Web Video / Casual Geographic

Mamadou B. Ndiaye, also known as Casual Geographic or Hood Nature, is an animal commentator from New Jersey. He gives insights on animal facts and behavior while being serious as possible... and is known to make creative witty remarks on the animals he brings the topic of. He also uses Instagram and TikTok before editing the videos on his YouTube channel.

You can find his YouTube here, his Instagram, and TikTok.

In 2022 released a book called 100 Animals That Can F*cking End You.

His videos provide examples of:

• Angry, Angry Hippos: He frequently talks about hippos on the channel and how aggressive they can be, including discussing hippos killing smaller mammals that pose no threat to them.
• Ascended to Carnivorism: The topic of the video "The One Rule of Nature School Never Taught You".
  Mamadou: Most herbivores are about as vegetarian as their options.
• Artistic License – Biology: Frequently brought up. He will discuss animal behavior that both is and isn't correct. Some examples include:
  • Killer whales will not eat humans, but they will eat moose.
  • Hyenas are not scavengers as depicted in most media like The Lion King. They are actually effective hunters; it's typically the lions that steal from hyenas, and even then, usually requiring more than one of them, considering the size of hyena packs.
  • Ring-tailed lemurs are actually a female-dominant species rather than male, meaning Julian in Madagascar would have been a Queen instead of a King if it were scientifically accurate.
  • Meerkats are in fact one of, if not the animal with the highest likelihood to commit homicide against their own kind. If it were scientifically accurate, just the segment with Timon's family in The Lion King 1 ½ alone would have launched the movie right into R-rated territory even without the threat of the hyenas.
  • Bears are not true hibernators, since hibernation means an animal under power-save mode, and not literally sleep for the entire winter, since some bears will wake up during winter. Instead, they have something called torpor where they'll nurse even newborn cubs in their sleep.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Did you see a really cute animal you want to have as a pet? Well, this guy explains why such animals are not a good idea to have as a pet, namely they're all high-maintenance and most of them bite.
  • He even sees the megalodon this way, since they were large apex predators that "became a was" because there isn't enough food to sustain them. Additionally, since they were surface dwellers, they would had left a body if they still existed now. Other marine biologists agree with his stance.
• Bait-and-Switch: He loves to make these kinds of comments. Some of them would reek of Does This Remind You of Anything?, only to clarify what he's actually talking about.
  Mamadou: Pigeons like these originated from dark red over there (showing a map of northern Africa, Europe, and Middle East), so every pigeon in New York is our fault. We brought them to America for work, freed them, and then let them fend for themselves. And now fast forward, we're mad at them for existing... [Beat] We're still talking about pigeons.
• Bears Are Bad News:
  • He will often explain why certain bears are bad news. Polar bears, for example, are the prime example of this trope, given they actively hunt humans if given the choice. Averted for black bears — they're just as capable of carnage as a polar or grizzly, but they can also be very calm around humans so long as they're getting food, with one clip even showing a black bear literally sitting down at a picnic table with a group.
  • As much as he disses on the panda bear for not technically being a species of bear (i.e. in the Ursus genus), they're still bears at heart. For example, a panda once mangled a man's leg so badly, doctors declared it damaged beyond repair and had to amputate it. Another incident involved a man in a panda suit that tried to get close, and the panda bear responded by attacking him. And they're shown to eat deer and peacocks and not just bamboo.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Capybaras may be the nicest things on Earth and are willing to chill with anything from turtles to crocodiles, but even they have their limits. Mamadou points out cappies don't mind being fed by humans and being near them, but if they're showing warning signs and you still get up close, you're liable to get bitten.
• Black and Nerdy: He explains the reason he took interest in researching animals is due to reading Zoobooks as a kid, and his first game was a zoo simulator. He also had a book that plays animal sounds and wanted to be a zookeeper when he grew up.
• Body Horror:
  • How often do you hear about fish mating, and fusing with their mate? He goes into detail that, yes, this is how anglerfish mate, wherein the larger female will typically have multiple mates fused with her.
