Explore every episode of the podcast Off Track

Australia is full of weird plants and animals. And Dr Ann Jones is on speaking terms with most of them! Each week Ann explores the most unusual elements of our natural world — the ones that make you go What the Duck?! Like why do quolls have spots? Who farts (and who doesn't)? And how do snakes climb trees? Join Ann alongside experts and ordinary Aussies alike to solve mysteries, smash myths and uncover the bizarre truth about nature down under.

The Off Track adventure has come to an end.

Murray Littlejohn first recorded the moaning frogs of WA on a device made from a gramophone mechanism in the early 1950s.

Whipbirds are a favourite in the Aussie bush – secretive little fellows with flat top haircuts and a cutting call.  This episode is chokka-block full of whippy (and other) recordings sent in from the audience members of Off Track.

It’s a bat eat mouse, lizard eat possum, wallaby eat bird world out there. Animals are always eating weird stuff.

These curious coral reef inhabitants have evolved some remarkable adaptations to thrive in the underwater realm.

Distinguished Professor Jamie Kirkpatrick has been crawling across lawns for more than 70 years, it's just that this one is on the top of a mountain and is full of plants from the cretaceous.

Robert Adlard says that parasites are intimate aliens, and that our dislike for them stems from their ability to surprise us with their closeness.

Despite all the noise of planes coming and going, the echidnas at Hobart airport are digging in to hibernate.

Understanding the power of seagrass in a research laboratory 18m under the sea.

With an aggressive mass-murder-then-compost strategy, these tiny plants are the most heinous of herbs.

Sea urchins are making a meal of south-eastern Australia’s rocky reefs and kelp forests. Can they be stopped?

Under the sea it isn’t all relaxing whale noise. The sound of the reef creatures is actually more like a percussive static with some grinding teeth on rock thrown in.

How can you appreciate the ecological importance of fire, but also fight fires with all your might? 

The underwater sounds in this creek near Brisbane are like an eclectic jam session.  There are sweet beetles (that sing), lonely bugs (on percussion), fishy grunters (think Jay-Z) and a punk-rocking rakali that just trashes the joint. This musical soundscape is the PhD homeland of eco-acoustician Emilia Decker.

Vanessa thought 'it's ok, the people are safe... It's ok, the house is safe...' But nothing prepared her for returning home.

Glenda Elliott can't say no to an animal in need - she wants to save them all. A few years back when fire ripped through Kangaloola Wildlife Shelter, she and the animals hid in a mineshaft.

This show aired in 2018 and we've been back in touch with Glenda for an update following the bushfires of 2019-20.

Just before the fire hit, the trees' leaves turned red and fell to the ground, and it left Adrian wondering - did they know they were just about to burn?

A bilby dreaming story guides a mother with a sick child to an outback town. Decades later, the child returns to repay the favour and look after the bilby.

For RN Summer we're bringing you Off Track highlights from 2019.

Albatross expert Dr Jaimie Cleeland listens to the gurgles and bellows of albatross as they nest on a tiny Atlantic island called Gough.

For RN Summer we're bringing you Off Track highlights from 2019.

The tiny Yarra pygmy perch has been pushed to extinction in the Murray Darling Basin. Now, all hopes for its return are focussed on a couple of farm dams.

For RN Summer we're bringing you Off Track highlights from 2019.

Sulphur-crested cockatoos are opening wheelie bins and turning trash into treasure.

For RN Summer we're bringing you Off Track highlights from 2019.

She studied the world's oldest spider and championed their home at a time when both the environment and women were given no fighting chance — Dr Barbara Anne York Main OAM.

For RN Summer we're bringing you Off Track highlights from 2019.

Birds sing at a mining camp, cicadas grind the gears of locals and mysterious sounds are identified. Listen to the sounds of Australia as recorded by the Off Track audience.

Just when you thought it might be safe to get back out into nature, you get zapped back to reality.

This is Mark: a life-size, custom-made inflatable whale. And he needs to be saved. 

Off Track presents the new ABC podcast 'GOOD GAME: how games play us' attempting to answer a BIG question: There's nothing like taking a walk out and about in nature — or is there?

What happens to the animals of the Kimberley when the big wet just doesn't arrive?

Over the course of the week, three pairs of shoes bite the dust, soles detached from uppers in the 45 degree heat, one microphone's glue melts and there are about a billion bush flies drinking from sweaty backs.

But despite the heat, Karajarri country has a draw towards it stronger than the pull of the sun.

Frogs don't just croak, they moan and groan, sing, whine, whizz and sound like dripping taps and this is an episode of pure adoration for the calls of Australia's frogs.

Rumours of pumas and leopards roaming the Australian bush have been around for more than a century. There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence but to date no definitive proof. Join in the search for a mythical cat in this re-issue of a classic Off Track.

It's only as big as a tea bag, plays dead if you pick it up, and landowners don't even know they have an endangered animal in their backyard.

It startled the cows, intrigued the locals and excited scientists around the world. Fifty years on, the Murchison meteorite still defines a town and yields new discoveries every year.

The Off Track family is growing and we want you to know about it.

Meet our little sister podcast - Noisy by Nature.

The masked lapwing terrifies humans with daring aerial attacks, which are actually displays of its pure parental love.

Can you defend yourself against a predator more than 200 times your size with a costume change?

[RE-ISSUE] The phrase 'mate for life' might seem romantic, but the reality of such a relationship for the long-lived Australian Magpie involves turf wars, sex on the side and the possibility of a step-parent bringing up your kids if you get too aggro.

What can science do to preserve marine life and help it develop in harmony with our own human development?

This program is a re-issue from the Off Track archives while Ann takes a short break.

Lindsay Smith has been tagging seabirds in the deep waters off Wollongong for over thirty years. Commercial fishing practice can have a devastating impact on seabird populations. But science is figuring out how to best mitigate the damage.

This program is a re-issue from the Off Track archives while Ann takes a short break.

Shark fishing holds a special place in Kiribati culture. But a growth in the market for shark fins in Asia changed the traditional fishing practice. This program is a re-issue from the Off Track archives while Ann takes a short break.

Few places on earth are as exposed to the ocean as Kiribati; a chain of 32 islands spread across 3.5 million square km in the East Pacific. This program is a re-issue from the Off Track archives while Ann takes a short break.

Sink into the sounds of Gough Island, where the Albatross gurgle, the petrels moan and the skuas chatter. No human voices, all Off Track soundscape.

Albatross expert Dr Jaimie Cleeland listens to the gurgles and bellows of albatross as they nest on a tiny Atlantic island called Gough.

Sulphur-crested cockatoos are opening wheelie bins and turning trash into treasure.

St Peter Island in South Australia's Nuyts Archipelago is home to sea eagles, short-tailed shearwaters, stick-nest rats and brush-tailed bettongs – and also some particularly venomous black tiger snakes.

A magpie calls to the rising sun, a fat green frog sings in a water tank and an endangered lemur moans about its family. Ann Jones takes you and a bunch of experts on an ear-tour.

What's been dumped on our beaches and what's been taken away?

No one ever forgets the time that they first heard a tiger.

In any given day on the golf course, there are people in ecstasy, and people in agony. Sometimes it's the same person. [From the Off Track archive]

Stressed? Got the sniffles? Need a nap? Got a fussy baby? Just. Over. It?

You won’t realise how much you needed to hear nature until you’ve heard this set of wild sounds sent in by Off Track listeners from around the globe.