Strange Animals Podcast

8:38

Episode 504: The Mystery Roar

Strange Animals Podcast ·

2026/09/28

Further reading:Wolves on rise in France as bears wreak mountain havoc Can Brown Bears Survive in the Pyrenees? Show transcript: Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw. On the evening of August 4, 2019, two hikers set up camp in the Pyrenees Mountains. Laurent and Frédéric were familiar with the area and had plenty of experience hiking and camping. Once their camp was ready for the night, they took off their boots and socks and sat down to eat dinner and relax at a small

en-US

6:58

Episode 503: The Mystery of Typhloesus

Strange Animals Podcast ·

2026/09/21

Further reading: A possible home for a bizarre Carboniferous animal: is Typhloesus a pelagic gastropod? Typhloesus An artist’s rendition of what Typhloesus might have looked like [pic taken from the Nix Illustration link above]: Show transcript: Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw. I recently discovered the excellent Nix Illustration blog, which is about scientific illustration and palaeontology. I’m finding so many fun topics that I keep going back to it, so I hope

en-US

11:14

Episode 502: Back to the Ocean

Strange Animals Podcast ·

2026/09/14

Show transcript:Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw. Life arose in the oceans and only much later spread to the land. But some land animals returned to the ocean and eventually became fully marine animals. That’s our topic this month, animals that returned to the sea. Vertebrates that evolved on land are called tetrapods, meaning four-footed. It applies even to animals like birds that have two legs and two wings, and snakes that have no legs, because all the ancestors of

en-US

9:12

Episode 501: The Wee Waa Monster and Tupandactylus

Strange Animals Podcast ·

2026/09/07

Further reading:Pterosaur melanosomes support signalling functions for early feathers Show transcript: Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw. This month we have a small mystery from Australia, which as far as I can find is still unsolved. In 1950, a man named George Gray started hearing bellowing from the gum swamp near his house. His adult son, Ted, heard it too and reported it was loud enough to hear half a mile away, or about 800 meters. The bellowing sounded like a

en-US

9:54

NEW Episode 500: Crikey, it’s 500 episodes!

Strange Animals Podcast ·

2026/08/31

It’s our 500th episode! Wow! Thanks to Rosie, Remy and Julien, and Dylan, Emily, and Michelle for their suggestions this week! Further reading: Crikey! Newly Discovered Snake Species Named After Steve Irwin Steve Irwin’s Treesnail A young Steve Irwin’s tree snail [photo taken from link above]: A marbled lungfish: A fennec, smallest and cutest of all foxes: Show transcript: Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw. This week we have a brand new episode,

en-US

6:17

Episode 499: The Mystery of Amiskwia

Strange Animals Podcast ·

2026/08/24

Further reading:Cambrian Explosion Month #18: Stem-Gnathifera Ambiguous Amiskwia Amiskwia, possibly [picture taken from above link]: Show transcript: Welcome to the Patreon bonus episode of Strange Animals Podcast for May 2025! We’ve talked about a lot of strange and mysterious animals from the Cambrian in past episodes, especially episode 69, but I don’t think we’ve learned about Amiskwia yet. For a long time it was another mystery animal from the Burgess Shale and a few other places, dating back

en-US

9:46

Episode 498: Octopolis

Strange Animals Podcast ·

2026/08/17

Further reading: https://sharonahill.substack.com/ https://metazoan.net/54-octlantis/ https://metazoan.net/109-octopolis-and-octlantis/ Scientists discover an underwater city full of gloomy octopuses The gloomy octopus [photo by Niki Hubbard – https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/118664956, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=123044473]: Show transcript: Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw. As I’ve mentioned before, I really don’t like April Fools

en-US

7:32

Episode 497 Megarachne

Strange Animals Podcast ·

2026/08/10

Megarachne as we know it now:Show transcript: Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw. Megarachne is only known from two specimens, neither of which is complete, which adds to the confusion. It lived around 300 million years ago in what is now South America. It was described in 1980 from the first specimen discovered and was named Megarachne, which means big spider. The scientist who described it thought it was a type of primitive spider related to modern tarantulas, but much

en-US

7:45

Episode 496 Two Mystery Invertebrates

Strange Animals Podcast ·

2026/08/03

Further reading: How did a tiny bee get to French Polynesia? Eight new species help solve a scientific mystery Secrets in the canopy: Scientists discover 8 striking new bee species in the Pacific Canopy specialist Hylaeus bees highlight sampling biases and resolve Michener’s mystery Scientists discover endoparasitic marine tapeworm trapped in Cretaceous amber Show transcript: Welcome to the Patreon bonus episode of Strange Animals Podcast for August 2024! It’s the start of Invertebrate August, so we

en-US

7:58

Episode 495 The Koao

Strange Animals Podcast ·

2026/07/27

Further reading:Gauguin’s Magical Mystery Koao Show transcript: Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw. The French painter Paul Gauguin moved to the island of Hiva Oa in 1901, less than two years before he died. Hiva Oa is the second largest island in the Marquesas, a volcanic archipelago in Polynesia in the South Pacific. It’s extremely remote, only slightly closer to Mexico than it is to New Zealand, although Hawaii is even closer. During his short time on Hiva Oa,

