nature in a experiment i don't know yet why is blight so far like it sounds so simple they had no idea

but now the data's i find this not only refreshing but but at some level astounding nature

welcome back to the Nature.

Welcome back to the nature podcast.

This week we'll be finding out about alien invasions.

And hearing about robot blood.

I'm Charmini Bundell.

And I'm Benjamin Thompson.

Listeners, a title of a paper in this week's nature rather caught my eye, and it contains the words alien bird populations.

Now, I did a bit of a double take when I saw it, but I have to say quickly, avian extraterrestrials have not been discovered, at least as far as I know. In this case,

the word alien refers to non-native species here on Earth that have been moved to a location where

they're not naturally found.

This happens all the time, says David Redding from University College London here in the UK.

The commonest animal species that get moved around by people are livestock, and that's happening every minute of every day. Other ways that species are moved are things like accidental movement of, say, mosquitoes

in containers where there's little pools of water, and again, that's happening all the time on

ships. And other times, there have been deliberate attempts to populate other places with, say,

familiar species. So when Britain colonised

different areas of the world, they would take British species over with them and introduce

them to just feel more familiar and more at home. Nowadays, there is a lot of legislation

against the deliberate introduction of species, but in this globalised world, accidental

introductions happen all the time. As countless historical examples have taught us, introducing species

to places beyond where they're naturally found can have very bad results. When a non-native

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