Episode 146: Three strange animals

Published: Nov. 18, 2019, 7 a.m.

b'The next few weeks will be all listener suggestions! This week, Dylan and Genevieve of What Are You? Podcast request a strange fish, Kim suggests a strange invertebrate, and Callum suggests a strange bird. Thanks for the great suggestions!\\n\\nAn archerfish, pew pew pew:\\n\\n\\n\\nA regular roly poly and a spiky yellow woodlouse. Can you spot which is which??\\n\\n \\n\\nA nightjar. Turn out light pls, is too bright:\\n\\n\\n\\nA white-winged nightjar showing off his wings:\\n\\n\\n\\nShow transcript:\\n\\nWelcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I\\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw.\\n\\nI\\u2019m really, really behind in getting to suggestions, as you will probably know if you have sent in a suggestion and you think I\\u2019ve forgotten all about it. So before the end of the year, which is coming up frighteningly fast, I\\u2019m going to try to get to a lot of the older suggestions. So this week we\\u2019re going to learn about a fish, an invertebrate, and a bird.\\n\\nWe\\u2019ll start with the archerfish, suggested by Dylan and Genevieve, who are part of the What Are You? Podcast. If you don\\u2019t already listen to What Are You?, I really recommend it. It\\u2019s a new animal podcast that\\u2019s especially for younger kids. If you like Cool Facts About Animals, you\\u2019ll like What Are You? Anyway, Dylan and Genevieve both really like the archerfish, so let\\u2019s find out why it\\u2019s such a weird and interesting fish.\\n\\nThe archerfish isn\\u2019t one fish, it\\u2019s a family of fish who all catch insects in an unusual way. Most archerfish species are small, maybe 7 inches at the most, or 18 cm, but the largescale archerfish can sometimes grow up to 16 inches long, or 40 cm. All archerfish live in Asia or Australia, especially southeast Asia. They like rivers and streams, sometimes ponds, and a few species live in mangrove swamps and the mouths of rivers where the water is brackish. That means it\\u2019s saltier than ordinary fresh water but not as salty as the ocean.\\n\\nThe reason the archerfish is so weird is the way it catches insects. Think about its name for a minute. Archer-fish. Hmm. An archer is someone who uses a bow and arrow, but obviously the archerfish doesn\\u2019t have arms and hands so it can\\u2019t shoot tiny arrows at insects. But it can shoot water at insects, and that\\u2019s exactly what it does.\\n\\nThe archerfish has really good eyesight, and it learns to compensate for the way light refracts when it passes from air to water. When it sees an insect or other small animal, maybe a spider sitting on a branch above its stream, it rises to the surface but only far enough so that its mouth is above water. Then it forms its tongue and mouth to make a sort of channel for the water to pass through. Then it contracts its gill covers, which shoots a stream of water out of its mouth. But because it shapes it mouth in a really specific way, the stream of water turns into a blob as it flies through the air, like a tiny water bullet. The water hits the spider, which falls from its branch and into the stream, where the archerfish slurps it up.\\n\\nBut the archerfish has to learn how to aim. Young archerfish aren\\u2019t very good at it, and they have to practice to shoot accurately and far. They can even learn by watching other archerfish shooting water, which is rare among all animals but practically unheard-of in fish.\\n\\nSometimes the archerfish will shoot underwater, sending out a jet of water instead of a bullet. It does this mostly to expose small animals hidden in the silt at the bottom of a pond or stream. And sometimes, of course, if the insect is close enough to the surface of the water, the archerfish will just jump up and grab it.\\n\\nThe archerfish shoots water with a force that\\u2019s actually six times stronger than its muscles would allow, and it does this by taking advantage of natural water dynamics. This means it uses a lot less energy to shoot water than if it was only using its muscles, and it gets a better result. It can shoot water up to ten feet away, or three meters, to bring down an insect or other small animal,'