What The Duck?!

Apr 04 2025 139 ep. 24 mins 1.6k

What The Duck?! Podcast artwork

The show with a mission to explore the mysteries of nature - especially the ones that make you go What the Duck?!

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Coming out of your shell

Apr 04 2025 25 mins

There's a whole world of mystery, and quite a bit of maths, inside the humble sea shell. Forget ancestry searches online, shells can tell you the history of the world! Featuring: Amy Prendergast, University of Melbourne. Jann Vendetti, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Dr Paul Butler, Researcher at the University of Exeter. Production: Ann Jones, Presenter /

Did Jaws get anything right about sharks?

Mar 28 2025 25 mins

Jaws (1975) was a massive hit that also created a whole lot of fear, but does anything in the film really stand up to shark science? Do sharks stalk humans? Do they roar? What can they sense? There are so many misconceptions when it comes to sharks that even now, 50 years later, these are impacting shark policies in Australia, and have come to be known as 'the jaws effect.' Fe

Girl, so confusing!

Mar 21 2025 25 mins

Female lab mice have been bred to be passive and breed with ease. But, in the wild they're feisty and even pugnacious. How much of our biological understanding of the world is based on misogyny? Featuring: Lucy Cooke, Zoologist and author of Bitch A Revolutionary Guide to Sex, Evolution and the Female Animal. Professor Arthur Georges, University of Canberra. Professor Catherine

How we really feel about eels

Mar 14 2025 25 mins

Eels are mysterious and have a fascinating history. People in pre-medieval England used them to pay rent. Early 17th-century maps featured 'eel ships,' and even Sigmund Freud studied their breeding and reproduction habits for a whole summer. Dr Ann Jones gets 'eely' curious about eels in today's What the Duck?! Featuring: Dr. John Wyatt Greenlee, Historian Cornell University.

Why do animals have penises?

Mar 07 2025 25 mins

When it comes to sexual organs, the penis is really ‘out there.’ Name another organ that can change its form AND function in a matter of seconds! There’s a lot of variety in the animal kingdom; from spikes and nails to coils and collagen – so, this appendage is worth investigating... close up. Sex is Weird is a new series of What the Duck?! with Dr Ann Jones following t

Hollywood lied to us: Babe

Feb 28 2025 25 mins

Aussie classic Babe turns 30 this year, and its story of the little pig that achieves his dream of being a sheep dog is still as uplifting as the day it premiered. But we can't say "that'll do, pig" when it comes to the science.... By now, we know pigs aren't "definitely stupid", but how smart are they? Would an orphaned pig be taken in by a family of dogs? Could a pig really lear

Hollywood lied to us: The Birds

Feb 21 2025 25 mins

If you have a fear of getting swooped by magpies, mobbed by seagulls or blinded by crows, perhaps Alfred Hitchcock is to blame. His 1963 horror classic The Birds created a generation of ornithophobes, and played on our fears of death by feathered fiend. But how accurate are his creepy corvids? Do birds of a feather flock together exclusively? Can a bird go all 'Here's Johnny' on

Hollywood lied to us: Antz

Feb 14 2025 25 mins

Remember that 1998 film Antz? The one about an ant named Z? The one where the ants had nightmare-inducing human teeth? The one we probably have to blame for the existence of Jerry Seinfeld's Bee Movie? Considering the movie is all about ants, you'd think it'd get SOMETHING right about ants. But Hollywood has once again LIED TO US. Do male ants have any jobs outside the boudoir?

Hollywood lied to us: Cocaine Bear

Feb 07 2025 25 mins

In 1985, a real American black bear consumed a bunch of cocaine that'd been dropped from a plane into the forest, and died. Nearly 40 years later Hollywood stepped in the rewrite the story. What would happen if the bear survived? Maybe it'd go on a coke-fueled rampage. That's how it works, right? Cocaine Bear (2023) launched a lot of memes, but does it get anything right about be

Hollywood lied to us: Jurassic Park

Jan 31 2025 25 mins

Quick! Think of a ‘dinosaur movie’. Chances are Jurassic Park (1993) was first to mind. Steven Spielberg’s genetic nightmare/theme park gone wrong classic is so iconic that it inspired a generation of kids to study palaeontology, and reinvented our modern popular idea of dinosaurs. But does that idea still stack up? Could you really clone a triceratops from DNA found in a