How Long Would Wild Animals Survive in Your House?

Seven wild animals. One locked house. Who lasts the longest? We locked an octopus, a hummingbird, a vampire bat, a sloth, a black bear, a crocodile and a house mouse inside an ordinary house and checked on them at four checkpoints: one hour, one day, one week, one year. Every answer is real biology: octopus gills that collapse in air, a hummingbird heart that drops from 1,200 to 40 beats a minute every night, vampire bats that starve after two missed meals, sloths that can starve with a full stomach when the room is too cold, a bear that eats 20,000 calories a day and then sleeps for 100 days, and a crocodile that can go more than a year without eating. The winner was never really locked in. Chapters: 0:00 Seven wild animals, one locked house 0:10 The checkpoints 0:19 #7 The octopus 1:23 #6 The hummingbird 2:26 #5 The vampire bat 3:39 #4 The sloth 4:52 #3 The black bear 6:10 #2 The crocodile 7:14 #1 The house mouse 8:12 One year later Sources: - Onthank, K. Can Octopuses Breathe Air? (Walla Walla University): https://gab.wallawalla.edu/~kirt.onthank/can-octopuses-breathe-air.html - Why can't octopuses live in freshwater? (Biology Insights): https://biologyinsights.com/why-cant-octopuses-live-in-freshwater/ - Inky the octopus, National Aquarium of New Zealand (2016): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inky_(octopus) - Hummingbirds go to chilly extremes for a good night's sleep (Smithsonian Magazine): https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/hummingbirds-andes-go-chilly-extremes-good-nights-sleep-180975767/ - Vampire bats (National Geographic, 2015): https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/151117-vampire-bats-blood-food-science-animals - Sloth (Rainforest Alliance): https://www.rainforest-alliance.org/species/sloth/ - Starving to death with a full stomach (The Sloth Conservation Foundation): https://slothconservation.org/starving-death-full-stomach/ - Hank the Tank (NPR, 2022): https://www.npr.org/2022/02/21/1082136147/hank-the-tank-bear-lake-tahoe - Eleven pounds of acorns: a daily feast for a bear (NPS, Yosemite): https://www.nps.gov/yose/blogs/eleven-pounds-of-acorns-a-daily-feast-for-a-bear.htm - Hibernation (PBS NOVA): https://dipsy.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/satoyama/hibernation.html - Supersize Crocs: crocodile secrets of survival (PBS Nature): https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/supersize-crocs-crocodile-secrets-of-survival/1750 - House mice have lived with humans for 15,000 years (National Geographic, 2017; Weissbrod et al., PNAS): https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/house-mouse-domesticated-humans-animals-science - House mouse (UC IPM, University of California): https://ipm.ucanr.edu/home-and-landscape/house-mouse/ Survival times marked "by our math" are our own estimates based on these sources. #animals #science #whatif