The artists of the animal kingdom
BBC Earth Podcast
Jenkins Laura
4.6 • 611 Ratings
🗓️ 30 March 2021
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, we’re displaying the most impressive artists of the animal kingdom. From tiny visual masterpieces, to animals that can dance to a beat, we’re shining a spotlight on the art that can be found in nature.
Deep in the Amazon rainforest, there’s a tiny structure that (if you’re able to spot it) catches your eye. The intricate silk henge is a mini masterpiece, and for some time nobody could say exactly what it was or why it existed. Phil Torres takes us on his journey of discovery and demystification.
Next we’re exploring whether animals can dance to a beat and, if so, why? To help us try and answer that, we hear from Henkjan Honing, professor of Music Cognition at the University of Amsterdam.
Finally, we turn our attention to Northern Australia’s great bowerbird. What can the males' elaborate constructions teach us about perspective?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a podcast from BBC Studios. |
| 0:03.8 | A commercial subsidiary of the BBC. |
| 0:15.5 | Picture this. You're deep in the Amazon rainforest in a place called Tambopata in Peru. |
| 0:22.0 | You're on an island in the middle of a river, covered in thick rainforest. |
| 0:27.0 | And in amongst the dense green foliage, something catches your eye, |
| 0:31.6 | something you've never seen before, something tiny. |
| 0:35.6 | So you peer in for a closer look. |
| 0:37.3 | I want you to imagine a perfectly circular |
| 0:40.3 | white picket fence, but this thing is made out of some kind of silky substance. And then in the |
| 0:48.4 | middle you have this tall tower. Almost looks like the Eiffel Tower, but circular. It's got a very |
| 0:54.0 | pointed, narrow top top and at the |
| 0:57.8 | base of that tower there's something covered in this silk but it's tiny even our best macro lenses |
| 1:07.9 | couldn't quite make out what we were looking at inside there. And |
| 1:12.1 | nothing like it's been seen in nature before. Welcome to the BBC Earth podcast. The podcast that's |
| 1:18.7 | always on the hunt for mysterious and beautiful things. I'm Emily Knight. We've seen so many |
| 1:24.5 | different patterns in nature, but never a pattern like this. |
| 1:32.0 | It was beautiful. A lot of people made the comparison. I don't know if you've ever seen that slow motion of like milk being dropped into a thing of milk or water and you just see all |
| 1:37.4 | these little splashes on the side. Like it looked like a piece of art. |
| 1:42.0 | In this episode, we're taking a step back from looking at wild animals and instead casting |
| 1:47.2 | our eyes over some of the things they make. We've curated some of the finest artworks |
| 1:52.0 | from the animal kingdom, masterpieces, crafted by tiny artists, and put them on display. |
| 1:58.3 | And the first piece in our gallery is a mysterious, intricate structure called |
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