Thanks to Jason for suggesting this week's topic, the bison!

Further reading:

New research documents domestic cattle genetics in modern bison herds

Higgs Bison: Mysterious Hybrid of Bison and Cattle Hidden in Ice Age Cave Art

A cave painting of steppe bison and other animals:

An American bison [photo by Kim Acker, taken from this site]:

Some European bison [photo by Pryndak Vasyl, taken from this site]:

The bison sound in this episode came from this site.

Show transcript:

Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw.

This week we’re going to learn about the bison, a suggestion from Jason. There are two species of bison alive today, the American bison and the European bison. Both are sometimes called buffalo while the European bison is sometimes called the wisent. I’m mostly going to call it the wisent too in this episode so I only have to say the word bison 5,000 times instead of 10,000.

Bison are herd animals that can congregate in huge numbers, but these big herds are made up of numerous smaller groups. The smaller groups are made up of a lead female, called a cow, who is usually older, other cows, and all their offspring, called calves. Males, called bulls, live in small bachelor groups. The American bison mostly eats grass while the European bison eats a wider selection of plants in addition to grass.

The bison is a big animal with horns, a shaggy dark brown coat, and a humped shoulder. The American bison’s shoulder is especially humped, which allows for the attachment of strong neck muscles. This allows the animal to clear snow from the ground by swinging its head side to side. The European bison’s hump isn’t as pronounced and it carries its head higher. The bison looks slow and clumsy, but it can actually run up to 35 mph, or 55 km/hour, can swim well, and can jump obstacles that are 5 feet tall, or 1.5 meters.

The American bison can stand over six and a half feet high at the shoulder, or 2 meters, while the European bison stands almost 7 feet tall at the shoulder, or 2.1 meters. This is massively huge! Bison are definitely ice age megafauna that once lived alongside mammoths and woolly rhinos, so we’re lucky they’re still around. Both species almost went extinct in recent times and were only saved by a coordinated effort by early conservationists.

The American bison in particular has a sad story. Before European colonizers arrived, bison were widespread throughout North America. Bison live in herds that migrate sometimes long distances to find food, and many of the North American tribes were also migratory to follow the herds, because the bison was an important part of their diet and they also used its hide and other body parts to make items they needed. The colonizers knew that, and they knew that by killing off the bison, the people who depended on bison to live would starve to death. Since bison were also considered sacred, the emotional and societal impact of colonizers killing the animals was also considerable.

In the 19th century, colonizers killed an estimated 50 million bison. A lot of them weren’t even used for anything. People would shoot as many bison as possible from trains and just leave the bodies to rot, and this practice was actually encouraged by the railroads, who advertised these “hunting” trips. The United States government also encouraged the mass killing of bison and even had soldiers go out to kill as many bison as possible. Bison that escaped the coordinated slaughter often caught diseases spread by domestic cattle, and the increased plowing and fencing of prairie land reduced the food available to bison. By 1900, the number of American bison in the world was probably only about 300.

As early as the 1860s people started to sound the alarm about the bison’s impending extinction. Some ranchers kept bison, partly as meat animals and partly to just help stop them from all dying out. The Yellowstone National Park had been established in 1872,

Thanks to Pranav for suggesting this mystery big cat this week, the marozi!

Further reading:

From Black Lions to Living Sabre-Tooths: My Top Ten Mystery Cats

Spotted Lions

A young lioness who still has some of her cub spots:

Subadult lions who still have a lot of cub spots:

The skin of an animal supposedly killed in 1931 and said to be a marozi:

Two photos of a "leopon," a lion-leopard hybrid bred in captivity in a Japanese zoo:

Show transcript:

Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw.

This week we’re going to learn about a mystery animal suggested by Pranav. It’s the marozi, a big cat from the mountains of Kenya.

Kenya is in east Africa, and humans have lived in what is now Kenya since humans existed. Because of this, usually when we talk about Kenya or east Africa, we’re talking about hominins, but today we’re talking about big cats.

