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Life is strange, naturally you want to hear about it. Strange by Nature is your guide to the strange, weird and unbelievable side of nature. Professional naturalists present weekly curated stories about just how strange nature can get.
Episodes
Wednesday Jan 15, 2025
Wednesday Jan 15, 2025
Victoria kicks things of this week with a fascinating new study on Potter wasps showing that the males actually can defensively "sting" even though they don't have a classic stinger. If you are a fan of defensive genitalia, this story's for you!
Kirk keeps it with insects and defense this week and tells us a bit about the irritating hairs of caterpillars, how some of them have toxins and and how they can get into your eyes. No thanks.
Rachel takes us to a small island off the coast of Yemen to introduce us to the endangered Dragon's Blood Tree. It isn't just rare, it is strange too.
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Wednesday Jan 08, 2025
Wednesday Jan 08, 2025
Rachel takes us to the zoo to meet a Lyre Bird. Sure, they are found in the wild too but this one learned to reproduce the evacuation alarm for the entire zoo. Good times. Learn more about these amazing birds.
Victoria this week brings us, The Immortal Jellyfish. This strange creature can reverse age and then start life all over again. There doesn't seem to be a limit so potentially it could live forever. Scientists are studying it to learn more about aging and how stem cells work.
Kirk wraps up this week with a pair of studies that shows that not only do plants make noises when they need water but some animals can take advantage of these sounds to decide where to lay their eggs.
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Wednesday Jan 01, 2025
Wednesday Jan 01, 2025
Hey Everyone, it is our first show of 2025!
Kirk starts us off this week with a medical mystery from Australia. Can Victoria guess what it is? Spoiler, it is the Paralysis Tick!
Rachel (no surprise here) takes us to the bottom of the ocean to lean about a strange bone eating worm that feasts on dead whales.
Victoria also takes us underwater this week to Doggerland, a hidden submerged world at the bottom of the North Sea that used to be dry land and home to humans during the last ice age.
Join us weekly for more strange nature. Our supporters on Patreon get every episode ad free!
Wednesday Dec 25, 2024
Wednesday Dec 25, 2024
Welcome to another exciting week of weird. Victoria starts off this week's show with the story of an Ignobel prize wining study showing that mammals can breathe through their butts.
Kirk then takes us to the ocean to learn about animals that can drink saltwater without dying like us humans would.
Rachel rounds out this week by returning again into the ocean to introduce us to the bizarre looking antarctic scale worm. It is beautiful and awful all at once. Perfect, just how we like it right?
Join us weekly for more strange nature. Our supporters on Patreon get every episode ad free!
Wednesday Dec 18, 2024
Wednesday Dec 18, 2024
This week Rachel brings us the Bumblebee Bat which by some measures is the smallest mammal in the world. It weighs the same as two skittles candies.
Kirk then describes some fascinating research that the authors claim shows plants can actually hear running water and send their roots toward it.
Join us weekly for more strange nature. Our supporters on Patreon get every episode ad free!
Wednesday Dec 11, 2024
Wednesday Dec 11, 2024
Welcome to Episode 200. Thanks for being along on the ride.
Victoria brings us the mysterious tale of Red Sprites. They sound like mythical creates but they are really a bizarre and beautiful atmospheric phenomenon related to powerful thunderstorms.
Kirk is up next to tell us about the Mexican Mole Lizard. This strange creature scares locals so badly they have colorful tales about it attacking you while you go to the bathroom and devouring you from the inside. Rest assured, they are actually harmless but fascinating none the less.
Rachel rounds out this week's show with a truly shocking topic, electric eels. How did we not get to electric eels before episode 200?
Join us weekly for more strange nature. Our supporters on Patreon get every episode ad free!
Wednesday Dec 04, 2024
Wednesday Dec 04, 2024
We're almost to 200 episodes! Hold your horses though, we have one more episode here in ONEderland.
This week, Kirk brings us a completely bizarre story about a possible solar powered hornet. Is the Oriental Hornet really solar powered? Kirk dives into the details.
Rachel then introduces us to the largest whale in the world, the Blue Whale. The animal is so hard to understand size-wise that she has to resort to some absolutely strange comparisons. Which body part weighs as much as a bumper car? You'll have to listen to find out.
Join us weekly for more strange nature. Our supporters on Patreon get every episode ad free!
Wednesday Nov 27, 2024
Wednesday Nov 27, 2024
We've got a full episode this week to get some of you though family time on Thanksgiving. Put in the ear buds and enjoy some anti-social you time.
Rachel kicks us off with the fascinating story of a long-long extinct plant brought back to live with an ancient seed found on an archeological dig. Only problem is, we aren't 100% sure what it is.
Victoria then untangles the issue of intersex. Sure, there are people with XX or XY chromosomes, but what happens when you get different combinations than what we learned about in high school biology?
Kirk rounds out this week with the unbelievably strange Undertaker Bird aka the Maribou Stork; a bizarre carrion-eating five foot tall stork that's seems like something out of a Dr Seuss book.
Join us weekly for more strange nature. Our supporters on Patreon get every episode ad free!
Wednesday Nov 20, 2024
Wednesday Nov 20, 2024
This week, Kirk takes us back to the end of the dinosaur age and how the asteroid impact may have set up just the right conditions to create the world's first farmers. Ants, it turns out, beat humans to the idea of agriculture by about 65 million years.
Rachel then takes us to one of the most remote islands in the world, Nightingale Island, to hear about the amazing effort going to to save the endemic Wilkins's Bunting. It is a monumental task that included saving forests by raising and introducing killer wasps.
Join us weekly for more strange nature. Our supporters on Patreon get every episode ad free!
Wednesday Nov 13, 2024
Wednesday Nov 13, 2024
Fresh off Halloween and still on a sugar high, Rachel and Kirk dive into the mysteries of the planet.
Rachel heads back to the ocean to visit the Twilight Zone and talk about the bizarre Barrel-eyed fish. This fish has a see-through head and looks like something out of Avatar or some other sci-fi alien movie. Truly bizarre.
Kirk also delves into the waters of the ocean to bring us some fresh research on comb sea jellies and their incredible regenerative properties. Scientists cut them in half and discovered they merged bodies with their neighbors to survive. It is an incredible story that makes us think about what it means to be able to tell when your body ends and your neighbor's begins.
Join us weekly for more strange nature. Our supporters on Patreon get every episode ad free!