy up with your pup this season—go to https://ollie.com/tooth and use code tooth to get 60% off your first box! Remi: Get 50% off your custom night guard at https://shopremi.com/tooth with code TOOTH at checkout. Rocket Money: Let Rockey Money help you reach your financial goals faster—join at https://RocketMoney.com/CLAW with promo code CLAW. Smalls: For a limited time, get 60% off your first order plus free shipping at https://Smalls.com/TOOTH ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/c/toothandclawpodcast ~~ Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to an extensive library of exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts. For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social: Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast Twitter: @ToothandClawPod Wes: @GrizKid Jeff: @jefe_larson Mike: @mikey3ds Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everyone. Welcome back to Tooth and Claw podcast. We have our chimpanzee biologist, Wes Larson, with us.
0:21.0	That's not me. Or which one? What? I'm not a chimpanzee biologist, Wes Larson, with us. And then I'm... Or which one? What? I'm not a chimpanzee biologist. Or which one? Bears. Or which one? Bears? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. We have our bear biologist. Is that right? That's better. Yeah. Does I need to say the type of bear? I'm pretty much a chimpanzee biologist after our chimp crazy episodes. Mike, I'm a bunches one too. And then, yeah, we have Mike Smith with us, and he's a good guy. That's all I can say about Mike. Yeah. He is. I try to be. Yeah, I like your hat today, Mike. Thanks. It's a good hat. You're a good guy to you. You're just complimenting me. That's a good guy behavior. I guess. Oh, really? Thank you. Sometimes I feel like that is, uh, you've gotten at me once or twice before for doing nervous laughter, which I do. and I am trying to kind of work on. I think I kind of nervously compliment people, too. Like, I think if I don't have, I think if there's a lull in a conversation, I don't have, like, something to say, I just throw out a compliment. I think that's a great reaction, though. I guess.
1:27.5	If that's where your brain goes to fill dead air.
1:30.0	Yeah, that's great.
1:30.8	Yeah.
1:31.4	Okay.
1:32.1	Well, a cop is like framing him with drugs and he's like, I like your gun.
1:40.5	All right.
1:41.5	Well, I brought up Chimp Crazy a second ago, and there's a reason I did that.
1:47.5	We, in 2024, we partnered with HBO documentaries, and we did a series of episodes on their series, Chimp Crazy.
1:57.2	It was a lot of work, but we were really proud of what we put out.
2:01.6	And there was a part in that series where they go into one of the premier animal attack stories of our lifetimes.
2:10.6	When we started this podcast, this was one of the stories that was like top of mind for me.
2:15.6	I actually started putting it together and then I stumbled on the story of Mo the
2:19.3	chimpanzee and he kind of pushed out this story.
2:22.9	And then we were going to do it during the Chimp Crazy episodes, but they kind of wanted us
2:27.9	to wait.
2:28.7	And so we waited, but now we're finally doing the story in full of Travis the Chimpanzee.
2:34.1	Great.
2:34.6	So we have talked about this in those chimp crazy episodes, but not really at length.
2:39.5	We haven't really dove into it the way I've wanted to.
2:42.8	It was all over the news.
	...

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