animals

New York may be known as a concrete jungle, but it's also a fish spawning ground, a migratory bird rest stop, and home to all kinds of life, including flora, fauna and whatever category “dog vomit slime mold” fits into. In their new book Wild NYC: Experience the Amazing Nature in and Around New York City, naturalist and science writer Ryan Mandelbaum profiles some of the species with whom we share our urban environment. The book also describes the city's natural history, and includes suggestions for day trips and excursions that can bring you closer to nature here in the five boroughs.

With the help of cat owners, a new project investigates cats’ biology and aims to link some of their behaviors to their genes.

Calling all cat people: This one’s for you. Despite humans’ long history of welcoming felines into their homes and delis, research on cats lags far behind research on dogs. Now, scientists behind the project Darwin’s Ark are working to close the cat gap by enlisting cat caretakers from across the country to submit a tuft of fur and answer a few questions about their feline’s appearance, personality, and behaviors.

Host Flora Lichtman talks about the project, as well as what we do and don’t know about cat genetics, with Dr. Elinor Karlsson, chief scientific officer at Darwin’s Ark, and director of the Vertebrate Genomics Group at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard Universities.

Transcript for this segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Farts. Trouser trumpets. Sulfur squeaks. Or toots, as Lulu insists on calling them. Smelly bubbles of air we don’t like to talk about. But Songbud Alan and Producerbud Ana are not ones to shy away from the stinky sidelines of science. 

First, they take us to a concert hall to meet a FARTchestra and and hear how behind some of the world’s greatest works of art lies the power of farts. Next Dr. Juan Pablo Zhenlio takes us through the ecosystem of human digestion, meeting trillions of microscopic organisms to learn why we fart. Then we jump into the world of animal farts. What do snake farts sound like? Manatees? Cows? Chimpanzees? Birds? 

Finally we ask the most important question of all: What would happen to the planet if we stopped farting? 

For more on toots, read Dani Rabiotti and Nick Caruso’s book Does it Fart? The Definitive Field Guide to Animal Flatulence.

Special thanks to the Brown University Orchestra, Dr. Juan Pablo Zhenlio, Dani Rabaiotti and Nick Caruso. 

Terrestrials was created by Lulu Miller with WNYC Studios. This episode was produced by Ana González, Mira Burt-Wintonick, Alan Goffinski, Joe Plourde, Lulu Miller, and Sarah Sandbach, with help from Tanya Chawla. Fact checking was by Natalie Middleton. 

Our advisors this season are Ana Luz Porzecanski, Anil Lewis, Dominique Shabazz, and Liza Demby.

Support for Terrestrials also comes from the Simons Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and the John Templeton Foundation.

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The male European fiddler crab attracts his mate by performing a courtship dance. New research says that dance isn't just notable for its visuals — it's notable for its vibrations, too.

During courtship, the male crab waves his major claw up and down, drumming on the sand until females approach. This works even in the dark. So, researchers believe that the way the crabs' drumming moves through the sand is key to the process.

Using geophones, which sense and record the crabs' seismic vibrations, researchers from the University of Oxford were able to listen in on these percussive love songs. They realized that the vibrations were created by a number of different behaviors, not just the claw drumming.

"It was things like bouncing on their legs, it was simultaneously crushing their claw and their body into the sand," says Beth Mortimer, one of the study authors and an associate professor of biology at the University of Oxford. "It was a lot more complex than we expected going in."

Altogether, researchers observed four different stages of the courtship dance, with each stage escalating the amount of vibrational output generated.

First, the male crab waves his claw in the air. Second, he alternates waving and dropping his body into the sand. Then, he simultaneously waves and drops his body, creating a more sustained thumping noise. And finally, if all that is successful and the female fiddler crab approaches, he begins drumming underground.

"Visually they can't be seen either by us or the females, but it does have a very, very strong seismic component," Mortimer says. "It's 'come and find me in my underground house, ladies.'"

Interested in more seismic vibration communication? Send us an email at [email protected].

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This episode was produced by Hannah Chinn and Kathryn Fink. It was edited by Patrick Jarenwattananon. Tyler Jones checked the facts. Copyright 2025 NPR

Terrestrials returns Thursday, April 17th with a brand-new season!

This spring, we’re diving into the wonderfully weird. Get ready to meet some of the fiercest, strangest creatures on Earth—from Hawaiian jungle goblins to New York City’s elusive sewer beasts to nine-foot-tall misunderstood snow monsters. When we take a closer look at the creatures we usually fear, we often discover a little magic, wonder, even friendship!

Join host Lulu Miller and Songbud Alan Goffinski for our wildest season yet—a nature walk packed with jaw-dropping stories, unforgettable guests, and original music. Listen with your family, or just by yourself. Either way, you're in for an adventure.

New episodes drop every Thursday starting April 17th—keep your eyes on the feed!

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Love the show? Leave us a rating and review on your podcast app—it helps curious listeners find us!

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Terrestrials is made possible in part by the generosity of listeners like you. Support the show by joining Radiolab’s membership program, The Lab—and we’ll send you a special thank you gift from our team!

Support for Terrestrials also comes from the Simons Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and the John Templeton Foundation.

Where did the Fijian iguanas come from ... and how?

For decades, it's been a scientific mystery.

Most iguanas are indigenous to the Americas; however, native Fijian iguanas, call an island nearly 5000 miles away from their closest relatives in the South Pacific home.

