The Wild Episode

Ruppell's Vulture ( Gyps rueppelli ) is one of the biggest vultures in the world, but it's real claim to fame is more spectacular. It is the highest flying bird on Earth. Certain risks come with being a master of the air, though, which leads us into a discussion that may make this episode unsuitable for some listeners: bird strikes, and their consequences for both aircraft and birds. And merely by...

The world record for longest animal is held by the bootlace worm ( Lineus longissimus ), a Nemertean or ribbon worm from the North Sea. In fact, it's held by a Scottish bootlace worm that was washed ashore in 1864. But is that record reliable? How long do bootlace worms actually get? And what is a ribbon worm anyway? Subscribe to the show to make sure you don't miss any future Wild Episodes, and e...

Colobopsis explodens is one of a group of ants known as exploding ants. Highly social insects that have developed an extraordinary approach to the defense of their colonies - a mass of workers, every one of which is prepared for the ultimate sacrifice. But how and why, you might wonder, does an ant make itself explode?  Subscribe to the show to make sure you don't miss any future Wild Episodes, an...

Cuvier's beaked whale ( Ziphius cavirostris ) is a member of a rarely seen, little known and little studied group of whales – the beaked whales – that are in fact widespread, relatively common and completely remarkable. The particular claim to fame of Cuvier's beaked whale is its astonishing diving capabilities: it holds the record for the deepest dive by an air-breathing animal (without the aid o...

The weirdest animals yet to appear on The Wild Episode: Osedax , a whole genus of bone-eating worms that for tens of millions of years have been colonising giant carcasses in the deep sea. They have no mouths, the males are miniature, they secrete acid and they grow roots like trees. Weird, like I say. But wonderful too.  Subscribe to the show to make sure you don't miss any future Wild Episodes,...

Come and meet the tortoise that went to the moon! The Russian Tortoise ( Testudo or Agrionemys horsfieldii ) was the first vertebrate animal to fly around the moon. It spends more time in hibernation/aestivation than just about any other vertebrate. And despite being probably the commonest and widespread tortoise in the world, it's vulnerable to extinction. What could humans possibly be doing to t...

What is the biggest terrestrial animal native to Antarctica? It's the Antarctic Midge ( Belgica antarctica ), a wingless fly that at no more than a quarter of an inch in length is by some distance Antarctica's biggest pedestrian. This is life right on the edge of possibility ... Subscribe to the show to make sure you don't miss any future Wild Episodes, and e-mail your comments, corrections, sugge...

The gelada ( Theropithecus gelada ) is the only living member of the Theropithecus genus. It's the only grass-eating monkey on Earth. It's probably the most terrestrial primate on Earth. It's an amazing species. But it's also an excuse to ask interesting questions (though not necessarily answer them!). Questions like: what is a species, anyway? Shownotes at www.thewildepisode.com .  Subscribe to t...

The spider-tailed horned viper ( Pseudocerastes urarachnoides ) is in many ways an unremarkable snake. But in one very particular way - its tail, and what it does with it - it is utterly extraordinary. Welcome to the weird and whacky world of caudal luring, and the snake that has taken that behaviour to an amazing extreme ... Shownotes at www.thewildepisode.com .  Subscribe to the show to make sur...

The Mariana snailfish (Pseudoliparis swirei) was only discovered and described a couple of years ago: and it was a big deal, because no fish has ever been brought up from greater depth. How do fish survive, kilometres down in the ocean? Why is this one named after someone called Swire? And what does it all have to do with The Lost World, a space shuttle and a famous film director? Shownotes at www...

The Crowned Eagle (Stephanoaetus coronatus) is one of the largest birds of prey in Africa. It's probably the most powerful and almost certainly the one that regularly goes after the biggest prey. But is the crowned eagle, as is sometimes suggested, the only living bird to qualify for the description 'man-eater'? Shownotes at www.thewildepisode.com .  Subscribe to the show to make sure you don't mi...

The violet oil beetle ( Meloe violaceus ) is our way into a discussion of leaky leg joints, toxic oil, aphrodisiacs, the cantharidin world, hitch-hiking, egg-laying on an industrial scale and hypermetamorphosism. There are not many animals that better illustrate just how weird and wonderful Nature can get ... Shownotes at www.thewildepisode.com .  Subscribe to the show to make sure you don't miss...