  • Blobfishes do not look like blobs in general; they only look like blobs because when they get pulled to the surface, decompression kicks in, resulting in its well-known look into the surface.
• Breather Episode: After revealing some horrifying and gruesome animal facts, he'll dial back to the wholesomeness of the videos by showing an animal (or animals) being Good Parents, showing how adorable some of the babies are, and even show non-aggressive interactions with the animal and humans.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • Seals are the butt-monkey in the ocean, considering almost every other animal hunts them.
  • Caimans (crocodilian reptiles related to alligators, crocodiles, and gharls) are considered the most disrespected reptiles in the animal kingdom due to the fact that every other animal always goes for its head/neck area.
  • About half of the video on coyotes is detailing how nearly everything that lives and breathes hates them. Wolves, ravens, eagles, bears, cougars, alligators, mobs of raccoons, donkeys, rheas, and other coyotes will either kill them or steal their food, and humans have spent decades on an unsuccessful plan to exterminate the species. The only partial exception is the badger, which sometimes hunts and plays with them, but kills their pups at other times.
  • He goes into depth on how cheetahs are practically bullied by nearly everything in the savannah, and describes them as "a cat who just can't cat".
• Cain and Abel: Some species of animal will have a very intense Sibling Rivalry, to the point of killing each other whether they are related or not.
  • Hyenas, despite their own loyalty to their packs, will start attacking their younger siblings when their mother is out hunting.
  • Sharks will eat their own siblings inside their mother's womb; this is called 'adelphophagy'.
  • Some invasive birds will leave their eggs inside of the nest of another bird to the point that upon hatching, the invasive chicks will actually kill their adoptive siblings to the point the mother won't realize her own chicks were killed.
• Character Catchphrase: "I should probably explain what the hell that is", often used when he opens a video with a clip of a very bizarre-looking animal or animals engaging in extremely questionable deeds.
• The Comically Serious: He says almost everything with a completely straight face and a serious tone of voice. Which makes it more funny. That said...
• Corpsing: In-Universe. While he really tries his hardest to be serious as possible, Mamadou occasionally slips up and laughs. Especially when it's a joke or phrase he said or the uncommon occasion where he gets his information wrong.
• Deadly Euphemism: He uses phrases such as "past tense", "cancel your life subscription", "co-sign your obituary", "take off the census", "soul filing for divorce", "put on a T-shirt", and "404 on your birth certificate" among several as a substitution for using the word "death". He also uses "reverse baptism" as a euphemism specifically for drowning and variations of "unethically late-term abortion" for the killing of recently-born baby animals. In cases where a mother will kill her own babies, he will call that "Casey Anthony-ing" them. It should be noted he doesn't do this (just) for entertainment purposes; he originally posted his animal videos on TikTok (and still does), which bans the use of words such as "death" as part of its Terms of Service.
• Death World: If he talks about a dangerous or poisonous animal that lives in Australia, he gives off a tone that speaks "of course it's over there".
• Determinator: It's no secret what Mamadou thinks of the honey badger, considering his video on the subject of them is quite literally titled "Why Honey Badgers Don't Fear God or Lions", and he even put them straight up at the top of his "Top 10 Animals with Black Air Force Energy" list, above the likes of cape buffalo and even hippos.
  • Mixing this trope with Suicidal Overconfidence (or as Mamadou puts it, "crackhead courage"), honey badgers frequently steal the kills of leopards, will square off with both lions, both individually and as a pride, and highly-venomous cobras, and even break into the hives of African bees (which are noted to be tenfold more aggressive than European bees) to gorge themselves on honey, often to the point of being stung to death.
  • The "champion" of their species, in his eyes, is a captive honey badger named Stoffel, who frequently used his cunning and intellect to break out of his holding pen and cause chaos for his handlers. Mamadou declares his crowning achievement in disrespect was the time when he escaped to go and pick a fight with the lion pen, getting mauled nearly to death, and then, once he was fully healed, escaping and returning to do it again. Mamadou notes that because he imprinted on humans as an infant, Stoffel never intended to actually escape, merely just for his own entertainment no matter how high he drove everyone's blood pressure. Things only got harder for them, by their own hand no less, when they later decided to find a female badger for him hoping she would keep Stoffel more docile, which, in Mamadou's words, was the worst thing in giving him the "Bonnie" to his "Clyde".
