Bonus: Wild Animal Dads from Terrestrials

a special little meditation on dads in the animal world.

This is an episode that we are dropping for terrestrials and I thought some of you might

“enjoy it because I think it expands our understanding of what Fatherhood can look like”

and the rest of short tomorrow is your regularly scheduled radio lab drop so enjoy that and enjoy this dad venture now okay here we go wait you're just okay all right you're listening to radio lab forget radio from WNYS 3 2 1 imagine you shrink down to the size of the chihuahua and your eyes grow bigger and bigger until they take up almost half your head and these eyes give you great night vision so when most of the forest has gone to sleep you can come out to feast

shop and swing and play you have become an almaki aramaki now it's part where I make you sing the

“theme song with me test yours is a show where we uncover the strangest waiting right here on earth”

I'm your host Lulu Miller joined as always by the song bud now like snowflakes no two

families are exactly the same there are families with one parent families with a mom and a dad families with two moms like mine families with two dads families with a non-binary parent or a grandparents parent like snowflakes the shape and beauty of a family is limitless but with fathers day right around the corner we wanted to spend some time two days shining light on daddy that's right we are heading up on a dad venture that will have you swinging high in the

trees with a owl monkey dad woo woo and burblen deep in the sea the sea horse dad and leaping and bounding and twirling with such cool frog bug and bird dad that it just might look woo your understanding of fatherhood showing you why what it looks like to be a dad is way more rad than we are sometimes taught and here to guide us on this dad venture are two human dads

hello you go first no dad number one Michael he's got a daughter Miller she's 11 almost 12

and dad number two my boys are 33 30 and 23 doctor Edwarda and my last name is Fernandez Duker someone chimed in was that bird I am surrounded by birds in my bag here yeah there was a gorgeous bird call so and you're right now in in Argentina yes doctor Eduardo is a biological anthropologist and behavioral scientist who has spent decades observing owl monkeys in the forests of South America and it goes the window that may redo okay but say hi to the bird it or say Hola

and our story begins outside that window way out in the forest way up high in the canopy where there is a male owl monkey who is just moments away from becoming a father now pretty sure this guy he's about the size of a toaba white face with huge orange eyes that help him see really

“well at night that's why he's called an owl monkey he does not unfortunately hoot like I thought”

you might but like owls he does come out at night anyway at this particular moment next to this monkey his mate the female owl monkey is pushing out a baby owl monkey the size of a chip monkey now this is a very charged moment in the animal world because with some animals like chimps lions hamsters goby fish beetles okay the list is pretty long the father has been known to uh kill their babies sometimes even eat them what I was hungry which is a guess common enough to give it a

scientific name fuel cannibal is all wrong if they're not doing that certain animals as our famous for well bailing oh I'm out checking out leaving the female parent to do all the care and

in the Argentinian forest the thing is up until this moment no one knew how that dad was going to

“respond because no one no one had ever seen a baby of monkey being born in the wild but that day”

and wardo's team happened to be there on the forest floor observing he took about half hour that the baby came out of the mother's womb and what was fascinating is that the father was also very very close and trying to help I mean it was he was touching the umbilical cord you know this cord that connects yeah the baby he was possibly trying to help the mama monkey cut it so the

baby could be free daddy's right there is the baby's boneborn for the first week the baby is just

nursing nursing nursing like crazy on the mom until mommy's like enough i've had it with this suckling and darling it's some say yeah but there there comes dad to the rest of the baby literally climbs onto the dad's back and basically does not leave for months the two of them bounce and swing through the treetops together daddy's gonna play with him fun to tag your it he grooms the infant get those mites out he teaches him how to curl up into a tiny ball way up high

in the tree so he looks almost invisible so he can sleep during the day look sweet day dreams little one and as the baby grows up dad starts teaching him how to pick out tasty fruits and which fruits to bite into which to avoid how to catch a moth mid air nice job but pretty much this whole time the baby's little arms are wrapped around the dad's shoulders meaning this is a three month long piggyback ride or should I call it a monkey back ride now around four months the baby climbs off

the piggyback ride and starts braving the big leaps up in the branches by itself fun to ask

