Fenekie Explorer Club

Meet Drift, the One Who Holds On, asleep on the open ocean tonight, wrapped in a rope of golden-brown kelp so the tide can't carry him away while he dreams. In this episode of the Fenekie Explorer Club we get up close with the sea otter: an animal with no blubber at all, who stays warm in freezing water using nothing but the densest fur of any mammal alive.

We wonder together about:
• BUBBLE COAT. Sea otters carry 850,000 to over a million hairs in a single square inch, the densest fur of any mammal: one square inch of his coat holds ten times the hairs on a whole human head, and the layer of air trapped between those hairs keeps him warm about four times better than blubber would
• Why he ties himself down every night. Before he sleeps, he wraps a strand of kelp around his body like a rope to the sea floor, and rests paw to paw with the rest of his raft, not the famous hand-holding video (that one was two otters at an aquarium in 2002), but real wild otters staying in contact so nobody drifts off alone
• His pocket and his rock. A loose fold of skin under one forearm holds his food and a favorite stone, which he balances on his own chest to crack open clams and mussels, real tool use that scientists have found helps protect his teeth
• Why one otter can hold up an entire forest. Sea otters eat sea urchins, and sea urchins eat kelp, so as long as the otters are around, a kelp forest gets to grow tall and golden instead of being chewed down to bare rock
• The hard part, told honestly. People once hunted sea otters for that same coat until almost none were left. Today roughly three thousand live along the California coast, protected by law, some of them raised by surrogate otter moms after starting life as rescued pups

And the part that turned this episode around: the very coat that keeps Drift alive is also his one real weakness. Oil clumps the fur and lets the cold straight through. So the best way to love a sea otter is to keep his ocean clean and let him stay wild, because every otter living wild is quietly holding up a whole forest underwater too.

Wonder first, facts second. Conservation through love, not fear.

Made for families to listen to together.

1% of every purchase goes to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Sea Otter Program, which rescues stranded sea otters and raises orphaned pups to return to the wild.

Keep exploring with Drift
The bedtime story: https://youtu.be/oq2RYipBc7M?list=PLf0vwLcadxqs
The Drift storybook: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HL5RS9KS
Drift tees, stickers and more: https://fenekie.printify.me/product/32489972
Drift's page, everything in one place: https://fenekie.com/animal-sea-otter.html?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sea-otter&utm_content=podcast-a
The bedtime show, Fenekie Bedtime Stories: https://open.spotify.com/show/1cv4QvPaquIEl7ppqbGOuv

Stories, podcasts, videos, and more at fenekie.com

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Meet Dewey, the Moss Piglet, walking his own path through a patch of moss on a garden wall, and very possibly living on yours. In this episode of the Fenekie Explorer Club we get up close with the tardigrade: an animal about the size of a single grain of salt that can stop being alive on purpose, wait years, and then get back up and carry on.

We wonder together about:
• How he stops. When the water around him disappears he pushes out eighty-five to ninety percent of his own body water, pulls his legs in, and curls into a barrel shape called a tun, until less than a hundredth of one percent of him is still running
• The thirty years. In laboratories scientists have documented tardigrades waking up from the tun after more than three decades, and all it takes to bring one back is a single drop of water
• The ten days in orbit. In 2007 about three thousand tardigrades rode the FOTON-M3 mission into space, and the ones exposed to plain vacuum came home surviving at rates barely different from the ones that stayed on the ground
• Why he is not really a bear. Researchers who filmed tardigrades walking found they step like insects five hundred thousand times their size, in the same rhythm whether they hurry or stroll, and the nickname came from blurry seventeen-hundreds microscopes
• Where his two names came from. A German zoologist called him Wasserbär, water bear, in 1773, and an Italian scientist named him Tardigrada, slow walker, four years later. Both got the walking wrong and both names stuck

And the part that turned this episode around: there is no danger list for the tardigrade. No countdown, no rescue mission. Tardigrades need healthy moss, and moss needs clean air and clean water, so the whole ask is to let a corner of the garden stay a little wild and go and look at it.

Wonder first, facts second. Conservation through love, not fear.

Made for families to listen to together.

1% of every purchase goes to the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, to protect the small animals that live in moss, leaf litter and soil.

Keep exploring with Dewey
The bedtime story: https://youtu.be/VBReygB7ns0?list=PLf0vwLcadxqs
Dewey tees, stickers and more: https://fenekie.printify.me/product/32236225
Dewey's page, everything in one place: https://fenekie.com/animal-tardigrade.html?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=tardigrade&utm_content=podcast-a
The bedtime show, Fenekie Bedtime Stories: https://open.spotify.com/show/1cv4QvPaquIEl7ppqbGOuv

Stories, podcasts, videos, and more at fenekie.com

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Meet Bo, the Gentle Giant, lying at the edge of a Pantanal river with a bird walking up and down his back. In this episode of the Fenekie Explorer Club we get up close with the capybara: the largest rodent alive, about as long as a large dog and standing somewhere between a grown-up's knee and mid-thigh, and the animal that half the wetland seems to choose to sit with.