en-US

7:26

Episode 494: Four Water Animals

Strange Animals Podcast ·

2026/07/20

Further reading: New species of extinct vampire-squid-like cephalopod When teeth grow on the body Fossil shark turns into mystery pterosaur Scientists Had Never Seen This Elusive Whale Alive—Until Now Show transcript: Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw. This month I wasn’t sure what to cover in this episode, so I decided to just click on four random bookmarks of scientific articles that I’ve had waiting for attention, and we’ll discuss them. We haven’t done a four articles

en-US

16:26

Episode 493: NEW The Mystery of Esconichthys and Friends

Strange Animals Podcast ·

2026/07/13

Yes, this is a NEW episode! Thanks to Eesa, Grace, and Viki for their suggestions this week. (Actual episode starts at 3 minutes 28 seconds.) Find the Backerkit campaign here! Further reading: Nix Illlustration: Esconichthys The southern hognose snake [picture by Caudatejake – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0]: A beach wolf spider [photo by Memer15151 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0]: Oviraptor may have looked kind of like this when alive [art by PaleoNeolitic – Own work, CC BY 4.0]: Two halves

en-US

8:18

Episode 492: Basilosaurids

Strange Animals Podcast ·

2026/07/06

Further reading: Giant early whale Basilosaurus hunted the calves of other whales Show transcript: Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw. Let’s look at some extinct whale ancestors this month, basilosaurids. We talked about the ancestors of whales in episode 72, about weird whales. After mosasaurs went extinct at the same time as the non-avian dinosaurs, 66 million years ago, basilosaurids evolved to fill the ecological niche they left. Mosasaurs were big marine reptiles while

en-US

6:21

Episode 491: The Jumar

Strange Animals Podcast ·

2026/06/29

Further reading: http://messybeast.com/genetics/hybrid-equines.htm Show transcript: Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw. I stumbled across an interesting mystery animal recently and thought it would make a great topic for a Patreon episode. It’s supposed to be a hybrid animal, but as we’ll soon learn, it can’t possibly be what it’s said to be. The animal is called a jumar or jumart, or sometimes a kumrah. The oldest record of a jumar dates to 1546 but there are many other

en-US

9:16

Episode 490: Ipnops and Other Deep-Sea Fish

Strange Animals Podcast ·

2026/06/22

Further reading: Faceless Fish and the deep-sea voyages that found it Long-Lost ‘Faceless’ Fish Shows Up Near Australia Ipnops: The faceless cusk [photo taken from the second article linked above]: A tripod fish: Show transcript: Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw. It’s a fish episode! These are also deep-sea fish, and you know how much I love deep-sea animals. Let’s talk first about some fish in the family Ipnopidae, including one deep-sea fish with the

en-US

10:58

Episode 489: Animal Artists

Strange Animals Podcast ·

2026/06/15

Further reading:https://elephantartgallery.com/blogs/meet Desmond Morris with his favorite Congo painting: Peter/Pierre Brassau and some of his paintings: The so-called donkey painting, and I described it wrong in the episode: Pockets at work: Show transcript: Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw. Back in the early days of the podcast I did an episode about animal musicians, which for a long time was my favorite episode. Today let’s visit a similar topic, animals who

en-US

5:45

Episode 488: The Java Tiger Mystery

Strange Animals Podcast ·

2026/06/08

Further reading: Is the Javan tiger Panthera tigris sondaica extant? DNA analysis of a recent hair sample The Sunda tiger [photo by Alfonsopazphoto – Own workAnimaisFotos, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16029853]: Show transcript: Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw. We’re going to learn about a mystery tiger this month, but first we have to learn about the place where it’s supposed to live. Java is a large island that was formed by

en-US

8:53

Episode 487: Animals and the Sense of Taste

Strange Animals Podcast ·

2026/06/01

Further reading:What gives bees their sweet tooth? Show transcript: Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw. Right before I left on my trip to Belize a few months ago, my aunt Janice gave me a magazine to read on the plane, the Autumn 2021 copy of LivingBird. It’s about birds and birdwatching. I actually forgot to take it with me and it was in my car the whole time I was gone, but when I got home I took it in to read. One article caught my eye, titled “Investigating the Sweet

en-US

8:01

Episode 486: Two Rediscovered Birds

Strange Animals Podcast ·

2026/05/25

Further reading: https://www.audubon.org/news/like-finding-unicorn-researchers-rediscover-black-naped-pheasant-pigeon-bird https://www.sci.news/paleontology/confuciusornis-shifan-11528.html The black-naped pheasant-pigeon: Confuciusornis: Show transcript: We’re going to learn about two birds that have been in the news lately. The first is the black-naped pheasant-pigeon. The word nape refers to the back of the neck, and this bird does have a black neck. It’s a dark blue-black all over, in fact,

en-US

6:58

Episode 485: Cryodraken’s Very Bad Day

Strange Animals Podcast ·

2026/05/18

Further reading: Rare pterosaur fossil reveals crocodilian bite 76m years ago Show transcript: Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw. Let’s learn about a type of pterosaur that lived around 75 million years ago in what is now Canada, and we’ll specifically learn about an individual young pterosaur that had a very bad day, a bad day that’s preserved in the fossil record. Pterosaurs were flying reptiles that lived alongside dinosaurs, but weren’t actually dinosaurs. Some of them

en-US

All Episodes

Similar Podcasts

The Deep Dive Lab: Unraveling Materials Science

Son Hoang

New Books in Political Science

New Books Network

Station 151

Pale Matter | Realm

Beyond the Divide

Koala Moon

StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson

Neil deGrasse Tyson