    Mamadou: If blatant disrespect were a sport… they still wouldn't play because anything with rules goes against a honey badger's belief system.
• Died Standing Up: Discussed; he mentions that a tiger's legs are so strong, they could die and still stay on their feet.
• Devious Dolphins: Dolphins and orcas are not safe from his ridicule. Orcas are frequently referred to as psychopaths, and it's not hard to see why.
• Don't Touch It, You Idiot!: In some occasions, Mamadou will explain a species of animal that Hates Being Touched after showing a person's bouts of stupidity, and will explain in great detail over how dangerous and poisonous they are.
• Drugs Are Bad: When a commenter did not realize that Cocaine Bear was Very Loosely Based on a True Story, he goes into detail that, yes, it was inspired by an incident where a male black bear ate a 77-lb brick of cocaine, causing it to suffer from cerebral hemorrhaging and both renal and heart failure. When it finally expired, authorities did an autopsy and managed to find another 35 lbs left in its body.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Some of Mamadou's videos from 2020 didn't have most of his creative Deadly Euphemisms or censorships. Some of his swearing goes uncensored until he starts doing so.
• Eats Babies: He brings up certain animals that will eat babies of other animals, including the animal's own parents.
• Everyone Has Standards: Even he finds the scene in Spongebob Squarepants where Squidward's holding a noose to be a little too morbid after discussing how the life cycle of a male octopus typically ends shortly after they pass on their genes to their offspring.
• Face of a Thug:
  • How he describes harpy eagles. Despite their size, crushing talons and fierce appearance, they're remarkably docile outside of hunting and the only bird-of-prey that doesn't become aggressive towards humans that approach them. Unfortunately, this also makes them an easy target for poachers.
  • Similarly, the shoebill stork looks like a cross between a hippogryph and a Five Nights at Freddy's reject, decapitates crocodiles, and is one of the few animals a hippo will peacefully co-habitate with, but they tolerate humans near their nests and can be befriended by literally just bowing to them.
• Faint in Shock: Opossums faint due to high levels of stress and it's not voluntary. They faint so badly, predators will think they're dead to the point of soiling themselves. And this lasts up to 4 hours.
• The Farmer and the Viper: He details on one occasion the story of a man who took in a baby hippo that he rescued from a flood. Years later the same hippo ended up dragging him into the same river and mauling him to death.
• Feathered Fiend: Pelicans and cassowaries are especially this when he brings them up. Cassowaries especially so, since they are really fast, can jump 7 feet in the air, and are excellent swimmers.
  Mamadou: I'm not talking about the "backyard Tweety that wake you up at 5 AM" birds. I'm talking about this Jurassic bullshit with feathers.
• Freudian Excuse: Mamadou shows an extremely deep hatred for pelicans and everything else in the Pelecaniformes group of birds, but he admits he is severely biased against them due to a pelican attacking and nearly blinding him when he was a child.
• Friend to All Living Things: The capybara, the largest rodent on Earth and one of the most chill animals to ever exist, willing to let all manner of birds and smaller mammals sit on or around it. Even some things that should be its natural predators will more often than not peacefully sit down next to it, with jaguars apparently being the one exception. Oh, and they have no fear of humans, to the point they literally roll over for belly rubs while being petted and are so easily domesticated they're commercially available as pets.
• Gentle Giant:
  • He describes certain animals as such, like elephants that will protect a sleeping person with its trunk or try to save people that they think are drowning.
  • Whales are described as such, and he makes several key points as to why. While whales are gentle to humans, they are also this towards seals if an orca has an intent to hunt one, considering their creative ways of hunting seals. He also notes that, like dolphins have occasionally done, whales also tend to protect humans from sharks, noting one instance where a humpback kept itself between a diver and a tiger shark.
  • He has a colorful description about basking sharks.
    Mamadou: They're a highly dangerous menace to society… if you're zooplankton.