Kenya is home to a lot of animals you think of when someone mentions the animals of Africa, like elephants and giraffes, and it’s also home to three big cats: lions, leopards, and cheetahs. The lion is generally a tawny brown color although different individuals and populations can be various shades of brown or gray. A lion cub is born with dark spots, and as it grows the spots fade. Sometimes a young adult lion will still have some spots, especially on its legs and belly, but in general an adult lion has no spots at all. In comparison, both the leopard and the cheetah are famous for their spots.

The lion prefers to live in savannas and open woodlands. These days it’s only found in a few parts of India, along with various places in sub-Saharan Africa. This just means south of the Sahara desert. In the past, though, the lion had a much larger range. It lived throughout most of Africa, the Middle East, southern Asia, and even southern Europe. Overhunting drove it to extinction in many parts of its historic range, which is called extirpation. I’ve used the term before but it specifically means that an animal has been driven to extinction in one area where it once lived, but it isn’t extinct in other areas. Some subspecies of lion have gone extinct, and the lions who remain are vulnerable to habitat loss, poaching, and many other factors. Just because lions are common in zoos doesn’t mean lions in the wild are doing fine.

The same is true of the cheetah, which has an even smaller range than the lion these days but which was once common throughout Africa and the Middle East along with a lot of southern Asia and Europe. We talked about the cheetah in episode 145. It’s actually not closely related to the lion or the leopard, and in fact genetic testing reveals that it’s most closely related to the puma of North America.

The leopard, on the other hand, is a very close relation to the lion. Both belong to the same genus, Panthera, which also includes tigers, jaguars, and snow leopards, but the lion and leopard are the closest cousins. While it’s also vulnerable to habitat loss, poaching, and other factors, it’s more widespread than the lion and cheetah. It lives throughout much of sub-Saharan Africa, Asia--especially India--and even parts of eastern Russia, and in the past it was even more widespread. It prefers forests where its spots help it blend in with dappled sun and shade.

So, the lion, the leopard, and the cheetah all live in Kenya, but there’s another big cat that’s supposed to live there too. It’s called the marozi, also sometimes called the spotted lion.

Stories of lions that have spots like a leopard go back for centuries among the local people. The spotted lion is supposed to be small and the male either has no mane or only a small one. It’s supposed to live in the mountains and is solitary instead of living in family groups like ordinary lions. In fact, “marozi” supposedly means “solitary lion” in the local language. Instead of living in open grasslands, it lives in thick forest where a spotted coat and smaller body s...

Thanks to Chuck for suggesting this week's topic, a weird little deer called the muntjac!

Further reading:

Dam Project Reveals Secret Sanctuary of Vanishing Deer

Wildlife camera trap surveys provide new insights into the occurrence of two threatened Annamite endemics in Viet Nam and Laos

Getting ahead (or two?) with Vietnam's Viking Deer - the Long-Running Saga of a Slow-Running Mystery Beast

A giant muntjac [photo by Mark Kostich, taken from article linked above]:

A Reeve's muntjac [photo by Don Southerland, taken from this site]:

Show transcript:

Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw.

This week we have a suggestion from Chuck, who wanted to learn about a small hoofed animal that I don’t think we’ve ever covered before, the muntjac. It’s a deer, but it’s a very weird deer.

In fact, it’s not just one deer, it’s at least 12 different species that are native to parts of south and southeast Asia, although it used to have a much broader range. Muntjac fossils have been found throughout Europe in particular. It prefers thick forests with lots of water around. Most species live in tropical or subtropical areas, although it can tolerate colder temperatures. It eats leaves, grass, fruit, seeds, and other plant parts, and it will also sometimes eat bird eggs and small animals when it finds them. It will even sometimes eat carrion.

The typical muntjac is small, barely larger than a fox. The largest species, the giant muntjac, stands a little over two and a half feet tall at the shoulder, or 80 cm, while there are several species of muntjac that don’t grow taller than 15 inches high, or 40 cm. It’s brown or reddish-brown, sometimes with darker or lighter markings depending on species. The muntjac appears hump-backed in shape like a rabbit, since instead of having a mostly level back, its back slopes upward from the shoulders to the rump. Its tail is very short and males grow short antlers that either have no branches or only one branch. Males also have a single pair of sharp, curved fangs that grow down from the upper jaw, more properly called tusks.