We wonder together about:
• How he poses for the birds. When one lands to pick the ticks off him he rolls onto his side and lifts his belly so it can reach the places he cannot, which means the calm is not a mood, it is a trade
• The study that counted twenty-one bird species keeping company with capybaras, fourteen of them recorded taking parasites off their backs, from a cattle tyrant the size of a sparrow to a caracara with a hooked bill
• Why his eyes, his ears and his nostrils all sit along the top of his head, so he can sink until only that one line shows and still see, hear and breathe
• How he talks far more than anyone expects: in one recording study of over two thousand capybara calls, researchers sorted out seven different ones, including a click and a chatter of the teeth
• Why in the dry season hundreds of them press in around the last water holes, and how they split back into small families the moment the rains come and the wetland fills again

Wonder first, facts second. Conservation through love, not fear.

Made for families to listen to together.

1% of every purchase from the Fenekie Explorer Club goes directly to the wild animals in our stories. This week it supports Onçafari, who work on the ground in the Brazilian Pantanal, the wetland this whole story rests on.

Keep exploring with Bo
The bedtime story: https://youtu.be/AmmpPkSS_UA?list=PLf0vwLcadxqs
The Bo storybook: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HHMJ9JTP
Bo tees, stickers and more: https://fenekie.printify.me/product/31726829
Bo's page, everything in one place: https://fenekie.com/animal-capybara.html?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=capybara&utm_content=podcast-a
The bedtime show, Fenekie Bedtime Stories: https://open.spotify.com/show/1cv4QvPaquIEl7ppqbGOuv

Stories, podcasts, videos, and more at fenekie.com

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Meet Cosmo, the Sky That Swims, drifting through the warm open ocean far from any shore. In this episode of the Fenekie Explorer Club we get up close with the whale shark: the largest fish on Earth, a grown male about eight metres long, who carries a map of stars on his back and has never once seen it.

We wonder together about:
• How every whale shark is born with a pattern of spots that belongs to nobody else, and how one shark photographed at Ningaloo Reef in 1992, then again in 2006, then again in 2011, still had exactly the same pattern nineteen years later
• The computer code written in 1986 to help a space telescope recognise star fields, and the moment somebody realised the very same maths could tell one whale shark from another
• The database that now holds 12,459 individual whale sharks, built from more than fifty thousand photographs, many of them taken by ordinary people on holiday with a camera
• Why his eyes are armoured with hundreds of tiny tooth-like scales, and how he pulls each one halfway back into its socket instead of blinking, because he has no eyelids at all
• Why the kindest thing you can do near a whale shark is stay back, since from a distance you can see his whole pattern, and your photograph can say which whale shark he is

Wonder first, facts second. Conservation through love, not fear.

Made for families to listen to together.

1% of every purchase from the Fenekie Explorer Club goes directly to the wild animals in our stories. This week it supports Wild Me, who build the shared photo-identification database that lets a holiday snapshot become real science.

Keep exploring with Cosmo
The bedtime story: https://youtu.be/ElFic9rCrb0?list=PLf0vwLcadxqs
The Cosmo storybook: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HHK9DHJZ
Fenekie tees, stickers and more: https://fenekie.printify.me/
Cosmo's page, everything in one place: https://fenekie.com/animal-whale-shark.html?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=whale-shark&utm_content=podcast-a
The bedtime show, Fenekie Bedtime Stories: https://open.spotify.com/show/1cv4QvPaquIEl7ppqbGOuv

Stories, podcasts, videos, and more at fenekie.com

Keep wondering.

Meet Digby, the Forest Gardener of the wet forests of southeastern Australia. In this episode of the Fenekie Explorer Club we get up close with the superb lyrebird: a ground bird about the size of a chicken who moves more earth than any other land animal alive, with nothing but his own two feet, while he is busy singing.

We wonder together about:
• How one bird turns over 155 tonnes of leaf litter and soil in a patch of forest the size of two football pitches, every year, just by scratching for his breakfast
• The clever experiment where scientists raked the forest floor by hand, exactly the way he does it, and counted half again as many beetles afterwards
• Why that means his digging grows the food he is digging for, and how he does all of it without ever knowing
• What a forest looks like without him: the fallen leaves piling up three times deeper, the ground underneath going hard, and the small seeds that never get their chance
• Why the best way to love a bird like this is to leave the leaves where they fall, keep the forest floor deep and let him stay wild

Wonder first, facts second. Conservation through love, not fear.

