The Wild Life

Swishy dainty areas, droppable penises (well, just the tip), butt-breathing, smelling things with horns, the tenacity of nudi niche filling, over-generalizations, taxonomy, blind dates, and how nudies came to kick butt and chew bubblegum, and they’re all out of bubblegum! We sit down this week with the Nagging Naturalist herself, Kristen Mankowski to talk nudibranchs in all their glory. So, hold o...

Tomorrow, we have an episode coming out in which The Nagging Naturalist herself, Kristen Mankowski, drops some major Nudibranch Knowledge on us. BUT as two naturalist, we had a very hard time staying on topic. This...this is our ramblings. Think of it as an opportunity to get acquainted with Kristen before tomorrows episode! We talk the horribleness of naturalist uniforms at Target, Noodle Knocker...

In this episode from 2018, Devon and Richard look into the void to unveil the cause of the once mysterious Deep Scattering Layer, taking you on a journey involving covert military research in World War 2, the largest migration on earth, shimmering creatures of the deep (and their food), and an organic machine responsible for capturing carbon and sinking it into the depths of the ocean.

Behind the SC i EN c ES with Dr Diva Amon Let's get to know deep sea biologist, Dr Diva Amon How long has she been interested in science? What was her first real connection with nature? Why the deep sea? What advice would she give a younger version of herself? No intros, outros, ads, or credits. Just 100% science! Support us at patreon.com/TheWildLife

We're back with another carefully, specially curated segment from our last full episode with Dr Diva Amon. In this SHORT, you'll get to here about underwater lakes (like the Goo Lagoon), hydrothermal vents, and life in the dark. No intros, outros, ads, or credits. Just 100% science! Support us at patreon.com/TheWildLife

In need of some science in your soul but a full episode is too long at the moment? We're selecting specially curated segments just for you! No intros, outros, ads, or credits. Just straight up science facts! Support us at patreon.com/thewildlife

I can’t even begin to describe how excited I am to share this episode with you. By far one of my favorite interviews I’ve done! It’s sea-ptember, and today we are diving deep A month or so back, I had the opportunity to sit down for a conversation with today’s guest that left me wonderstruck. As I mentioned at the top, this started as an attempt to follow the journey of the body of one of the ocea...

It's Sea-ptember, and it's about time we revisit this old favorite of ours in which we explore the true source of the Air We Breathe. In this episode that originally aired May 30th, 2018, Devon and Richard talk to Dr Julie Koester of UNC-Wilmington and Dr Orly Levithan of Rutgers about the truth behind where our oxygen comes from, and the tiny organisms we have to thank for our very existence. Sup...

In the second part of our Phylum miniseries, we're talking Ctenophores (box jellies) and Cnidaria (jellyfish, anemones, hydra, and coral!) Unlike our episode on sponges, we had done a lengthy episode two years ago on Jellyfish with Lucas Brotz, research associate at the Marine Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries at the University of British Columbia and a Cnidaria Scientist for Quantitative Aqu...

How do plants make more plants? Better yet, how can one plant reproduce with itself? That was the question Devon's wife asked when an accidental pumpkin plant sprouted and eventually conquered their backyard. Who better to answer that than Vikram Baliga! Vikram is a research associate and greenhouse manager at Texas Tech University, a horticulture expert, host of the amazing podcast Planthropology...

Everybody knows their sound. It's haunting, but it also holds fascinating secrets. Hyena’s have been painted as villains, demons ridden by witches, grave robbing ghouls, and the embodiment of all things vile by people for thousands of years. Nature documentaries and Disney films alike play no small role. That’s what we’re exploring today. Much like in our episode on sharks, what is at the root of...

It's #SharkWeek2020...and it is easily one of the best examples of a massive divide in how the general public sees an animal compared to how experts see and talk about them. Science Twitter is a buzz with fact checking, jokes, and outright facepalming while Mike Tyson rumbles on the reef with Jaws and entertainment programs portray sharks as serial killers of the deep. That isn't the only dark sid...

When we hit 800 twitter followers, we said we'd do a bonus episode and an AMA. So, we did them both together! This is 40 solid minutes of us eating candy corn, playing Halo, and answering yalls questions!

