The Wild Episode – Details, episodes & analysis

The Longnose Lancetfish is a big, strange, predatory fish of the open ocean, whose unusual feeding habits and physiology make it of particular interest to scientists ...

You can support the show - keep it going, keep it growing - and get additional content by subscribing at The Wild Episode Substack. Become a paid subscriber to get access to occasional bonus episodes. Even a free sign-up there will get you regular content celebrating the wonders and curiosities of the Animal Kingdom.

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 to help make those future episodes better!

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Music

Opening & Closing Themes: Running Waters and Acoustic Meditation by Audionautix (Jason Shaw), from audionautix.com. CC BY 3.0.

Ancient and The Scholar by AvapXia, CC BY 4.0

The Bigfin Squid (species of the genus Magnapinna) is one of the most iconic deep sea animals these days. But we know precious little about it - we can't even be 100% sure exactly what we're looking at when we capture footage of one of these amazing animals ...

You can support the show - keep it going, keep it growing - and get additional content by subscribing at The Wild Episode Substack. Become a paid subscriber to get access to occasional bonus episodes. You don't have to pay anything, though - a free sign-up there will still get you regular content celebrating the wonders and curiosities of the Animal Kingdom.

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 to help make those future episodes better!

You can also follow the show on Facebook or Twitter.

Please share the show on social media, rate and review in your podcast app. That helps a lot. Or best of all, become a paid subscriber at  The Wild Episode Substack. Thank you. 

Music

Opening & Closing Themes: Running Waters and Acoustic Meditation by Audionautix (Jason Shaw), from audionautix.com. CC BY 3.0.

The Golden Rocket Frog - an amazing little frog that lives only in one small corner of South America and whose life revolves around the very specific architecture of one - also amazing - plant.

You can support the show - keep it going, keep it growing - and get additional content by subscribing at The Wild Episode Substack. Become a paid subscriber to get access to occasional bonus episodes. You don't have to pay anything, though - a free sign-up there will still get you regular content celebrating the wonders and curiosities of the Animal Kingdom.

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 to help make those future episodes better!

You can also follow the show on Facebook or Twitter.

Please share the show on social media, rate and review in your podcast app. That helps a lot. Or best of all, become a paid subscriber at  The Wild Episode Substack. Thank you. 

Music

Opening & Closing Themes: Running Waters and Acoustic Meditation by Audionautix (Jason Shaw), from audionautix.com. CC BY 3.0.

Modified versions of: Bait, Overgrown and Mindless by AvapXia, CC BY 4.0; Rain by Unheard Music Concepts, CC BY 4.0.

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.thewildepisode.com. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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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 better known, so here's my tiny contribution to putting that right ...

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 make those future episodes better.

And now you can find The Wild Episode on Facebook too!