The muntjac is usually a solitary animal, with each individual defending a small territory. Both males and females have a large gland near the eye that secretes an oily substance with a strong smell. It also has another pair of scent glands on the forehead. The muntjac rubs its face on the ground to mark the edges of its territory with scent. It can even flare its scent glands open to communicate with other muntjacs by smell more effectively.

Unlike many deer species, the muntjac doesn’t have a particular mating season. Females, called does, can come into season any time of the year, so males are always ready to fight with other males for a doe’s attention. The male loses and regrows his antlers yearly, but mainly he only uses them to push an opponent over. He does the real fighting with his fangs.

There are other types of hoofed animals with fangs. We talked about the musk deer and the chevrotain in episode 116, but even though the chevrotain in particular looks a lot like the muntjac, it’s not closely related to it at all. Neither is the musk deer. In fact, neither the musk deer nor the chevrotain are actually deer, and they’re not even closely related to each other.

The southern red muntjac is one of the smallest species of muntjac known and is fairly common throughout much of southeast Asia, although we don’t know much about it. One thing we do know is that it has the smallest number of chromosomes of any mammal ever studied. Males have 7 diploid chromosomes and females only have 6. In comparison, the common Reeve’s muntjac has 46 diploid chromosomes. Scientists have no idea why there’s so much difference in chromosome count between species, but it works for the muntjac.

Many species of muntjac are common and are doing just fine, but others are endangered due to habitat loss, hunting,

Let's take a look at some new findings about the temnospondyls this week!

Further reading:

Ancient giant amphibians swam like crocodiles 250 million years ago

Fossil of Giant Triassic Amphibian Unearthed in Brazil

Kwatisuchus rosai was an early amphibian [picture taken from article linked above]:

Koolasuchus was a weird big-headed boi:

Show transcript:

Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw.

This week we’re going to revisit an animal we talked about way back in episode 172, the temnospondyl. That’s because a new species of temnospondyl has been named that lived about 250 million years ago, and some other new information has been published about temnospondyls in general.

In case you haven’t listened to episode 172 in a while, let’s brush up on some history. The temnospondyls arose about 330 million years ago during the Carboniferous period. Ocean levels were high, the continents were coming together slowly to form the supercontinent Pangaea, and much of the land was flooded with warm, shallow water that created enormous swampy areas full of plants. Naturally, a whole lot of animals evolved to live in the swamps, and the temnospondyls were especially successful.

Temnospondyls were semi-aquatic animals that probably looked a lot like really big, really weird salamanders. This was before modern amphibians evolved, and scientists still aren’t sure if the temnospondyls are the direct ancestors of modern amphibians or just cousins that died out with no living descendants. Temnospondyls do share many traits with modern amphibians, but they still had a lot in common with their fish ancestors.

Most temnospondyls had large heads that were broad and flattened in shape, often with a skull that was roughly triangular. Some had smooth skin but many had scales, including some species with scales that grew into armor-like plates. The earliest species had relatively small, weak legs and probably spent most of their time in the water, but it wasn’t long before species with stronger legs developed that probably lived mostly on land.

Many temnospondyls were small, but some grew really big. The biggest found so far is Prionosuchus, which is only known from fragmentary specimens discovered in Brazil in South America. It had an elongated snout something like a ghavial’s, which is a type of crocodilian that mostly eats fish, and a similar body shape. That’s why its name ends in the word “suchus,” which refers to a crocodile or an animal that resembles a crocodilian. Inside, though, prionosuchus probably had more in common with its fish ancestors than with modern crocodiles, and of course it wasn’t a reptile at all. It was an amphibian, possibly the largest one that’s ever lived. The biggest specimen found so far had a skull that measured just over 5 feet long, or 1.6 meters. That was just the skull! The whole animal, tail and all, might have measured as much as 30 feet long, or about 9 meters, although most paleontologists think it was probably more like 18 feet long, or 5-1/2 meters. That’s still incredibly big, as large as the average saltwater crocodile that lives today.

