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Well... That’s Interesting

Ep. 217: We Need To Talk About These ‘Grave Robbing’ Badgers + These Fish That Can Count

·33 min·3 clips
An 88-year-old woman in England found a human skull in her garden, sparking a police investigation and a bizarre culprit.
The episode opens with host Jill ChaCha introducing two main stories: 'grave-robbing' badgers and counting fish. The first segment details how 88-year-old Anne Mathers in Dudley, England, found a human skull in her garden in 2022, leading to more bones appearing. Police identified European badgers as the culprits, protected by UK law, causing similar issues in other areas like Tweedmouth Cemetery in Northumberland. There, badgers disturbed graves up to 18 times in 21 days, with locals like Alaina Brown expressing distress. Authorities applied for licenses to relocate badgers but were denied by Natural England, eventually installing badger-proof fences that show some success by 2024. The second segment shifts to zebrafish, previously covered for their empathy genes. Researcher Tyrone Luson-Siccato at the University of Ferrara conducted experiments where zebrafish larvae, raised in tanks with vertical bars, preferred tanks with more bars after moving, indicating numerical discrimination. The study suggests hardwired counting abilities in fish just four days after hatching, with implications for understanding human cognition and learning disabilities. The episode also includes a brief update on Pando, a clonal aspen forest, with new research using AI to estimate its age at 16,000 to 80,000 years. The host maintains a comedic, storytelling tone throughout, weaving in sponsorships and audience engagement.

As heard by us

Grave-robbing badgers and counting fish make episode 217 a weirdly effective mix of natural history and cognition.

Episode 217 opens on a grim note: 88-year-old Anne Mathers finds part of a human skull in her garden in Dudley, England, and police treat the property as a crime scene.

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Why you'd press play

You get a skull-in-the-garden badger story, then a fish that can count.

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