  • Turns out that even rhinos can fit this trope, albeit under the right conditions. As he points out, the ones living in the wilds of Africa are aggressive as a defense mechanism due to their poor eyesight and the abundance of predators. The ones living in the safety of zoos and such are surprisingly playful and affectionate towards their keepers, or as Mamadou puts it, they have the personality of an "armor-plated lapdog".
  • Gorillas in captivity are surprisingly gentle if they see a fallen child. Jambo and Benti for example were protective of a child that accidentally fell into their enclosure. Mamadou even indicates Harambe himself would have helped the child that fell into his enclosure without incident if people didn't start screaming and throwing objects in an already stressful environment.
• Good Parents: Has a few on this discussion on both positive and negative aspects:
  • He comments how alligators will help their children hatch as well as male gharls carrying his children on his back.
  • Male tigers are known to be good fathers to the point they they will let their family eat first, then he eats last, in contrast to male lions.
  • Despite making fun of orcas, he does acknowledges that female orcas are good mothers, that even their grandmothers are good parents to her grandchildren.
  • Female pythons will go weeks without eating to warm her eggs.
  • On the negative sides, some species of birds do have favorites and are only a good parent to the strongest of their offspring, while leaving the others to starve.
  • As much as he makes fun of koalas for their lack of intelligence and diet of poisonous, non-nutritious leaves, Mamadou does give them credit for being good mothers. They'll devotedly nurture their young for extended periods of time and are willing to fight to the death to protect them, unlike other Australian marsupials like the kangaroo and the quokka which will deliberately use their own babies as a decoy to escape predators.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: He tries to avoid using hard swears due to YouTube and TikTok guidelines and uses censorship accordingly. Sometimes, it's Censored for Comedy.
• Hates Being Touched: He explains a species of long-horned beetles this way.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: Despite their reputation as solitary hunters, tigers are capable of both loyalty and selflessness. He brings up instances of male tigers sharing their kills with females they mated with and their cubs and even waiting for them to finish before eating. He also brings up a case of a male tiger mauling a poacher for killing his mate. They even treat their favorite zookeepers with affection and behave almost like giant housecats towards them. He puts this in contrast with lions, who tend to be more cutthroat and self-centered in their interactions despite being social predators.
• Hive Mind: Siphonophores are tiny organisms that work this way. This includes the Portuguese Man-O-War.
• Humans Are Bastards: You can't blame him for thinking this. Whenever an animal is curious and friendly towards humans, they show their "appreciation" for hunting them down. And more often than not, some people think it's a "great idea" to harass said animal when they've done nothing to them.
  Mamadou: God gave us thumbs and everyone else has to pay for it.
• I Warned You: He states that if someone tries to antagonize an orangutan, there are going to be problems. Lo and behold, a 17-year-old tried to gain Internet fame by taunting one, and the orangutan retaliated in response. Moral of the story: Listen to what Mamadou says, and you might live longer.
• It Can Think: Animal intelligence and how humans constantly underestimate it is frequently brought up.
• Incorrect Animal Noise: He brings up that a lion's roar in media actually belongs to tigers. The same goes with dolphins and their vocal effects actually belonging to sped-up kookabura calls.
• Interspecies Adoption: A capybara by the name of Cheesecake was adopted by humans that hung out with dogs, thinking she is one herself. Then when she became an adult, she raised several puppies as her own children. This lasted until her caretakers gave her another capybara as a companion named Cobbler.
• Interspecies Friendship:
  • Wolves and ravens get along with each other to the point that wolves will hunt prey and share with ravens. Ravens will also play with the wolves pups, and if a coyote is within proximity, they will go out of their way to snitch on them, having a pack of wolves gang up on a coyote.
  • Coyotes, meanwhile, will team up with badgers to hunt voles and other hole-dwelling rodents, and while the badger's digging ability and the coyote's speed and sense of smell are a devastating combination, they can also be seen just chilling.
  • Downplayed with octopuses and groupers. While they will occasionally hunt together, the relationship is far more transactional, and the octopus will not hesitate to smack the grouper around if it thinks the fish is withholding food.