The resemblance of many temnospondyls to crocodilians is due to convergent evolution, since researchers think a lot of temnospondyls filled the same ecological niche as modern crocodiles. If you’re an ambush predator who spends a lot of time hiding in shallow water waiting for prey to get close enough, the best shape to have is a long body, short legs, a long tail that’s flattened side to side to help you swim, and a big mouth for grabbing, preferably with a lot of teeth. A study published in March of 2023 examined some trace fossils found in South Africa that scientists think were made about 255 million years ago by a temnospondyl. The fossils were found in what had once been a tidal flat or lagoon along the shore of the ancient Karoo Sea. You didn’t need to know it was called the Karoo Sea but I wanted to say it because it...

Thanks to Oz from Las Vegas for suggesting this week's topic!

Further reading:

Bobi, the supposed 'world's oldest dog' at 31, is little more than a shaggy dog story

Greenland sharks live for hundreds of years

Scientists Identify Genetic Drivers of Extreme Longevity in Pacific Ocean Rockfishes

Scientists Sequence Chromosome-Level Genome of Aldabra Giant Tortoise

Giant deep-sea worms may live to be 1,000 years old or more

A Greenland shark [photo by Eric Couture, found at this site]:

The rougheye rockfish is cheerfully colored and also will outlive us all:

An Aldabra tortoise all dressed up for a night on the town:

Escarpia laminata can easily outlive every human. It doesn't even know what a human is.

Show transcript:

Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw.

This week we have a great suggestion by Oz from Las Vegas. Oz wanted to learn about some animals that will outlive us all, and gave some suggestions of really long-lived animals that we’ll talk about. We had a similar episode several years ago about the longest lived animals,where for some reason we talked a lot about plants, episode 168, but this is a little different.

But first, a quick correction! Last week we talked about the dodo and some of its relations, including the Nicobar pigeon. I said that the Nicobar pigeon lived in the South Pacific, but Pranav caught my mistake. The Nicobar pigeon lives in the Indian Ocean on the Nicobar Islands, which I should have figured out because of the name.

Anyway, back in the olden days when I was on Twitter all the time, I came across a tweet that’s still my absolute favorite. Occasionally I catch myself thinking about it. It’s by someone named Everett Byram who posted it in January 2018. It goes:

“DATE: so tell me something about yourself

“ME: I am older than every dog”

Not only is it funny, it also makes you thoughtful. People live a whole lot longer than dogs. The oldest living dog is a chihuahua named Spike, who is 23 years old right now. A dog who was supposed to be even older, 31 years old, died in October of 2023, but there’s some doubt about that particular dog’s actual age. Pictures of the dog taken in 1999 don’t actually look like the same dog who died in 2023.

The oldest cat who ever lived, or at least whose age is known for sure, died in 2005 at the age of 38 years. The oldest cat known who’s still alive is Flossie, who was born on December 29th, 1995. If your birthday is before that, you’re older than every cat and every dog.

The oldest human whose age we know for sure was Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 at the age of 122 years. We talked about her in episode 168. The oldest human alive today, as far as we know, is Maria Branyas, who lives in Spain and will turn 117 years old on her next birthday in March 2024.

It’s not uncommon for ordinary people to live well into their 90s and even to age 100, although after you reach the century mark you’re very lucky and people will start asking you what your secret for a long life is. You might as well go ahead and make something up now to tell people, because it seems to mainly be genetics and luck that allow some people to live far beyond the lives of any dog or cat or most other humans. Staying physically active as you age also appears to be an important factor, so keep moving around.

But there are some animals who routinely outlive humans, animals who could post online and say “I am older than every human” and the others of its species would laugh and say, “Oh my gosh, it’s true! I’m older than every human too!” But they don’t have access to the internet because they are, for instance, a Greenland shark.

