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How do plants make more plants? Better yet, how can one plant reproduce with itself? That was the question Devon's wife asked when an accidental pumpkin plant sprouted and eventually conquered their backyard. Who better to answer that than Vikram Baliga!Vikram is a research associate and greenhouse manager at Texas Tech University, a horticulture expert, … Continue reading The Birds, the Bees, and the Trees with Vikram Baliga of Planthropology →

Everybody knows their sound. It's haunting, but it also holds fascinating secrets.Hyena’s have been painted as villains, demons ridden by witches, grave robbing ghouls, and the embodiment of all things vile by people for thousands of years. Nature documentaries and Disney films alike play no small role. That’s what we’re exploring today. Much like in … Continue reading Who’s Laughing Now? Hyenas with Dr Kay Holekamp →

It's #SharkWeek2020...and it is easily one of the best examples of a massive divide in how the general public sees an animal compared to how experts see and talk about them. Science Twitter is a buzz with fact checking, jokes, and outright facepalming while Mike Tyson rumbles on the reef with Jaws and entertainment programs … Continue reading A Better Way to Talk About Sharks with Dr Catherine MacDonald →

When we hit 800 twitter followers, we said we'd do a bonus episode and an AMA. So, we did them both together! This is 40 solid minutes of us eating candy corn, playing Halo, and answering yalls questions!

The first installment of our first ever miniseries is here--Phylum: Porifera!Sponges are often overlooked aside from Spongebob Squarepants and cleaning. It's time that changed. Dive into the amazing life history of sponges!Throughout this series, we will be covering 9 of the main phyla in the animal kingdom. Next up on our list? Cnidaria (jellies)!On our … Continue reading Phylum: Porifera (SPONGES) →

On July 18th, Just the Zoo of Us posted a harmless tweet asking "what is the most overhyped animal?"It started an all out war: #WormGate2020This is our attempt, along with Ellen Weatherford's, at a tracing explanation of what exactly went down.To see the original tweet and follow the breadcrumbs yourself, go here: https://twitter.com/JusttheZooofUs/status/1284598945377812481?s=20Support The Wild … Continue reading #WormGate2020: An unimaginable can of worms with Ellen Weatherford! →

Hey everyone, a bit of a different approach with this episode. Last week, we left off talking SciComm and just about to talk about @BlackAFinStem and #BlackBirdersWeek. That's where we pick up this time in a conversation that spans immigration, COVID 19, the problem with SciComm, being a person of color in a scientific field, … Continue reading A Conversation with Chelsea Connor: Part 2 →

Color changing, mini lassos, islands, superpowers, vivid blues, falling of limbs, and so much more!This first half is largely focused on the anoles, but part 2, see, Chelsea is one of the cofounders of #BlackBirdersWeek and @BlackAFinSTEM, and so our conversation in the second half largely revolves around that, SciComm, art, and at the time, … Continue reading Did You Anole? with Chelsea Connor Part 1 →

Our guest for the day has one of the coolest jobs on earth, studying in what is perhaps the coolest place on earth. He is full of stories, and knowledge, and passion for little creatures that so many would overlook. He will have you wood by the end of the episode as a lifelong ardent … Continue reading Islands, Snails, & other Tales with Dr Andrew Kraemer →

This episode starts with a major announcement, but then...Tattoos, superheroes, opportunities, regeneration, Men in Black, phallic fencing, 1st brains, discoveries, cocaine, addiction, belly button mouths, and so much more. So, wherever you are, maybe a floaty in a pool gliding around like a flatworm in a petri dish, get ready for our conversation with Dr. … Continue reading The Man with the Planarian with Dr. Oné R. Pagán →

This is the start, the real start, of what our mission should have been from the beginning.Before the end of the summer, we will have initiated all of the necessary filing paperwork establishing ourselves as a Nonprofit Organization!YOU can help us to reach that goal even faster, and to begin the work on some of … Continue reading An Absolutely Major Announcement →

Dog person? Cat person? No, no, no. We’re all Snow Leopard people.AI, the difficulty of finding snow leopards, a strange form of social networking, tricky trail cam footage, using their floofness as a conservation tool, what to call a group of snow leopards, how snow leopards are world-class experts at social distancing, and so much … Continue reading Snow Leopards with Dr Koustubh Sharma →

Today, May 21, is the 221st anniversary of Mary Anning’s birth. She is not a household name, by any means—though she is believed to be the inspiration behind the well-known tongue-twister “she sells sea shells by the sea shore”.However, it wasn’t shells she was selling, but fossils of long extinct creatures of a bygone era. … Continue reading BONUS: Mary Anning, The Greatest Fossil Hunter You Never Knew →

A rare blue bee has been spotted in Florida for the first time in 4 years according to a news release from the Florida Museum of Natural History!This isn't the only winged critter there has been a lot of buzz about. By now, you've all hear of the 'Murder' Hornet. We'll tell you why you … Continue reading NEWS: A Rare Blue Bee and the So-Called Murder Hornet →

Everybody loves Orangutans, but how much do we really know about them? We are currently living in a world where we may lose all wild orangutans within the next decade as a result of human activity, but many of us are live our day to day lives unaware of that tragic fact. In this episode, … Continue reading Orangutan Conservation with Leif Cocks →

It's Mother's Day, and we kind of owe her a major Thank You for (along with Dad) shaping the people we became and The Wild Life as a whole.

