Obtenez 3 mois à 0,99 $/mois

OFFRE D'UNE DURÉE LIMITÉE
Page de couverture de Strange Animals Podcast

Strange Animals Podcast

Strange Animals Podcast

Auteur(s): Katherine Shaw
Écouter gratuitement

À propos de cet audio

 A podcast about living, extinct, and imaginary animals! Nature et écologie Science Sciences biologiques
Épisodes
  • Episode 461: Therizinosaurus and Its CLAWS

    Episode 461: Therizinosaurus and Its CLAWS
    Dec 1 2025
    Further reading: Study: Giant Therizinosaurs Used Their Meter-Long, Sickle-Like Claws for Display Show transcript: Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw. I am delighted to report that Therizinosaurus lived in what is now Mongolia in Central Asia, in the Gobi Desert. 70 million years ago, the land wasn’t a desert at all but a forest with multiple rivers and streams flowing through it. Lots of other dinosaurs and birds lived in the area, including a tyrannosaurid called Tarbosaurus that was probably the only predator big enough to kill Therizinosaurus. When the first Therizinosaurus fossils were discovered in the 1950s, they were initially thought to belong to a type of giant turtle. Later it was reclassified as a sauropod relation, not a turtle. These days, we know for sure it’s not a turtle and we’re pretty sure it’s not anything like a sauropod. The Therizinosaurus fossils found so far are incomplete. All we have are some ribs, one hind foot, and mostly complete arms and hands. We don’t have any parts of the skull or any vertebrae, so paleontologists still have a lot of questions about what Therizinosaurus looked like and how it lived, although we have more complete specimens of some of its close relations to help scientists make good guesses. Luckily we have its hands, because its claws are enormous. Therizinosaurus had claws bigger than any other dinosaur known. Therizinosaurus was a big dinosaur overall, with an estimated length of 33 feet, or 10 meters, although until a more complete specimen is discovered we can’t know for sure how big it really was. It may have stood up to 16 feet tall, or 5 meters, and walked on its hind legs. It’s classified as a theropod these days, a group that includes famous dinosaurs like T. rex and Spinosaurus, but it wasn’t closely related to those big fast meat-eaters. Most paleontologists think Therizinosaurus ate plants, but again, we don’t know for sure since we don’t have any of its teeth to examine. Its closest relatives were herbivorous but its immediate ancestors were carnivorous. If Therizinosaurus was a plant-eater, why did it have such enormous claws? Its claws were seriously terrifying! Its arms were big and strong in general, measuring about 8 feet long, or 2.5 meters, including long, slender fingers, and the claws measured over three feet long! That’s more than a meter long. If the claws were covered with a keratin sheath, which is probable, they would have been even longer when Therizinosaurus was alive. They were relatively thin and straight with a curve at the end. There are many reasons why an animal develops big claws. Predators need claws to help grab prey or tear meat into pieces, or an animal may need big claws to help it dig or climb trees. Claws are also great for defense. Some animals use claws to grab tree branches and bend them closer to the animal’s mouth, which is something that giant ground sloths probably did, at least sometimes. The new study published in February 2023 examined the claws of Therizinosaurus and lots of other dinosaurs to learn how strong they were. The claws were 3D scanned, and then the scans were used in various models that measured the stress placed on each claw in various different activities. The study discovered that the claws of different dinosaurs were strong in different ways depending on what they were used for, which wasn’t a surprise. What was a surprise was that Therizinosaurus’s claws were weak no matter which model the scientists used. In other words, Therizinosaurus probably didn’t use its claws to fight other dinosaurs unless it just had to, because they would break too easily. It wouldn’t have dug with its claws or even used them to hook branches down closer to its mouth. As far as we can tell, its claws were basically useless. But obviously, Therizinosaurus used its claws for something or it wouldn’t have evolved to have such gigantic claws.
    Voir plus Voir moins
    8 min
  • Episode 460: Blue Blobs and Graveyard Snakes