We talked about the Greenland shark in episode 163. It lives in the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans where the water is barely warmer than the freezing point. It can grow up to 23 feet long, or 7 meters, with females being larger than males. Despite getting to such enormous sizes,

Thanks to Wilmer and Carson for suggesting we revisit the dodo!

Further reading:

Dodos and spotted green pigeons are descendants of an island-hopping bird

On the possible vernacular name and origin of the extinct Spotted Green Pigeon Caloenus maculata

Giant, fruit-gulping pigeon eaten into extinction on Pacific islands

A taxidermied dodo:

The Nicobar pigeon, happily still alive [photo by Devin Morris - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=110541928]:

The 1823 illustration of the spotted green pigeon:

Show transcript:

Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw.

This week we’re going to revisit a bird that everyone’s heard of but no one has seen alive, because it’s famously extinct. We talked about the dodo way back in episode 19, so it’s definitely time we talked about it again. Thanks to Wilmer and Carson for suggesting it! We’re also going to learn about some of the close relations of the dodo.

The first report of a dodo was in 1598 by Dutch sailors who stopped by the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. Mauritius is east of Madagascar, which is off the eastern coast of Africa. The last known sighting of a dodo was in 1662, just 64 years later. The dodo went extinct so quickly, and was so little known, that for a couple of centuries afterwards many people assumed it was just a sailor’s story. But there were remains of dodos, and in the 19th century scientists gathered up everything they could find to study the birds. More remains were found on Mauritius.

In the wild, the dodo was a sleek bird that could run quite fast. It may have eaten crabs and other small animals as well as roots, nuts, seeds, and fruit. It was also probably pretty smart. People only thought it was dumb because it didn’t run away from sailors—but it had no predators on Mauritius so never had to worry about anything more dangerous than an occasional egg-stealing crab before.

When humans arrived on Mauritius, they killed and ate dodos and their eggs. What the sailors didn’t eat, the animals they brought with them did, like pigs and rats. It was a stark and clear picture of human-caused extinction, shocking to the Victorian naturalists who studied it.

A lot of the drawings and paintings we have of dodos were made from badly taxidermied birds or from overfed captive birds. At least eleven live dodos were brought to Europe and Asia, some bound for menageries, some intended as pets. The last known captive dodo was sent to Japan in 1647.

The dodo grew over three feet tall, or almost a meter, with brown or gray feathers, a floofy tuft of gray feathers as a tail, big yellow feet, and a weird head. The feathers stopped around the forehead, making it look sort of like it was wearing a hood. Its face was bare and the bill was large, bulbous at the end with a hook, and was black, yellow, and green. The dodo looks, in fact, a lot like what you might expect pigeons to evolve into if pigeons lived on an island with no predators, and that’s exactly what happened.

The dodo’s closest living relation is the Nicobar pigeon, which can grow 16 inches long, or over 40 cm. Like other pigeons, the dodo’s feathers probably had at least some iridescence, but the Nicobar pigeon is extra colorful. Its head is gray with long feathers around its shoulders like a fancy collar, and the rest of its body is metallic blue, green, and bronze with a short white tail. Zoos love to have these pigeons on display because they’re so pretty. It’s a protected animal, but unfortunately it’s still captured for sale on the pet black market or just hunted for food. It only lays one egg a year so it doesn’t reproduce very quickly, and all this combined with habitat loss make it an increasingly threatened bird. Scientists are trying to learn more about it so it can be better protected.

The Nicobar pigeon lives on a number of islands in the South Pacific and it can fly.

Thanks to Murilo for suggesting this week's episode about the sawfish and the sawshark!

Further Reading:

Sawfish or sawshark?

Two New Species of Sixgill Sawsharks Discovered

Do not step:

The underside of a largetooth sawfish [photo by J. Patrick Fischer - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17421638]:

The sawshark has big eyes [photo by OpenCago.info - Wikimedia Commons [1], CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25240095]:

A comparison of rostrums. The sawskate is in the middle, the one with barbels is the sawshark, and the really toothy one is the sawfish [picture by Daeng Dino - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=137983599]:

Show transcript:

Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw.