Made for families to listen to together.

1% of every purchase from the Fenekie Explorer Club goes directly to the wild animals in our stories. This week it supports BirdLife Australia, who work to protect Australian birds and the forests they depend on.

Keep exploring with Digby
The bedtime story: https://youtu.be/CHDV64RFOAY?list=PLf0vwLcadxqs
The Digby storybook: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HHN26YRY
Fenekie tees, stickers and more: https://fenekie.printify.me/
Digby's page, everything in one place: https://fenekie.com/animal-superb-lyrebird.html?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=superb-lyrebird&utm_content=podcast-a
The bedtime show, Fenekie Bedtime Stories: https://open.spotify.com/show/1cv4QvPaquIEl7ppqbGOuv

Stories, podcasts, videos, and more at fenekie.com

Keep wondering.

Meet Poppy, the Tiny Tentmaker of the Central American rainforest. In this episode of the Fenekie Explorer Club, we get up close with the Honduran white bat: the smallest fruit-eating bat in Central America, who weighs about the same as a grape and builds her own house out of a single leaf.

We wonder together about:
• How an animal smaller than your thumb cuts a leaf with her teeth until it folds into a tent
• Why she bites the side veins and never the middle one, and what would happen if she got that wrong
• What her Leaf Shield really is, and how green light can make a snow-white animal disappear
• Why her bright yellow nose and ears come from the figs she eats
• Why the best way to love a bat this small is to keep the low leafy plants under the big trees and let her stay wild

Wonder first, facts second. Conservation through love, not fear.

Made for families to listen to together.

1% of every purchase from the Fenekie Explorer Club goes directly to the wild animals in our stories. This week it supports Bat Conservation International, who work to protect bats and the forests they depend on across the Americas.

Keep exploring with Poppy
The bedtime story: https://youtu.be/Q2JKXhyt4gA?list=PLf0vwLcadxqs
The Poppy storybook: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HHN2M4PP
Fenekie tees, stickers and more: https://fenekie.printify.me/
Poppy's page, everything in one place: https://fenekie.com/animal-honduran-white-bat.html?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=honduran-white-bat&utm_content=podcast-a
The bedtime show, Fenekie Bedtime Stories: https://open.spotify.com/show/1cv4QvPaquIEl7ppqbGOuv

Stories, podcasts, videos, and more at fenekie.com

Keep wondering.

Meet Eco, the Green-Water Listener of the upper Gulf of California. In this episode of the Fenekie Explorer Club, we get up close with the vaquita: the world's smallest and rarest porpoise, who reads her whole murky green sea with Echo Vision, hearing shapes her eyes could never find.

We wonder together about:
• How Eco finds a fish the size of your hand in total darkness, without ever seeing it
• What the world sounds like when every click comes back as an answer
• Why her whole world is one small patch of green sea, and why she never leaves it
• Who Frida is, and what her brand-new calf means for the rarest sea animal on Earth
• Why the best way to love a vaquita is to keep her water quiet and let her stay wild

Wonder first, facts second. Conservation through love, not fear.

Made for families to listen to together.

1% of every purchase from the Fenekie Explorer Club goes directly to the wild animals in our stories. This week it supports VaquitaCPR, the international rescue effort keeping the waters of the upper Gulf of California safe and quiet for the last vaquitas.

Keep exploring with Eco
The bedtime story: https://youtu.be/3wgRMrSI9ho?list=PLf0vwLcadxqs
The Eco storybook: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HHM2RPGT
Eco tees, stickers and more: https://fenekie.printify.me/product/32066457
Eco's page, everything in one place: https://fenekie.com/animal-vaquita.html?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=vaquita&utm_content=podcast-a
The bedtime show, Fenekie Bedtime Stories: https://open.spotify.com/show/1cv4QvPaquIEl7ppqbGOuv

Stories, podcasts, videos, and more at fenekie.com

Keep wondering.

Meet Pip, the Grassland Gardener of the Brazilian Cerrado. In this episode of the Fenekie Explorer Club, we get up close with the maned wolf: the tallest wild dog on Earth, standing on legs like stilts in a sea of golden grass, who plants a whole orchard behind her without ever knowing it.