The first installment of our first ever miniseries is here--Phylum: Porifera! Sponges are often overlooked aside from Spongebob Squarepants and cleaning. It's time that changed. Dive into the amazing life history of sponges! Throughout this series, we will be covering 9 of the main phyla in the animal kingdom. Next up on our list? Cnidaria (jellies)! On our website, https://thewildlife.blog/2020/0...

On July 18th, Just the Zoo of Us posted a harmless tweet asking "what is the most overhyped animal?" It started an all out war: #WormGate2020 This is our attempt, along with Ellen Weatherford's, at a tracing explanation of what exactly went down. To see the original tweet and follow the breadcrumbs yourself, go here: https://twitter.com/JusttheZooofUs/status/1284598945377812481?s=20 Support The Wi...

Hey everyone, a bit of a different approach with this episode. Last week, we left off talking SciComm and just about to talk about @BlackAFinStem and #BlackBirdersWeek. That's where we pick up this time in a conversation that spans immigration, COVID 19, the problem with SciComm, being a person of color in a scientific field, learning, antiracism, and so much more. A sizeable portion of what we di...

Color changing, mini lassos, islands, superpowers, vivid blues, falling of limbs, and so much more! This first half is largely focused on the anoles, but part 2, see, Chelsea is one of the cofounders of #BlackBirdersWeek and @BlackAFinSTEM, and so our conversation in the second half largely revolves around that, SciComm, art, and at the time, the news that the nearly 1 million international studen...

Our guest for the day has one of the coolest jobs on earth, studying in what is perhaps the coolest place on earth. He is full of stories, and knowledge, and passion for little creatures that so many would overlook. He will have you wood by the end of the episode as a lifelong ardent snail enthusiast, nay, lover. Richard and I spoke to him back in late May, and it was so much more than we bargaine...

This episode starts with a major announcement, but then... Tattoos, superheroes, opportunities, regeneration, Men in Black, phallic fencing, 1st brains, discoveries, cocaine, addiction, belly button mouths, and so much more. So, wherever you are, maybe a floaty in a pool gliding around like a flatworm in a petri dish, get ready for our conversation with Dr. Oné R. Pagán ! His enthusiasm will...

Dog person? Cat person? No, no, no. We’re all Snow Leopard people. AI, the difficulty of finding snow leopards, a strange form of social networking, tricky trail cam footage, using their floofness as a conservation tool, what to call a group of snow leopards, how snow leopards are world-class experts at social distancing, and so much more, with Dr Koustubh Sharma, Senior Regional Ecologist and the...

Today, May 21, is the 221st anniversary of Mary Anning’s birth. She is not a household name, by any means—though she is believed to be the inspiration behind the well-known tongue-twister “she sells sea shells by the sea shore”. However, it wasn’t shells she was selling, but fossils of long extinct creatures of a bygone era. She was ‘the greatest fossilist the world ever knew’. Though, the sad tru...

A rare blue bee has been spotted in Florida for the first time in 4 years according to a news release from the Florida Museum of Natural History! This isn't the only winged critter there has been a lot of buzz about. By now, you've all hear of the 'Murder' Hornet. We'll tell you why you need to chill out. We have one more bonus episode coming this week to celebrate the birthday of fossil hunter Ma...

Everybody loves Orangutans, but how much do we really know about them? We are currently living in a world where we may lose all wild orangutans within the next decade as a result of human activity, but many of us are live our day to day lives unaware of that tragic fact. In this episode, we sit down with Leif Cocks, World-Renowned Orangutan Expert, whose worked in the field for nearly 30 years. He...

It's Mother's Day, and we kind of owe her a major Thank You for (along with Dad) shaping the people we became and The Wild Life as a whole.

Life is a lot of things, but one thing it can be is unexpectedly big. Like, really, really big. What started as a random question from a high schooler ("what's the biggest living thing?") with a seemingly straight forward answer, evolved into a search that lead to some very unexpected places. Such a big journey called for the crossover of the century! We joined forces with Ellen Weatherford of Jus...