This week we’re going to learn about an amazing fish suggested by Murilo. It’s the sawfish, and while we’re at it, we’re also going to learn about a different fish called the sawshark.

There are five species of sawfish alive today in two genera, and they’re all big. The smallest species can still grow over 10 feet long, or 3 meters, while the biggest species can grow over 20 feet long, or 6 meters. The largest sawfish ever reliably measured was 24 feet long, or 7.3 meters. Since all species of sawfish are endangered due to overfishing, pollution, and habitat loss, really big individuals are much rarer these days.

The sawfish lives mostly in warm, shallow ocean waters, usually where the bottom is muddy or sandy. It can also tolerate brackish and even freshwater, and will sometimes swim into rivers and live there just fine. The largetooth sawfish is especially happy in freshwater.

Let’s talk specifically about the largetooth sawfish for a moment, since we know the most about it. Like other sawfish, the female gives birth to live young, up to 13 babies at a time, and the babies can be up to three feet long at birth, or 90 cm. When a baby is born, its saw, which we’ll talk about in a minute, is covered with a jelly-like sheath that keeps it from hurting its mother. The sheath dissolves soon after birth.

The mother usually gives birth around the mouth of a river, and instead of swimming into the ocean, the babies swim upstream into the river. They live there for the next several years, and some individuals and even some populations may live their whole lives in the river. It’s sometimes called the river sawfish or the freshwater sawfish for this reason.

One interesting thing about the largetooth sawfish is how agile it is. All sawfish are good swimmers, but the largetooth sawfish is especially good. It can swim backwards, it can jump more than twice its own length out of the water, and it can climb over rocks and other obstacles using its fins, even if the obstacle isn’t completely submerged. It’s possible that other species of sawfish can do the same, but scientists just haven’t observed this behavior yet. We actually don’t know that much about most species of sawfish because of how rare they’ve become.

The sawfish is a type of ray, and rays are most closely related to sharks. Like sharks, rays have an internal skeleton made of cartilage instead of bone, but they also have bony teeth. You can definitely see the similarity between sharks and sawfish in the body shape although the sawfish is flattened underneath, which allows it to lie on the ocean floor. There’s also another detail that helps you tell a sawfish from a shark: the rostrum, or snout. It’s surprisingly long and studded with teeth on both sides, which makes it look like a saw.

The teeth on the sawfish’s saw are actual teeth. They’re called rostral teeth and the rostrum itself is part of the skull, not a beak or a mouth. It’s covered in skin just like the rest of the body. The sawfish’s mouth is located underneath the body quite a bit back from the rostrum’s base,

Welcome to 2024! Let's learn about some exciting new discoveries in our own family tree!

Further reading:

476,000-Year-Old Wooden Structure Unearthed in Zambia

Mysterious 300,000-year-old skull could be new species of human, researchers say

Show transcript:

Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw.

It’s time to start the new year off with an episode that has me really excited. I was initially going to include this in the updates episode that usually comes out around summertime, but I just can’t wait. In 2023, scientists discovered what they think might be a new lineage of extinct human ancestors!

We’ll come back to that in a moment, but first I want to highlight another amazing human-relateded discovery from 2023.

And just to let you know, I am going to be using the words "humans" and "people" and "hominins" more or less interchangeably. I try to make it clear when I'm talking about Homo sapiens versus other species of ancient hominin, but these are all our ancestors--in many cases our direct ancestors--so they're all people as far as I'm concerned.

As you may know, especially if you’ve listened to previous episodes where we’ve discussed ancient human ancestors, the ancestors of all humans evolved in Africa. Specifically, we arose in the southern part of Africa, in areas that had once been dense forest but gradually changed to open woodland and savanna. Because there weren’t very many trees, our far-distant hominin ancestors, the australopiths, no longer needed to be able to climb trees as well as their ape cousins. Instead, they evolved an upright stance and long legs to see over tall grasses, and the stamina to run after the animals they hunted until the animal was exhausted and couldn’t run anymore. Once our ancestors were walking on two legs all the time, their hands were free to carry babies and food and anything else they wanted.

