30/03/2010

Available for over a year

Series 18, Programme 13. Friday night in any town centre provides ample evidence of humanities' love of intoxication. Drugs and alcohol have been associated with human activity for as long as there have been humans to have activities. But does this extend to other members of the animal kingdom. This week you ask whether a crow was deliberately drugging itself on fumes from a household chimney. What, you want to know, are the brown mites found swarming all over a bumblebee. More bird behaviour as you ask where all the black headed seagulls go in summer and do pigeons surf over oncoming traffic? And why do we hear so little about the origins of life on Earth? Joining Richard Daniel for this week's Home Planet are ecologist Dr Lynn Dicks of Cambridge University; Graham Appleton of the British Trust for Ornithology; and Professor Philip Stott, an environmental scientist from the University of London. The producer is Toby Murcott, and this is a Pier production for BBC Radio 4.