Watch a Replay of Our Facebook Live Chat With Animal Planet's Dave Salmoni

Mandi Bierly

Dave Salmoni, Animal Planet’s large predator expert who you may recognize from his many visits to Jimmy Kimmel Live!, joined Yahoo TV Tuesday for a Facebook Live chat to promote the network’s annual Monster Week, which continues through June 2. It’s his favorite week of the year: “We’ll show the monsters that actually are monsters, things that do really scary things that make us get scared, because a lot of people like that,” he said. “I always liken it to Halloween where people sometimes want to go see a really scary movie, and sometimes you want to see a little toddler dressed in a ghoul costume.”

If you’re a fan of the former, you can still catch new specials including Grizzly Uprising (tonight at 8 p.m. ET), Extinct or Alive: The Tasmian Tiger (tonight at 9 p.m. ET), Lair of the Killer Crocs (Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET), and Attack of the Killer Dragons (Wednesday at 9 p.m. ET), as well as new episodes of River Monsters (both nights at 10 p.m. ET, with a marathon from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. ET Thursday).

Viewers who prefer the latter, however, might find our chat with Salmoni — who makes appearances like this to get people to connect with animals and become interested in joining conservation efforts — more their speed. He brought out four friends: a Bengal tiger cub, a baby red fox, a baby crocodile, and a small boa. We also met Roy, the red Lab who is the constant companion/playmate of tiger cub Wyatt.

Here are two of our favorite moments.

Animal Planet's large predator expert Dave Salmoni holds Roy while Wyatt does a walk-by.
Animal Planet’s large predator expert Dave Salmoni holds Roy while Wyatt does a walk-by.

• Wyatt’s walk-by. As we started our conversation, Wyatt was roaming the conference room, or, as Salmoni said, “stalking us.” It took Wyatt roughly 15 seconds to play-bite one of us on the leg. He tuckered himself out; after we wrapped, he and Roy napped (paws touching).

That boa is bigger than advertised
That boa is bigger than advertised

• Yahoo TV’s Jeffrey Pattit sees the boa. Salmoni saw Jeffrey’s eyes widen as the animal wranglers prepared to escort the boa, Lady, to Salmoni. Lady was so calm on Salmoni’s lap that viewers watching the chat live asked if she was sleeping. Fun fact: Snakes have no eyelids, so you can’t tell.

There's a reason she's named Lady
There’s a reason she’s named Lady

Watch the full conversation to learn how often Lady gets fed, why Salmoni likes to always work with the same wrangler, and which animals he’d like to spend more time with.

Monster Week continues through June 2 on Animal Planet.