Being fully bipedal meant that women had a harder time giving birth, since the pelvis had to change position to allow them to walk and run, so babies started being born when they were smaller. This meant the babies needed a whole lot more care for a lot longer, which meant that family groups became even more important and complicated. One thing we’ve learned about sociability in animals is that it leads to increased intelligence, and that’s definitely what happened with our long-distant ancestors. As their brains got bigger, they became more creative. They made lots of different types of tools, especially weapons and items that helped them process food, but eventually they also made artwork, baskets, clothing, jewelry, and everything else they needed.

All this took a long time, naturally. We know Australopithecus used stone tools over three million years ago, but we don’t have evidence of human ancestors using fire until a little over 1.5 million years ago. Homo sapiens was once thought to have only evolved around 100,000 years ago, maybe less, but as scientists find more remains and are able to use more sophisticated techniques to study those remains, the date keeps getting pushed back. Currently we’re pretty certain that actual humans, if not the fully modern humans alive today, arose about 300,000 years ago and maybe even earlier. Homo sapiens evolved from Homo erectus, which arose about two million years ago and went extinct about 100,000 years ago. They were probably the first hominin to use fire, which allowed humans to start migrating longer distances into colder climates. They might also have communicated with language. Basically, Homo erectus was a lot like us but not quite us yet.

The modern-day country of Zambia is in the middle of south-central Africa, and naturally it’s been home to humans and our ancestors for as long as humans have existed. One especially important part of Zambia is also one of its most beautiful places, Kalambo Falls, which is really close to the equally important and beautiful country of Tanzania.

Apologies to patrons for redoing an old Patreon episode, but I have a cold and it's the holidays.

The noble emu:

A baby emu (picture from this site, which has lots of good info about emus and lots more great pictures):

Show transcript:

Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw.

I had a different episode planned to finish off the year, but I had lots of stuff to do for the holidays so I put it off, and then I came down with a cold. It’s just a cold, at least, and it's not too serious, but I decided to repurpose a Patreon episode from early 2020 instead of making a new episode, because I don't feel good. Apologies to my patrons for getting a rerun, but I did give the episode a brush-up and re-recorded it.

Our topic this week is a bird from Australia, the emu, but mostly we’re going to learn about the emu war that happened in 1932.

The emu is a large, flightless bird almost as big as an ostrich, over 6 feet tall, or 2 meters. Like the ostrich, it can run really fast, over 30 miles per hour, or 50 km/hour. It’s only distantly related to the ostrich, though, and in fact it’s much more closely related to the tiny kiwi of New Zealand.

The emu has long legs and a long neck, soft feathers that are gray and brown, and three toes on each foot. It also has small vestigial wings that are only about eight inches long, or 20 cm. The body feathers make the emu look shaggy, but the head and the upper portion of the neck are less heavily feathered so that it sort of looks like it’s wearing a fancy coat with a high collar. It also looks like it has a poofy wedge of a downward-pointing tail, but it actually doesn’t have much of a tail at all. What looks like a tail is mostly part of the body. The emu’s skeleton is built for running, which includes a modified pelvis and leg bones for the attachment of strong leg muscles.

In winter, the female puffs out her feathers and struts around to attract a mate while making drumlike calls. Females sometimes fight each other by kicking, especially if a female approaches a male who already has a mate. The male builds a nest on the ground by placing dry grass, sticks, bark, and other plant materials on a flat, open area where he can see any predators that might approach.

The female lays up to 15 green eggs that are around five inches long, or 13 cm. The male broods the eggs for the next eight weeks and doesn’t eat during that entire time, and only drinks whatever dew he can gather from the plants around the nest without leaving the nest. A male can lose a third of his weight while brooding. Meanwhile, the female often leaves and finds another mate, sometimes laying several clutches of eggs during the nesting season.

When the babies hatch, the father takes care of them for the next six or seven months, at which point they’re fully grown. While he’s in charge, the father won’t let any other emus near the chicks, even their mother. He teaches them to find food and if the babies feel threatened, they’ll run underneath him to hide. Baby emus have gray and white longitudinal stripes and are super cute.

