If houseplants could talk: communication and the natural world

Outside/In

NHPR

Society & Culture, Documentary, Natural Sciences, Nature, Science

4.7 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 3 August 2023

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s our listener mail round up, and this week it’s all about communication in the natural world, like: how do migratory animals teach their young how to migrate and where to go? Do sharks smell underwater? And, are plants talking to each other? Plus, a mini-story about a lost baby squirrel and a Bluetooth speaker. Take a listen! How do young animals know how to migrate? Can plants talk to each other? What makes an animal a pest? How do shark noses work underwater? Featuring: Patrik Byholm, Richard Karban, Bethany Brookshire, and Stephen Kajiura. SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In. Talk to us! Follow Outside/In on Instagram or Twitter, or discuss the show in our private listener group on Facebook. Submit a question to our Outside/Inbox. We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to outsidein@nhpr.org or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). LINKS Visit outsideinradio.org for video of a Bluetooth speaker-assisted baby squirrel rescue. On animal migration: A magnetic compass aids monarch butterfly migration Paternal transmission of migration knowledge in a long-distance bird migrant On plants talking: Rumor Has It…: Relay Communication of Stress Cues in Plants Towards understanding plant bioacoustics On what makes an animal a pest: The long history of speed at Reuters about carrier pigeons and The Tastiest Bird You Can Legally Eat about the tastiness of pigeon meat, also known as squab Burmese Pythons: The Giant Invasive Snake at Risk in Its Native Land On sharks: Check out the Shark Lab at Florida Atlantic University. Scientists believe sharks came into existence about 400 million years ago. CREDITS Host: Nate Hegyi Reported and produced by Felix Poon, Jeongyoon Han, Taylor Quimby, and Jessica Hunt Edited by Taylor Quimby Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer Special thanks to Lani Asuncion and Angus Murphy Music for this episode by Blue Dot Sessions Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm actually going to kick this off by telling you a story, so one day I got a text from
0:07.6	a neighbor down the street and she wrote, good morning, decided to take an early walk
0:13.4	and discovered a little baby squirrel in the street in front of your house.
0:17.7	Use some boards to get it out of the road, didn't want to leave it, but also didn't want
0:22.2	to scare the mom away.
0:24.1	Can you check on it but not get too close?
0:26.8	And then she also sent you a picture of a very cute baby squirrel holding on to a little
0:32.5	piece of wood.
0:33.5	I feel like it looks almost like, you know, in Titanic when what's your name Rose is like
0:39.2	grasping on to like a little door, forget like, yeah, yeah, exactly.
0:44.9	So what I did was I called a wildlife rehabilitator and they told me to keep it warm and hydrated.
0:51.6	So I put in a little shoebox with some hand towels and a little dish of water.
0:55.8	Oh, and you made a video.
0:56.7	There's the squirrel trying to get out of your nice little shoebox shelter.
1:02.7	So my hope or our hope was that the mom squirrel would find this baby squirrel, but you know,
1:08.1	I was checking in on them throughout the whole day and mom never came.
1:11.7	Oh, so then finally I called the wildlife rehabilitator again for advice and like the
1:16.2	mom's not coming.
1:17.2	What would we do?
1:18.8	And they're like, okay, there's this one thing you can try.
1:21.7	It's a long shot.
1:23.0	Yeah.
	...

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