This week we explore the Urban Caracal Project with Dr. Laurel Serieys and fawn over the most charismatic urban mesofauna we’ve seen to date (get a load of those ear tufts!). Caracals might have been enough to discuss on a podcast, but we were hogs about it and, with Dr. Seán Cahill of Barcelona’s Parc de Collserola, decided to root around the problems that arise when boars go urban, which they are doing all over Europe and Asia.

Robin Irizarry of the Tookany/Tacony-Frankford Watershed Association and wildlife biologist Mike McGraw join us for the conversation.

And on #urbanwildlifebling we get a call from Robin, Tony, and a birding crew out on a whippoorwill expedition to Philadelphia’s Awbury Arboretum.

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Join Billy, Tony, and guest host Ken Frank as we explore history through our many-legged neighbors and hitchhikers.

Environmental Archeologist Allison Bain of Université Laval in Quebec City, Canada tells us how insects can teach us about the European colonization of North America.

Not old enough for you? Billy talks about the river crabs of Rome’s Cloaca Maxima (HT to Tristan Donovan‘s Feral Cities via Robb Dunn), shaped by 2,500 years or so of urban isolation.

Ken talks about his new book The Ecology of Center City Philadelphia and tells a West Philly tale of the decline and fall of urban feral honey bees.

Is there a corner of the globe untouched by our neighbor critters? Now that we have research stations on Antarctica, no, no there isn’t. We speak with Dr. Kevin Hughes of the British Antarctic Survey about the critters that ride down to the wildest continent with us and all the effort it takes to keep them from sticking around.

We close the episode with an extended #Urbanwildlifebling, a spider hunt in the apartment of naturalist Andrew Hoffman – best enjoyed on your belly, flashlight in hand, examining spider webs behind the furniture.

Triangulate Cobweb Spider, by Andrew Hoffman

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