Baby iguanas born inside a volcano

BBC Earth Podcast

Jenkins Laura

Society & Culture, Places & Travel, Tv & Film

4.6 • 611 Ratings

🗓️ 5 January 2021

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We’re back with new discoveries and awe-inspiring moments, taking you to a world far beyond your own four walls.

The wildlife photographer and adventurer Tui De Roy explores one of the most hostile spots on Earth: the mouth of a volcano on Fernandina Island. The inside of the volcano is a barren place, but surprising life exists - in the form of tiny iguanas.

Jason Ward’s encounter with a Peregrine falcon from the window of his homeless shelter in the Bronx led towards a lasting love affair with the natural world.

The birder and science communicator explains how you don’t have to travel as far as you might think to get up close to nature.

Connections with the world around us can be found in even the most trying of times.

Elisabeth Bailey’s mystery illness led to an unlikely companionship with a forest snail. She shares some surprising facts about these creatures, including the sound of a wild snail eating.

Thank you for listening to another series of the BBC Earth Podcast. As ever, we love hearing from you on social media, so do share with us your favourite episode so far or story that amazed, surprised or moved you…

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is a podcast from BBC Studios.
0:03.9	A commercial subsidiary of the most active volcanoes in the world.
0:31.9	It has an enormous caldera that is about four kilometers across, about 900 meters deep.
0:41.0	Welcome to a brand new series of the BBC Earth podcast, the podcast that takes you straight
0:46.3	into the heart of some of the wildest places on Earth.
0:49.6	The volcano has erupted massively on several occasions, and it became a moonscape.
0:59.1	In this episode, we're looking at the things you find in the most unexpected of places.
1:04.6	Things that aren't where they ought to be.
1:07.1	Or things that are exactly where they ought to be, but not where we were expecting to find them.
1:12.6	Back in 1978, I was with a team of volcanologists when I saw something very curious.
1:20.6	The caldera had recently erupted. There was absolutely no sign of life at first sight, except there were dozens of Galapagos hawks flying around,
1:31.3	and I soon realized they were actually praying
1:34.3	on a large number of very camouflaged baby land iguanas.
1:40.3	And I really wondered what on earth are these little iguanas doing inside this horrendous pit.
1:47.0	In this first story, we're on Fernandina Island in the Galapagos, around 600 miles west of Ecuador in the Pacific Ocean.
1:55.0	On its rocky shores, iguanas bask on black lava rocks, and penguins and sea lions make the most of the fertile seas.
2:03.6	The shoreline may be teeming with life, but inside the volcano itself?
2:08.6	A barren, steep-sided dust bowl scorched by the sun with no shelter and no food.
2:15.6	And yet, there they were.
2:18.2	Hundreds of tiny iguanas.
2:21.0	It was clear that they had hatched there
2:23.2	and they were making their way out of the caldera.
	...

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