Thanks to genome mapping, researchers think they've found out how: The iguanas rafted.

Biologists used phylogenomic data to essentially build an iguana family tree — seeing which species were most closely related to one another.

"The iguanas that live on Fiji were most closely related to a group of iguanas that I knew very well from the United States called desert iguanas," says Simon Scarpetta, an evolutionary biologist at the University of San Francisco who led the study.

This rafting theory isn't entirely unprecedented.

In the 1990s, after hurricanes Luis and Marilyn hit the Caribbean, researchers found that a group of iguanas had floated over 180 miles away from the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe to the territory of Anguilla — all on a clump of downed trees.

Reaching Fiji would have been nearly 30 times as far — a months-long journey of thousands of miles. But, the scientists who study these creatures say that if any creature could survive, it's iguanas.

Want to hear more about iguanas? Or rafts? Or evolutionary biology? Email us at [email protected].

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Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.

This episode was produced by Hannah Chinn and edited by our showrunner Rebecca Ramirez. Jon Lambert and Tyler Jones checked the facts. The audio engineer was Zo vanGinhoven. Copyright 2025 NPR

A sweeping new study on one of the most beloved insects, maybe the only truly beloved insect—the butterfly—details its rapid population decline in the United States. The new research, published in the journal Science widens the butterfly net and looks at how more than 500 species have fared over the past 20 years.

Researchers found that many populations are taking a nosedive. What’s causing the downswing, and is there anything we can do?

Host Flora Lichtman talks with two of the study authors, Dr. Elise Zipkin, Red Cedar distinguished professor of quantitative ecology and director of the ecology, evolution and behavior program at Michigan State University; and Dr. Nick Haddad, professor of integrative biology also at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan.

Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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A study finds that Peto’s Paradox, which states that larger animals are no more likely to get cancer than smaller ones, may not hold up. Also, a nearly complete predator skull was found in the Egyptian desert. Its lineage indicates that it was a top carnivore of the age.

If you throw a huge party, there’s more of a chance of problems than if you host a quiet get-together for a couple of friends. The logic is simple: Having more people around means more opportunities for chaos. Similarly, it would seem to make sense that in animals, a bigger species with more cells might have a greater chance of something going wrong with one of those cells, including mutations leading to cancer.

Back in 1977, a British epidemiologist named Richard Peto observed that that didn’t seem to be true. Bigger animals didn’t seem to have a greater risk of cancer than smaller ones. That became known as Peto’s Paradox, and has been a topic of debate among cancer biologists ever since.

Research published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences takes a new look at Peto’s Paradox using an unusual set of data—death reports from zoos around the world. Dr. Sarah Amend of Johns Hopkins Medical School joins Host Flora Lichtman to explain why, in their findings, Peto’s Paradox doesn’t seem to hold up—and what studying animal cancer rates could teach scientists about improving human health.

Once upon a time, some 30 million years ago, what is now Egypt’s Western Desert was a lush forest. Humans had not evolved yet, the nearest relatives being monkey-like creatures. And through those forests stalked Bastetodon syrtos, a newly described apex predator from an extinct lineage known as the Hyaenodonts—one of the top carnivores of the age.

Researchers recently discovered a nearly complete skull of the creature. They reported on the find in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Host Flora Lichtman talks with Shorouq Al-Ashqar of the Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology Center about the discovery, and the picture it helps paint of ancient life.

Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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The bone and joint structures in mammal tails help them keep their balance. Could those benefits be adapted for robots? And, in her first children’s book, conservationist Bindi Irwin takes little readers on a journey through Australia Zoo.

If you have met a cat, you’ve probably at some point been amazed by how acrobatic they are. They’re able to reorient themselves effortlessly, even in midair. It turns out that a lot of that twistiness comes down to having a top-tier tail. While most reptile tails can swing only in one plane of movement, mammal tails have more joints, leading to better inertial control. That lets mammals tweak their balance better, much as holding a balance pole can help an acrobat navigate a tightrope.

In a recent study published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, researchers explored the biomechanics of different tails, and considered how a better tail could help build a better robot. Dr. Talia Moore, a roboticist at the University of Michigan, and Dr. Ceri Weber, a cellular and developmental biology postdoc at UC San Diego, join Host Flora Lichtman to talk tails.

Almost 30 years ago, conservationists Terri Irwin and the late Steve Irwin captured the world’s attention with their show “The Crocodile Hunter.” It introduced millions of people to Australia Zoo and the strange, often scary, sometimes cute, critters from Down Under.

Now, Terri and her children—Bindi and Robert—are at the helm of the zoo, which is the setting for Bindi’s new children’s book, You Are a Wildlife Warrior!: Saving Animals & the Planet. In it, Bindi takes little readers and her own daughter, Grace, on an adventure through the zoo.

Host Flora Lichtman talks with Bindi about her family’s legacy, how motherhood fuels her approach to conservation, and what it’s like to run a zoo.

Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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Birds are the master vocalists of the animal kingdom. They can make a remarkable variety of sounds.

But why is a barred owl more of a baritone, while a cedar waxwing is a soprano?

And what influences a bird’s vocal range, and the kinds of sounds it can make? Beak size? Body size? Geography?

To answer some of these questions, researchers analyzed over 140,000 bird vocalizations from all over the world to try to peck out some kernels of knowledge about bird calls and songs. Their research was recently published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Flora Lichtman talks with Dr. Zuzana Burivalova, assistant professor of forest & wildlife ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison about her latest research.

Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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