Naturebang BBC Radio 4

Becky Ripley and Emily Knight tackle a serious question. One of supreme scientific importance: do animals get wasted?
From drunk moose stuck in trees, to wasted wallabies asleep in opium fields, to dippy dolphins puffing on toxic pufferfish; stories abound about animals who seem to be using their free time to get sloshed. But do these stories, delightful as they are, stand up to scrutiny? In the natural world, when your survival relies on keeping your wits about you, what could be the evolutionary purpose of dulling your wits with psychoactive drugs?
Come to think of it, why do we do it? And what's the connection between getting high, seeing God, and learning to love your neighbour?
Produced by Becky Ripley and Emily Knight. Featuring zoologist Lucy Cooke, and Professor Richard Miller at Northwestern University.

Becky Ripley and Emily Knight find out what it takes to learn the language of your people, with the help of some extremely chatty little birds.
The song of the zebra finch has been compared to a 90's dial-up modem running triple-speed, or an alien fax machine. But to a female zebra finch, it's a song of irresistible seduction. The males learn their song in a very similar way to the way we learn language, and it all starts with the babies. Through babbling, then copying, then innovating motifs of their own, the zebra finches take their language and then put their own distinctive stamp on it.
But if they don't learn it at just the right time, as a chick, they can't learn it as an adult.
How does human language acquisition work, and what would happen if you denied a baby the opportunity to learn to speak? The surprising answer takes us to 1970s Nicaragua, and the extraordinary story of the birth of a language...
Produced by Becky Ripley and Emily Knight. Featuring Professor Ofer Tchernichovski from Hunter College at CUNY, and Dr Judy Shepard-Kegl from the University of Southern Maine.

Becky Ripley and Emily Knight investigate physical fitness in the animal kingdom, and ask why animals never seem to have to go to the gym.
Consider the Barnacle Goose, getting ready for one of the most phenomenal physical challenges of the animal world: the annual migration. They leave their sedentary summer life, floating about eating reeds, and take off to fly 2,700 miles. And what do they do to prepare for this incredible feat? Absolutely nothing. They just sit around, eating as much as they can.
The physical fitness of so many animals is hard-wired into their biology. But not ours. If we want to gain muscle, we don't just wait for the seasons to change, we have to work for it. No pain no gain! And if we slack off and laze about, our muscles melt away. Why are we so different? And do I really have to go to the gym?
Produced by Becky Ripley and Emily Knight. Featuring Professor Lewis Halsey from the University of Roehampton, and Professor Dan Lieberman at Harvard University.

Becky Ripley and Emily Knight dive into the underwater world of killer whales, where tight-knit family pods are led by the eldest post-reproductive matriarch, to better understand why we have a menopause.
Matriarchal killer whales usually stop being able to reproduce in their thirties or forties, but continue to live for decades longer. This phenomenon of having a long post-reproductive life is known only to exist in 5 species: killer whales, narwhals, beluga whales, short-finned pilot whales, and humans. That’s it. Females across the rest of the animal kingdom can keep reproducing into old age, many until their dying days.
So why? If the success of a species lies in its ability to breed and pass on its genes, why have we – and a few species of whale – evolved this seemingly counter-productive thing that stops us being able to do that? What's the point of it? And what does it say about our need for grandmas?
Featuring Prof. Darren Croft, Professor of Animal Behaviour at the University of Exeter, and Dr. Brenna Hassett, Biological Anthropologist at UCL and author of Growing Up Human. Produced and presented by Emily Knight and Becky Ripley.

Becky Ripley and Emily Knight look to the giggles and guffaws of the animal kingdom to ask where human laughter has come from.
At least 65 species have been identified as making 'play vocalisations', a sort of animal version of laughter, according to a recent UCLA paper studying animals at play. Rats giggle in ultrasound, elephants have a play-specific trumpet, and kia parrots cackle from the treetops. These sounds are auditory cues that have come from breathing during play, and they signal to fellow playmates that their rough-and-tumble is in jest.
But us humans have taken laughing to new levels. Our laughter has evolved from a play-specific vocalisation into a highly sophisticated tool of communication, sometimes spontaneous, other times performed. It is a powerful spell that affects our brains and bodies, playing so many important roles in our close relationships and wider social networks. And the best thing about it: it’s good for you.
Featuring biological anthropologist Sasha Winkler, co-author of the UCLA paper 'Play vocalisations and human laughter: a comparative review' (2021), and Professor Sophie Scott, Director of the Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience at UCL. Produced and presented by Emily Knight and Becky Ripley.
Animal recording credits:
The chimpanzee laughter clip is courtesy of Dr. Robert Provine.
The rat clip (slowed down so that our ears can detect the ultrasound) is courtesy of Dr. Jaak Panksepp.
The kea parrot play vocalisation is from Schwing et al. (2017)

Rhythm is everywhere in the biological world. The rhythm of heartbeat, the rhythm of breathing, the rhythm of gait and walking. In fact, in 'The Descent of Man', Charles Darwin wrote that the perception of rhythm is "probably common to all animals and no doubt depends on the common physiological nature of their nervous system.” And yet, recent studies have shown that even our closest living relatives, the great apes, can't seem to keep a beat. Becky Ripley and Emily Knight investigate.
Enter YouTube sensation Snowball the Cockatoo. Much to the intrigue of evolutionary biologists, Snowball loves to dance to anything with a strong beat. Especially The Backstreet Boys. How is it that chimpanzees can't keep a beat and yet this parrot - which is more closely related to a dinosaur than a human - clearly loves to groove? What's going on in the brain of this bird? And how does that link to our own beat-keeping brains?
Back in the human world, there's serious neurological benefit to this beat-based research. The more we understand how and why people move to a beat, the more we can appreciate its powerful therapeutic effects. It unites our brains with our bodies, which can help to relieve symptoms of movement-based neurological disorders like Parkinson's, and it unites us to each other.
Featuring cognitive neuroscientist Aniruddh Patel and dance psychologist Peter Lovatt.