All Things Wild

Black bears have a very strong public image as lone roaming, dangerous and mindless eating machines -  here's something that will completely change the way you look at them!

Benjamin Kilham, author of In the Company of Bears: What Black Bears Have Taught Me about Intelligence and Intuition, has been studying and living with them for many years and has a connection and insight into their society that almost no one else has. Mother bears punishing cubs, sharing with family members, language, standing up to bears in the wild and so much more!

Important Times:
00:10 Intro
02:50 Welcome Benjamin! What caused you to start studying bears?
04:20 Your first bear encounter
06:40 Rehabilitating black bears and keeping bear cubs
10:15 Bear scent: how do they use their sense of smell?
15:50 Sharing resources and being social: bears share with family members
22:10 Your friend Squirty the bear
25:40 Do the bears you raise see you as a parent? How she punishes bad behavior
29:50 They can read people, highly cognitive animals
34:55 Males vs female bears
38:45 Bear hazing -  helping bears caught around people
40:20 Communicating with the bears in the way they understand
42:05 Alpha males
45:10 What do you do if you run into a bear in the wild? Deescalate the situation
50:10 Attacks on humans
52:45 Backyard chickens are drawing the bears closer to humans
54:50 Hunting black bears and population
59:40 One thing you wish people understood about bears
01:02:35 Male bears and cubs
01:05:25 There's so much more to learn, thank you for sharing your knowledge!

Today is something completely different... but actually really similar if you think about it. We are always talking with experts about how animals experience our world, today we are talking about how an animal from another planet would experience it's world! Robin Hanson tells us about his Grabby Aliens Hypothesis and we explore the possibility of life on other planets!

This is a 2 part episode -  next week is part 2!

Important Times:

01:40 Welcome Robin! What made you interested in your field of research?
03:00 What is your Grabby Aliens Hypothesis?
07:10 Is the universe dead and empty?
09:20 We should see evidence of civilizations in the stars
10:30 The model is a 3 parameter model, linked to data
14:10 Finding spheres in the universe
16:30 What would prove your hypothesis wrong? Time, Panspermia
19:30 The early solar system
21:20 How sure are we of our solar system's history?
24:20 What research is being done now about Panspermia?
25:40 Grabby vs Non-Grabby Aliens
28:40 They're either there or not 
30:40 Congressional hearings on UFO's
32:00 Old crazy theories can become fact, like meteorites and pink lightning
34:50 Robin is evaluating how 'crazy' these theories are, which one's can be dismissed and which can't
37:05 4 categories of UFO reports. 1: Mistakes/Errors
37:50 Category 2: Hoaxes
41:55 Many reports are category 1
42:55 Some reports fit well into category 2
43:40 Next 2 categories. 3: Built on earth. 4: Built outside of earth
45:25 Evidence trumps chance, but I can make a reasonable theory for each category
47:50 Category 2 vs 4: Lying and Hoaxes could be working
49:00 What about the Nimitz Incident 
50:20 Uncertainty can be used to your advantage
54:05 Outro

Part 2 coming soon!!

Port and Starboard, 2 affectionately named Orca's that have been visiting Cape Town's shores over the past few years seem to be responsible for the disappearance of the once common Great White Sharks! Are these 2 individuals really responsible for chasing them ALL away? Join Martin as he shares his thoughts about a recent study that found that these whales were linked with the disappearance of the Great Whites. 

Orca's are incredibly intelligent animals, come learn more about them!

Important Times:

• 00:10 Hello and welcome!
• 01:20 Shark Shield
• 02:40 Orca's and Great White Sharks
• 04:15 Why are the sharks disappearing?
• 07:00 Orca brains
• 09:50 They are very culturally specific and don't mix with other groups and hunting styles
• 12:45 The findings of the study done in South Africa
• 15:35 What are Great White Sharks most scared of?
• 17:20 An alternative theory

Yannis Papastamatiou definitely studies one of the coolest animals in the world: Reef Sharks! We talk about all things Reef Sharks, the many different types, new info on their body language, communication and what their society is like.
Yannis tells us about his research and theories on these interesting animals! When you hear sharks, you don’t think of social animals - this should change your mind!