The biggest snail in the world, Syrinx aruanus , turns out to be a highly specialized and effective predator. And we'll get to it via dolphins, mistaken identity, a unique human culture and the sound of trumpets. Shownotes at www.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 to help m...

In recognition that Halloween is almost upon us, we pay a visit to Nature's dark side. A beetle, a crustacean and a wasp that do really pretty extraordinary things. But not, let's be honest, things that you could really call 'nice'. Predators and parasites that demonstrate just how surprising. and kind of merciless, the natural world can sometimes be ... Shownotes at www.thewildepisode.com .  Subs...

The Baikal seal is the only purely freshwater seal species in the world, and it lives in precisely one place: Lake Baikal in Siberia. A lake which is itself extraordinary - the deepest in the world - and which is home not only to that unique seal, but to a host of crustaceans, fish and other animals that occur nowhere else on Earth. Shownotes at www.thewildepisode.com .  Subscribe to the show to m...

The Spectral Bat ( Vampyrum spectrum - which is pretty cool as scientific names go) is the biggest bat in the Americas, and the biggest carnivorous bat in the world. A properly high-ranking predator in its environment, out there in the darkness enjoying a diet that makes its insectivorous, piscivorous and frugivorous relatives look like they're hardly even trying ... It deserves, I think, to be be...

Revisiting the subjects of the first three Wild Episodes! Just how common is the huge, ridiculously long-lived Greenland Shark? New research has the beginnings of an answer. The Lord Howe Island Stick Insect can't go home until someone gets rid of the rats that invaded it. Those rats are still there, but elsewhere there's big, big news in the world of rat eradication from islands ... And finally,...

You've probably heard of Archerfish ( Toxotes spp.), the Robin Hoods of the natural world. I discovered them when I was a kid, burning through wildlife books from the library. What I didn't know then - because nobody did - was just how  these really pretty small fish rely on physics and fluid dynamics to hunt terrestrial prey using water as a tool. You know a fish is doing something interesting wh...

The coelacanth(s) ( Latimeria chalumnae and Latimeria menadoensis ) must be amongst the most famous fish in the entire world. And rightly so, since their discovery was one of the most astounding zoological moments of the 20th century. But they're not just famous. They're also a bit misunderstood, and bit mysterious. They are not really living fossils, or missing links. They are fish that give birt...

The large blue butterfly ( Maculinea arion - or Phengaris arion , depending on who you ask) is both beauty and the beast. Beauty because ... well, it's a pretty little butterfly, so what more could ask for? The beast because it's also such a master of deception, infiltration and carnivory it could be the antagonist in a sci fi horror movie. So welcome to the world of a butterfly that is both paras...

Wild cattle don't come much more beautiful or impressive than the banteng ( Bos javanicus ), one of three (or is it two?) surviving cattle species that are as much a part of wild Asia as are the tiger or the orang-utan. Like the tiger and the orang-utan, the banteng has not done very well in the face of human pressure, but it has one thing those animals don't: a large population - its largest, in...

Part two of two, and the amazing Steller's sea cow ( Hydromalis gigas ) - a sirenian bigger than an African elephant - finally makes its appearance, as the wheels come off the Great Northern Expedition and Vitus Bering and Georg Steller discover a Lost World. Astonishing wildlife abounds, but will not abound for long, now that it must share its home with a handful of shipwrecked sailors ... Showno...

Steller's sea cow ( Hydrodamalis gigas ) was one of the most surprising, dramatic and generally amazing animals to have shared the world with modern humans. To tell its story is going to take two episodes - and this first of them, to be honest, doesn't even feature the sea cow itself. But it does feature Vitus Bering and Georg Steller, two men who would share with that gigantic creature an extraor...

Vikings! Monks! Poetry! Plus, a bird that is next to impossible to see , but almost impossible not to hear. The corn crake ( Crex crex ) has one of the most distinctive voices in the animal world, and for centuries - even as its population in the UK has plummeted - that voice has been a symbol of the bird itself ... Shownotes at www.thewildepisode.com And remember to subscribe to the show for plen...

This Wild Episode is all about what was once the rarest insect in the world - the Lord Howe Island Stick Insect ( Dryococelus australis ) - and the bizarre story of how it escaped extinction, pulling off one of the most amazing tricks of species survival the world has ever seen ... Shownotes at www.thewildepisode.com .   Subscribe to the show for plenty more wonders, curiosities and horrors from t...