Strange Animals Podcast

This week’s episode is all about some awesome sharks: the hammerhead shark, which used to scare the poop out of me when I was a kid, and the unbelievably huge but fortunately for all the whales extinct megalodon! Thanks to Zenger from Zeng This! for recommending such a great topic! The great hammerhead, a huge and freaky-looking shark. A ray leaping out of the water to escape a hammerhead. The article I pulled this from is here. A guy with a teeny adorable bonnethead, a newly discovered species of hammerhead. Hello there. I am a great white shark.

In episode 14, we discuss the big three of giant salamanders–and some possible mystery relatives. The Chinese giant salamander. An orange one. Enormous. Mostly harmless. Just wants to eat a snail. The Japanese giant salamander. The HELLBENDER reverb reverb reverb The Pacific giant salamander. Not as giant but has an angry.

This week we’re taking a close look at the legend of the chupacabra! It’s not what you may expect, but it’s definitely an interesting story. Ben Radford’s sketch of the chupacabra Madelyne Tolentino described in 1996. The Texas chupacabra taxidermied by Ayer. A happy, healthy Xolo dog. A coywolf without mange. Mange can be cured! Above is a poor sad mangy pup before treatment and a happy happy pup after treatment. Further reading/listening: Tracking the Chupacabra by Benjamin Radford Museum of Modern Mystery podcast, episode 8

This week we range across the world to solve (sort of) the mystery of the wyvern, the basilisk, the cockatrice, and crowing snakes! From left to right, or whatever since the three have been confused since at least the middle ages: the basilisk, the cockatrice, and the wyvern. The king cobra, or maybe the basilisk. The Egyptian mongoose/ichneumon, or maybe the cockatrice. Basilisk! Further reading: Extraordinary Animals Revisited by Karl P.N. Shuker Gode Cookery: The Cockentrice – A Ryal Mete Thanks to listener Richard E. for suggesting this week’s topic!

This week we’re going all goth in April for the vampire squid and the vampire bat. They’re so awesome I want to die. The vampire squid looking all menacing even though it’s barely a foot long. “I love you, vampire bat!!” “I love you too, Kate.” Thanks for listening! We now have a Patreon if you’d like to subscribe! Rewards include patron-only episodes and stickers!

This week’s episode is about electric animals! There are so many of them that I could only touch on the highlights. We start with the electric eel. It’s not actually an eel but it is most definitely electric. The one pictured above has just read some disturbing fanfic. The oriental hornet is a living solar panel. The platypus’s bill is packed with electricity sensors. I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried. Amphisbaenids are not electric AS FAR AS WE KNOW. Bzzt. Thanks for listening! We now have a Patreon if you’d like to subscribe! Rewards include patron-only episodes and stickers!

This week we take a look at (and listen to) the ivory-billed woodpecker and its close relative, the imperial woodpecker. Is it alive? Is it extinct? How can one innocent bird be the source of so much drama? A pair of ivory-billed woodpeckers. Photo taken in 1935. Frames from the alleged ivory-billed woodpecker video taken in 2004. Not super clear there, guys. Above, left to right: imperial woodpecker, ivory-billed woodpecker, and pileated woodpecker. A pair of stuffed imperial woodpeckers. A still from the 1958 video of a female imperial woodpecker. She’s so cute! Her crest bobs around as she moves. Thanks for listening to me blather on about woodpeckers!

This week’s episode is a collection of strange animal sounds, some unknown, others identified. We start with “the loneliest whale.” A blue whale. Not the loneliest whale, as far as anyone knows. A tarsier. This fox can see into your soul and does not like you. Further listening: Strange Matters Podcast “The Most Strange and Unexplained Audio Recordings” Skeptoid episode 526: “Sky Trumpets”

New information came out today about the infamous Ozenkadnook Tiger photo! Here’s all the breaking news! The photo in question, taken in 1964. Someone please tell me how to pronounce Ozenkadnook.

This week we look at three strange birds: a red-tailed Canadian raven that may or may not exist, the pied-billed grebe that definitely does, and New Zealand’s takahē. A common raven. No red markings. Here’s the Cryptodominion page with the red-tailed raven report. Here’s Karl Shuker’s post about the red-tailed raven. Precious smol baby pied-billed grebes riding on their mom or dad’s back. The takahē, hooray!

This week’s episode is all about sea monsters: mysterious sightings, possible solutions, and definitely discovered monsters of the world’s oceans! The giant oarfish! Try to convince me that’s not a sea serpent, I dare you. The megamouth shark. Watch out, krill and jellyfish! The frilled shark. Watch out, everything else including other sharks! A giant isopod. Why are you touching it? Stop touching it! Sorry, it’s just a rotting basking shark. Recommended reading: In the Wake of Bernard Heuvelmans by Michael A. Woodley In the Wake of the Sea-Serpents by Bernard Heuvelmans The Search for the Last Undiscovered Animals by Karl P.N. Shuker

Everyone knows the legend of the unicorn and most of us know unicorns don’t really exist. But how did the legend get started? And more importantly, can we talk about narwhals a whole lot? Narwhals are rad. Narwhal. So rad. I haven’t seen this show but apparently it’s pretty good. I love that elasmotherium. Unicorns are (sort of) real. Unicorning certainly is. Thanks to Jen and Dave for suggesting this week’s topic!

In which your host calls her own podcast by the wrong name! And doesn’t catch it until it’s too late to change (i.e. five minutes ago). This week’s episode of Strange Animals Podcast is about the Irish Elk specifically and the Pleistocene era in general, especially as regards to humans spreading out across the world from Africa. Did the Irish elk’s enormous antlers really have anything to do with its extinction? And is it really for-sure extinct? (Spoiler alerts: no and yes.) The Irish elk (more accurately called the giant deer) could stand as tall as seven feet high at the shoulder.

In this week’s episode, we look at a couple of so-called living fossils: the tuatara and the lamprey. One of them hasn’t changed appreciably in almost 400 million years. Tune in to find out which one and learn about how gross it is and how cute the other one is! (I may be biased.) The adorable tuatara! It eats anything, including baby tuataras. Not cool, lizardy guy. A face not even a mother could love. The sea lamprey. A recently discovered fossil lamprey, complete with impression of its body.

People have been searching for the so-called African brontosaurus, mokele mbembe, for a century without any luck. No one was looking for the extinct coelacanth until a museum curator saw one in a pile of recently caught fish. In this episode of Strange Animals Podcast we discuss the hunt for both creatures. Recommended reading: Abominable Science!: Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids by Daniel Loxton and Donald R. Prothero. The beautiful coelacanth.