Hi, I'm Anne Strange Champs. It's to the best of our knowledge, and I want to play a sound for you.

See if you can guess what this is.

Here's a hint. I'm at the zoo. I'm standing in the ape house at the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago,

looking at, and listening to a family of

unbelievably noisy, white-cheeked gibbons. So this is a mom, a dad, and three sons. It's

lunchtime, and they're swinging wildly from branch to branch. Huge, graceful, swooping leaps,

and the whole time, they're making this unearthly noise. from branch to branch, huge, graceful, swooping leaps,

and the whole time they're making this unearthly noise.

Now, I don't know if the gibbons are singing to each other or yelling at us or what.

And it's that unknowability of wild animals that draws us to them.

Most of the time, seeing them in a zoo is about as close as we can get. But animal scientists and

naturalists are coming up with a few new ways. For instance, ever wondered what it's like

to be a badger? Try living in a hole in the ground and eating

worms. When you put a worm into your mouth, it senses the heat as something sinister. You'd

have thought it might make a bid for freedom by going down into the deeper darkness

that usually means home and safety and head for your esophagus.

But it doesn't.

It goes for the gaps between your teeth.

It thrashes, whirling one end like a centrifuge around the middle of its body.

It lashes your gums.

Eventually, frustrated it curls up in the moist space next to the frenulum and considers its position.

If you open your mouth again, it'll be off, pressing its tail against the floor of your mouth like a sprinter pushing off from the blocks.

...