“suddenly you get to a gap between branches and you need to take a jump and so they may give you a”

little bit of a squeak or a squeal and that's his okay hold on a minute I'm gonna put you my back

and take him across the job I got you little one what is very powerful is the evidence we

have that eventually over the years they are fun it seems to have a stronger attachment or bond to their father than the mother wow so as Eduardo and his team are discovering all the secrets of the owl monkey dad halfway across the globe living in Switzerland at the time our other human dad Michael he's becoming a father yeah and while he is completely obsessed with his new daughter Mela completely in love with her he says he wasn't sure exactly what to do with her

how to sue her bath her I was I didn't grow up sort of being super comfortable expressing my

“emotions or super comfortable with physical touch and so at first with this baby in his arms he just”

felt a little awkward or unnatural which felt in this weird way like maybe the natural way for a dad to feel there was this story about what's natural you know what's natural for the mom for the dad for the family and we did have in my education a lot of comparisons to animals but usually we were being compared to chimpanzees going up Michael's told that since humans were closely related to chimps through evolution we're both primates we share common ancestor

then some of the things chimps do might somehow be inside us as instincts too and chimped dads well at the time Michael was growing up they were understood to be very aggressive at their worst and at their best well they were just off somewhere else it seemed like in nature the dad role was about hunting and protection and he thought well maybe nature was sending him a message that

he'd never be good at the softer side of parenting and then one day a few years ago Michael

is lamenting about all this wooded dad's natural role truly is when his friends says wait wait wait you've got a call doctor Eduardo he studies our monkeys and I reached out to him and he was like I'll come over I'll come over to your house let's set like let's have a play date basically really okay that's awesome come to my house he fell like that yeah so he came over and we're like let's go swimming and I brought my goggles he's a really good swimmer by the way okay really

fast we kept talking about all sorts of different dads chimped dads and their own dads

he's talking about it two to three months piggyback ride you're guys are at your play date

“you're I'm picturing you you're swimming in the in the in the waves and like I don't know”

Eduardo's like no Michael and then a wave comes he's like no no really Almond's are amazing

good okay so what from your side Michael what did you what did Eduardo tell you that day and how did it hit you well first I was like that's so cute and then at the same time I was kind of upset why well I was like why if I'm hearing about this for the first time and so I was sort of like who who picked which monkey we were gonna be compared to and why did they pick chimpanzees because if they had picked the Almond keys you know maybe I would have learned something different

so I found myself kind of wanting to dig in to sort of what other animals are out there

“that might do fathering differently and he will share what he finds and take us on some of the”

wildest turns in this dad venture after the short break the fatal shooting of a teenager at a protest in Seattle has gone unsolved for six years this is open in your base to how are there no answers our investigation has uncovered

new evidence and witnesses who say they've never talked to police did police ever call you

not once listen to we keep us safe a new true crime series on the embedded podcast from NPR to restreels is back we are talking about the radius of the dad is with our dad friend Michael and he is on a quest to learn all about animal dads who defy the stereotypes and show us all the amazing ways a dad can dad and to start off we have see horses the sea horses is the one that everybody knows okay but tell it but it's important because the dads get pregnant so what is

that mean they really what does that mean he does like the dance a courtship dance and then the

female will put her ex into a pouch in in the the male sea horses belly and the pouch is a kind

of like a magical pouch it will change the levels of oxygen and salt and it's kind of like a womb

“you know getting them ready to go out into the ocean and they're pregnant for I think a couple”

weeks and then the dad seahorse goes into labor and it could take a few hours and they they just shoot out hundreds of baby seahorses all all like fully formed but really tiny and then they can get pregnant again a few days later wow just right off the bat there goes nature shattering another rule like those hard lines we thought existed between what a mom is supposed to do and that does supposed to do like the two categories they just aren't there there's so many different ways

to be a dad there's a lot of options and we're flexible and we can organize and be whatever it is that our kids need that in it of itself is natural that that is something you find in nature okay who is our next dad I got totally obsessed with poison dart frogs okay what are what are they living that rain forest in South America do they shoot poison dart so they're called poison dart frogs because people have used venom that comes from them

to make poison tips on arrows and they they're the size of like your thumbnail so really okay little frogs and their singers will they chirp right to kind of claim like a territory and the females will listen to them chirping to see like who's the best singer to decide where they want to lay their eggs and that's where by the moon and the stars in the sky I'll be there chirping and so the females will lay the eggs on wet leaves on the forest floor and then the dads will guard

them and this is the best part when they hatch the dad will take each tadpole individually on a piggy back ride so on on his back just like the owl one each one individually and and go and find a plant that sort of has some covering and has some water inside and you'll lay the tadpole in there so that it safe and it has water but he won't put any of them together because he doesn't want them

and then coming back and checking on them all the time to make sure there's enough water and if they

need to eat the dads they can't feed the tadpoles so our little frog is only mommy can feed you by laying one of our eggs for you to eat so they'll do their song again to try and persuade if there's a