• Laser-Guided Karma: In Lamar Valley, a disease struck the Druid wolf back from 36 to 4, and they frequently fought with the rival wolves called the Sloughts. They also killed a coyote while his mate watched and ran. Eventually, the same disease that took most of the Druid wolves infected the Sloughts, which caused them to return to their original territory. A lone wolf nicknamed Casanova that spent time with the Druids replenished their numbers with their surviving daughters, allowing the Druids to take back their land.
• Never Say "Die": He would, but due to TikTok guidelines, he has to use Deadly Euphemisms in its place, though the way he uses the euphemisms are really creative. This is subverted and lampshaded humorously in "The Unspeakable Horrors of the Deep Sea", made in collaboration with Lindsay Nikole; when she remembers that the video is a YouTube collaboration, she backtracks herself just to say "die" instead.
  Lindsay: That sounds like one of the worst ways to be unalived in the ocean. Oh wait, this isn't a TikTok collaboration. That sounds like one of the worst ways to die in the ocean.
• The Nicknamer: He gives a rather interesting nicknames for certain animals, such as "homicidal Oreos" for orcas (or anything for them for that matter) and "homicidal bar codes" for zebras.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In Yellowstone back in 1995, wolves started going after livestock to the point that farmers and the US Army got involved by hunting them down, because they were considered "undesired predators". Unfortunately, the elk population exploded to the point that they ate off everything in the area, to the point that bears, magpies, and ravens had to find another source of meat somewhere else. They also destroyed the willow in which beavers needed to survive. It got so bad that wolves in other parts of the US were migrated in the area to reduce the elk population, and only one colony of beavers were left.
• Non-Indicative Name: The flying lemur. It's a rodent of its own class, and it glides. It's also not related to lemurs.
• "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: When he says an animal's name or group name, he clarifies that he isn't making it up.
• Nothing Is Scarier: Mamadou more often than not describes the ocean this way, since there are more unknown creatures that live in the deep sea, and the ones that do get discovered, he describes them in a less flattering way.
  Mamadou: Billions. We've spent billions of dollars trying to explore space when the real ET shit's is happening in the ocean.
• Pyromaniac: You wouldn't think a bird would do this as a hunting strategy. The Black Kite is a hawk in Australia that will go out of its way to literally burn everything to the ground in order to hunt its prey, to the point that they will steal cooking fires and burn the grass a mile away, which got so bad that farmers would actually hunt them to stop them from causing fires that would reach their homes. However, they are protected by law, which means they can't be stopped setting things on fire to hunt prey.
• Reality Is Unrealistic: One of the most common ways he discusses Artistic License – Biology. While there are some animals depicted in media as savage monsters and some such as lions as noble creatures, he points out this tends to be the case, such as great white sharks being hunted due to paranoia surrounding then because of Jaws even though they're docile and don't hunt humans.
• Running Gag: Whenever he mentions bush babies for any reason, he takes a moment to put one on screen.
  Mamadou: That's a bush baby.
• Sex Is Violence: For ferrets, they actually engage in violent sexual activity. When a female ferret mates with a male, the male becomes very abusive. And it turns out that female ferrets do need violence during sex, since once they start producing estrogen, they need to lay off steam because if they didn't, they will actually die, since their bone marrow won't produce red blood cells.
• Shown Their Work: The reason Mamadou is popular with biologists and causal animal video viewers is how accurate his videos on the topic of the animal subject is. Several biologists and marine biologists are impressed over how well he did his research, and will give more additional pointers on the subject.
• Sole Survivor: A pregnant female coyote in Lamar Valley, Yellowstone saw her mate get mauled to death by a wolf pack called the Sleuths. Both her and her mate got along with the Druid pack that was 36 strong until the Sleuths came and pick a fight with them. Then a disease started dwindling the Druids' numbers, and the Sleuths took over the valley.
• Stealth Insult: Any animal with a deformed-looking natural look is referred to as a "rough draft".
• Stuff Blowing Up: He warns people not to get near a dead whale. Dead whales expand due to a buildup of gasses trapped inside its body. They will unexpectedly explode just like the Taiwan incident when scientists were bringing a dead sperm whale to their lab only for it to unexpectedly explode in the middle of town. This ended up showering pedestrians in blood and guts, but no one surprisingly got hurt for the most part, since exploding whales has a force of a lit dynamite.
