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- Shaquille O’Neal revealed the very unusual issue he encounters when he visits certain zoos
- The NBA legend says there’s one type of animal that is not happy to see him outside its enclosure
- Read more about Shaq here
It’s safe to say Shaquille O’Neal was able to use his 7′ 1″ frame to his advantage while establishing himself as one of the most dominant big men to ever play in the NBA, but when you’re that tall (and packing close to 350 pounds), you’re going to run into some issues a lot of people can never even fathom.
For example, you’d be hard-pressed to find many shoe stores that keep any size 23s in stock (or many companies that even produce them in the first place), and while Shaq has a well-documented love for flashy sports cars, he’s had to make some pretty drastic alterations to be able to fit inside some of them.
However, it’s hard to think of a more unique problem than the one Shaq brought up on a recent episode of The Big Podcast.
At the start of the show, the Lakers legend addressed the gray hairs he’s been dealing with as he nears his 50th birthday and dubbed himself a “silverback” as opposed to a “silver fox.” That served as the perfect segue to an anecdote concerning a number of encounters he’s had with a certain species of animal during his travels, as he went on to say:
“I’ve been to every zoo in the world, and every time I go to the gorilla section, they look at me like, ‘Hey man, where your fur at?’ For real. For real. That’s how they look at me.
They also look at me like, ‘What am I doing in here and you out there?’ And they always go crazy when they see me…Every zoo in the world, they go crazy. They try to break out the damn thing and try to fight me.”
When his co-hosts expressed some skepticism over the claim, Shaq decided to call Ron Magill, a wildlife expert who currently serves as the communications director at Zoo Miami. Magill confirmed the claim and shared how Barney, the zoo’s 28-year-old silverback, reacts when he sees a man he perceives as a challenger to his domain:
“He gets intimated, and he looks at Shaq and thinks that Shaq is going to take away his girls, and he gets tight-lipped and tries to stand up and make himself look as big as possible.
But at the end of the day, he backs off. He knows who’s boss.”
It’s Shaq’s world and we’re all just living in it.