At more than 42 million acres, the Pantanal is the world's largest tropical wetland.

It spans parts of three countries, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Brazil. If you visit the Pantanal, depending on the time of year, you may find open plains dotted with small green patches of forest, with water found mostly in the rivers that wind their way through the area. But when the rains come, those rivers spill out over the plains, covering them in water.

It is the perfect place for biologists to come and study the remarkable creatures that live here. Dr. Arnaud Desbiez is a biologist who's originally from France but has lived in Brazil for more than 15 years where he works to study and protect animals in the Pantanal. He's the founder of the Instituto de Conservação de Animais Silvestres (ICAS)

Houston Zoo's South America’s Pantanal allows guests to explore the tropical wetlands of Brazil. The lush habitat highlights animals they are protecting in the wild, including giant anteaters, tapirs, and more. Partnered with on-the-ground conservationists, the Zoo offers visitors the chance to see these animals in an immersive and engaging trail.

This podcast is produced by 3Wire Creative

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Wild World live broadcast from Antarctica!

Saturday, December 14 at 1 pm ET

Scott will be traveling with the Rice University Traveling Owls aboard the National Geographic Explorer. They will be somewhere along the Danco Coast of the West Antarctic Peninsula.

The broadcast will be live streamed from our YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@wildworldpodcast).

Link to live event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJnU3khcV8c

Subscribe to @wildworldpodcast on YouTube @wildworldshow on X, Instagram, and Bluesky for updates and notifications!

Before signing off on our first season, we wanted to share a little more of the conversation Scott had with nature and wildlife photographer Tui De Roy.

Tui has lived in the Galapagos Islands since her family moved there in 1955 when she was just 2 years old. Her unique perspective as a local and as a photographer has given her both a keen eye for detail and the opportunity to observe how the islands and its wildlife have changed over the last half century.

Scott asked Tui what she thinks about the future of Galapagos, and how what she sees in Galapagos might be relevant for wild places throughout the world.

You can hear the rest of Scott's conversation with Tui in Episode 3 - Experiencing Galapagos with Tui De Roy and Lee Ehmke.

Learn more about Tui and see some of her outstanding photography at https://www.galapagosconsultant.com/

This season of Wild World was produced by 3WireCreative.

If you’d like a T-shirt, poster, or coffee mug with the Wild World logo, check out the Wild World merch shop run by Alltheus.com: https://alltheus.com/collections/wild-world/SSolomon+Wild-World

Join us next season as we explore even more of our wild world!

We’re stepping away from our regular podcast this week to bring you an episode from our friends at WCS Wild Audio—a podcast of the Wildlife Conservation Society. WCS Wild Audio brings you the latest news and newsmakers from WCS’s global field sites and its five wildlife parks in New York City, including the Bronx Zoo and the New York Aquarium.

In today’s episode, Wild Audio’s Hannah Kaplan talks to Inaoyom Imong, Director of Cross River Landscapes for the WCS Nigeria program. The Cross River gorilla is one of the most elusive and critically endangered subspecies of gorilla in the world. Found exclusively in the densely forested jungles between Nigeria and Cameroon, it is thought that there are as few as 300 animals left in the wild. But despite the persistent threats of habitat loss, gene fragmentation, and poaching, there is hope, says Imong.

We hope you enjoy the episode. If you like what you hear, follow “WCS Wild Audio" on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast app. And tell them we sent you!

WCS Wild Audio: https://www.wcs.org/wcs-wild-audio

Antarctica is famous for gigantic ice sheets and charismatic animals, but Antarctica is also one of the best places to search for meteorites– rocks that have traveled through space and survived passing through Earth’s atmosphere.

Mini Wadhwa is a planetary scientist who studies meteorites to learn about the formation of our universe and what conditions are like in other parts of our solar system. She is the Director of the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University and the Principal Scientist for the Mars Sample Return Mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Dr. Wadhwa discusses what it’s like to work in Antarctica, an accident that nearly killed her while on a field expedition, and why representation matters as a woman of color in science.

Learn more about Mini Wadhwa at https://search.asu.edu/profile/957644

Watch her TEDx talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iukJJ2u0vlo

McMurdo Antarctic Research Station: https://www.nsf.gov/geo/opp/support/mcmurdo.jsp

This episode of Wild World was produced with support from:

Lindblad Expeditions: https://www.expeditions.com

The Rice University Traveling Owls: https://alumni.rice.edu/travelingowls

Mentioned in this episode:

Lindblad Expeditions

Today’s episode of Wild World is sponsored by Lindblad Expeditions. Discovery is in the Lindblad DNA. Visit expeditions.com to see where in our wild world you’d like to explore next.