“female in the area to come and feed them a little bit more remember they're the size of your”

of your thumbnail and they're like feeding journeying with these tadpole babies all over placing them coming back checking on them so and they're like laying music to like lure food back like wow that is a that is a toad alia some father next up another contender from frog land

the Darwin frog found in the forest of Argentina in Chile they also guard the eggs like the

poison dart frogs but then they do this really funny thing they put them in their mouth they swallow them no wait the bait like the tadpoles are the eggs they swallow the eggs and then they store them in a in a vocal sack in their throat because it's safer right it's safer in there and then inside this pouch in their throat the they grow and they're protected the father eats a bit less

“he stops calling around so much because you can't see because you're like oh look at my baby”

and then put then and then like the the big reveal is when they're sort of ready to go out on their

own they just walk out of their dad's mouth into the world and perhaps they're literally taking

refuge in him yeah wow that is talking about biting off more than you could chew that's a that's a big fatherly commitment yeah next up father number four okay so bearing beetles also tiny little beetles okay and bury we're not talking like blueberries you mean bearing under ground like bearing under ground because they find a small animal like a mouse or a bird that's dead they will team up with a mom okay um and they'll they'll bury it under ground

the the dead the core okay this sounds gross okay it is gross but it's also a really cool

“and like full of mom the clean it they'll get rid of debris and they'll shape it and they turn it”

okay we want picturing okay let's just go with a mouse so like a dead mouse they clean it meaning like they eat all the dead meat and fur hold on or they get it off I have a picture too wait what am I looking at it was a mouse oh it's gonna be a nursery wait this is what a corpse a skeleton crib yeah yeah yeah no it's not just a skeleton because it's also gonna be a source of food it's gonna be like a edible nursery yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

yeah so it's like a corpse yeah yeah some corpse crib exactly it's the corpse crib but not so scary because they coat it with this anti-bike microbial secretion so they kind of like that meat has lots of bacteria and the the anti microbial secretion I look this up just for terrestrial's yeah it comes from their mouth and from their butt so that you care with a dead bacterial spray from your deer don't try this at home don't try this at home

that's the best find a dead body yeah they like mush the dead flesh around so that it becomes shaped like a crib they disinfect it and then what do they do the babies hatch the larvae hatch and they they can hang out there but they they they can't yet eat themselves so the dad will do this thing that you see with birds like chew it and then feed them from it once again the it is dead flesh yeah so he like baby birds some dead flesh from the walls of the crib

yeah yeah yeah exactly into it's both so sweet happy father's day and and and they'll defend their kids from animals that could be like a hundred times bigger like a mouse like there's no chance right that they're gonna be what they're doing one of the ways that they do this is they have this nasty smelling chemical that they can make in the glands of their butt again let's go yeah yeah yeah yeah and and then the last part of this and very relevant for a conversation

sometimes the mom the mom will just wander off and if the mom just wanders off the dad will raise the whole family by himself which is like 10 20 30 babies per brood so like some serious heavy single father and goes on here whoa okay moving on to dad numbero single

dads are mean dad so in recent years scientists observing chimps in the wild in the

“forests of Tanzania have discovered that chimps fathers are not always as aggressive or”

narrowly or absent as we thought there is no one way that a male chimped parents it depends on the individual some of those dad's groom and cuddle their babies and on rare occasions have even

been observed taking in a baby that isn't theirs that's way better than our first

chip pression of them all right next up a feathery father fellow say that tenors has a feathery father fellow of the feathery father fellow of the feathery father fellow of the feathery father and waiting bird about the size of a chicken waiting meaning it likes water yes yes okay and so the jacanas what happens is that moms are looking around and they go shopping for a potential dad that's gonna take good care of the eggs oh so the females are fighting for the tension of a male

