Becky Ripley and Emily Knight find out what ants teach us about surviving a pandemic.

As social animals, we're particularly susceptible to disease, so perhaps there are lessons to be learned from other sociable species in how we manage this. Ants are one of the most social species on the planet, and it turns out they know a thing or two about self-isolation and social distancing.

The story of how we protect each other (and ourselves) is a story that takes us from the complex maze of an anthill to the equally complex maze of human etiquette. If you think social distancing is a new invention - or even a human invention - think again.

Featuring Dr Nathalie Stroeymeyt, Senior Lecturer at the University of Bristol, and Michael de Barra, Lecturer in Psychology at Brunel University London.

Naturebang is back. Becky Ripley and Emily Knight are again trying to make sense of what we humans are all about, with a little help from the natural world. And this week, they’re getting lost.

Navigating our world is a challenge faced by every creature that moves. From dung beetles mapping the desert dunes, to eels circumnavigating the globe, each finds its own way about with unerring accuracy. How do they do it? And how is that going to help Becky and Emily get out of the woods?

The story of animal (and human) navigation is a story of the sun, the stars, magnetic fields, polarised light, and… dog poo. Yes, dog poo.

Featuring Michael S. Painter, Assistant Professor at Barry University, and John Edward Huth, Donner Professor of Science at Harvard University.

Ah, true love. Who can quantify that heady rush, the joy of another’s company, the unshakable bonds between one lover and another? Well, vole experts can.

This tiny rodent is not just an anagram of love, it can also teach us a lot about why we fall. And why we sometimes stray.

Prairie Voles form life-long monogamous bonds, together until death they do part. Almost identical Meadow Voles don’t, living the single life, and mating at will.

It all comes down to brain chemistry. And it turns out, some of us are more Prairie Vole than others.

Featuring Dr Larry Young from the Emory University, and author of 'Sex at Dawn', Chris Ryan.

Produced and presented by Becky Ripley and Emily Knight.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in June 2019.

If you think you’re in control, think again.

What invisible forces might be guiding your behaviour, your decisions, your most intimate emotions?

Becky Ripley and Emily Knight take a trip into the bizarre nightmare world of the undergrowth, and watch ‘zombie ants’ stumble forward, blindly following the orders of the deadly fungi controlling their brains.

Parasites often get the upper hand of their hosts, manipulating their behaviour in sometimes horrifying ways. But is that true of humans too? Could we be unknowingly subservient to creatures that live inside us?

Do they wish us well, or might they be plotting our downfall?

Featuring entomologist Dr David Hughes from Penn State University, and neuroscientist John Cryan from University College Cork.

Produced and presented by Becky Ripley and Emily Knight.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in June 2019.

Strange things dwell out in the open ocean.

Bobbing atop the waves, Becky Ripley and Emily Knight meet one such creature, the Portuguese Man O’War.

With its bulbous air-sacs and trailing tentacles you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s a jellyfish, but you’d be wrong. It’s a colony, a society of tiny individual animals, who work together to eat, hunt and reproduce as one.

In the Age of the Individual, we humans like to think of ourselves as self-sufficient little nodes who don’t need nobody. But that perspective gets called into question when you consider where we live.

Thanks to some complex maths and some incredible data-crunching, we’re beginning to see the cities we inhabit in a different light. They grow, move, breathe, and die, just like a living organism, according to strict mathematical principles.

Just like polyps in a Man O’ War, are we really any more than cogs in a machine?

Featuring:

* Marine Biologist, Dr John Copley from the University of Southampton

Produced and presented by Becky Ripley and Emily Knight.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in June 2019.

The humble sea sponge has been around for over 500 million years.

We may think of them as ‘simple’ animals, with no brain, no nerves and no organs. But they have a pretty good party trick up their fleshy sleeves. Push a sponge through a mesh, until all that remains is a cloud of cells. Pour those cells into a tank, and watch as the cells reform themselves, like the terminator, back into a sponge.

Becky Ripley and Emily Knight ask: is it the same sponge it was before?

Would you allow yourself to be dissolved into a molecular cloud and flung through space and time? And would the ‘you’ at the other end really be the same ‘you’ that left?

Featuring Professor Sally Leys from the University of Alberta, and Philosopher Charlie Huenemann from Utah State University.

Produced and presented by Becky Ripley and Emily Knight.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in June 2019.

Starling murmurations, those swirling, shifting sky-patterns made by hundreds of birds moving in synchrony, are one of nature’s greatest spectacles.

How do they avoid crashing into each other?

Becky Ripley and Emily Knight delve into the maths behind the movement with some computer modelling to help them chart the flight patterns, and discover the secret.

As for us humans, sadly we don’t fly together through the sky in swirling clouds. But there ARE patterns to how we interact with one another.

Like a ripple of movement, travelling through a cloud of starlings, ideas can spread through social media with blistering speed. Here too, computer modelling can help us chart how opinions morph as we react to those around us.

Do we have more in common with the birds than we think?

Featuring:

* Jamie Wood from the University of York

Produced and presented by Becky Ripley and Emily Knight.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in June 2019.

Becky Ripley and Emily Knight look to the natural world to answer some of life's big questions. Science meets storytelling, with a philosophical twist.