Life is a lot of things, but one thing it can be is unexpectedly big. Like, really, really big. What started as a random question from a high schooler ("what's the biggest living thing?") with a seemingly straight forward answer, evolved into a search that lead to some very unexpected places. Such a big journey … Continue reading Big Life with Just The Zoo Of US →

When we started The Wild Life, the original idea was to answer listener submitted questions and have every day people on the show to interview guests with us or talk about their interests and passion. Well, when you first start a podcast, you have no listeners, so we had to re-evaluate. In the last year, … Continue reading True Nature #1: Conversation with Maria Hancox →

If you live in the north, you almost definitely know we have frogs, but how do they survive the winter? That's what we explore today as we revisit one of our SHORT series episodes from July 2019!Read the associated blog post and check out some pictures!Rate and review us wherever you listen, or on Podchaser … Continue reading Revisit: Frogcicles →

In this time of self-isolation and social-distancing, this time where we are inundated with numbers and figures every waking hour of the day, we wanted to take a break from our status-quo and do something a bit different. What we all need is a little connection, so this week we have a conversation. Just two … Continue reading Conversation with Corina Newsome, aka The Hood Naturalist →

Hey! Devon, here. March, as you may know, is International Women’s Month, and in honor of that (and the most important women in our lives), my wife and our mother are taking over---and they insisted this episode be called "Hooters". Why? Well, you can ask them...but mainly because it's about owls! The two of them … Continue reading They Made Me Call This “Hooters” with special hosts, Chelsea and Chrissy Bowker →

Everyone loves penguins, but how much do we really know about them as living beings?This week, The Wild Life is taking a waddle on the wild side, and our guide on our clumsy, yet hopefully charming journey is the one, the only, the...penguin lady, Dyan deNapoli. Dyan deNapoli is a penguin expert, TED speaker, and … Continue reading The Waddle Life with The Penguin Lady, Dyan deNapoli →

It's #CitizenScienceFriday! This week, we sit down to chat with Katie-Lyn Bunney, Education Coordinator at the Monarch Joint Venture, a partnership of federal and state agencies, non-governmental organizations, and academic programs that are working together to support and coordinate efforts to protect the monarch butterfly migration across the lower 48 United States.YOU can be involved in Monarch … Continue reading #CitSciFri with Katie-Lyn Bunney of the Monarch Joint Venture →

Ahead of next weeks #CitizenScienceFriday where we talk to Katie-Lyn Bunney of the Monarch Joint Venture, we wanted to revisit an old favorite as a context filler for some of what you will hear...and because we love the topic!Starting at a young age, we are all introduced to this idea, an idea that we carry … Continue reading Revisiting the Metamorphosis Metaphor with Dr Martha Weiss →

In part 3, we talk to Dr Robert T Mason about the absolute chaos that is the sex life of a garter snake. We talk snake pits, mating balls, cloacal fluids, copulatory plugs, cryptic female choice, Snakes on a Plane, pheremones, and so much more!Special thanks to Dr Robert T Mason (https://masonlab.science.oregonstate.edu/), Sebastian Echeverri (Twitter: … Continue reading Tainted Love Part 3: Garter Snakes with Dr Robert T Mason →

We're flipping the script this Valentine's Day with a three part series where we show some love to nature's unloved: spiders and snakes!In part 2, we talk to Shakira Quiñones about Nephilid Spiders (like North America's Golden Silk), weird spider sex, and have her and Sebastian Echeverri answer your listener submitted questions! We talk spider … Continue reading Tainted Love Part 2: Spider Sex and Freaky Facts with Shakira Quiñones and Sebastian Echeverri →

We're flipping the script this Valentine's Day with a three part series where we show some love to nature's unloved: spiders and snakes! In part 1, we talk to Sebastian Echeverri about everything from fear of spiders, spider VR, spider dancing, spider sex, tiny spiders on tiny treadmills, and everything in-between! Part 2 will air … Continue reading Tainted Love Part 1: Spider Speed Dating with Sebastian Echeverri and Shakira Quiñones →

In this episode, Devon and Richard talk snow, Frozen 2, whether or not water has memory (and if it's good or bad), the Big Bang, the formation of planets, the secret role of bacteria, why snowflakes are intricately symmetrical, and more! **Stay tuned for an updated episode description containing a link to 2 video demonstrations … Continue reading How to Make a Snowflake →

My how the turntables!In today's special holiday episode, Devon and Richard summarize some recent news of tenacious turkey turmoil, and explain how it is that the wild turkey became our Thanksgiving centerpiece.Prepare for a hearty helping of puns, unnecessarily long historical interviews, and straight facts!Check out thewildlife.blog later this week for our favorite turkey attack … Continue reading When the Tables are Turned (a Thanksgiving Special!) →

Discover why we are seeing less fireflies, the secrets behind their natural glow, how to find yourself a lady firefly, and so much more in this jam-packed episode.Our guest is Lynn Frierson Faust, the lightning bug lady of Knoxville, TN. She’s the author of Fireflies, Glow-worms, and Lightning Bugs,which details flash patterns of the 75+ … Continue reading Fireflies with Lynn Frierson Faust →