The emu eats plants and insects, and will sometimes travel long distances to find enough food and water. It can go a long time without eating and several days without drinking. It usually only drinks once a day but it will drink a whole lot of water during that one time.

Some populations of emu migrate to the coast after breeding season, where they can find more food and cooler weather. But in 1932 in western Australia, migrating emus didn’t find their usual food supplies. They found a whole lot of wheat fields cultivated by former soldiers, who had been given land after World War I. The Australian government had encouraged the soldiers to clear the land of native vegetation and grow lots of wheat, which they did. Then the emus showed up.

Naturally, without their usual food to eat, the emus sampled the wheat plants. And they found the plants yummy. Also,

Thanks to Morgan for suggesting this week's topic, the Antarctic Death Star!

Further reading:

Giant Monster Starfish ALERT

Echinoderm Tube Feet Don't Suck! They Stick!

Bodies of Starfish and Other Echinoderms Are Really Just Heads, New Research Suggests

The Antarctic death star [from first link listed above]:

The "beartrap" structures, magnified [from first link listed above]:

Show transcript:

Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw.

It’s been way too long since we talked about an invertebrate, so this week we’ll look at one suggested by Morgan, the Antarctic death star.

It has a lot of other names too, including the Antarctic sun starfish and the wolftrap or beartrap starfish. Its scientific name is Labidiaster annulatus. I’m going to call it the death star because I think that’s hilarious.

As you may have guessed from its common names, the Antarctic death star is a starfish that lives in cold ocean waters near the Antarctic, AKA the south pole. But its common names also hint at how it gets its food, and this would be a good time to take a moment and be glad you’re not a copepod that also lives in the Antarctic Ocean.

The death star is reddish-brown on its dorsal side, white underneath. It’s a large starfish, up to two feet across, or 60 cm, and it also has a lot of legs, more properly called rays—up to 50 of them. The rays are long, narrow, and very flexible, and the undersides have rows of little structures called tube feet. All echinoderms, including starfish, have these tube feet and they’re used for several purposes. One important purpose is helping the animal stick to a hard surface, which allows it to climb around more easily and right itself if it gets flipped over.

For over 150 years scientists thought the tube feet acted like little suction cups, but that didn’t explain how a starfish or other echinoderm could stick to porous surfaces. It wasn’t until 2012 that a study was published explaining how the tube feet actually work. The tube feet exude tiny amounts of a sticky chemical that acts like glue.

The death star’s body also has little spines and bumps all over it, but it also has some structures that give the animal its other names, the wolftrap or beartrap starfish. The structures are called pedicellariae [PED-uh-suh-LAIR-ee-aye], which are also common in echinoderms. Most echinoderms seem to use them to keep algae and other organisms from settling on the body, although scientists aren’t completely sure. Pedicellariae have muscles and sensory receptors, and when something touches them, they snap shut like a trap. In the case of the Antarctic death star, its pedicellariae are extra big and really sharp. When a krill or other tiny animal brushes against one of these little traps, it grabs the animal and then the death star can eat it.

But that’s just part of what’s going on when the death star goes hunting, so let’s discuss it in more detail.

Most starfish spend almost all their time on the ocean floor, walking around looking for food. The death star does this too, but not all the time. Quite often a death star will climb on top of a rock or other large structure, and then it will extend some of its rays up and out into the water. It waves its rays around and if it touches a small animal, it will wrap the rays around it. The pedicellariae also snap shut. Then the death star can eat whatever it caught. Usually this is krill or amphipods, but it’s not a picky eater. Since it will eat animals it finds already dead, researchers aren’t completely sure if the death star ever catches fish. They’ve certainly found dead fish in death star stomachs, but the water it lives in is so cold that not many fish live there anyway. Fish don’t make up a big part of the death star’s diet, whether or not it’s catching them itself. The death star also eats other starfish, including smaller death stars.

Like other starfish, the death star can eat surprisingly large pieces of f...