Episode 227 - Beaks

The Common Descent Podcast

Common Descent

Science, Natural Sciences, Education, Earth Sciences, Science:natural Sciences

4.8 • 764 Ratings

🗓️ 28 September 2025

⏱️ 147 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The faces of vertebrate animals are often soft and full of teeth, but there is a common alternative. Birds, turtles, and many more groups have developed toothless snouts covered in a tough sheath. This episode, we’ll explore the defining features of beaks and their various functions. And we’ll take a tour through animal life past and present to investigate the reasons behind the repeated evolution of beaks among dinosaurs and beyond. In the news: Life on Mars, ancient sharks, mammoth microbes, and ant-eaters. Time markers:Intro & Announcements: 00:00:00News: 00:07:00Main discussion, Part 1: 00:42:40Main discussion, Part 2: 01:38:25Patron question: 02:21:50 Check out our website for this episode’s blog post and more: http://commondescentpodcast.com/ Join us on Patreon to support the podcast and enjoy bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/commondescentpodcast Subscribe to Curiosity Box using our Affiliate Link: https://www.curiositybox.com/CommonDescentAnd get 25% off the first box with code descent25 Got a topic you want to hear about? Submit your episode request here: https://commondescentpodcast.com/request-a-topic/ Lots more ways to connect with us: https://linktr.ee/common_descent The Intro and Outro music is “On the Origin of Species” by Protodome. More music like this at http://ocremix.org Musical Interludes are "Professor Umlaut" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the Common Descent Podcast.
0:18.8	Hello, David. Hello, Will.
0:21.5	And hello, listeners.
0:22.9	Welcome to episode 227 of the Common Descent Podcast.
0:27.9	On this episode, we're discussing beaks.
0:30.6	Beaks, we're back in the mouthful region to go with all of our other mouth episodes.
0:37.4	We've done a bunch.
0:38.1	I was looking at them the other day,
0:39.3	and I was considering making a playlist
0:40.9	out of just our mouth-themed episodes.
0:45.3	Yeah, no, we have done a lot of things about the mouth.
0:48.9	There's a lot more to say there than you might think.
0:51.1	There's sure yet.
0:51.9	Epteat, episode 88.
0:53.6	Tusks 107. Sabertief, 21 yet. Teeth, episode 88, Tusc's 107, saber teeth, 214, tongues, 192.
0:58.4	We got a whole, there's a lot of mouth content. Yeah, very cool. So we will add to that with beaks,
1:06.5	the toothless bird mouths, though there are more than just birds to discuss this episode.
1:14.4	So we'll be discussing what makes up a beak, how many animals have them, and what are the
1:22.3	trends we see in how birds evolve their beaks, and why it seems so many animals evolve beaks.
1:29.5	Yeah, it's a very distinctive and very common type of mouth.
1:35.2	Yes, and it has shown up many, many times, so we'll take a dive into all of that.
1:40.5	This episode, as all our episodes, was requested, which is why we're discussing it.
	...

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