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This week we're staying at home and looking around our own yards and gardens to learn about some of the little critters we see every day but maybe never pay attention to. Thanks to Richard E. for the topic suggestion, and thanks also to John V. and Richard J. for other animal suggestions I used in the episode!\n\nThe common or garden snail:\n\n\n\nA couple of robins:\n\n \n\nA brown-eared bulbul nomming petals:\n\n\n\nAn Eastern hognose snake. srsly, no one believes ur dead snek:\n\n\n\nThe hognose in happier times:\n\n\n\nAn Australian water dragon. Stripey!!\n\n\n\nThe edible dormouse. I think you mean the ADORABLE dormouse:\n\n\n\nThe eastern chipmunk:\n\n\n\nA guppy with normal eyes:\n\n\n\nShow transcript:\n\nWelcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw.\n\nI\u2019m out of the country this week, visiting Paris, France and undoubtedly eating my weight in pastries and cheese as you listen to this. Since I\u2019m away from home, though, I\u2019m probably feeling a little homesick. So this week\u2019s episode is all about the ordinary-seeming little animals found in gardens and yards, a suggestion from Richard E. This is also a perfect opportunity to feature some listener-suggested animals that aren\u2019t really complex enough for a full episode but are still really interesting.\n\nBut I\u2019m not going to just look at the animals in my yard. Depending on where you live, hopefully I\u2019ll touch on one or two animals you might be able to see for yourself just by going outside and looking around.\n\nIt sounds corny, but no matter how boring you think the nearest patch of greenery is, if you look closely enough you\u2019ll see a world of activity. The other day I was sitting on a bench outside the library, enjoying a breeze and the shade of an oak tree, and because I am sort of disgusting and was wearing flip-flops, I was picking at one of my toenails that was partly broken. I pulled the broken part off and flipped it into the grass nearby. A few minutes later I noticed that a couple of ants had found that piece of toenail and were working hard to wrestle it over the grass and twigs and presumably back to their home. Why? Why did they want my toenail? It\u2019s just a piece of keratin, and while keratin is a type of protein, it\u2019s not digestible by most animals.\n\nI looked it up, and guess what. I am not the first person to notice this. No one\u2019s sure why ants take toenail and fingernail clippings, either. They\u2019re not interested in hair, just nails. Hair and nails have different properties so it\u2019s possible the ants are able to digest the keratin in nails but not the keratin in hair.\n\nThat was probably not the best story to start with. Try to forget that picture of me and remember that I\u2019m sipping wine at a sidewalk caf\xe9 in Paris right now, or touring the Louvre.\n\nLet\u2019s move on to a small invertebrate that is sometimes eaten as a delicacy in France and other parts of Europe, the common or garden snail. That\u2019s Cornu aspersum, which is native to the Mediterranean and western Europe, but which has been introduced in other parts of the world. It\u2019s pretty big for a snail, with a shell almost 2 inches across, or 5 cm. The shell varies in color and pattern, but it\u2019s usually brown with yellow markings.\n\nThe shells almost always coil to the right, or clockwise, but the occasional rare snail will have a left-coiling shell. Researchers have found that left-coiling shells are due to a genetic mutation and only occur about once in a million snails. A famous lefty snail was called Jeremy, who died in October 2017 at the ripe old age of two years. Since snails are hermaphrodites who both fertilize other snails\u2019 eggs and lay their own, a boy name seems like a random choice. Jeremy was discovered by a retired scientist in his London garden, who gave the snail to the University of Nottingham for study. After a public appeal, two other left-handed snails were found by the public, but while the three snails all laid eggs, all the babies had clockwise shells.