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Bonus: Wild Animal Dads from Terrestrials

Father nature.
Duration
39m
Broadcast on
18 Jun 2026
Audio Format
other

In honor of Father's Day, here is a family friendly bonus episode from our kids' podcast Terrestrials. 

What does it really mean to be a dad? In the animal world, fathers have long been painted as aggressive or absent. At best providers and protectors, but certainly not caregivers. And yet for every tale of a lion or chimp dad eating its own young (yikes!), there’s another creature who tells a sweeter story. 

Two HUMAN dads bring us on this DADventure: Dr. Eduardo Fernandez-Duque, who has spent decades studying owl monkey dads in the forests of Argentina, and Michael Feigelson, who once worried he wasn't cut out for the softer side of parenting. 

They introduce us to seahorse dads who get pregnant, poison dart frog dads who give piggyback rides to their tadpoles, Darwin frogs who swallow their eggs to keep them safe, burying beetles who build "corpse cribs," jacana birds who do all the egg-sitting, and stickleback fish who construct intricate underwater nests for their young. Along the way, we learn that nature doesn’t offer just one model of fatherhood. Alongside Mother Nature... there just might be a Father Nature, too.

Special thanks to the Van Leer Foundation for the support of this episode. 

Resources on Animal fatherhood

Human fatherhood 

Talks, films & convenings

Campaigns & global perspectives

Terrestrials was created by Lulu Miller with WNYC studios. This episode was produced by Tanya Chawla, with sound design by Mira Burt-Wintonick. Sarah Sandbach is our Executive Producer. Our team also includes Ana González, Alan Goffinski, Natalia Ramirez, and Joe Plourde. Fact checking by Angely Mercado. 

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Hey friends, Lulu here, and with Father's Day coming up this weekend, I just wanted to drop a special little meditation on dads in the animal world. This is an episode that we are dropping for terrestrials, and I thought some of you might enjoy it because I think it expands our understanding of what fatherhood can look like, and rest assured tomorrow is your regularly scheduled radiolab drop, so enjoy that and enjoy this dead venture. Okay. Here we go. Oh, wait. You're listening to radiolab from WNYC. Three, two, one. Imagine. You shrink down to the size of a chihuahua, and your eyes grow bigger and bigger and bigger until they take up almost half your head, and these eyes give you great night vision. So when most of the forest has gone to sleep, you can come out to feast, and swing and play. You have become an almighty. Now it's part where I make you sing the theme song with me, terrestrials, terrestrials. We are not the worst. We are the best, bestrials, bestrials, you got it, bestrials, oh my. Terrestrials is a show where we uncover the strangeness, waiting right here on earth. I'm your host Lulu Miller. And as always, I'm a song bud. Who do you think you are? Now like snowflakes, no two families are exactly the same. There are families with one parent, families with a mom and a dad, families with two moms, like mine, families with two dads, families with a non-binary parent or a grandparent parent. Like snowflakes, the shape and beauty of a family is limitless. But with Father's Day right around the corner, we wanted to spend some time today shining light on... DADDY! Hey! What's going on? What's up? That's right, we are heading up on a DadVenture. That will have you swinging high in the trees, with a owl monkey dad, a burbling deep in the sea, a seahorse dad, and leaping and bounding and twirling with such cool frog bug and bird dads that it just might flip. Woo! Your understanding of fatherhood showing you why what it looks like to be a dad is way more rad than we are sometimes taught. And here to guide us on this DadVenture are two human dads. Hello! You go first. No. Dad number one, Michael. He's got a daughter. Mila. She's 11. Almost 12.

Transcription truncated.

Father nature.