Welcome to 2026! Rachel starts off the year with horrifying wasps that sting cockroaches, turn them into zombies and then lay their eggs in them so their young can devour them from the inside. You're welcome.

Victoria takes on the fascinating topic of all the animals that beat us to the idea of farming by millions of years. They even do weeding and apply fungicides. It gets wild.

Kirk heads to the ocean and discovers that some brittle stars are actually covered in millions of eyes. These eyes are unlike any other and absolutely wild.

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The final episode of 2025. Here's what we have for you:

Kirk kicks off the show by looking into the very strange world of insect hearing. Turns out some flies use a rotating nose to hear.

Rachel is then up and she talks about the arms race between Bats and Moths. This conflict has lead to some amazing defenses on the part of the moths.

Victoria is up third and she brings us the smallest animals on earth, Myxozoans. These little creatures are technically an animal (related to jellyfish) but they are missing most of the genes for the things we usually associate with animals.

A HUGE thank-you to our Patrons that made this show possible in 2025!

Look, we get it. This is a busy week with family for a lot of people. If you are one of those people, we sincerely hope this episode helps you hide from family and obligations and take a moment for your weird selves. We're all in this together.

On this week's show, Victoria kicks things off with a deep dive on Bats. We often think of them as predators but they are prey animals as well. She talks about some of the animals that hunt bats and then stare some bizarre new research showing that even rats have started to hunt bats and unbelievably are catching them while they are flying.

Kirk then brings us the Top 7 birds that actively work to keep predators away from their nests. He covers amazing talents that range from distraction displays to essentially group mass defication on predators until they die. It gets wild.

Rachel rounds out this week by loading fish into a cannon and blasting them off. It sounds cruel but the fish cannon is actually a bizarre device to help migrating fish safely fly over tall dams on rivers.

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Support us: patreon.com/strangebynature

Email us: contact@strangebynaturepodcast.com

Visit us at: strangebynaturepodcast.com where you can sign up for our episode emails.