Episode 239 - Nocturnality

The Common Descent Podcast

Common Descent

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

4.8 • 764 Ratings

🗓️ 15 March 2026

⏱️ 134 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Creatures of the night! The world is a different place in the dark, and a whole array of organisms have adapted to being most active outside of daytime hours. This episode, we’ll explore the regular traits that allow nocturnal animals to get by, we’ll discuss some of the ways nocturnal evolution has shaped living species, and we’ll investigate which – if any – of these traits we can identify in the fossil record. In the news: snake hormones, Australian amphibians, ancient microbes, and baby dinosaurs. Time markers:Intro & Announcements: 00:00:00News: 00:07:25Main discussion, Part 1: 00:39:15Main discussion, Part 2: 01:14:30Patron question: 02:03:45 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 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.
0:19.0	Hello, David. Hello, Will.
0:21.9	And hello, listeners.
0:23.6	Welcome to episode 239 of the Common Descent Podcast.
0:29.0	This episode, we are discussing nocturnality.
0:32.8	Nighttime stuff.
0:34.4	Being awake at night.
0:36.5	Nocturnality, being nocturnal, is a phenomena all too common in our
0:42.4	animal world. There are many, many creatures. I'm sure everyone can think of a creature, and many
0:48.1	pet owners probably have, about 50% of pet owners, probably have one of these running around your house right now.
0:55.3	Yes, or parents of teenagers.
0:57.2	Yes, indeed. This episode we will be discussing the behavior of being active outside of daytime hours.
1:06.0	And what adaptations, what benefits, what costs go into being able to function in the dark.
1:13.7	We'll also discuss how we detect this in the fossil record and how much of it is detectable
1:19.9	and look into one of the key aspects of mammal evolution that ties into this very topic.
1:27.0	As always, we're discussing this because it's awesome, but specifically because it was
1:31.2	requested. This topic and a specific topic we'll be getting into was requested by Tony, Scott,
1:38.9	Sean, Taterboy, JWS, and Carissa. Thank you, everybody, for your requests and topic suggestions.
1:46.4	As a reminder, the topic request form is now on our website.
1:50.1	So you can click the button and submit a topic, and it goes right to us.
1:54.0	One simple click.
1:55.4	Way better than the way we used to do it, which was gathering suggestions from literally every place you could possibly
	...

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