Follow him on Instagram @yannispapastamatiou

Important Times:

• 00:10 Intro
• 00:55 Welcome Yannis! What is your background with sharks?
• 02:25 Are sharks ‘social animals’?
• 04:25 What species of shark are we talking about?
• 05:10 Tell us about Reef Sharks - are they one species or many different ones?
• 06:25 Notorious body language
• 07:05 Attacking scuba divers or is it spearfishing?
• 09:20 Do sharks form schools? School vs Shoal
• 10:00 Some sharks seem to become friends
• 11:30 How many sharks did you tag and how did you study them?
• 13:35 Night time activity
• 17:50 What fish do they eat? Do they target weaker fish?
• 20:05 Sharks behaving similar to sharks
• 22:35 Why do they pick friends?
• 24:35 The mystery of shark pups: where are they?!
• 27:25 Thanks for your time!

In 2009 Bob Pitman, his team and a BBC film crew were in Antarctica filming Killer Whales wave washing seals off of the ice as it had never been filmed before. What they witnessed next would blow them away! They captured evidence of Humpback whales actively protecting seals from Killer whales! Hear the story of this discovery and some interesting conversation about the new questions that this discovery made us ask. 

Please check out our YouTube channel The All Things Wild Podcast!

Important Times:

• 00:10 Intro
• 01:20 Welcome Bob Pitman!
• 02:05 Altruism in Humpback whales, what lead you to this point?
• 08:15 Mobbing behaviour
• 13:55 Natural instinct to react to predators
• 17:00 Two main types of Killer whales in this area: fish eaters and mammal eaters
• 19:15 Why isn’t this mobbing behaviour?
• 21:28 Humpback calves don’t go to Antarctica 
• 24:45 Do you think they know they are protecting a different species?
• 26:22 Killer whales hunting in Western Australia
• 28:10 Do you think the seal knew what was going on? Animals escaping predators by climbing onto your boat!
• 31:00 Types of Killer whales in Antarctica: 5 types
• 32:35 Where did this experience rank in your career?
• 35:00 Dolphins helping people
• 38:35 Altruism in humans
• 40:05 Why haven’t Killer whales attacked humans?
• 42:55 Killer whale intelligence
• 44:00 Do they speak a language?
• 44:40 Do they compare to human intelligence?
• 45:20 Outro

Hello everyone and welcome to the show! Today’s episode is a little different to usual, it’s just me talking! Learn about the history of this podcast, what inspired it to begin with, what motivates me to keep it going and what lies in the future for the show. 

I have also recently found some really interesting information on wolves and how they hunt and perceive the world, including picking up on things that we are only now discovering, like the Grandmother Effect! 

We hope you enjoy today’s episode, we’ll be back next time with more interviews with experts from around the world!

• 00:10 Welcome to the show! Let me introduce myself and tell you the history of this podcast!
• 06:20 The future of the All Things Wild Podcast
• 09:20 Interesting new information about wolves referencing the book: Wolves on the Hunt: The Behavior of Wolves Hunting Wild Prey by Daniel R. MacNulty, Douglas W. Smith, and L. David Mech
• 10:45 The Grandmother Effect
• 13:10 Closing thoughts

Check out our YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/channel/UC5_MH_H-LW9ZUBR-layMc6w

Welcome back to the show! Today we have Cassie Volker of the Wild Dolphin Project and she studies aggression in dolphins! Did you know that dolphins can form small gangs which then go and beat up rival pods? Neither did we! Lot’s of super interesting info on today’s show, thank you so much Cassie for making time for this interview!

Be sure to visit their website: https://www.wilddolphinproject.org/ and follow them @WildDolphinProject

00:11 Hello and welcome back!

02:10 Hello Cassie, welcome to the show!

03:50 How long have you been doing this for?

06:30 So you’re interested in dolphin aggression?

07:55 How did you figure out what they were doing?

09:50 Do they get injured?

11:45 Orca attack

16:15 Males or females?

