TREY the Explainer
is the man behind an edutainment Analysis Channel of the same name, which focuses primarily on paleontology, but also discusses the biology of modern animals, the Speculative Biology of cryptids, aliens and mythical creatures, and even an analysis of fictional works here and there (he did an entire scientific analysis on what Bill Cipher might be, for instance—one that, up until the Series Finale, felt strangely plausible).
His most noteworthy series include:
- Paleo Profile - A series discussing (usually obscure) paleofauna.
- Cryptid Profile - A series examining cryptids, analyzing their plausibility (usually erring towards skepticism) and questioning what the organism is like if it's real.
- The Accuracies and Inaccuracies of... - Somewhat self-explanatory; Trey discusses fictional portrayals of extinct species and gauges their accuracy and/or inaccuracy.
- Paleoanthropology videos, which deal with...well, paleoanthropology. Usually used to describe the fascinating history of human evolution and often debunk misconceptions of primitive human life.
His deviantART can be found here, under the name aGentlemanScientist, and his Twitter can be found here.
Tropes in his videos:
- Arc Welding: In "3 More Sea Monster Carcasses And Their Explanations," Trey jokingly decides that mysterious tourist who supposedly bought Gambo's severed head and never showed it to anyone is actually E. L. Wallace, a mysterious naturalist from the first globster video who supposedly said that the Moore's Beach Monster had to be a Plesiosaur.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: Occasionally discussed. Arthropleura was the subject of one of his Paleo Profiles, while his speculative idea of what the Loch Ness Monster might be is a giant leech.
- Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: Conducted a comprehensive analysis of alleged Native American legends of Sasquatch in his video essay "The Native Bigfoot", ultimately finding most of the supposed Bigfoot stories cited by cryptozoologists did not describe a creature remotely resembling the big ape, not even under his loosest criteria.
- Department of Redundancy Department: Has a tendency to repeat the same facts multiple times in the same video.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Was a smidge more angry and prone to ranting in a few of his earlier videos. This quickly died down.
- Fantastic Slurs: Spoofed in his first video about globsters (unidentified carcasses that wash to shore):"A globster, also known as a "blob" by racists...
- The Greys: Talked about in his video on alien biology.
- "L" Is for "Dyslexia": Has admitted to having the condition, and often mispronounces words in his videos.
- Mascot: His is a dinosaur version of Dipper Pines. Later, also the Basking Owl.
- Mellow Fellow: Comes off as this in most of his videos.
- Mokele-Mbembe: Covered this cryptid as well, concluding that the creature was little more than the wishful thinking of European colonizers rooted in Darkest Africa stereotypes in turn exploited by native Africans seeking to make a quick buck off gullible missionaries.
- Ominous Owl: His idea of what the Mothman might be if it's real, a large relative of barn owls. He also considers The Flatwoods Monster to have been an actual barn owl perceived as larger and more fearsome than it is due to the perception from the young witnesses (and the follow-up video had him show a barn owl behaviour that was pointed out to him — making itself look larger through head and wing positioning when frightened — say, by suddenly encountering humans).
- Our Cryptids Are More Mysterious: In his Cryptid Profile videos, he discusses various cryptids from a skeptical perspective and speculates what they might be like if they do exist.
- Shout-Out:
- Among other things, his "Beast of Gevaudan" Cryptid Profile featured illustrations based on Jojos Bizarre Adventure characters. He fully leans into this in his video on the Minoan civilization.
- His "Quirk Counter" in his video on Avatar is represented by a picture of Deku's face.
- Speculative Biology: Dabbles in this, especially with his Cryptid Profiles and analyses on what certain mythical monsters could be like if they were real.
- Starfish Aliens: Deems these to be more likely to exist than The Greys or any humanoid aliens for that matter.
- Stock Ness Monster: Did a three-part series about the Loch Ness Monster and its probable identity. He ultimately declared it a myth, but suggested a speculative identity for it if it is real: In this case, a very large leech.
- Viewers Are Goldfish: As mentioned under Department of Redundancy Department, his older videos would often have him repeating the same facts multiple times, sometimes in the span of under a minute.