• Take That!: He often throws jabs at people who had no idea what they're getting themselves into, especially when they see a highly poisonous animal or are trying to remove a keystone predator in a specific area where they are needed to do population control.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Coyotes and badgers hate each other's guts, but they will put their hatred aside to hunt prairie dogs.
• Threatening Shark:
  • Subverted. He actually explains some sharks are docile, and even friendly with humans (some can actually be jealous if their favorite humans interacts with another shark), and evens mentions how a man met with a baby Port Jackson shark and how they bonded, to the point that he introduced his children to said shark.
    Mamadou: Sharks are really just the pitbulls of the ocean.
  • Double-subverted when a shark attacks a boat, because in their point of view, sharks thinks a boat is a whale calf, and once they realize the boat they just attack isn't a whale, they'll leave the person they just harassed alone.
• To Serve Man: There's a reason Canada forbids citizens from locking their cars. Polar bears actively hunt humans, and your best course of action if you ever see one is to either hide in your own vehicle or a stranger's.
• Trust Password: Felines will start blinking if a human they see is trustworthy. This extends to larger cats like black cats and tigers, since it lets the human they're in contact with that they trust them.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • Human stupidity is frequently the subject of ridicule.
    • Found a blue jellyfish-looking thing on the beach? It's a venomous siphonophore called a Man-o-War. See a blue-ring octopus? Its venomous bite is strong enough to send you to the hospital and light enough you probably won't even feel it.
      Mamadou: (sees a man pick up a dead Man-o-War and then pretend to lick its air bell; delivers a bleeped-out Precision F-Strike) This is why women live longer than men: shit like this.
    • He also mentions how people are dangerously careless at zoos, especially if it's feeding time, and specifically talks about how an idiot that tried to break into a zoo and landed in a pen of tigers, or a man who tried to gain Internet fame by provoking an orangutan, piss him off so much.
      Mamadou: (speaking about things that anger zookeepers) No other animal causes more migraines and high blood pressure than a hairless primate armed with an iPhone and a sense of entitlement.
  • On the flip side, every time Casual Geographic talks about koalas, he'll always mention how they fit into this trope.
  • The intro of his video on the traumatizing reality of ants shows an ant jumping onto a spider.
• Vindicated by History: In-Universe. Mamadou notices how Threatening Shark, Killer Gorilla, and Savage Wolves are being discredited, since people began studying wolves, gorillas, and sharks, and they are not as much of a threat as one would think. Ditto to wolves as it's revealed that wolves are actually shy around humans, and the ones in captivity are as playful as pet dogs.
• Walking Wasteland: He explains why prey animals are this and keystone species are an important part of an ecosystem. For one, overabundance of prey animals will cause a wasteland, since a top predator is needed to control overpopulation. The reason is because prey animals will start to eat everything around them until they die. He even showed a comparison image where since there weren't enough sea otters to control the sea urchin population, it became an urchin barren.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: His reaction to a certain species of ant, Protomagnathus americanus, and their behavior hits really close. Trust him on this one.
• You Keep Using That Word: He basically points out how the concept of "alpha wolves" technically don't exist, since wolves are social predators that, no pun intended, are Papa Wolf to their family. An alpha wolf implies a wolf that's low in the wolf pack manages to fight his way up to the social ladder and fight the biggest wolf of them all (his father), but the males would rather hunt with their family as a pack, but not gain control. Putting unrelated wolves in one location however makes them hostile to each other. The only known species of animals that does have such social structure are hyenas, and it's lead by a dominant female (sometimes non-violently).
• Zerg Rush: The Humboldt, also known as "the red devil", is one of the rare squid species that will hunt in groups and do this. How many, you ask? 1000 of them. Just ask Lindsay.
  Lindsay: That sounds like one of the worst ways to be unalived in the ocean. Oh, wait, this isn't a TikTok collaboration. That sounds like one of the worst ways to die in the ocean.

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