We wonder together about:
• The stilt-legs: why the tallest wild dog alive needs legs built almost like a giraffe's, just to see clear over her own sea of grass
• The Orchard-Walk: a fruit that barely ever sprouts on its own wakes up and grows six or eight times out of ten after it travels through Pip
• A bark that isn't a howl: a deep, rolling call that carries for miles across the open grassland to find her mate in the dark
• The only one of her kind: no close wolf or fox relatives anywhere on Earth, a whole family tree that belongs to her alone
• Why the best way to love a maned wolf is to let her golden grassland stay whole

Wonder first, facts second. Conservation through love, not fear.

Made for families to listen to together.

1% of every purchase from the Fenekie Explorer Club goes directly to the wild animals in our stories. This week it supports the World Land Trust, protecting maned wolf habitat in the Brazilian Cerrado.

Keep exploring with Pip
The bedtime story: https://youtu.be/WC6vdpeb66Q?list=PLf0vwLcadxqs
The Pip storybook: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HHK2SQJ6
Fenekie tees, stickers and more: https://fenekie.printify.me/
Pip's page, everything in one place: https://fenekie.com/animal-maned-wolf.html?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=maned-wolf&utm_content=podcast-a
The bedtime show, Fenekie Bedtime Stories: https://open.spotify.com/show/1cv4QvPaquIEl7ppqbGOuv

Stories, podcasts, videos, and more at fenekie.com

Keep wondering.

Meet Strike, the Forest Ghost of the Ituri rainforest. In this episode of the Fenekie Explorer Club, we get up close with the okapi: the giraffe's secret cousin, hidden so deep in the forest that people once thought she was a myth, whose striped legs catch the light like soft lightning so her calf can follow her home through the dark.

We wonder together about:
• The stripe fingerprint: why no two okapi in all the forest wear the same pattern, the same way no two people share a fingerprint
• The lightning-stripe trail: how those bold rear stripes catch the smallest scrap of light and turn a mother into a path her calf can follow through the shadows
• A tongue as long as your arm: 45 centimetres of blue-black muscle, long enough to reach up and wash her own eyes and ears with no help from anyone
• The voice you feel instead of hear: how okapi mothers and calves call to each other in infrasound, so low it travels through the earth and lands in your chest before you can name it as a sound
• Why the best way to love an okapi is to let the deep forest keep her, wild and hidden, exactly where she belongs

Wonder first, facts second. Conservation through love, not fear.

Made for families to listen to together.

1% of every purchase from the Fenekie Explorer Club goes directly to the wild animals in our stories. This week it supports the Okapi Conservation Project, which trains and equips anti-poaching rangers to protect the Ituri forest and its communities.

Keep exploring with Strike
The bedtime story: https://youtu.be/72xDhZIe2Ck?list=PLf0vwLcadxqs
The Strike storybook: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HHK6KDDX
Fenekie tees, stickers and more: https://fenekie.printify.me/
Strike's page, everything in one place: https://fenekie.com/animal-okapi.html?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=okapi&utm_content=podcast-a
The bedtime show, Fenekie Bedtime Stories: https://open.spotify.com/show/1cv4QvPaquIEl7ppqbGOuv

Stories, podcasts, videos, and more at fenekie.com

Keep wondering.

Meet Luria, the Moonlight Rock-Runner of the rocky deserts of Pakistan and Afghanistan. In this episode of the Fenekie Explorer Club, we get up close with the leopard gecko: a little spotted lizard who closes her eyes to sleep just like you, and if something grabs her tail, she lets it dance away in the moonlight and grows a whole new one.

We wonder together about:
• The true eyelids: why Luria can blink, wink, and close her eyes to sleep, when almost every other gecko on Earth cannot
• Her tail as a pantry: how she stores her food inside her own tail, and what it costs her on the night she has to let it go
• The dancing tail: how a dropped tail keeps flipping and glinting on the stone all by itself while Luria slips away into the rocks
• How her body grows a brand new tail over the weeks that follow, a little rounder, a little different, and wholly hers again
• Why the best way to love a leopard gecko is to let its wild cousins stay wild, out on the moonlit rocks

Wonder first, facts second. Conservation through love, not fear.

Made for families to listen to together.

1% of every purchase from the Fenekie Explorer Club goes directly to the wild animals in our stories. This week it supports the wild places where Luria's cousins live, out on the rocky deserts of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Keep exploring with Luria
The bedtime story: https://youtu.be/uNtF3vnYojM?list=PLf0vwLcadxqs
The Luria storybook: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HHMR1V6L
Fenekie tees, stickers and more: https://fenekie.printify.me/
Luria's page, everything in one place: https://fenekie.com/animal-leopard-gecko.html?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=leopard-gecko&utm_content=podcast-a
The bedtime show, Fenekie Bedtime Stories: https://open.spotify.com/show/1cv4QvPaquIEl7ppqbGOuv

Stories, podcasts, videos, and more at fenekie.com

Keep wondering.