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b'To celebrate my new book,\\xa0Skyway, this week let\'s learn about sky animals! They\'re fictitious, but could they really exist? And what animals are really found in the high atmosphere?\\n\\nYou can order a copy of Skyway today on Kindle or other ebook formats! It\'s a collection of short stories published by Mannison Press, with the same characters and setting from my novel Skytown (also available)!\\n\\n\\n\\nFurther reading:\\n\\n"The Horror of the Heights" by Arthur Conan Doyle (and you can even listen to a nice audio version at this link too!)\\n\\nCharles Fort\'s books are online (and in the public domain) if not in an especially readable format\\n\\nFurther Listening:\\n\\nunlocked Patreon episode The Birds That Never Land\\n\\nR\\xfcppell\\u2019s vulture:\\n\\n\\n\\nThe bar-headed goose:\\n\\n\\n\\nThe common crane:\\n\\n\\n\\nBombus impetuosus, an Alpine bumblebee that lives on Mount Everest:\\n\\n\\n\\nShow transcript:\\n\\nWelcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I\\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw.\\n\\nThis week we\\u2019ve got something a little different. Usually I save the weirder topics for Patreon bonus episodes, and in fact I had originally planned this as a Patreon episode. But I have a new book coming out called Skyway, so in honor of my new book, let\\u2019s learn about some sky animals!\\n\\nSkyway is a collection of short stories about the same characters in my other book Skytown, so if you\\u2019ve read Skytown and liked it, you can buy Skyway as of tomorrow, if you\\u2019re listening on the day this episode goes live. I\\u2019ll put links to both books in the show notes so you can buy a copy if you like. The books have some adult language but are appropriate for teens although they\\u2019re not actually young adult books.\\n\\nAnyway, the reason I say this episode is a little different is because first we\\u2019re going to learn about some interesting sky animals that are literary rather than real. Then we\\u2019ll learn about some animals that are real, but also interesting\\u2014specifically, animals that fly the highest.\\n\\nBack before airplanes and other flying machines were invented, people literally weren\\u2019t sure what was up high in the sky. They thought the sky continued at least to the moon and maybe beyond, with perfectly breathable air and possibly with strange unknown animals floating around up there, too far away to see from the ground.\\n\\nPeople weren\\u2019t even sure if the sky was safe for land animals. When hot-air balloons big enough to carry weight were invented in the late 18th century, inventors tried an important experiment before letting anyone get in one. In 1783 in France, a sheep, a duck, and a rooster were sent aloft in a balloon to see what effects the trip would have on them. The team behind the flight assumed that the duck would be fine, since ducks can fly quite high, so it was included as a sort of control. They weren\\u2019t sure about the rooster, since chickens aren\\u2019t very good flyers and never fly very high, and they were most nervous about the sheep, since it was most like a person. The balloon traveled about two miles in ten minutes, or 3 km, and landed safely. All three animals were fine.\\n\\nAfter that, people started riding in balloons and it became a huge fad, especially in France. By 1852 balloons were better designed to hold more weight and be easier to control, and that year a woman dressed as the goddess Europa and a bull dressed as Zeus ascended in a balloon over London. But the bull was obviously so frightened by the balloon ride that the people watching the spectacle complained to the police, who charged the man who arranged the balloon ride with animal cruelty. The bull was okay, though, and no one made him get in a balloon again.\\n\\nAfter airplanes were invented and became reliable, if not especially safe, the world went nuts about flying all over again. In 1922 Arthur Conan Doyle published a story called \\u201cThe Horror of the Heights,\\u201d about a pilot who flew high into the sky and came across sky animals. You can tell from the story\\u2019s title that things did not go well for the main charact...'