Animal Bands

On the September 30th show, I featured bands that love the Kingdom Animalia so much that they decided to make animals their namesake. We heard from the likes of Deerhunter, Grizzly Bear, Cat Stevens, Fruit Bats, Cat Power, Neil Young and Crazy Horse, Bonobo, Deerhoof, The Mountain Goats, and The Toadies. Some of you may be thinking... hmmm... I wonder why that list is so disproportionately Class Mammalia! Well, so did I. Perhaps in future shows I will do a catalog search to come up with some bands whose names reflect Class Insecta or Aves... or maybe Subphylum Chelicerata? You can be assured that I will be doing more shows in which I focus on the music because I had a blast playing these tunes. Hope you enjoy them!

As for the news, we learned that:

• Monarch butterflies rely on a chronometer in their antennae for navigation
• Spiritual women have more sex 
• Teenage students work to reduce the effects of tinnitus, a ringing sensation in the ears

It was an unconventional show, but a lot of fun. Check out the animal bands!

UPDATE: The following week, I did another animal bands show because I had so much fun with this one. Click here for the October 7th podcast.

Turn down that racket!

Inspiration for the September 23rd show came from the noise of the motorcycles that roared into Fayetteville for Bikes, Blues, and Barbecue - an annual motorcycle rally in Northwest Arkansas.  I featured stories about noise pollution and its effects on wildlife... particularly that associated with roads.  But it's not just automobile traffic that messes with wildlife... sonar used by seafaring vessels has been shown to wreak havoc on the navigation and health of marine mammals such as dolphins and whales.

Some interesting things were in the news...

• Mystery of horned females solved?
• Genetics linked to early sexual activity in kids
• Rare heart transplant for a man with reversed organs
• Drink now, pay later

Artists featured included: Mariee Sioux, Cake, The Pixies, Sufjan Stevens, Beck, Mylo, Islands, Ted Leo, Brian Eno, Grand National, The Mountain Goats, and America.

Most frequently quoted b.s. animal facts

Truth or fiction? Unfortunately this question does not oft enter the mind of a person when blurting out some of the most frequently quoted bullsh*t animal facts. On the September 9th show, we ran through a list of these erroneous ideas as seen on cracked.com. They included the mass suicide of lemmings, bees that fly in the face of the laws aerodynamics, the old ostrich with its head in the sand bit, and more.


As for the news in nature, we covered:

• US woman falls off a cliff after marriage proposal
• Yawning toons make an ape gape
• Bananas let off blue halos of cell death

No sound quiz this week :( Artists featured included: Rilo Kiley, The Faint, David Bowie, Eddie Vedder, Wire, Echo and the Bunnymen, Ryan Adams, Tripping Daisy, Deerhoof, Blackalicious, Calexico, and Billie Holiday.

F-I-R-E-I-N-C-A-L-I

Blaze like the fires in California. Blaze like a... fire.. fire.. fire. Just like The Cure is sweeping through my brain right now, so the wildfires swept through California at the end of the summer. In the September 2nd show, we talked all about wildfire and its effects on wildlife. The chaparral ecosystem of California is particularly susceptible to out of control fires because of the hot dry conditions of late summer. So often the media focuses on the property damage caused by these wildfires. What about the turtle that cannot outrun it? Or the bird whose nest goes up in flames? Sometimes even larger animals such as deer cannot out run it, as seen in shocking photos from this video. We learned about other critters affected by fire such as salamanders and shrews from a USGS podcast.

As for the news in nature, we heard about:

• the wolf hunt in Idaho
• male chicks being ground up alive in egg hatcheries
• making music for monkey minds

No sound quiz again :( Darn wireless internet at the station is being finicky!

Music featured included: The Cure (of course), The Decemberists, Voice of the Seven Woods, John Fahey, M. Ward, Starlight Mints, Arcade Fire, Franz Ferdinand, and Billy Bragg and Wilco.

Gone grabblin'!

Forget your pole... if you want to catch the biggest, meanest catfish out there... you gotta use your hand. In the August 26th show, we heard a Nature Stories podcast out of Mississippi in which Doc Harrington describes how best to grabble.

We also listened to a recorded version of The Auklet from 1977, a lampoon publication put out by the American Ornithologists Union at their annual meeting (bird dorkdom at its finest). It included such gems as "Women's Lib. and the search for Graduate Students" and "Patience in Mistnetting by George Junkie".

