Have you ever wondered what secrets lurk in the basement of a natural history museum? Museums around the world are the keepers of vast natural history collections with millions of specimens, ranging from fish in jars to dinosaur fossils. Most of the specimen are not on display, but are an invaluable resource for researchers. But what exactly can we learn from natural history collections? What stories do the specimens tell us? In this podcast, I talk to the people working in collections, and ...
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5. A frog's eye view of the world - with Kate Thomas
33:16
33:16
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There is a saying that someone is "eagle-eyed" if they spot minute details - and if I asked you to name an animal with good eyesight, you'd probably think of an owl or an eagle. But in this episode we'll hear that the largest relative eye size of any vertebrate is found in an entirely different group of animals - frogs and toads. Kate Thomas, who i…
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4. Fluttering migrations with Micah Freedman
43:43
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Fall is upon us and it is high time for many animals to be on the move. Millions of birds migrate south each fall. But another animal currently migrating south is the monarch butterfly. The monarch butterflies migrate over 2000 kilometers every fall to reach their wintering grounds in Mexico. It's an astonishing journey for an insect. But not all m…
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Specimen Stories Trailer
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3. Foraminifera - tiny time machines of the ocean with Marina Rillo
32:20
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How do we know what the climate was like thousands or even millions of years ago? We would need some kind of record of what the planet was like in the past. Ideally, we'd want a record with not only high temporal resolution - showing the changes year by year - but also with wide geographical scope, showing changes not only in one place, but globall…
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2. Weird and wonderful fish with Kory Evans
33:41
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How do you evolve to have the entire right side of your face moving to the left side? Seems like a pretty outlandish thing to do - but the humble flatfish achieves just that feat during its lifespan. In this episode, I talk to Kory Evans, Assistant Professor at Rice University, to learn much more about how strange fish skulls evolve, and what this …
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1. Super-black feathers with Dakota McCoy
34:34
34:34
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Super-black materials are blacker than black - they are so good at capturing light that almost no light escapes them. While a normal black object still reflects some light, which allows you to see the shape of the object, super-black objects appear almost shapeless. You can see this in objects covered by a human-made super-black material, Vantablac…
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