Do Animals Have Names for Each Other?

How far back can you trace an ordinary dinner?A mashed potato has a history stretching back thousands of years. A chicken connects us to wild junglefowl, ancient agriculture, and an entire food web. And even that little side salad has a surprisingly complicated backstory.In this solo companion episode of The Wild Quiet, Bre follows one ordinary meal backward through Indigenous farming, the microscopic world beneath our feet, animal domestication, pollination, and the sunlight that powers so much of life on Earth.Along the way, we're exploring the relationships between food, nature, and human history—and why we're a lot more connected to the natural world than a trip through the grocery store might suggest.Because apparently, even a plate of mashed potatoes can lead to some pretty big questions.A companion to: Everything That Happened Before Dinner, featuring Montana farmer Aimee Miklovic of Full Bushel Farm

A chicken on a boat in Indonesia. A fish curry during an unexpected adventure in Fiji. And a group of kids discovering that carrots actually grow underground.What do these things have in common? They all reveal something we tend to forget: every meal has a story that began long before it reached our plates.This week on The Wild Quiet, Bre sits down with her friend Aimee Miklovic, a farmer in Montana's Bitterroot Valley, to explore the surprising connections between food, nature, and the people who grow, raise, prepare, and share what we eat.From raising livestock and knowing your farmer to seasonal eating, family traditions, and the remarkable amount of life behind an ordinary dinner, this conversation takes us beyond the grocery store and into the relationships that make our meals possible.Along the way, there's a chicken with impeccable comedic timing, some very strong opinions about vegetables, and a reminder that reconnecting with nature doesn't have to mean growing all your own food.Because whether it's a homegrown tomato, a hamburger, or a plate of french fries, there's an entire living world behind it.Aimee Miklovic is a farmer and owner of Full Bushel Farm in western Montana's Bitterroot Valley. Through her diversified farm and farm store, she grows flowers, herbs, and seasonal produce, raises livestock, and helps connect her community with other local food producers.The Wild Quiet is a podcast about nature—and our place within it.

We know humans changed wolves. But after thousands of years of living alongside dogs, how much did they change us?In this solo companion to my conversation with evolutionary biologist Greger Larson, I'm turning the domestication story around.From a 14,000-year-old puppy buried alongside humans to ancient hunting partnerships, prehistoric journeys, and the surprisingly sophisticated ways dogs communicate with us, we're looking at how one relationship may have helped shape human life.We'll also investigate a particularly tempting theory about dogs and Neanderthals, and why a good evolutionary story isn't necessarily a true one.Along the way, there's some ancient DNA, a little archaeological detective work, and my Great Dane Freyja, who has successfully trained an entire household without contributing much in the way of hunting or guarding.Because domestication wasn't simply something humans did to animals. It was a relationship that went both ways.The Wild Quiet is a podcast about nature—and our place within it.Keep exploring:Listen to How Did Wild Animals Become So Ordinary? with Greger Larson.Find additional research, links, and behind-the-episode notes on The Wild Quiet's Substack: https://thewildquietco.substack.comFollow The Wild Quiet wherever you listen, and share the episode with another curious human. It makes a real difference for an independent podcast.

There’s basically a wolf descendant sleeping on our couch. Wildcats live in our houses. And a bird that once lived in the forests of Southeast Asia is now one of the most familiar animals on Earth.So how did wolves, wildcats, and junglefowl become so tangled in human life that we almost forgot they were ever wild? Bre talks with Professor Greger Larson of the University of Oxford, who studies the origins and evolution of domesticated animals through archaeology, genetics, and ancient DNA.And the stories we tell about domestication? They might be a lot messier than we think.Greger shares the rabbit origin story that completely fell apart when his team tried to trace it back to its source, why wolves becoming dogs may have looked more like a relationship than a human takeover, what ancient dog burials can tell us about lives shared with people thousands of years ago, and one possible explanation for the rise of domestic cats involving ancient Egypt, religious pilgrims, and counterfeit cat mummies.We also get into the surprisingly strange history of chickens, why humans are so drawn to tidy stories about where things came from, and what changes when we stop thinking of ourselves as separate from the rest of nature.Because maybe domestication isn't really a story about humans conquering the wild.Maybe it's a story about what happens when species begin living alongside one another—and neither comes out of the relationship quite the same.In this episode:Greger Larson is an evolutionary biologist in the School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford who uses ancient DNA datasets to understand the deep-time relationships between people and animals.Greger Larson, Professor of Archaeology at the University of Oxford and director of the PalaeoBARN (Palaeogenomics & Bio-Archaeology Research Network).Bluesky: @gregerlarson.bsky.socialComing up next: Did Dogs Change Us, Too? We usually ask how humans changed wolves. Next time, we're turning that question around.Stay Curious 🌿@thewildquietpod

