Lions #2 electric boogaloo you're carbon credits are due!  (Alex said we had to say that, sorry) It's Episode 13 of Life On The Brink, featuring LIONS. Didn't we already do lions? Yes we did... deal with it. But also this episode is very different from our first lion episode. Last time we focused on the tree-climbing lions of Uganda, this time we're focusing on the equally unique lions in Kenya known for their maneless males! In the episode, our over-achieving guest Dr James Allan talks about what it's like to grow up with a family that owns a safari company in a national park the size of Switzerland, we hear about the research he was involved in that influenced international conservation policy, and we talk with James about his new project - a company dedicated to capturing carbon AND saving threatened animals at the same time! Follow Life On The Brink on Instagram: instagram.com/lifeonthebrinkpodcast and via our website: lifeonthebrinkpodcast.com Follow Life On The Brink   on Twitter: twitter.com/jamesecology Find Koobi Carbon via their website: koobicarbon.com Produced by Gabriel George & Alex Bezzina Theme music by Kyle Morley Episode Cover Image: Man-eating maneless male lions (ones from the railway James mentions in the episode) from Tsavo, Kenya. Currently full of stuffing instead of human as they stand on display in the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, USA. JEFFREY JUNG.

We're back in New Zealand for Episode 12 of Life On The Brink!!  And this time, it's all for the tuatara! Some call it a "living fossil", others say they have a mystical third eye, but what we do know is there are a lot less of them than there used to be. In the episode, we run the tuatara rumours past our guest PhD Candidate Sarah Lamar and ask her why she researched the speed of their sperm in the name of conservation! Follow Life On The Brink on Instagram: instagram.com/lifeonthebrinkpodcast and via our website: lifeonthebrinkpodcast.com Follow Life On The Brink on Twitter: twitter.com/SphenodonSarah Produced by Gabriel George & Alex Bezzina Theme music by Kyle Morley Episode Cover Image: A tuatara. SARAH LAMAR.

This is our third ever bonus episode!!! Last week's episode introduced us to Deborah Santos de Azevedo the incredible great hammerhead researcher who works with stressed-out sharks. She also happens to be a member of Minorities in Shark Science (MISS) an awesome organisation looking to build diversity in marine research and support minorities in the field. So this episode focuses on Deb's experiences as a Brazillian immigrant making her way into the wild world of shark science and her message that you aren't alone and if you work hard enough you can work with hammerheads too! Follow Life On The Brink on Instagram: @lifeonthebrinkpodcast and via our website: lifeonthebrinkpodcast.com Follow Deb on Twitter: @diverdebb and Instagram: @deborahsazevedo Follow MISS on Twitter and Instagram: @MISS_Elasmo Produced by Gabriel George & Alex Bezzina Theme Music by Kyle Morley

What could possibly out a 6-metre hammerhead? Humans, of course. This is Episode 11 of Life On The Brink, and the third installment of our little four-part series on elasmobranchs, featuring the Great Hammerhead shark. In the episode we get into how to measure a shark's stress levels, what it's like breaking into the shark science field, and ask our guest Deborah  Santos de Azevedo deep questions like 'Why do hammerheads have hammer heads?'. Follow Life On The Brink on Instagram: instagram.com/lifeonthebrinkpodcast and via our website: lifeonthebrinkpodcast.com Follow Deb on Twitter: @diverdebb Produced by Alex Bezzina & Gabriel George Theme music by Kyle Morley

It's our second ever bonus episode! Last week's full episode with manta biologist Asia Haines left a lot of cool stuff on the cutting room floor, including a story about when the organisation she works with (Project Manta) tracked a manta ray down a highway! She also talked through how absolutely anyone can help Project Manta discover more about manta rays through the power of belly photos. Follow Life On The Brink on Instagram: instagram.com/lifeonthebrinkpodcast  and via our website: lifeonthebrinkpodcast.com  Follow Project Manta on Facebook: facebook.com/ProjectMANTA Theme Music by Kyle Morley Production by Alex Bezzina & Gabriel George Album Images: Tracking map of the tag mentioned in the episode & a photo of the tag. PROJECT MANTA.

