July 2, 2026

Blackie the Anteater escapes!

Show Notes
Transcript

Johnny Mac shares five good news stories ahead of July 4th: YouTuber Carlos “The Malibu Artist” was shocked when a great white bit an underwater camera off Southern California, cracking its dome and producing footage from inside the shark’s mouth. In Denver, the Food Matters Restaurant Challenge helps restaurants cut waste and costs, including Blue Sparrow Cafe re-steeping chai spices to save $2,500 per cafe yearly, Olivia using whole eggs, and Pit Friend Barbecue stopping cucumber coring to save $1,600 a year. Wildlife SOS reunites misplaced leopard cubs in India by using monitored “safe boxes,” reporting over 95% success over 15 years. NPR tested NIO’s automated EV battery swap taking 3:08, with nearly 4,000 stations worldwide. Taipei Zoo’s 11-year-old anteater Blackie escaped for a week before being safely returned.

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Kalaroka Shark Media. Hey there, I'm Johnny Mack with five

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good news stories just in time for July fourth, and

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it's time to get out of the water and a

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Jaws rewatch. How about a shark that bit a camera.

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Carlos goes by the name the Malibu Artist on YouTube.

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He spends a lot of time on his kayak off

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the coast of Sokal filming sharks. He's been doing it

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long enough that he knows their behavior pretty well, so

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when a great white approach one of his cameras in

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late April and bit it, he was surprised. He had

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multiple cameras in the water and a friend operating a drone.

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The problem was, at that moment he lost communication with

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the drone guy and he had no idea where the

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shark was, he said, not knowing where the shark is,

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I look back at the shadow of the sharks right there.

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By the time I got comes with him, all I

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can hear is my buddy yelling he got the camera.

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He got the camera. The great white had chopped down

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directly on one of the underwater cameras. The footage captured

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from inside the shark's mouth is remarkable. Carlos told Local TV.

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I've been around them a lot. They normally don't come

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any like that. The shark did not swim away with

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the camera, but it did crack the protective dome around

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the equipment. You'll find the video on his YouTube channel.

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Again he goes by the Malibu artists in Denver. Restaurant

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tours are saving money and while cutting down on waste.

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I like this a lot. It is called the Food

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Matters Restaurant Challenge run by the Denver Department of Public

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Health and Environment. Here's the concept. Restaurants sign up for

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a twelve week program. They have to come up with

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an innovation to reduce their food waste, and they get

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paired with environmental consultants and food lab experts. The guys

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at Blue Spiral Cafe, a small chain of coffee shops

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around Denver, are known for their Chai lattes. Their Chai

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lattes are made fresh daily from ground spices. For the challenge,

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they figured out that if they steep the spices twice

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then again as a half batch, they can get significantly

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more shy out of the same amount of spices. It

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has about twenty minutes of the process. However, It saves

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each cafe twenty five hundred dollars a year, fourteen pounds

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of spices and five pounds of tea leaves. The folks

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over at the Olivia restaurant started using whole eggs instead

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of separating them and discarding the whites. Pit Friend Barbecue

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stopped cooring their cucumbers. That'll save them sixteen hundred dollars

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a year and cucumber costs alone. Good news for leopard

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cubs in India. Nicky Sharp is the executive director of

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Wildlife SOS USA. She explains leopards are found throughout India.

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India is the most populated country in the world, so

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their natural habitat is shrinking. When they live in these environments,

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their normal prey base is usually not available. That leads

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them to find other food sources that include domestic livestock

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like goats, which leads to conflicts with people. That'll make

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sense to me now. Sometimes farmers will find cubs in

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the fields and move the cubs they have good intentions,

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not realizing that the mother is likely nearby and will

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return for her young. So while Life SOS has been

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working on this, their approach is when separated cubs are found,

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experts examine them for health issues, then place them in

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what they call a safe box, set back in the

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location where the cubs were originally found. The team then

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monitors from a distance and stays out of the way.

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The mother hears the cubs cries and collects them. Sharp said,

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we've been doing these cup reunifications successfully for over fifteen years.

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Cubs learned from their mother for up to two years,

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and without this education, they won't survive on their own.

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Over ninety five percent of the attempts have been successful.

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Do you have an electric car? Do you have to

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charge it? If you have a fast charger, maybe twenty

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to thirty minutes. Well, a Chinese company called Neo thinks

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they have a better answer. What if you swapped the battery?

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So some folks at NPR drove one of their SUVs.

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The NPR host spoke to the car's AI assistant and

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asked it to initiate a battery swap. The car took

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over entirely. The car said, hey, take your foot off

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the break, take your hands off the wheel, don't open

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the doors. Then the car backed itself into the port.

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The car lifted slightly. A machine rose up from behind it.

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They swapped out the entire battery pack, which weighs around

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eleven hundred pounds, and whisked it away to a changing

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room for a future driver a fresh fully charged battery.

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He was lifted in a place bolted in, diagnostics were run,

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green light came on. Total time three minutes eight seconds.

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There are now nearly four thousand battery swap stations around

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the world, most of them in China. Huh Oh, an

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eleven year old ant eater named Blackie escaped from the

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Taipei Zoo in Taiwan and spent the next week doing

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whatever it wanted. Zoo staff noticed she was gone and

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began searching the surrounding area for seven days. Nothing. Then

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a zoo employee spotted Blackie, the anteater, crossing a service

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road that circles the zoo in an area and not

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open to the public. Blackie made her way to the

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solar energy clock in front of the zoo's tropical rainforest area.

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Zookeepers were called in, Blackie put up a fight, and

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Blackie is now safely back in her enclosure. One employee

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was scratched. As far as I know, no ants were

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harmed in this story and Those are your five good

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news stories for today. You have an awesome day.