Oddities & Untold Picks
Go deeper on the stories from our Shorts on Wild Oddities and Untold History Desk: books and documentaries picked for each episode. Updated automatically.
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The Only Venomous Primate on Earth 🦷
- book Primate Ecology and Conservation by Eleanor J. Sterling
The Secret City Hidden From The World 🕵️♂️
- book The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes
Hoopoe Chicks Weaponize Stink Against Predators 💩
- book The Burgess Bird Book for Children by Thornton W. Burgess
This Owl Pinpoints Prey in Total Darkness 🦉
- documentary The Life of Birds by David Attenborough
Stubby the War Dog Outsmarted German Soldiers 🐕
- book Stubby the war dog by Ann Bausum
The Aye-Aye's Finger Trick 🐒
- book The Aye-Aye and I by Gerald Malcolm Durrell
The octopus that saved a diver 🐙
- documentary My Octopus Teacher by Pace Craig Foster and Pippa Ehrlich
How this beetle drinks from thin air ☁️
- documentary Planet Earth by Alastair Fothergill
Surinam toads emerge from their mother's skin 🐸
- book Life history and ecology of the hylid frog Osteocephalus taurinus by William E. Duellman
The spider that looks like an ant 🕷️
- book The Private Life of Spiders by Paul Hillyard
Dolphins using sponges as tools 🧽
- documentary Dolphins – Spy in the Pod by John Downer
- book The Dolphin in the Mirror by Diana Reiss
This frog births swimming tadpoles 🐸
- book A field guide to the frogs of Borneo by Robert F. Inger
Balto's Perilous Frozen Run 🐕
- book The cruelest miles by Gay Salisbury
Virginia Hall: The Most Dangerous Spy 🕵️♀️
- book A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell
Pistol Shrimp's 4,800°C Snap 🔥
- book The Extreme Life of the Sea by Stephen R. Palumbi
This lizard drinks water through its skin! 🦎
- book A Life on Our Planet by David Attenborough
This beetle boils enemies alive! 🪲
- book Planet Earth by Alastair Fothergill
She Survived a 10,000 Foot Fall Into the Amazon ✈️
- book When I Fell From the Sky by Juliane Koepcke
- documentary Wings of Hope by Werner Herzog
America's Deadliest Mob Heist Secret 💰
- book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi
The Man Who Survived Two Atomic Bombs 🤯
- book Hiroshima by John Hersey
- documentary White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by Steven Okazaki
The Animal That Freezes Alive Every Winter 🧊
- book Winter World by Bernd Heinrich
The Mouse That Howls Like a Wolf 🐺
- book The Song of the Dodo by David Quammen
The Ghost Blimp That Landed Empty 🎈
- book Winsor McCay by Various
The Ant That Lives Underwater 🐜 Ocean Survival Myth
- book The Leafcutter Ants by Bert Hölldobler
This Giant Fish Might Be Self-Aware 🌊
- book Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? by Frans de Waal
- documentary My Octopus Teacher by Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed
The Missing Patient Zero of 1918 🩸❓
- book The Great Influenza by John M. Barry
The Viking Ship That Beat Columbus ⛵️
- book The Vikings in History by F. Donald Logan
- documentary Vikings by PBS Nova
Why Japanese Farmers Paint Cows Like Zebras 🦓
- book The lives of a cell; notes of a biology watcher by Thomas, Lewis, 1913-1993
3 Deep Sea Creatures That Weaponize Slime 🌊
- book The Deep by Claire Nouvian
- documentary Blue Planet II by BBC
The Great Tsavo Elephant Crisis 🐘
- book An African Love Story Life Love And Elephants by Daphne Jenkins Sheldrick
The Twins Who Lived Nearly Identical Lives 🤯
- book Indivisible by Two by Nancy L. Segal
The Bird That Mimics Chainsaws 🪚
- documentary The Life of Birds by David Attenborough
- book The Singing Life of Birds by Donald Kroodsma
What REALLY Happened in the Boston Molasses Disaster 🌊
- book Dark tide by Stephen Puleo
This Blind Shrimp Hires a Seeing-Eye Fish 🐟
- book The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery
Inside the Secret Negotiations of the 1971 Attica Uprising
- book Time to die by Tom Wicker
- documentary Attica by Stanley Nelson Jr.
The Ant Queen That Commits Regicide 👑
- book The Leafcutter Ants by Bert Hölldobler
5 Theories on What Happened to the Lost Colony of Roanoke
- book Roanoke by Lee Miller