    Episode 460: Blue Blobs and Graveyard Snakes
    Nov 24 2025
    Further reading: Mysterious ‘blue goo’ at the bottom of the sea stumps scientists Three new species of ground snakes discovered under graveyards and churches in Ecuador Show transcript: Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw. I’ve come down a cold this week, and while I’m feeling better, it is settling into my chest as usual and I’m starting to cough. Since I’m still recovering and need to be in bed instead of sitting up researching animals, and since my voice is already sounding a little rough, here’s a Patreon episode this week instead of a regular episode. I had been planning to run old Patreon episodes for a few weeks in December so I could have some time off for the holidays, and those were already scheduled, so I just moved one of those episodes up to use this week instead. This is a Patreon episode from October of 2022, where we talked about two very slightly spooky animal discoveries. We’ll start with a suggestion from my brother Richard, about a strange newly discovered creature at the bottom of the ocean. On August 30, 2022, the NOAA Ocean Exploration research team was off the coast of Puerto Rico. That’s in the Caribbean, part of the Atlantic Ocean. The expedition was mostly collecting data about the sea floor, including acoustic information and signs of climate change and habitat destruction. Since the Caribbean is an area of the ocean with high biodiversity but also high rates of fishing and trawling, the more we can learn about the animals and plants that live on the sea floor, the more we can do to help protect them. When a remotely operated vehicle dives, it sends video to a team of scientists who can watch in real time and control where the rover goes. On this particular day, the rover descended to a little over 1,300 feet deep, or around 407 meters, when the sea floor came in view. Since this area is the site of an underwater ridge, the sea floor varies by a lot, and the rover swam along filming things and taking samples of the water and so forth, sometimes as deep as about 2,000 feet, or 611 meters. The rover saw lots of interesting animals, including fish and corals of various types, even a fossilized coral reef. Then it filmed something the scientists had never seen before. It was a little blue blob sitting on the sea floor. It wasn’t moving and it wasn’t very big. It was shaped roughly like a ball but with little points or pimples all over it and a wider base like a skirt where it met the ground. And it was definitely pale blue in color. Then the rover saw more of the little blue blobs, quite a few of them in various places. The scientists think it may be a species of soft coral or possibly a type of sponge, possibly even a tunicate, which is also called a sea squirt. All these animals are invertebrates that don’t move, which matches what little we know about the blue blob. The rover wasn’t able to take a sample from one of the blue blobs, so for now we don’t have anything to study except the video. But we know where the little blue blobs are, so researchers hope to visit them again soon and learn more about them. Next, let’s return to dry land and learn about some newly discovered snakes. In fact, we’re not just on dry land, we’re way up high in the Andes Mountains in South America, specifically in some remote villages in Ecuador. A teacher named Diego Piñán moved to the town of El Chaco in 2013, and he started noticing dead snakes on the road that he didn’t recognize. He also realized that people were killing the snakes on purpose. A lot of people are afraid of snakes, so Piñán made sure to teach his students about them so they would learn that most snakes aren’t dangerous. He also kept the dead snakes he found and preserved them in alcohol so he could figure out later what species they were. But he never could figure it out. Then a scientist named Alejandro Arteaga assembled a team to study the animals found in remote areas of the...
    Voir plus Voir moins
    6 min
  • Episode 459: Strange Little Dolphins

    Episode 459: Strange Little Dolphins
    Nov 17 2025
    Thanks to Alexandra, Jayson, and Eilee for their suggestions this week! Further reading: Scientists have discovered an ancient whale species. It may have looked like a mash-up of ‘a seal and a Pokémon’ The nomenclatural status of the Alula whale Field Guide of Whales and Dolphins [1971] The little Benguela dolphin [photo taken from this site]: The spinner dolphin almost looks like it has racing stripes [photo by Alexander Vasenin - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25108509]: The Alula whale, which may or may not exist: Show transcript: Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw. This week let’s learn about some whales and dolphins, including an ancient whale and a mystery whale, all of them really small. Thanks to Alexandra, Eilee, and Jayson for their suggestions! Let’s start with an ancient whale, suggested by Jayson. The genus Janjucetus has been known since its first species was described in 2006, after a teenage surfer in Australia discovered the fossils in the late 1990s. It grew to about 11 feet long, or 3.5 meters, and lived about 25 million years ago. So far it’s only been found around Australia. But much more recently, just a few months ago as this episode goes live, a new species was described. That’s Janjucetus dullardi, also found in Australia along the same beach where the first Janjucetus species was found, and dating to around the same time period. We don’t know a lot about the newly described whale, since it’s only known from some teeth and partial skull. Scientists think the individual was a juvenile and estimate it was only around 6 feet long when it died, or 2.8 meters. Small as it was, it would have been a formidable hunter when it was alive. Its broad snout was shaped sort of like a shark’s and it had strong, sharp teeth and large eyes. Because it was an early whale, it wouldn’t have looked much like the whales alive today. It might even have had tiny vestigial back legs. Its eyes were huge in proportion to its head, about the size of tennis balls, and it probably relied on its eyesight to hunt prey because it couldn’t echolocate. Its serrated teeth and strong jaws indicate that it might have hunted large animals, but some scientists suggest it could also filter feed the same way a crabeater seal does. Modern crabeater seals have similar teeth as Janjucetus, as do a few other seals. The projections on its teeth interlock when the seal closes its mouth, so to filter feed the seal takes a big mouthful of water, closes its teeth, and uses its tongue to force water out through its teeth. Amphipods and other tiny animals get caught against the teeth and the seal swallows them. If Janjucetus did filter feed, it probably also hunted larger animals. Otherwise its jaws wouldn’t have been so strong or its teeth so deeply rooted. But Janjucetus wasn’t related to modern toothed whales. While it wasn’t a direct ancestor of modern baleen whales, it was part of the baleen whale’s family tree. Baleen whales, also called mysticetes, have baleen plates made of keratin instead of teeth. After the whale fills its mouth with water, it closes its jaws, pushes its enormous tongue up, and forces all that water out through the baleen. Any tiny animals like krill, copepods, small squid, small fish, and so on, get trapped in the baleen. It’s just like the crabeater seal, but really specialized and way bigger. Whether or not Janjucetus could and did filter feed doesn’t really matter, because the fact that it’s an ancestral relation of modern baleen whales but it had teeth helps us understand more about modern whales. Next, Eilee wanted to learn about the Benguela [BEN-gull-uh] dolphin, also called Heaviside’s dolphin. It lives only off the southwestern coast of Africa, and it’s really small, only a little over 5 and a half feet long at the most, or 1.7 meters. It’s dark gray with white markings,
    Voir plus Voir moins
    12 min
Pas encore de commentaire