“who's gonna take good care of the eggs she lays wow so she finds a spot she lays the eggs”

also the male is gonna sit with the eggs and incubate them and protect them and she'll the eggs hatch

and mom and incubating at all I don't think my incubates oh gosh I don't know why it's so hard for me to picture a dad incubating all in his own it's like proof of how strong my miseducation has been like these beliefs about dad and mom are even on our language because we say things like oh she's a mother hen it's a part of our language like mother nature yeah mother nature wow does I hurt your feelings as men not doesn't hurt my feelings but I think that there's a

father nature as much as there's a mother nature oh like that okay now speaking of father hen types nesting dads it is time now for our sixth and final dad don't poo poo this pop out to meet the top of the pops we gotta go down deep to give props those pickle bags okay this to me looks like a

“tiny stagosaurus of a fish with like sharp spikes running down its back and that's why it's called”

stickleback I think okay so they're known as like underwater architects so they build nests on the bottom of a pond or stream also to get the moms to want to lay eggs and they use bits of plants that they glue together with a sticky substance that is called bigans it's made out of protein-based mucus okay and so they build these nests and then they do these zigzag dances like they do dances when they see a female with a belly full of eggs to try to get her to lay the eggs

in the nest and then then she goes and the dad will take care of them and and take the sort of take them the rest of the way wow I just pulled up a picture of the nest because I was trying to picture it because like I usually think of a fish nest as just like a little smooth out bit of sand but this is this has architecture it looks almost like a bird's nest up on its side yeah it's clearly arranged with so much care and I don't know it just makes me think back to

all your worries that started this thing my goal that dads don't do the nest doing or the cosying or the softer parts and it's just like here's another one yet another creature where the dad is doing that can I can I jump in Eduardo yeah go ahead there was this um study by another class Michael says that all kinds of scientists have been trying to understand where a parent's care taking behavior where it comes from like is it an old part of us or something that's new

and involves lots of complex thought in the brain and they're finding some pretty neat stuff like there was one experiment that took dads and watched how their brain activates when they see and play with their baby and you would see activation in the really old parts of our brain in another scientist called kumi karota and she was trying to isolate what part of the

brain was responsible for nesting behavior and she had concluded that the first sort of parental

instincts the first nesting behavior was male fish millions of years ago whoa fish of course are who we came from mammals descended from fish hundreds of millions of years ago and it was only then when we came on land and you know had the babies outside the the body and had to breastfeed

with your inner fish we all have that kind of biology and it's really really old it's deep yeah

has learning about all these different ways that dads show care in the animal world has a change doing anyway they sort of joke I've been making is it's a kind of new take on dad bought like we're actually incredibly flexible and capable of connecting in a profound way like we can do this in our bodies our brains are are made for this actually of all different species and every location the dad delegation is sweeping the nation

deep in their mind these days are going primal the living care they share with their child is wild

“I'm talking about they're singing off key they don't really care they're clapping off”

feet they're baking dessert they're going the lawn they're grading your hair they're dancing along if their back doesn't hurt give it up for dance come and all she exercises they're full of surprises when a kindness arises they don't try to fight it's all different species from monkeys to fish are loving and cuddling they hug and they kiss daddy you care are everywhere it's true

so let's do this one more time with dad and two I'm talking about all kinds of

we're mad about so cancel your plans it's celebrate so cancel your plans it's celebrate Ellen go finsky everyone and that's it nothing else cool about that what's that excuse me I have a question two three before the batteries listeners with Badging questions for expert and why don't you ready yeah absolutely hi my name is Emerson I'm seven years old my question is who would win in the fight an owl monkey or an owl owl

“oh gee I think an owl owl I would be scared of an owl robbing the old monkey with its feet”

and claws yeah I put my manning with an owl owl oh with that scientific recommendation I would put owl my money with the owl owl owl too hi I'm Cassie I'm nine years old my question is have you ever hugged an owl monkey? full disclosure it was back in the day when we were allowed to do these things twenty thirty five years ago yes I've had them in my arms and hold them what did it feel like it moves you I mean you're you're you're handling these animals you want them to do well

you're releasing them into the forest again so it's it's very nice feeling my name is Lucie and five years old I might question is can owl monkeys go onto the top of your roof somehow of course in fact some people told me when I started working with owl monkeys they were showing me the roof of their houses and they said can you see how clean they are they're no spider webs well that's because owl monkeys do come on the roof and they like insects and they

end them and they do they job for us of keeping our proof clean now that's the monkey business

