The Wild Life

MOVE OVER ‘SPIDER PAWS’! THE GOOTY SAPPHIRE TARANTULA’S GALACTIC COLORS ARE STUNNING.

This unexpected beauty from Gooty, a town in Central Southern India, certainly doesn’t have a shortage of names. It’s most commonly referred to as the Gooty Sapphire Ornamental Tree Spider.

Check out pictures and a transcript of the episode here

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The Wild Life has a new series, and it's unlike anything you've heard from us before. 8D, immersive, soundscapes of nature and wildlife, coming to your ears DAILY. The best way is to listen with headphones, but as far as however else you listen...it's up to you! Meditation, relaxation, sleeping, studying, curing the winter-time blues, working out for some strange reason, whatever!

Check it out!

https://the-wild-life-8d-sound.captivate.fm/listen

Support the Show at www.patreon.com/devonbowker

A lot of people want to be an “inbox zero” kind of person, but what about “mailbox zero”? Ask yourself, how often do you check the mail and how much of it ends up in the bin? Ask my wife, I am obsessive about checking the mail because I never want to miss anything important, but the reality is that 9 times out of 10 the mailbox is packed to the gills with coupons, credit card offers, and a subscription to Seventeen magazine that I NEVER SIGNED UP FOR. Well, today is your lucky day because I’m here to tell you three ways that you can get to mailbox zero.

https://www.optoutprescreen.com/

https://www.dmachoice.org/

https://www.catalogchoice.org/

Episode Transcript

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Deer. They’re everywhere. And our relationship with them is, well, complicated.

Some of us love to look at them, take pictures of them, have them around.

Some people hunt them for sport or for food.

Some only see them as Bambi

Some hit them with their cars…accidentally of course.

Some want them as far away from their yards, crops, or gardens as possible.

Love them or hate them, they’re here to stay. But how much do we actually know about them?

That’s what today’s show is about. Deer. Everything from antler to tail. Starting with, what makes a deer a deer.

Today's guest is Rhiannon Kirton (@Rhiannon_Kirton). She’s a Master's student studying deer, soon to be done and undoubtedly moving on to bigger and better things, and she’s worked in the US, Canada, and Australia. She’s also the co-founder of Black Mammologists Week!

Support The Wild Life at www.patreon.com/DevonBowker

Not every reindeer has a red nose. After all, that’s part of what makes Rudolph so special—and he’s not alone.

Episode Transcript

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When you get hot, you sweat.

When Elephants get hot, well, they don’t sweat. So what’s a 13 foot tall and 13,000-pound animal to do? I mean, not only do they produce tons of body heat for their literal tons, but Elephants in general—African and Asian—tend to live in some pretty warm places.

That’s where their big ole ears come in.

Episode Transcript

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What do Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Gilmore Girls, and Giraffes have in common? The women are the stars of the show. 

Despite being one of the most popular animals on Earth, giraffes are not studied as much as you might expect. You might think that is totally fine. After all, giraffes are not known for being super complicated creatures. Aside from being adorable, their unique geometric pattern, and having purple tongues, their biggest flex is that they stand as tall as 3 Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson's and sometimes fight each other with their Kevin Hart-sized necks. But now, a pair of researchers at the University of Bristol in England, Zoe Muller and Stephen Harris, have discovered that longstanding beliefs about giraffe social lives just do not measure up, and their findings may have huge implications on saving these creatures.

Today on the show, Giraffe Social Circles and What They Mean for Conservation

Read the transcript and/or the original paper here

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An effort to end protections for gray wolves that began with the Florida Man administration has come to fruition under the Biden administration. The species, native to much of the US and Canada, was only recently dropped from the endangered species list. In response, a team of scientists is calling on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to instead continue safeguarding the species. The primary signatory of this letter is John Vucetich.

For the past 25 years, John Vucetich has been the lead researcher of the Wolves & Moose of Isle Royale project. He is newly the author of Restoring the Balance: What Wolves Tell Us about Our Relationship with Nature, a book which meaningfully recounts all that John has learned from these incredible creatures. “A wolf,” John says, “is a living creature, with a perspective, memories of yesterday, an interest in how tomorrow turns out, joys and fears of its own, and a story to be told.”

Today on The Wild Life, why protections were ended, what’s happened since, why hunting wolves is viewed by many as unjustifiable, their social nature and disruptions, the why behind anti-wolf rhetoric, and how protections can be put in place once again.

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Happy Halloween! In this super special, unexpected, and therefore super last minute holiday treat (and trick), Devon reads a retelling of Edgar Allen Poe's famous short story, A Tell Tale Heart, that you undoubtedly were coerced into reading in high school. In our somewhat modernized version, we get a different, more wildlife oriented ending that turns out to be the most opposite from horror as you can get.

Become a patron (and our best friend), and get tons of cool perks at www.patreon.com/TheWildLife and help us to keep doing what we are doing and getting better!