In the news, They Might Be Giants have come out with a new album all about science. We heard an interview they did for Nature Podcasts. Check out their website for more news.

For the news in nature, we learned about:

• prosthetics for animals (like Lucky the Turtle, right)
  
• swapping DNA to avoid inherited diseases, and
• flowers that mimic the distress pheromones of bees to attract bee-predators for pollination.

Alas, we ran out of time for the sound quiz... but we did hear from such artists as: Primus, The Books, Aphex Twin, Brian Eno, Blockhead, TV on the Radio, Al Green, Nat King Cole, Josh Rouse, Ratatat, The Beatles, and the Pixies. Lots of music this week!

Pygmy Marmosets Grooming at the Philly Zoo

Here's a video of pygmy marmosets grooming one another at the Philadelphia Zoo. These are the smallest of the monkeys - weighing in at around 4.5 oz. They live in the rainforests of South America. An interesting things about these guys is that they are gummivores, meaning that they gouge the bark of trees with their elongated lower incisors to release sap or gum, which they then lap up. I was SO excited to see them close up because you could actually see their miniature underbites. For more on these little cuties, click here.

I just had to include the picture below to show how tiny their offspring are. These marmosets reproduce by twinning, meaning they have two offspring at a time. The young cling to their family members as the troop moves through the canopy in search of food.

A little taste of man vs. nature

I wrote a little ditty for the August 19th show, and it goes something like this:

Oh Great Pacific Garbage Patch
Your trash a turtle mouth does catch
And airplanes do get in the way
Of migrating birds on their flyway
Why does man have to make
Our presence appear such a mistake?

So you might guess that we covered some ways in which man and nature collide, including the article that definitively linked the US Airways Flight 1549 crash to an air collision with Canada Geese. We also learned about some current research regarding the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which is a clump of trash the size of Texas swirling in the Pacific Gyre.

As for the news in nature, we learned about:

• biting back on World Mosquito Day
  
• a bird behavior experiment that gives credit to one of Aesop's fables
• a new set of twin pandas at a rescue center in China
• and much more!

We spent some time listening to an awesome record of nocturnal bird vocalizations that I scored at the annual conference for the American Ornithologists' Union in Philadelphia. To carry on the theme, the sound quiz was all about owls like the Great-horned Owl and the Northern Saw-whet Owl... my favorite! You should google images for this owl for some seriousness cuteness.

And your mouse can sing

La-te-da! For the July 29th show, we heard from animals that you might not typically think of as being big noise makers. For example, did you know that mice can sing? Oh yes... of course you did. Ever wonder why? If you've learned anything from listening to this show, you probably guessed it's sex. Well... you're right!

Another oddball in the noisy animal world is the midshipman, a fish that vibrates its swimbladder to attracts mates. Hear what one sounds like at npr.org or watch video here.

We also talked about how to get rid of pesky animals in a friendly way by visiting a webpage for how to get rid of things. I recommended visiting the site Bird-X for gear and tips for getting rid of nuisance birds specifically.

As for the news in nature, we learned how:

• little creatures can stir big oceans
• toucans keep cool
• jays use their ninja skills to keep from being robbed

For our animal sound quiz, we heard from midshipman, singing mice, a pika, a bonefish, and a back-swimming congo catfish.

Music featured included The Wrens, Bert Jansch, PJ Harvey, Pavement, Paul McGrattan, Joanna Newsom, The United States of America, Modest Mouse, Catfish Haven, and Animal Collective.

Ornithology I

Deviating a bit from the usual show, on July 22nd I featured music provided by my future father-in-law, David Peeples. He called the mix 'Ornithology I' because each of the songs has something to do with birds.

Artists included: Jerry Douglas, The Everly Brothers, Tom Leher, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Leon Russell, and more! Check out the links for samples of the music, or check out the entire show for one big serving of bird.

Herp-mania!

For the July 8th show, I had a James Van Dyke, a graduate student in the Biological Sciences Department, join me in the studio for a chat about issues concerning invasive reptiles in the United States. We also touched on how pesticides used by your local "bug-man" could harm non-target animals such as lizards.

As for the news in nature, I featured the following articles:

• Cancer DOES discriminate
• Human sperm created by British scientists (although you should check out this follow-up)
  
• Center for Biological Diversity suing EPA over pesticides in polar bears

As for the sound quiz, we heard from the likes of alligators, rattlesnakes, frogs, and toads.

Music featured included Matt Pond PA, Jose Gonzalez, Built to Spill, Modest Mouse, and Mirah.