What The Duck?!

Grabbing a lift can go from bad to worse when your uber drops you outside your evolutionary niche. FEATURING:Dr Matt Greenlees - Sydney University.Arthur White - NSW frog and tadpole study group.David Chapple - Monash University.Dr Maggie Watson - Charles Sturt University.Dr Robert Streit - Reef Function Hub at James Cook University.Voice of the Internet: Nikolai Beilharz. PRODUCTION: Ann Jones, Presenter / Producer.Petria Ladgrove, Producer.Joel Werner, Script Editor.Additional mastering: Brendan O'Neill.This episode of What the Duck was produced on the land of the Wadawarrung people. Find more episodes of the ABC podcast, What the Duck?! with the always curious Dr Ann Jones exploring the mysteries of nature on ABC Listen (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. You'll learn more about the weird and unusual aspects of our natural world in a quirky, fun way with easy to understand science.

Quackery and Catfishing. Fake news doesn’t only happen on the human internet. Welcome to nature’s dark web.We didn’t TRY to make a spooky and disturbing episode... we just wanted to talk about plants with DUCK in the title. But oh boy, these flowers are savage! One of them has become internet famous for a detox that could literally kill you. Another catfishes its pollinators by pretending to be (and even feeling like) the ‘private’ parts of a female fly! Nature isn’t safe from this algorithm.Featuring:Tim Entwisle – Author, The Sceptical Botanist. Former CEO of the Royal Botanic Gardens in MelbourneKatherine Isoardi - Associate Professor, University of Queensland. Senior Staff Specialist Emergency Physician and Clinical ToxicologistJulie Radford - Threatened Species expertGareth Prosser – Professional Voice Over Artist whose wife roped him in Production:Ann Jones, Presenter / ProducerSarah Prosser, ProducerMastering Engineer, Harvey O’Sullivan This episode of What the Duck was produced on the land of the Wadawarrung people. Find more episodes of the ABC podcast, What the Duck?! with the always curious Dr Ann Jones exploring the mysteries of nature on ABC Listen (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. You'll learn more about the weird and unusual aspects of our natural world in a quirky, fun way with easy to understand science.

In fact, most dinosaurs never got the chance to stop and smell a flower... and it was all because of bad timing. Sad face.The meteor that killed all the dinosaurs (rude) actually kicked off flower supremacy on planet earth. Flowering plants are only about 135 million years old, yet they’re the most bio-diverse plants on the planet. Without them, no birds, no bees. Again, sad face. So where did flowers come from? And how did they end up being top bud? FEATURING: Mario Vallejo-Marin - Professor in Evolutionary Ecology, Uppsala University, Sweden.Professor Michelle Waycott - Chief Botanist at the Adelaide Botanic Gardens State Herbarium / Professor in Systematic Biology, Adelaide University.Morris Lake - Author, Australian Rainforest Woods.Gareth Prosser - Professional Voice Over Artist whose wife roped him in. PRODUCTION:Ann Jones, Presenter / ProducerSarah Prosser, ProducerMastering Engineer: Tegan NichollsThis episode of What the Duck was produced on the land of the Wadawurrung people. Find more episodes of the ABC podcast, What the Duck?! with the always curious Dr Ann Jones exploring the mysteries of nature on ABC Listen (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. You'll learn more about the weird and unusual aspects of our natural world in a quirky, fun way with easy to understand science.

This flower takes needy to a whole new level! It was almost extinct. That was, until 2015, when a woman called Julie took it upon herself to make sure we didn’t lose the species altogether, and as it happened (baby) Ann Jones went along with a microphone. Now, it’s 10 years on, and Ann is older, greyer and more closely resembles a bearded orchid. But, given she hasn’t been made redundant yet, we can revisit the forest to ask – was all that effort worth it? Did the orchids survive? Featuring:Julie Radford, Threatened species ecologist in Central VictoriaProduction:Ann Jones, Presenter / ProducerSarah Prosser, ProducerMastering Engineer: Tegan NichollsThis episode of What the Duck was produced on the land of the Wadawarrung people. Find more episodes of the ABC podcast, What the Duck?! with the always curious Dr Ann Jones exploring the mysteries of nature on ABC Listen (Australia) or wherever you get your podcasts. You'll learn more about the weird and unusual aspects of our natural world in a quirky, fun way with easy to understand science.