Welcome to the first of four episodes on ELASMOBRANCHS (rays & sharks)! Over the next month, we've got two full episodes and two little bonus episodes headed your way. We know we only just started out fortnightly schedule but we just can't help ourselves!! Episode 10 of Life On The Brink is all about the world of the ocean's wanderers: MANTA RAYS! We're focussing on the reef manta ray, the slightly less massive of the two manta ray species. Our guide through their big blue world is Asia Haines, a manta biologist who works with the citizen-science group Project Manta to understand the manta ray populations along Australia's east coast. She talks about the world's only pink manta ray, why no one has ever seen a manta ray give birth in the wild, and what it's like to swim belly-to-belly with a wild manta ray. Follow Life On The Brink on Instagram: instagram.com/lifeonthebrinkpodcast and via our website: lifeonthebrinkpodcast.com Follow Project Manta on Facebook: facebook.com/ProjectMANTA Produced by Alex Bezzina & Gabriel George Theme music by Kyle Morley Episode Cover Image: Inspector Clouseau, the only pink manta ray in the world. ASIA HAINES.

...is tigers are wonderful things! However we can't verify whether their tops are actually made of rubber nor their bottoms made out of springs.  Episode 9 of Life On The Brink is full of tiger talk and more Tigger from Winnie-the-Pooh references! Hear how hard it is to count one of the world's most elusive big cats, and how Arjun once came face-to-face with a wild tiger in a 15-minute standoff. This episode is a big one, full of stories, ways anyone can help conserve tigers, and high-brow questions like 'Where did the tiger actually get its stripes?!'. Follow Life On The Brink on Instagram: instagram.com/lifeonthebrinkpodcast and via our website: lifeonthebrinkpodcast.com Follow Arjun on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ArjunGswamy Produced by Alex Bezzina & Gabriel George Theme music by Kyle Morley Episode Cover Image: Wild bengal tiger. 

Get ready to meet the cutest most baby-dragon-looking-est lizards we've somehow never heard about before on Episode 8 of Life On The Brink! Reptiles are so often overlooked in conservation and these cute critters are a perfect example. They live in family groups and make houses out of logs complete with outdoor dunnies. What's not to love?! In the episode, we hear how the incredible Holly Bradley started off in research keeping honey possums warm, moved on to sloth tracking in the Costa Rican jungle, and now is taking on the challenge of relocating entire populations of endangered Western spiny-tailed skinks before new coal mines wipe out their current habitat.  Follow Life On The Brink On Instagram: instagram.com/lifeonthebrinkpodcast and via our website: lifeonthebrinkpodcast.com Follow Holly On Instagram: instagram.com/holly_sydelle/ Produced by Alex Bezzina & Gabriel George  Theme music by Kyle Morley  Episode Cover Image: Western Spiny-Tailed Skink. HOLLY BRADLEY.

Welcome to the first Life On The Brink bonus episode! Launching Life On The Brink has been a very humbling experience. The response we've seen so far blew us away, so we kept pushing weekly episodes out so you could get to know who we are and what this podcast is all about. But we've now kicked into our on-going fortnightly release schedule to maintain the standard we want to keep (and, to be honest, to stop us two from burning out too quickly). But that doesn't mean you won't hear from us in these "off weeks". We'll still be popping up in your feed with bonus episodes like this one, mini-series we have in the works, and major updates to our previous stories. For today, we have some bonus content from our third episode featuring southern brown kiwis and biodiversity ranger Denis Stojanovic. When editing down the episode, we had to leave a whole raft of Denis' stories on the cutting room floor! A bunch of those stories were about another of New Zealand's strange rare birds starting with 'k': the kakapo. So for this episode, we stitched those cuts back together so you also get to hear his stories about tracking kakapos and meeting the famously kinky kakapo Sirocco!  Follow Life On The Brink  on Instagram instagram.com/lifeonthebrinkpodcast  and via our website: lifeonthebrinkpodcast.com  Follow Denis on Flickr: instagram.com/viv.fox Theme Music by Kyle Morley Production by Alex Bezzina & Gabriel George

It's time to float like a migrating butterfly for Episode 7 of Life On The Brink!   Insects make up more than 90% of species on this planet, and yet we know so little about them. In this episode, we unravel the complete mysteries of butterfly migration with Ph.D. candidate Shawan Chowdhury. We hear how Shawan fell into the world of butterflies as a student in Bangladesh's capital city Dhaka, how following the butterflies landed him in a world of leeches, and how the guy who failed eight out of 12 classes in 7th Grade went on to study a Ph.D.  Follow Life On The Brink on Instagram instagram.com/lifeonthebrinkpodcast and via our website: lifeonthebrinkpodcast.com  Find Shawan on Flickr: flickr.com/people/125106066@N02/ on his website: shawanchowdhury.wordpress.com/ Theme Music by Kyle Morley Production by Alex Bezzina & Gabriel George Episode Album Image: Caterpillar of the common mime swallowtail butterfly. SWAHAN CHOWDHURY.