The Wild Episode

Remipedes ! Upside-down-swimming, venom-injecting, cave-dwelling amazingness. Some of the strangest crustaceans ever discovered, living in some of the strangest places the world has to offer. Show notes, with photos, video and links to lots more information, are available at thewildepisode.com Subscribe to the show to make sure you don't miss any future Wild Episodes, and e-mail your comments, cor...

Ants that can glide and Myrmeconema , a parasitic nematode that can change the appearance and behaviour of its host. What happens when the two of them meet? Show notes, with photos, video and links to lots more information, are available at  thewildepisode.com Subscribe to the show to make sure you don't miss any future Wild Episodes, and e-mail your comments, corrections, suggestions or feedback...

The Sumatran Rhino , the closest living relative of the extinct Woolly Rhinoceros, is the most vocal of all rhinos. This is the story of its extraordinary voice, and its journey through the twilight of the natural world ...  Show notes, with photos, video and links to lots more information, are available at  thewildepisode.com Subscribe to the show to make sure you don't miss any future Wild Episo...

The Cookiecutter Shark is famous for its gruesomely efficient parasitic attacks on whales, seals and big fish. But that is only a part of the story when it comes to this extraordinary, and extraordinarily bright, shark ...  Show notes, with photos, video and links to lots more information, are available at thewildepisode.com Subscribe to the show to make sure you don't miss any future Wild Episode...

The Giant Barrel Sponge : one of the simpler animals on Earth yet grows to enormous size over a crazily long life, exerts a big influence on reef ecosystems and, unlike a great many animals in our oceans, seems to be thriving ... Show notes, with photos, video and links to lots more information, are available at  thewildepisode.com Subscribe to the show to make sure you don't miss any future Wild...

The Aldabra Giant Tortoise is an amazing survivor of a lost time - very recently lost - when giant tortoises dominated many of the islands in the Indian Ocean. Aldabra Atoll is the only place in the world you can still see great herds of tens of thousands of these huge reptiles.  Show notes, with photos, video and links to lots more information, are available at thewildepisode.com Subscribe to the...

The Whip Spider Phrynus longipes is not a spider but one of the craziest-looking arachnids on Earth. They're also territorial and cannibalistic, so how do they manage to survive at super high densities in Caribbean caves without eating each other? Subscribe to the show to make sure you don't miss any future Wild Episodes, and e-mail your comments, corrections, suggestions or feedback to help make...

The Glacier Lanternfish is one of the most important fish in the world - part of arguably the greatest, and most under-appreciated, concentration of animal life on the planet. Which we can only really 'see', and understand, using sound. Subscribe to the show to make sure you don't miss any future Wild Episodes, and e-mail your comments, corrections, suggestions or feedback to help make those futur...

The Matabele Ant conducts large-scale raids against its only prey: termites. And the way it does it is amazing, with elements that might remind us of reconnaissance, generals, signalling, tactics, even battlefield medical services. Subscribe to the show to make sure you don't miss any future Wild Episodes, and e-mail your comments, corrections, suggestions or feedback to help make those future epi...

The Yellow-footed Antechinus is a tiny marsupial predator in Australia that has a life history, and in particular a breeding system, that makes it one of the most unusual mammals in the entire world ... Subscribe to the show to make sure you don't miss any future Wild Episodes, and e-mail your comments, corrections, suggestions or feedback to help make those future episodes better! You can also fo...

The Japanese Train Millipede has a surprising history of interactions with the country's railway system, and the pattern of those interactions reveals it to be almost unique in the way its life is governed by a ticking clock ... Subscribe to the show to make sure you don't miss any future Wild Episodes, and e-mail your comments, corrections, suggestions or feedback to help make those future episod...

The leopard is the most flexible, adaptable big cat in the world, with a surprisingly long history of visiting urban areas. Today, as in the past, sharing your city with a large predator brings problems, but maybe there's an upside, because of how, and what, urban leopards are hunting ... Subscribe to the show to make sure you don't miss any future Wild Episodes, and e-mail your comments, correcti...

