BROADCASTS.com

b"This week we're looking at some very small animals--but not animals that we think of as small. Join us for a horrendously cute episode!\\n\\nFurther reading:\\n\\nThe Echinoblog\\n\\nFurther listening:\\n\\nAnimals to the Max episode #75: The Sea Panda (vaquita)\\n\\nVarmints! episode #49: Hippos\\n\\nFurther watching:\\n\\nAn adorable baby pygmy hippo\\n\\nThe Barbados threadsnake will protecc your fingertip:\\n\\n\\n\\nParvulastra will decorate your thumbnail:\\n\\n\\n\\nBerthe's mouse lemur will defend this twig:\\n\\n\\n\\nThe bumblebee bat will eat any bugs that come near your finger:\\n\\n\\n\\nThe vaquita, tiny critically endangered porpoise:\\n\\n\\n\\nThe long-tailed planigale is going to steal this ring and wear it as a belt:\\n\\n\\n\\nHe h\\xf6wl:\\n\\n\\n\\nA pygmy hippo and its mother will sample this grass:\\n\\n\\n\\nThis Virgin Islands dwarf gecko will spend this dime if it can just pick it up:\\n\\n\\n\\nShow transcript:\\n\\nWelcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I\\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw.\\n\\nI talk a lot about biggest animals on this podcast, so maybe it\\u2019s time to look at the very smallest animals. I don\\u2019t mean algae or bacteria or things like that, I mean the smallest species of animals that aren\\u2019t usually considered especially small.\\n\\nWe\\u2019ll start with the smolest snek, the Barbados threadsnake. It only lives on a few islands in the Caribbean, notably Barbados. The very largest individual ever measured was only 4.09 inches long, or 10.4 cm, but most are under four inches long. But it\\u2019s an extremely thin snake, not much thicker than a spaghetti noodle.\\n\\nThe Barbados threadsnake mostly eats termites and ant larvae. It spends most of its time in leaf litter or under rocks, hunting for food. The female only lays one single egg, but the baby is relatively large, about half the mother\\u2019s length when it hatches.\\n\\nThat\\u2019s so cute. Why are small things so cute?\\n\\nRemember the starfish episode where we talked about the largest starfish? Well, what\\u2019s the smallest starfish? That would be Parvulastra parvivipara, which is smaller than a fingernail decoration sticker. It grows to about ten millimeters across and is orangey-yellow in color. It lives on the coast of Tasmania in rock pools between low and high tide, called intertidal rock pools.\\n\\nIf you remember the Mangrove killifish from a few episodes ago, you\\u2019ll remember how killifish females are hermaphrodites that produce both eggs and sperm, and usually self-fertilize their eggs to produce tiny clones of themselves. Well, Parvulastra does that too, although like the killifish it probably doesn\\u2019t always self-fertilize its eggs. But then it does something interesting for a starfish. Instead of releasing its eggs into the water to develop by themselves, Parvulastra keeps the eggs inside its body. And instead of the eggs hatching into larvae, they hatch into impossibly tiny miniature baby starfish, which the parent keeps inside its body until the baby is big enough to survive safely on its own.\\n\\nBut what do the baby starfish eat while they\\u2019re still inside the mother? Well, they eat their SIBLINGS. The larger babies eat the smaller ones, and eventually leave through one of the openings in the parent\\u2019s body wall, called gonopores. Researchers theorize that one of the reasons the babies leave the parent is to escape being eaten by its siblings. And yes, occasionally a baby grows so big that it won\\u2019t fit through the gonopores. So it just goes on living inside the parent.\\n\\nNext, let\\u2019s look at the smallest primate. The primate order includes humans, apes, monkeys, and a lot of other animals, including lemurs. And the very smallest one is Berthe\\u2019s mouse lemur. Its body is only 3.6 inches long on average, or 9.2 cm, with a tail that more than doubles its length. Its fur is yellowish and brownish-red.\\n\\nBerthe\\u2019s mouse lemur was only discovered in 1992. It lives in one tiny area of western Madagascar, where it lives in trees, which means it\\u2019s vulnerable to the deforestation going on all over Madagascar and is considered endan..."