Humans were using plants as medicine—and poison—long before anyone knew what an alkaloid was or how the nervous system worked.So how did we know what plants could do before we understood why they worked?For this Halloween companion episode, I’m following that question through screaming mandrakes, poisonous nightshades, witches’ flying ointments and foxglove—a plant people were using medicinally long before science could explain what it was doing to the heart.Along the way, we’ll get into what atropine and scopolamine actually do to the nervous system, why plants make these chemicals in the first place, how people learned about medicinal plants before modern pharmacology, and why the popular story that accused witches were really persecuted herbalists is a whole lot messier than it sounds.Because sometimes humans know that something works long before we know why.And somewhere in that gap, we tend to tell stories.The Wild Quiet is a podcast about nature—and our place within it.

Where did we get monsters?Dragons. Werewolves. Vampires. The Kraken. A whirlpool that could swallow a ship. Strange lights floating over a swamp.Humans are very good at making things up—but we didn't necessarily make all of this up.This week, I’m talking with science writer Matt Kaplan, author of The Science of Monsters, about the real animals, fossils, diseases and natural phenomena hiding underneath some of our oldest monster stories.We get into ancient Greek monsters showing up on actual maps, the surprisingly gross science behind vampires, what rabies may have had to do with werewolves, whether a giant squid could really sink a ship, and why sometimes a monster was simply a really effective way of saying: don't go over there.Because the more you dig into these stories, the question gets really interesting:How much of a monster comes from the thing that's actually out there—and how much do we add to it?Plus, Finn has a very important Kraken question.Guest: Matt Kaplan, science writer and author of The Science of Monsters, Science of the Magical, and I Told You So: Scientists Who Were Ridiculed, Exiled, and Imprisoned for Being Right.The Wild Quiet is a podcast about nature—and our place within it.

Do animals have names for each other—or is naming one more human idea we keep trying to find reflected in the rest of nature?After giving a backyard downy woodpecker named Needo an entire family life and personal history, Bre begins wondering what other woodpeckers might call him.This episode follows the evidence from bottlenose dolphin signature whistles and socially learned parrot calls to receiver-specific elephant rumbles and the scientific debate surrounding marmoset “names.” Together, these animals reveal several possible ways of communicating something very close to: you, specifically.Because “we cannot translate it” is not the same as “nothing is being said.”This is a companion episode to Why Does a Wild Animal’s Life Feel Different Once We Know Its Name? — with Samantha MillerListen and consider: Is a signal only a name if it works the way a human name does?Follow The Wild Quiet:Instagram: @thewildquietpodSubstack: https://thewildquietco.substack.com/

Why does a wild animal’s life feel different once we recognize it as an individual?P-22 was not simply a mountain lion. Grizzly 399 was not simply a bear. Jackie was not simply one Bald Eagle among many.Once we learn an animal’s name, recognize its face or follow its family over time, information begins attaching itself to a particular life. It survived that winter. It crossed that road. It returned to that nest. It raised those young.But why do we so often need to recognize one individual before we care about what happens to the rest?In this episode of The Wild Quiet, Bre talks with Samantha Miller, Senior Carnivore Campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity.Together, they explore how individual animals can become doorways into much larger conservation stories—from P-22 and Southern California’s wildlife crossings to Grizzly 399, Yellowstone’s Mollie’s pack, Colorado’s Copper Creek wolves, and Jackie and Shadow’s Big Bear Valley habitat.They also examine the risks that come with wildlife celebrity. Familiarity can create empathy and political action, but it can also encourage crowds, expose an animal’s location and tempt humans to turn a wildlife into a character expected to behave according to our story.In this episode:Why Samantha once asked Santa Claus to save mountain lionsHow one recognizable animal can make a population-level issue feel realP-22, urban development and wildlife connectivityGrizzly 399 and the complicated effects of wildlife celebrityThe young Copper Creek wolf who survived a winter aloneMollie’s pack and the invisible boundary surrounding YellowstoneWhy names and numbers can influence how humans understand wild animalsHow Jackie and Shadow helped make an entire landscape visibleThe difference between witnessing wildlife and demanding access to itWhy calling an animal a “problem” can prevent us from examining the human side of a conflictWhich animal would arrive at a wildlife commission meeting most prepared—and most outragedAbout Samantha MillerSamantha Miller is the Senior Carnivore Campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity, where she works on carnivore issues nationwide with a focus on state-level progress.Her career spans wildlife commission reform, political advocacy and coalition building to advance carnivore policy across the American West. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Riverside, and a Master of Public Policy from Pepperdine University.Find Samantha and Her WorkCenter for Biological Diversity:https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/biodiversitycowgirl/https://www.instagram.com/savingwolvesorg/https://www.instagram.com/centerforbiodiv/Listen to Wildlife Wire:https://wildlifewire.podbean.com/Saving America’s Wolves:https://savingwolves.org/Wolf Planning:https://www.wolfplanning.org/Continue ExploringRead the episode article:Why Does a Wild Animal’s Life Feel Different Once We Know Its Name?Watch Shadow and Kaydee on the official Big Bear Bald Eagle livestream:https://friendsofbigbearvalley.org/livestream/Companion episode: Do Animals Have Names for Each Other?Available Friday, October 23.Your TurnIs there one particular wild animal you have followed over time? Did learning its story change how you thought about the rest of its species—or the place it lived?Find The Wild Quiet on Instagram at @thewildquietpod.The Wild Quiet is a podcast about nature—and our place within it.This is The Wild Quiet. Until next time, stay curious.

