On donkeys, hippopotamus, octopuses, parenting and love

Perhaps as you’ve been confined to your home or your neighbourhood these past few months, you’ve begun to pay more attention to the animals around you. Those fluffy, scaly or feathered creatures that we share our lives with. Here’s a collection of stories about our attachments to our non-human neighbours, from swarms of locusts in Kenya to an octopus fiercely protecting the next generation and a donkey named Judas.

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Octomom - Radiolab (WNYC Studios)

Length: 35 minutes

Format: Single episode

Year: 2020

Listen on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify or any other podcast app or streaming service

True to the Radiolab style, stellar storytelling and artful sound design make this story about a deep sea octopus guarding her eggs, come alive and tug at your heartstrings. Veteran Radiolab producer, Annie McEwan, deftly weaves this yarn about an eight-limbed mollusc into an epic show of resiliency, parenting and sacrifice. Go underwater with your ears and be prepared to be absorbed by what you hear.

If you want some more Radiolab animal audio gems, take a listen to Breaking bad News Bears, There and Back Again or Why Fish Don’t Exist.

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Hoofprints On The Heart - HumaNature (Wyoming Public Media)

Length: 21 minutes

Format: Single episode

Year: 2016

Listen on: Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud or any other podcast app or streaming service

An epic tale of intercontinental adventures and unexpected friendships. This first-person narration strung together with sparse storytelling and music tells the story of John Dunham, who walked from the US, down through Mexico and into South America. Along the way he met a friend who changed his life forever: a donkey called Judas. Listen with a box of tissues nearby, this one’s a tearjerker.

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Belly of the Beast - Snap Judgement (PRX)

Length: 24 minutes

Format: Single episode

Year: Originally published 2018, rebroadcast in 2020

Listen on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or any other podcast app or streaming service

This story is a non-narrated, first-person account of surviving a hippopotamus attack on the Zambezi River. Safari guide, Paul Templer, details a near fatal encounter with a hippo that dips in and out of view in the years following the attack. Full of twists and turns and musical beats, this Snap Classic will have you at the edge of your seat.

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Nipple cripples and other nibbles - Off Track (ABC)

Length: 25 minutes

Format: Single episode

Year: 2020

Listen on: Apple Podcasts or any other podcast app or streaming service

The Australian audio equivalent of Candid Camera, this episode is an entertaining frolic through short stories about animals behaving badly. From biting horses to kleptomaniac crabs and baboons that cover trees in stolen toilet paper, Off Track will have you laughing out loud. If you like funny animal stories, this show has heaps more where this one came from.

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Episode 19: The Wolves - This Is Love (Radiotopia)

Length: 39 minutes

Format: Single episode

Year: 2020

Listen on: Apple Podcasts, Spotify or any other podcast app or streaming service

The way Rick McIntyre speaks about a pack of Yellowstone wolves, you’d think he’s talking about a human family. There’s the new dad helping to raise his partner’s pups, there’s the young pup that grows up and leaves to establish his own family and a rivalry that threatens to tear both packs apart. This is an intergenerational love story about rising to the occasion and overcoming impossible odds which speaks of a tenderness we don’t often extend to the natural world.

If you enjoyed this episode, then you will enjoy This is Love’s recent season that is all about animals.

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Kenya's locust hunters - The Documentary Podcast (BBC)

Length: 26 minutes

Format: Single episode

Year: 2020

Listen on: BBC Sounds or any other podcast app or streaming service

“Listen to this. That’s not rain, that’s the sound of billions of tiny wings.” This is how the BBC’s Senior Africa Correspondent, Anne Soy, introduces us to the sound of destruction in northern Kenya. Through Soy’s textured field recordings and interviews with “the locust man”, Albert Samburu, we listen in on a world held ransom by insects. Will the locust hunters be able to stop the swarm before it is able to multiply? Listen in to find out.

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Do Crows Mourn Their Dead? - Here Be Monsters (KCRW)

Length: 22 minutes

Format: Single episode

Year: 2014

Listen on: Radio Public or any other podcast app or streaming service

Tackling big questions and pervasive fears, Here Be Monsters charts rich journeys into the unknown. In this episode, we join researchers as they ask how crows express grief and loss. By studying birds performing, what we like to think of as uniquely human rituals, the episode challenges the neat hierarchies that humans have constructed with ourselves at the top. After listening you won’t be able to look at a crow the same way again.

If you’re craving some local adventures, both SANParks and Cape Point Nature Reserve have podcasts to bring the sounds of the wild to you.

If you’re wondering how to listen to these audio gems, local podcast organisation, Sound Africa, has prepared a handy guide to show you how.

Happy listening! DM/ ML

Missed last week’s edition? Here is ‘On who deserves to be commemorated’

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-07-17-on-who-deserves-to-be-commemorated/