What connects feasting Japanese fish, a swimming pool in southern France and Alexander the Great's encounter with the Gordian Knot? The extraordinary horsehair worm Paragordius tricuspidatus , a simple animal capable of astonishing things ... Subscribe to the show to make sure you don't miss any future Wild Episodes, and e-mail your comments, corrections, suggestions or feedback to help make those...

Northern Gannets are famous for one thing above all else: plunge diving after fish. So, an episode that's a bit of a deep dive into ... diving! How high, how deep, how dangerous, and how individually distinctive is a gannet's dive? Subscribe to the show to make sure you don't miss any future Wild Episodes, and e-mail your comments, corrections, suggestions or feedback to help make those future epi...

The Antarctic Krill is one of the most numerous animals on Earth, probably responsible for the biggest single species aggregations you can find nowadays. So numerous, in fact, that its surprising connection to Antarctic sea ice is just one of the ways it's bound into global climatic systems, carbon cycling and flows of energy and matter ...   Subscribe to the show to make sure you don't miss any f...

The tentacled snake is one of the most unmistakable snakes in the world. And the story of how its tentacles connect to its extraordinary hunting strategy involves two letters: 'J' and 'C'. Subscribe to the show to make sure you don't miss any future Wild Episodes, and e-mail your comments, corrections, suggestions or feedback to help make those future episodes better! You can also follow the show...

The Mediterranean Monk Seal is probably the rarest pinniped in the world. It's had almost everything thrown at it - by us and by Nature - and survived, just, in part by changing its own behaviour. At some point, left with no alternative, it went into hiding. Subscribe to the show to make sure you don't miss any future Wild Episodes, and e-mail your comments, corrections, suggestions or feedback to...

The São Tomé Caecilian is a fantastic creature: an extremely yellow legless amphibian living in the soil on a single volcanic island. An extraordinary example of an already extraordinary group of animals. Subscribe to the show to make sure you don't miss any future Wild Episodes, and e-mail your comments, corrections, suggestions or feedback to help make those future episodes better! You can also...

Something very weird goes on in mating assemblies of the White-barred Acraea butterfly - males and females swap roles. Why? And what can it tell us about a secret natural force shaping whole populations of insects? Subscribe to the show to make sure you don't miss any future Wild Episodes, and e-mail your comments, corrections, suggestions or feedback to help make those future episodes better! You...

Whirling Disease in fish is caused by a tiny parasite. But what is that parasite and just how tiny is tiny? The answers will astound you! Subscribe to the show to make sure you don't miss any future Wild Episodes, and e-mail your comments, corrections, suggestions or feedback to help make those future episodes better! You can also follow the show on Facebook or Twitter . To support the show, pleas...

The Megamouth Shark is one of the biggest, yet least known, least understood, sharks in the world. Not entirely surprising, since we've only known it exists for about fifty years ...  Subscribe to the show to make sure you don't miss any future Wild Episodes, and e-mail your comments, corrections, suggestions or feedback to help make those future episodes better! You can also follow the show on Fa...

Just a quick update on the podcast, and a quick look forward to 2023!  Subscribe to the show to make sure you don't miss any future Wild Episodes, and e-mail your comments, corrections, suggestions or feedback to help make those future episodes better! You can also follow the show on Facebook or Twitter . To support the show, please share on social media, rate and review in your podcast app! Thank...

The Vampire Jumping Spider feeds - in part - on blood. Often, human blood. But how it does it makes it one of the most extraordinary spiders in the world ... Subscribe to the show to make sure you don't miss any future Wild Episodes, and e-mail your comments, corrections, suggestions or feedback to help make those future episodes better! You can also follow the show on Facebook or Twitter . To sup...

The Vampire Squid is not really a vampire, nor is it really a squid. It's the last survivor of an ancient lineage that has arrived in the present with an astonishing array of adaptations that equip it to live in a place most other animals can only visit ... the oxygen minimum zone. Subscribe to the show to make sure you don't miss any future Wild Episodes, and e-mail your comments, corrections, su...

The Corsac Fox is a small, elegant fox of Central Asia, Mongolia and China - a huge range, most of which it shares with four other animals that loom large in its life: red fox, golden eagle, marmots and, inevitably ... humans.  Subscribe to the show to make sure you don't miss any future Wild Episodes, and e-mail your comments, corrections, suggestions or feedback to help make those future episode...