A caterpillar and a butterfly are the same animal—but they barely seem to have anything in common.One crawls around chewing leaves. The other flies, drinks nectar through a proboscis and may travel thousands of miles.In this solo episode of The Wild Quiet, Bre goes inside the chrysalis to explore what really happens during metamorphosis, why a caterpillar does not completely dissolve into “insect soup,” and whether anything it learns can survive the transformation.Along the way, we meet Catty Kathy, a monarch caterpillar living in Bre’s milkweed patch, and tobacco hornworms that were trained to associate an odor with danger—and still remembered that connection after becoming moths.Because the butterfly is not a reward waiting at the end of a caterpillar. It is the caterpillar’s life continuing.In this episode:Whether a caterpillar and butterfly are truly the same animalThe difference between a chrysalis and a cocoonWhat really happens inside a monarch chrysalisWhy a caterpillar does not completely dissolve into soupImaginal discs and the adult structures already developing inside a larvaHow an insect’s nervous system changes during metamorphosisThe experiment testing whether moths remember something learned as caterpillarsThe difference between learned associations and autobiographical memoryWhy we value the beautiful butterfly differently from the hungry caterpillarHow monarchs navigate toward a destination they have never visitedThis episode accompanies Bre’s conversation with cartoonist and educator Peter Kuper: Can Art Change How We See Nature—and Ourselves?RESOURCESRetention of Memory Through Metamorphosis:https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0001736Monarch Growth and Development — Monarch Joint Venture:https://monarchjointventure.org/monarch-biology/monarch-life-cycleMonarch Biology FAQ — Monarch Joint Venture:https://monarchjointventure.org/faqMonarch Migration — Monarch Joint Venture:https://monarchjointventure.org/monarch-biology/monarch-migrationExplore Peter Kuper’s work:https://www.peterkuper.com/Monarch’s Journey — American Museum of Natural History:https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/monarchs-journeyFollow The Wild Quiet on Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/thewildquietpod/Read the episode companion:Can Art Change How We See Nature—and Ourselves?This is The Wild Quiet—curious conversations about nature, and our place within it.

What would humans look like inside a museum curated by insects?Cartoonist and educator Peter Kuper uses art, storytelling and humor to change who appears to be observing whom. A 2026 Pulitzer Prize finalist, Peter has written and illustrated SPY vs. SPY for MAD magazine since 1997, co-founded World War 3 Illustrated and created more than two dozen books, including Insectopolis: A Natural History, Ruins and Wish We Weren’t Here: Postcards From the Apocalypse.In this episode, we explore whether imagining another creature’s experience can change how we value its life—and what art can make visible that information alone sometimes cannot.We get into:The cicadas that captured Peter’s attention as a childHow comics and wordless images communicate across age and languageWhat a monarch sees when it crosses highways, power plants and human bordersWhy humor can help us stay present with frightening environmental issuesThe New York City cockroach that revealed how much Peter’s perspective had changedThe overlooked people who helped build our knowledge of insectsWhy dung beetles are sacred, ecologically essential and extremely funnyWhat insects might place inside a museum exhibit about humansPeter’s exhibition, Monarch’s Journey, opens October 16, 2026, at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.Explore Peter’s work:https://www.peterkuper.com/Follow Peter on Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/kuperart/Learn about Monarch’s Journey:https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/monarchs-journeyEpisode Companion:Can Art Change How We See Nature—and Ourselves?What animal have you already placed into a category—and what might change if you looked at it a little longer?The Wild Quiet is a podcast about nature—and our place within it.Instagram: @thewildquietpodSubstack: The Wild Quiet Co.