Antarctica 2023-25

JOURNEY TO ANTARCTICA: THE WHITE CONTINENT 14 DAYS | FROM $15,840 Scan QR code for itinerary details and current rates or visit expeditions.com/antarctic Aboard National Geographic Explorer, National Geographic Endurance, & National Geographic Resolution EXPEDITION DETAILS DATES National Geographic Explorer: 2023-2024 January, February, November, December 2025 January National Geographic Endurance: 2023-2024 November, December 2025 January National Geographic Resolution: 2023 January, February, December 2024 January, November, December 2025 February National Geographic Resolution departures route via Santiago instead of Buenos Aires.

Lindblad Expeditions

Lindblad Expeditions

We can learn a lot by exploring the edges of the biosphere, where conditions can just barely support even the most hardy organisms. And by venturing beyond the biosphere– by leaving Earth and traveling into space– we can really test the limits of what our bodies are capable of.

Scott Parazynski is a former NASA astronaut who has flown on five missions to space and completed seven spacewalks. He is also an emergency medical doctor who has climbed some of the highest mountains on Earth, including Everest, a scuba diver, pilot, rock climber, and luge athlete.

Scott describes what it’s like to live and work in space, his journey toward becoming an astronaut, and what being in space and other extreme environments has taught him about Earth and about the limits of the human body.

To learn more about Scott Parazynski, check out his book “The Sky Below” and his website: https://parazynski.com/

You can learn more about space science and exploration at https://www.nasa.gov/

Mentioned in this episode:

Lindblad Expeditions

The Rice Alumni Traveling Owls program offers exciting intellectual itineraries to destinations across the globe. Traveling Owls trips serve as a catalyst for lifelong learning and strengthen bonds between Rice University alumni and friends. You don’t have to be a Rice alum to participate in Traveling Owls programs. Visit alumni.rice.edu/travelingowls to see a list of upcoming trips.

Rice Traveling Owls

Lindblad Expeditions

Around the world, wildlife is in decline. We know that animals play important roles in their environments, but it’s often difficult to know how exactly the natural world would change if any particular type of wildlife no longer existed.

In this episode, Scott speaks with Dr. Haldre Rogers, an ecologist working on the island of Guam, where invasive snakes have eliminated nearly all of the island’s native birds. By comparing the forests on Guam with forests on nearby islands that still have birds, Dr. Rogers’ work is helping reveal the importance of birds in the Mariana Islands and elsewhere.

Dr. Rogers is also an avid rugby player who helped establish Guam’s first female rugby team. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation at Virginia Tech University.

Learn more about Haldre Rogers’ research at https://www.haldre.org

To see photos and hear records of the calls of the native forest birds of Guam and the Mariana Islands, visit: https://www.guampedia.com/a-native-forest-birds-of-guam

This episode of Wild World was produced by 3WireCreative.

Mentioned in this episode:

Lindblad Expeditions

The Rice Alumni Traveling Owls program offers exciting intellectual itineraries to destinations across the globe. Traveling Owls trips serve as a catalyst for lifelong learning and strengthen bonds between Rice University alumni and friends. You don’t have to be a Rice alum to participate in Traveling Owls programs. Visit alumni.rice.edu/travelingowls to see a list of upcoming trips.

Rice Traveling Owls

Lindblad Expeditions

Brazil is one of the most biologically diverse nations on Earth. In the center of Brazil, between the Amazon Rainforest and the Atlantic Coast Rainforest is an ecosystem found nowhere else on Earth– a savanna known as the Cerrado. The Brazilian Cerrado is home to more than 11,000 species of plants, 800 species of birds, and 200 species of mammals, and an unknown number of insects. Yet, much of the biological diversity of the cerrado is hidden underground.

In this episode, Scott speaks with his former research advisor Dr. Ted Schultz, Curator of Entomology at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Dr. Schultz describes his lifelong fascination with ants, particularly a group of ants that live in the Cerrado and engage in a form of agriculture by cultivating fungi deep underground. To study these fascinating ants– which have been living as farmers for 66 million years– Scott and Ted share stories of their expeditions to the Brazilian Cerrado.

But finding the ants is only half the battle. To learn about their underground farming practices, they have to dig deep pits while carefully tracing the ant’s narrow tunnels– all in the sweltering, tropical heat. But, with much of the Cerrado being lost to agriculture and urban development, it’s a race against time to learn about these species before they disappear.

Smithsonian Ant Lab website: https://naturalhistory.si.edu/research/entomology/collections-overview/hymenoptera/antlab

More about the Brazilian cerrado: www.worldwildlife.org/places/cerrado

Follow Wild World on social media: @wildworldshow

This episode of Wild World was produced by 3WireCreative

Mentioned in this episode:

Lindblad Expeditions

The Rice Alumni Traveling Owls program offers exciting intellectual itineraries to destinations across the globe. Traveling Owls trips serve as a catalyst for lifelong learning and strengthen bonds between Rice University alumni and friends. You don’t have to be a Rice alum to participate in Traveling Owls programs. Visit alumni.rice.edu/travelingowls to see a list of upcoming trips.

Rice Traveling Owls

Lindblad Expeditions