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advancing environmental education of an endangered animal, the saiga antelope.

Endangered Animals and the Worldly Adventures of Archibold Clutterbuck & Friends

Tom Sanders from the Worldly Adventures of Archibold Clutterbuck & Friends talks with Rob about their educational outreach interactive online program featuring endangered animals. While listening to this episode you may follow along on the website at https://www.archiboldclutterbuck.co.uk/endangered-animals

The saiga antelope has a nose that reminds one of Gonzo the Muppet. They suffered of many to a bacterial infection outbreak in 2015 and may now have the distinction of being the world’s most endangered mammal.

Or perhaps most endangered mammal is the saola, seen only four times.  Living deep in the dark forests of Vietnam and Laos, the saola looks like an antelope with straight horns that remind locals of “spinning wheel posts,” or in Laotian “saola.”

The bluefin tuna is the most sought after fish in the sea.  It has been called Boston Bluefin because of its marbled meat was thought to be the result of the coldwater off of Boston.  The largest of the tuna, the bluefin is an apex predator at the top of seven trophic levels bigger fish eating smaller fish, etc.  The produce one pound of tuna the fish must consume the 10 to the seven power of diatoms at the bottom of the food pyramid.  That’s the equivalent of four New York City dump trucks full of diatoms.  Because diatoms pick up mercury in the water, one pound of bluefin tuna will accumulate one thousand times as much toxins than does the next biggest tuna, the yellowfin tuna.  The yellowfin feeds at six, not seven, trophic levels up, does not grow nearly as big and lives a much shorter life.  If the tuna on the menu is expensive, don’t order it because it may be bluefin tuna.  If it’s a tuna melt or a tuna casserole it will not be bluefin and, lacking in toxins, will do your body good.

Tom and Rob also talk about the pangolin, giant ibis, orangutan, and rhino, all five rhino species: white and black rhinos in Africa (they are not really white or black) and in Asia the Javan, Sumartran and greater one-horned rhino (Rhinoceros unicornis).