18:05 Youtube Video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nce9LVlApzI)

19:35 Coalitions and alliances in dolphin communities

21:10 Do they practice their fight moves?

22:30 Do these groups stay together?

24:05 Separating from their mother’s

25:45 Lamda the dolphin

31:20 They seem to recognize individual people

32:20 Bottlenose vs spotted dolphins

36:20 How do the fights start?

38:00 Worst injuries and have they hurt humans before?

43:00 Reading their behaviour

45:20 Dolphin vs chimp violence

47:45 Communication in dolphins

52:45 Dolphin language

57:20 Your favorite moment in the water

58:40 What do you think of their intelligence?

01:01:20 Thank you Cassie!

01:01:30 Outro

Today's interview is with Dr Eduardo Mercado, a professor of psychology at the University of Buffalo in New York. He is interested in how humans and animal brains change when they learn new things, and more specifically to study animal cognition and in particular dolphin cognition. He has come across some startling new evidence that could rewrite a lot of what we know about Humpback whales and large cetaceans alike. Listen in on our interview as we find out Dr Mercado’s answer to “why do Humpback whales sing?”.

Find his research here!

Check out All Things Wild YouTube here:
https://youtube.com/channel/UC5_MH_H-LW9ZUBR-layMc6w

Important Times:

• 00:10 Intro
• 01:15 Welcome Dr Mercado! Please tell us about yourself and what you study
• 02:00 How did you end up studying dolphins and whales?
• 04:35 So why do Humpback whales sing?
• 06:05 Are these like bird songs?
• 07:55 Other whales sing predictable and similar songs
• 09:20 Regional differences
• 11:55 What are the problems with the current accepted theories?
• 16:50 Humpback mating has never been observed before
• 18:15 Mating season
• 22:45 So what do you think they are doing?
• 27:00 Mapping the ocean’s whales
• 30:55 What are the sounds they use? Tell us about the songs themselves
• 32:30 What do you want to happen next with this research?
• 34:50 Great experiment idea
• 36:30 Convincing people and standing up to pushback from the scientific community
• 39:30 Whale ears
• 42:00 Echolocation controversy
• 45:55 What are your next steps?
• 47:40 How can people follow your research?
• 49:25 Outro

Today’s episode is with Erik Frank from the University of Wuerzburg in the department of animal ecology and tropical biology! He has made some groundbreaking discoveries about ants, they have paramedics! The ants he studies, the Matabele ant, is constantly at war with termites, attacking multiple colonies per day to take them as food. These battles often leave ants injured. Erik has discovered that these injured ants are taken from the battlefield and nursed back to health by these paramedic ants!

Get ready to have your mind blown and be faced with questions about consciousness, human society and life itself! Thank you Erik for being on the show!

You can find him on Twitter @ETF1989

Check out All Things Wild YouTube here: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5_MH_H-LW9ZUBR-layMc6w

Important Times:

• 00:10 Intro
• 01:30 Welcome Erik! How and why did you start studying ants?
• 03:45 The Matabele ants
• 04:55 The role and jobs of ants
• 06:20 How are termites divided up? Workers and soldiers
• 06:50 How do the ants kill the termites?
• 08:05 Tell us about your big discovery: ant paramedics!
• 12:45 Which ants do they help?
• 14:00 The individual vs society
• 17:45 Ants could be ahead of us in evolution
• 19:25 How are they treating the injured ants?
• 21:00 Ant anatomy: tongues
• 22:00 How they treat wounds
• 24:10 How long does the treatment and rehabilitation take?
• 25:05 Could you describe the battle between the ants and the termites
• 28:05 Termite foraging
• 29:15 How far away do the ants and termites live from each other?
• 30:30 What predators do these ants have?
• 32:30 What decisions does an ant as an individual make? 
• 33:25 Consciousness vs instinct
• 34:30 What do you think? What’s your opinion on any consciousness?
• 35:05 Brain size
• 335:40 Do you think they are aware that they are alive?
• 37:35 What is next for you? How can people find and follow your work?
• 38:40 Outro