“I can give a hug hey I'm Tobin and I'm Lucy's dad why are owl monkey toes so long?”

because that's very important if you're walking around in relatively thin branches that's for the same reason that them like us have what we call your possible thumb it really helps your gripping over the branches along which you walk hello my name is Parker I'm five years old do owl monkeys see anything different with their orange eyes oh I love that what what the world look like through an owl monkey eyes black and white for one not in color okay and we

would have pretty very detailed skills to detect the variation of the black and white I mean the hue's the gradient and what about at night time they see better than us they see better than us because of specific the cells of the eyes but Edwardos says we humans can see better in the dark than you might think get out get out on a night of a full moon give yourself 10 minutes without light

the book it's cool if you can now I bet you that you'll do it you can read a book no

“promise but you have to let your eyes adjust I'm gonna try this there's actually a full moon in a”

couple of days there you go okay that's tough it is a very full moon I'm sitting you can maybe hear the waves of lake Michigan I'm sitting right near the lake in this dark park where they're known no streetlights and I'm gonna do the test 10 minutes later I opened up my son's copy of wild robot to a random page if I really look I can almost get where it's like somebody grinned I can't wait definitely got better Dr. Eduardo was right it got impressively better my

eyesight in 10 minutes but I can't quite get there here's what might be messing with the experiment

number one there's some clouds in front of the moon and number two I'm getting older in my eyesight has actually started to get worse and I don't know glasses so I don't know if you guys try this

“on a full moon if you can read even more and I think that's where we're gonna leave it with a”

little bit of real life experimentation learning owl about owl monkeys has been a real hoot and I won't tell you about barking tree frog dads who prevent their egg clusters from getting too dry by dousing them with urine I won't tell you that because I'm nice trashos was created by me Lou Miller with WNYC studios this episode was produced by Tanya Challa with sound designed by Mirabert Winconic Sarah Sambakis our executive producer our team also

includes Elinkofinsky on a Gonzalez Joe pleurton tell your Ramirez affecting him by Anjali Mercado with additional editorial advising by Cassius Adair and big special things to our dads Michael and Eduardo they actually organized a conference all about dads in the animal world in the human world over at Yale that was called fathers and fatherhood from molecules to modern families and that's where Michael learned all about dads in the animal world and they recently

participated in another conference on dads in Brazil and I guarantee you their guh organize or participate in another one so if you are interested in dads in the animal world and are evolving understanding of dads in the human world keep an eye on the project early childhood matters that's early childhood matters dot online support for terrestrials is provided by the Simon Foundation the author finding Davis foundations and the Templeton Foundation and you and you and on

there are fathers they go show some love on the father figures in your life whoever it is that tells the best dad jokes okay the the worst jokes in your life and if you are making a father's day card here is some inspiration from listener emmy age nine she drew a picture of a toucan holding up a phone finger that says number one and the toucan is saying toucan do it and inside the card it says together we can win it I love that because it's not all world trying to do here together

just just get through with best we can together okay finally preview our next episode is all about

king cobras and we want to know what would you draw for the episode art what would you be your

“episode poster of a king cobra send it to us at T-R-E-S-T-R-I-L-S-W-N-Y-C dot org or if you want to draw”

the thing and send it in the real mail to us the snail mail the old school way just put it in envelope throws stamp on there and send it to terrestrial's team W-N-Y-C radio one hundred and sixty very straight new york New York New York one zero zero one three we love getting mail that's all see you in a couple spins of this dirty old planet of ours hi I'm Maya and I'm from London and here are the staff credits radio lab is hosted by Lulu Miller and Latev Nasa so our

and we let is our executive editor Sarah Sandbach is our executive director our managing editor is part walters Dylan Keith is our director of sound design our staff includes Jeremy Bloom W Harry for Tuna David Gable Maria Paz Gutierrez Sindhu nine a son bundan Matt Kielty Mona Ward Galker Anima Curen Alex Newsson Sarah Curry the Tallya Ramirez Rebecca Rand Joanna Strogats Anisa Vitsa Aryan Watt Molly Webster and Jessica Young with help from Gabi Santas and Maya

radio lab Michael Koma Washington leadership support for radio lab science programming is provided by the Simon's Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation foundational support for radio lab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation