Living Night: On the Secret Wonders of Wildlife After Dark

Summary

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New Books Network: "Living Night: On the Secret Wonders of Wildlife After Dark"

Host: Dr. Christina Gessler
Guest: Dr. Sophia Kimig
Date: December 11, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this episode of Academic Life on the New Books Network, host Dr. Christina Gessler interviews Dr. Sophia Kimig, ecologist, behavioral biologist, and author of Living Night: On the Secret Wonders of Wildlife After Dark. The conversation explores the hidden world of nocturnal and crepuscular animals, their unique adaptations, the effects of light pollution on nature (and humans), and the evolutionary origins of nighttime life. Dr. Kimig brings to light how much we miss, both scientifically and personally, when we overlook the living creatures and experiences of the night.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Dr. Sophia Kimig’s Background and Scientific Curiosity

• Ecologist, behavioral and evolutionary biologist, and science communicator.
• Fascinated by what drives life on earth and animal behavior, including in urban and invasive ecological settings.
• Emphasis on making science accessible: "I really like it when people out there also know what we scientists do." (03:00)

Pathway to Nighttime Ecology

• Initial curiosity sparked during a PhD project studying urban red foxes in Berlin, which required nighttime fieldwork.
• Noted the dramatic difference between the city at night and during the day — describing it as "a parallel universe" where wildlife replaces daytime human activity.

  "Suddenly there's a raccoon sitting in the bus stop or a wild boar roaming the street... I was fascinated by that contrast." (07:01)

Nocturnal Life—More Prevalent Than We Think

• Approx. 62% of animals worldwide are nocturnal or crepuscular (active at dawn/dusk)—a surprisingly understudied majority. (08:19)
• Significant data gaps: 81% of mammals labeled “Data Deficient” on the IUCN Red List are nocturnal, pointing to bias in research.

  “That’s way too much for being coincidence... just because they happen to be active at the wrong time of the day to be studied.” (09:40)

Wonders of Nocturnal Adaptations

• Moths have an extraordinary sense of smell—they "have the best nose... and it doesn't even have a nose." (11:07)
• Opossums are misunderstood and underappreciated (often labeled "ugly," but have fascinating evolutionary mechanisms like playing dead, extreme physiological shutdown, and immunity to rabies and ticks).

  "Nature is sometimes so fascinating... evolution always finds a way." (13:48)
  "They actually increase your chances to not get infected... because they take care of the actual risk." (19:27)

Adapting to the Dark: Sensory Evolution

• Animals use different communication and survival strategies at night:
  • Less reliance on color; more on scent and sound.
  • Bats use echolocation, owls have keen night vision, plants emit scent at night to attract nocturnal pollinators.
  • The tapetum lucidum in many animals’ eyes doubles light use, causing the “eye shine” visible at night. (25:10)

Human Disconnection from the Night

• Many people have never seen the Milky Way due to urban light pollution; about a third of humanity is affected.

  "Wherever you are on the surface, you could see an awesome night sky... but millions have never seen it in their lifetime." (29:05)

• 1994 LA blackout: People called emergency services about a “strange cloud”—the Milky Way.
• Artificial light disrupts both wildlife (example: sea turtles misled by lights) and human circadian rhythms, with health consequences including poor sleep and increased disease risk. (38:17)

Fun Fact: Night Milk

• Night-milked cows produce higher melatonin; drinking this milk before bed has a stronger sleep-inducing effect—“the same calming effect as actual tranquilizer medication.” (39:59)

Evolutionary Roots: Dinosaurs and the Mammalian Night

• Many evolutionary mammalian traits (fur, steady body temperature) evolved to survive nighttime during the age of the diurnal dinosaurs; mammals were largely nocturnal for millions of years.

  "Everything began in those dark, shadowy small areas—under some giant’s feet... in the shadow of another branch of life." (49:14)

Owls: Symbols of Night and Unexpected Diplomats

• 240 species worldwide, important for natural rodent control.
• Barn owl nesting projects in Israel and Palestine reduced the use of rodenticides—uniting farmers across a conflict zone:

  "The owl brought a little bit of connection and friendship... it became an international cooperation." (51:47)

• Owls can rotate their heads up to 270 degrees without harm—their anatomy allows more vertebrae and flexible arteries than humans.
• Unique among birds, they cannot move their eyes, necessitating this adaptation. (57:22)

Significance of Darkness for Well-being

• Darkness is crucial not only for wildlife but also human health, creativity, rest, and mental balance.

  “We do not only underestimate the night’s importance for life on earth, but also for ourselves.” (58:15)

• Nighttime experiences—watching fireflies, stargazing, night walks—are sources of wonder, peace, and inspiration. (59:43)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On curiosity and scientific motivation:

  “I never understood how people can be outside in nature and not wonder about everything.” (03:25)

• On the city at night:

  “It’s like someone replaced the actors on a stage.” (07:01)

• On opossums:

  “Nature is sometimes so fascinating... evolution always, you know, finds a way.” (13:48)

• On light pollution and knowledge:

  “Millions of people have never seen [the Milky Way] in their lifetime because they live where there’s so much artificial light.” (29:05)

• On adaptation:

  “Darkness is like a motor of invention for new communication styles.” (25:10)

• On the wisdom of respecting the night:

  “I think that we miss out a lot if we don't take that time for ourselves, for our mental health and for our physical health. But also, we just miss so many wonders.” (59:20)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Dr. Kimig’s Introduction & Path to Science: 02:11 – 05:13
• Origin of Nocturnal Interest (Red Fox project): 05:26 – 08:19
• Scope of Nocturnal Life / Data Gaps: 08:19 – 11:02
• Moth Scent Adaptation: 11:07 – 12:24
• Opossum Evolution & Defense Mechanisms: 13:28 – 18:46
• Myths about Opossums, Disease Control: 18:46 – 20:38
• Nighttime Adaptations & Senses: 22:02 – 27:17
• Light Pollution and the Hidden Night Sky: 28:13 – 30:43
• Sea Turtles and the Importance of Natural Darkness: 30:43 – 36:41
• Human Health and Artificial Light: 36:41 – 39:27
• Fun Fact: Night-Milk for Sleep: 39:47 – 42:10
• The Evolutionary Night – Mammals and Dinosaurs: 46:33 – 50:15
• Owls as Ecological and Social Connectors: 51:11 – 56:54
• Wisdom from the Epilogue – Why the Night Matters: 58:15 – 62:53

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Final Reflections

Dr. Kimig hopes that listeners gain an appreciation for the richness of the nocturnal world and feel inspired to explore nighttime nature—whether through reading, observation, or simply spending time outside after dark:

“I hope that it may inspire some people to find that excitement, joy, but also peace that nature brings to me... and bring those great emotions and experiences to their lives as well.” (62:53)

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Further Reading

• Living Night: On the Secret Wonders of Wildlife After Dark by Dr. Sophia Kimig
  (Detailed explorations of nocturnal animals, evolutionary biology, and the ecological significance of darkness.)

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Transcript

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[Dr. Christina Gessler]

Welcome to the New Books Network.

Hello everyone and welcome to Academic Life. This is a podcast for your academic journey and beyond. I'm the producer and your host, Dr. Christina Gessler, and today I am pleased to be joined by Dr. Sophia Kimig, who is the author of Living on the Secret Wonders of Wildlife After Dark. Welcome to the show. Sophia hello.

Thank you for joining us. I am so glad that you are here and that we're going to talk about this book. Before we do that, will you please tell us about yourself?

[Dr. Sophia Kimig]

Yeah, sure. Thanks for the invitation.

I am an ecologist and behavioral biologist and.

I have also focused on evolutionary biology in my career. So I really like looking into how behavior and environment come together and change, for example animal behavior over time. And yeah, other than that I'm mainly working in invasion ecology and urban ecology. So working in different fields but always like the question of what drives life on earth, what drives animalizations fascinates me the most I think. And other than that, I really like it when people out there also know what we scientists do. So I also am into science communication, bringing science to society and that's why I also write books and wrote the Living Night Book.

[Dr. Christina Gessler]

At the Academic Life we're curious about how people found their path. How did you know that you wanted to be a scientist and where you are now? Is this where you thought you would end up.

[Dr. Sophia Kimig]

I'm not sure if I knew that I wanted to be a scientist because I probably didn't know what that is and how to get to that point. But I definitely knew that I'm a very curious person and that I love to look deeper into things. I never understood how people can be outside in nature and not wonder about everything. It's like, why are the leaves green? Why are the trees dropping the leaves in autumn? Why has this male bird another color than the female bird? Why do they sing at all? All those things, you know, they were puzzling me and I really wanted to find answers to all the questions on my mind. And then I realized that there's this opportunity to study biology and learn about like, at least theoretically, all life on Earth. And that sounded really promising. And I think my only expectation to that point was to find a way to answer questions. And that's what I got. So I never really pictured how my life would look. So it's hard to compare how it is now to what I could have possibly imagined because I think I'd never had that clear image in mind. But I definitely got what I wanted. I got the tool of scientific thinking and approaching questions and the ability to investigate things and.

A plan, like if there's something I don't understand or that I want to know, then I learned how to approach that and to answer the question that has puzzled me. So, yeah, I'm happy with that.

[Dr. Christina Gessler]

This book is called Living on the Secret Wonders of Wildlife After Dark. What got you curious about what was going on after dark?

[Dr. Sophia Kimig]

Well, although there has been a couple of years that I studied. Also I worked in a project on nighttime ecology. The fascinating aspect about it actually goes back to a project that I did before. So for my PhD, I studied urban red foxes in Berlin, the capital of Germany. And I radio colored red foxes to understand their space use behavior. Like where do they hang out, what places of the city do they use? They appear everywhere in the city, but you know, you see them for two seconds and then they are gone and you have no idea what they do and how do they spend their day. And yeah, so I, As a part one part of my PhD, I studied their movement behavior. And for that I had to trap them with live traps so that I could radio collar them. And as foxes are mainly active during twilight and nighttime, the trapping also happened at nighttime. So I set up the traps during daytime. But the actual field work then usually happened at night. And foxes are really hard to trap because they're really suspicious about everything new showing up in their territory. And sometimes it took weeks or even months until they would enter a trap. But yet I had to visit those traps almost every night because some other hungry animal was sitting in my trap, like a hedgehog or sometimes a crow or a raccoon. So animals that I really didn't want to trap but did anyway. And so I spend a lot of time, like, driving through nighttime Berlin and seeing the city from a completely new perspective. Because although as the big city that it is there is active, you know, vivid nightlife, but that's on a nice warm summer night. But when it's three at night in November, then in most parts of the city, no one is out. And then you. You drive through this city and there's all those structures that, you know, the houses, the streets, the bus stops, and everything looks kind of normal, but also somehow weird because it's like someone replaced the. The actors on. On a stage because suddenly there's a raccoon sitting in the bus stop or a white boar roaming the street that during day you would usually see people on their way to work. So I was really fascinated by that contrast. Like, as if there was a parallel universe that I have never thought about before. And, yeah, that was the start of a long journey, discovering the night.

[Dr. Christina Gessler]

And you tell us in the book that 62% of animals worldwide are nocturnal or. Or crepuscular. I had to look that one up. Those are the animals who are out basically at twilight, just after sunset, just before dawn. And yet that's an understudied area in the scientific community. Most studies in your field happen about the daytime, but with 62% of animal species worldwide hanging out in the dark, this is sort of an understudied area of science.

[Dr. Sophia Kimig]

Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, the 62% is like one estimate from a study, but it's obviously really hard to give a precise number given the fact that we don't even know all species out there yet. But that's the current estimate. And even it was like. Even if it was like 50, 50, then still you would be like. That would still be like half of life on Earth. Right. And you would still wonder how it can happen that it is understudied, but it is. And the interesting thing is that it's not only reflected by the scientific knowledge that we have. For example, many people know this IUCN Red List that.

Lists threatened species, or for all the species where we have information on their population status.

They are, like, categorized in least concerned to extinct, depending on how well their populations are doing. And when you look at the mammals on that list and on all the mammals that we couldn't classify because there were just not enough data, you know, then they got this little Data Deficient label. 81% of all those are nocturnal. So that's way too much for being coincidence. And there's like plenty of examples where we realize that many species are poorly understood just because they happen to be active at the wrong time of the day to be studied, obviously. And that also is not only reflected by scientific knowledge but also by like daily life knowledge of, you know, ordinary people, of us, like for example, butterfly species that are active during day. Many people can at least name some of them, while usually many people cannot name a single species that is active at night. Although the nocturnal species of that insect order are way more than the diurnal ones.

[Dr. Christina Gessler]

And I learned from your book that moths have a really good sense of smell.

[Dr. Sophia Kimig]

Yeah, it's funny because they actually don't have noses. So that's something really, I really liked such, you know, small details. Then you discover like there's the animal with the best nose kind of in animal kingdom and it doesn't even have a nose.

So if you look at pictures of butterflies and moth, which belong to the same order but are like the daylight and the nighttime version of the same insect.

Like principle or the way they are constructed, then you will notice a difference in the way that, in the shape of the antenna. So.

The species that are active at daytime, they usually have a small round end of the antenna. And if you look at the moth then you see very fancy shapes that look a little bit like feathers. And that's to increase the surface which helps him to even collect or detect the tiniest little particle of something in the air to detect scent out there.

[Dr. Christina Gessler]

In the opening of the book you tell us that for years you went about your life without noticing the dark world. And the book looks at the creatures who call the dark side of day home. And it takes us into how it came to be so from their evolutionary journey. And the book hopes to open readers eyes to the wonders of the night. Early in the prologue, you, you take us into the city at night, which you've already outlined for us a bit. And we meet the mama boar and all her babies and they're going over to the bus shelter. And you contrast that with the daytime of the, you know, commuters waiting for the bus. And chapter one, night Dwellers takes us into the opossum and you tell us that they're not attractive. I was surprised to Know that because I think they're kind of cute.

But you take us into the whole story of them, and obviously I have a slight fondness for them, not because I think they make good pets. I am clear that wildlife does not want to be my pet. But can you take us into the underloved opossums?

[Dr. Sophia Kimig]

Yeah, sure. I mean, I share your perspective. I also find them very cute. I also find them really interesting. But, you know, many people describe them as ugly. And even from a kind of objective point of view.

Like being handsome or looking good is often associated with symmetry. And also like, not only in humans, but we also know examples for that from behavioral biology studies for other animals, that symmetry of body, symmetry of faces is an attractive feature. And strangely, opossums seem to have more asymmetric faces from time to time. So even on an objective, scientific level, they might be called ugly from some people, by some people. But I think it's also just their weird behavior that many people.

Which is why many people don't like them. And I also think that sometimes people just don't like animals when they fear them a little or just cannot, I don't know, identify themselves with them. So humans tend to like fluffy, cute things. And opossums are usually not the first creatures that people think of. You know, when you tell someone imagine a very cute animal, then most people would probably not thing of a possum. But they're really cool because they develop this fancy defense strategy of, you know, playing that. And it's just so cool. I mean, nature is sometimes so fascinating. Like all these different strategies that evolved through over the course of time. And some of them seem so weird that, you know, it's just like, it's so entertaining to imagine that there is this little creature and it doesn't have long teeth, it doesn't have big claws. It's not big, it's not strong. So it needs some other way to get out of, you know, a bad situation when it's threatened by someone. And then comes evolution into play. And things like playing that develop. And as usual, evolution always, you know, finds a way to.

Like, develop things one step further. So it's not just not moving. You know, it even creates the scent of death, like of decomposition to make it more believable.

[Dr. Christina Gessler]

And you go into the actual sort of biomechanics that are going on inside the possum when it's playing dead. It's amazing the number of body systems that kick into make the animal not only seem like it's dead, but to bring it fairly close to death.

[Dr. Sophia Kimig]

Yeah, that's true. I mean, it has to drop the body temperature, the heart rate goes down. You know, if we are excited because we are threatened, like imagine you would walk down the street and then suddenly there's a lion coming around the corner. Then you would definitely not have your heart rate, heart rate drop. You know, you would have like a very, very fast beating heart and stress and want to run away. And the opposite happens in the opossum, you know, when they're threatened, then everything like slows down. The temperature drops, the heart rate goes down, the breathing rate drops, and even the smell, this scent of decomposition is produced and they kind of get stiff. Like, it's not.

Like if we would play that by not moving. You know, it's really a physiological process happening that puts them in a certain condition that they cannot like actively prevent sometimes or just end from one second to another. It's like once they go into it, they have to go all in and, you know, go through the process. And I really sometimes pity them when I see videos of people online, you know, poking them with a stick, moving them around or making fun of it, because we don't really know what happens on the inside, you know, on the mind of the possum. So although the whole thing looks fun or seems sometimes even entertaining, it might be like almost scared to death. You know, we don't really know how it feels to be in that situation. So I think that we should all be kind with such creatures and leave them alone when they appear to be so frightened that they thought that, you know, death, faked death is the only way out.

[Dr. Christina Gessler]

I was reminded in your book about how many people think possums are destructive, disease carrying, bug carrying. And I had one for a while living on the roof because mama had lived on the roof when her litter was young. And I was grateful because I have a dog and they eat like fleas and ticks. And I wasn't, you know, going to introduce the dog to the possum, but I was happy for the natural pest control. And I was surprised the number of people who said, oh, you, you know, should scare it off. They're filthy, they have diseases. And you debunk all of that in your book.

[Dr. Sophia Kimig]

Yeah, that's another very fascinating thing about those tiny little critters because they, they are like superpower against diseases for once. Like, as a dog owner, you know, the thing that you usually fear the most or are annoyed by the most is ticks. And they eat them like nothing. You know, they really they obviously love to eat ticks. They can kill hundreds and thousands of them. So if you have a possum roaming your yard, then you can be grateful because you know they will take care of your ticks in the grass. But also they seem to be kind of immune against rabies. And yeah, they have to have a very interesting immune system that seems to be able to cope with things that other animals can't. So they're really, really fascinating on that as well, especially when, as you mentioned, there's all those misconceptions about them and then they turn out to be the opposite. You know, people are afraid that they would bring them diseases, but they actually increase their chances to not get infected by some things because they take care of the actual risk.

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[Dr. Christina Gessler]

Chapter two is called the Dark side and it helps us understand what you call the other world. It also helps us understand how animals can adapt to a dark world when humans really can't. Can you take us into some of the ways that the nocturnal animals are uniquely suited to be roaming around and living their lives at night?

[Dr. Sophia Kimig]

Yeah, sure. I mean, for us, as, you know, species that is active during daytime, we usually don't think about darkness that much. I mean, we, we describe it as the absence of light, so it only exists in contrasts to the light around us. And of course, the most obvious difference between day and nighttime is that it's dark at night. But it's not just that. There's also other temperatures. The wind is different. And this different living reality comes also with A lot of changes to the meaning of.

Like, strategies or looks. Like, for example, many animals that are diurnal, they use colors to communicate things like, things like, I'm toxic, don't eat me because you will die. Or not toxic, poisonous. Yeah. Or.

You know, you can use colors to attract maybe a partner, like many birds do, like showing off beautiful colors to attract a mate and so on. So, like, visual cues and signals play a very important role during the daytime, but at nighttime, there's not much color. We know now that.

Other than we assume for a long time because we cannot see colors at night. We also thought that no other species is able to see colors at night. Now we know that some actually do, but most species out there don't. So colors completely lose their meaning for most situations during nighttime. So you need other strategies to get attention, for example, and that can be through scent. So, for example, like olfactory communication, using scent to communicate becomes way more important at nighttime, like pheromones and scents. We know now that, for example, also plants can actively produce their scent or, like, throw it out in the air. It's not a passive thing. You know, they can actively kind of decide to release their scent at nighttime when they're specialized on nocturnal pollinators, for example. And, yeah, as well as the sense of smell, also audible cues become more important at nighttime when your eyes are not the most important sense anymore. Then there's the way open for evolution to develop other senses to fill that gap. And there's all this audible communication of, for example, bats using sound to kind of see the world through sound. And. Yeah, so there's all those senses that become more important at nighttime because during daytime they kind of.

Fall behind this. I don't know how to express that. It's like when the sense of. When the. When sight or visual cues are so important, then sometimes other senses are underdeveloped. We also can talk and hear, but our sense, our eyes are our best sense. And for example, our sense of smell is really bad compared to other animals out there. But, you know, when. When visual cues become less important and other things become much more important. And also there's like, some evidence that points to the idea that maybe we only are able to have this conversation now and to use sound because of nocturnal animals. Because sound communication has evolved several times throughout evolutionary history, but it has evolved way more often in nocturnal traits. So darkness is like a motor of invention for new communication styles. But I mean, still, animals that are active at night do use visual cues. So if they do, then they, for example, need much better eyes than we have. Or adaptations of their eyes to use the very poor light conditions at night better. And one of these adaptations is something that we all know, although most people probably have never thought about it as much. But like when you drive along a road at night and the light of the car will hit some animal's eyes that are sitting somewhere inside the road in the bushes, you will see the ice, like, you know, glooming, reflecting the light back. And that would not happen if the light would hit a human's eyes. Because we don't have that feature that is called tapetum lucidum, which is like reflective layer at the back of the eyes that throws back the light, which enables the light to pass two times.

Through the eye. And so the animals can use low light conditions to get out more visual information of that. So, I mean, we could talk just for hours. Was only about senses of nocturnal animals and about, you know, those adaptations is there's so many animals out there with so many different senses. There's animals who even produce light because they live in the dark. And then making light becomes something that would never be an option for an animal that is active during daytime. So it's really hard to, like, say that's the one thing because there's so many. But I think it helps to just put ourselves into that situation. Imagine ourselves being out at night and thinking about how different the visual information is that we get. And how much other senses become more important.

[Dr. Christina Gessler]

And you give us a glimpse of how little most people know about the nighttime. In 1994, there was a massive power outage in the Los Angeles area, which is a huge metropolitan area in California. And people started calling emergency services reporting that they were seeing something very strange and unidentified in the sky. And you tell us in the book that it's the Milky Way and that you give us the numbers. And it's a rather staggering number of people who can't see the Milky Way at night from where they're lit, where they live. You say it's about a third of all humanity. And that the reason for this is not because where they're located on Earth, that isn't a good viewing spot, but it's because of light pollution.

[Dr. Sophia Kimig]

Yes, that's interesting, right? Because there's not really a. Not good viewing spot for the sky, unless you are in a cave, maybe. But other than that, wherever you are on the surface, you theoretically able to see an awesome night sky with a lot of star constellations and also the Milky Way. Because we are in an outer branch of the spiral of the Milky Way, which is our home galaxy. And when we have a really dark night and a good view because there's not much clouds, then you can see those.

Shimmering like milkish thing on the sky. And there's like millions of people who've never seen it in their lifetime because they live in places where there's so much artificial light around them. So we humans bring so much artificial light to the night that it produces this like sky glow effect. When you're far away from a city and you approach the city at night, you will see it like a dome of light, like spanning over the city. When we're in that area, we usually don't notice it that much, just that we cannot see the stars. But it's so much light that we bring to this naturally dark time of the day that it affects life on earth in a massive way.

[Dr. Christina Gessler]

As I was reading through the animals with different adaptations to help them go about at night, I was thinking about chapter 10, which is called Losing the Night, and it talks about the importance of darkness. And one of the examples you give about why darkness is so important is the sea turtles and that they need to be able to go towards the moon in order to go back into the water. And I was visiting a relative who has a, a place on a small barrier island on the, on the eastern United States. And I went for a walk at sunset just to take some pictures of the sunset. And I had forgotten or perhaps not realized that it was still sea turtle season. And so when the sun went down and I tried to walk back, I could not see any of my landmarks because everybody was required to have black curtains and no public lighting could be lit. So I was in complete darkness. And really my 20 minute walk took three hours. I did find my way, but none of your raccoons or possums or any of your other night dwellers would have been lost for that long.

And it really underscored the importance of darkness and how little time human beings are willing to spend in darkness.

[Dr. Sophia Kimig]

Yeah, but in your defense, evolution gave you the traits of a diurnal species. You know.

We are not made for the night.

That's the deal. I mean, in evolution or in history of life, some turned out to be nocturnal and some have to use the other side of the day. So it's okay that you were blind. Although interestingly, sometimes people realize that they seem much better at nighttime than they thought, because it's like a reflex sometimes that we automatically pull out our smartphone and turn on the light.

Because we feel uncomfortable during the darkness. So it's like an instinct reaction that we turn on light, but that actually blinds us more sometimes because then you have this bright, small light, and everything that is outside of that area that is lit becomes even darker. Because our eyes can always only adapt either to bright or too dark. So if we make it brighter, then everything that is dark becomes even darker. And I find it really interesting sometimes I do that with people. When we do excursions, for example, sometimes we do nighttime exhaustion excursions with people, and then we ask them to turn off all those lights and give themselves some time. You know, like take two, three, four minutes to just stand and adapt yourself to the new condition. And then people are often surprised how much they can actually see under the natural starlight and moonlight because it's obviously not completely dark at night. So, yeah, sometimes we just don't get into the situation anymore to discover that, because we always turn the light on before.

We can find out that we can actually orientate ourselves better than we thought. But, yeah, we're definitely not made for that time of the day. But other animals are, and it's really important for them to have the darkness. And that's due to many things. The turtles that you mentioned, they need the reflection of the light on the water surface so that they know where the water is. Like, they hatch and then they run for their life. You know, it's really, really hard to be a turtle. It's not what you want to be because there's like a thousand of you. You and your mates, your hats on the beach, and then everybody comes to kill you. Like, there's a lot of birds and other animals who prey on those little hatchlings, and it's really tough for them. It's just like one in a thousand that. That survives that, you know, race to the sea. And now imagine you start running for your life because you have to reach water to be safe, at least safer to say, than on the beach. And you, you run as fast as you can or crawl. And then it turns out you just, you know, you went to the wrong direction because you headed towards the light as your instinct told you, because your ancestors have done it for like hundreds and thousands of years. But now there's like a street lamp, you know, somewhere at the beach, and you took the wrong way. And then it's game over. So this just like one example where it's very easy to see how light can distract animals from their pathways and which consequences it can have. But it affects so many species out there, like migrating birds, for example, or we all know the moths that are flying around. Light sources that get distracted. So many nocturnal animals use star constellations or starlight or the position of the moon and other natural light sources at night to find their ways, their ways home, their ways to their winter destinations and so on. And all the artificial light out there distracts their pathways, and that's just orientation. And there's many other issues that are affected. Another big one, for example, are biological rhythms that may also get completely out of their, like, natural rhythm because of all those light sources.

[Dr. Christina Gessler]

And you point out in that section that humans get out of rhythm as well from our indoor dependence on light, that as soon as it starts to get dark, we instinctively turn on lights. We may keep a light going inside all night long. And you point out a number of biological reasons why that's not in our best interest.

[Dr. Sophia Kimig]

Yeah, that's true. I mean, we probably all know the problem of not being able to fall asleep very well or sleeping late because of looking too long on our smartphone screen. And that's not only because, you know, we end up doom scrolling through social media or waste time with things, although we know that we should sleep. It's also because the blue light that is emitted by the screens that we look at is part of the natural daylight spectrum and usually makes us awake. I mean, that's. That's something that we evolved to have, right? That this daylight makes us active and motivated to do things because that's the time of day that we are active, that we roam, that we have to forage and, you know, do all our things. So if we are, if we are facing all this, like, fake information by the artificial life, like, our brain thinks that there's, like, additional daylight, then also, like, our hormones react to that. So instead of.

Like, adjusting to the approaching night and creating the right, like, melanin level and melatonin level and all those processes that we need to have a gentle sleep, we do the opposite and become more awake again. And all those. And for a short period of time, that might not seem to be all that important. But in the long run, it seems that this actually makes us sick. Because there's like, several studies that suggest that different types of cancer or.

Cardiovascular diseases or mental issues like depression and so on actually are influenced by that. So living against our own biological rhythm as diurnal species, through mostly, you know, being active at nighttime, using artificial light can cause a lot of harms to our health.

[Dr. Christina Gessler]

At the end of most chapters, you give us a fun Fact in the chapter that we're mostly drawing from, there's more information throughout the book about how artificial light is changing the planet and affecting all species. In this chapter, specifically chapter 10, the fun fact is about.

When you want to drink milk at night to fall asleep. How effective that could be seems to depend on what time of day the cow was milked.

[Dr. Sophia Kimig]

Yeah, I mean, sometimes humans forget, or maybe want to forget that drinking cow milk is not like a natural thing that much because, you know, this is breast milk that the cow produces for their own offspring, like humans do. They are mammals, like humans are. And as all mammals, that's what we have in common as mammals, among other features, is that we produce milk for our offspring. And as humans. Cows are diurnal species and also they're like wild ancestors are. So they have the same rhythm that our hormones follow. They have that as well. So when the nighttime comes, they also produce more melatonin to, you know, get prepared for sleep. So when they are milked at nighttime, then you will find those in the milk. And then it has this like, calming down effect when we consume it. And there has been a study that showed that it even had like the same like sedative effect or, you know, calming down effect than actual like, you know, tranquilizer medication has. So that. That's quite interesting. And it's just one very tiny example of how many things might be out there that are related to the nighttime that we have no clue of. Like if we. I have no idea why, how they found that, if this was like a coincidence or, you know, byproduct of some other thing or if someone actually thought about it and checked it? But how many things are there that we never thought about just because we think in this daytime patterns? How many interesting cool creatures out there that we haven't met yet or interesting behaviors that we don't know about because they only become relevant when you're a nocturnal animal and we haven't looked into them. And yeah, it's just somehow.

It kind of seems weird to me that there's this whole universe, this entire parallel world, and it's not in some super remote place. We don't have to fly to Mars to answer that. It's actually right in front of our doorstep and still we don't know. Know all those things. But it's also really exciting because it's like such a promising.

Field, you know, such a promising opportunity to, to just to uncover more of the natural world.

[Dr. Christina Gessler]

As I'm listening to this, I'm thinking that it has a logical sense. The mom cow would want the baby cow to be quiet and go to sleep. So having.

[Dr. Sophia Kimig]

I. I think every mother can probably relate to that feeling.

[Dr. Christina Gessler]

Yeah, that's where I'm drawing the logic from. So it would make sense that she somehow adapted to make the evening meal sedative to the baby cows in a healthy way. There's so many animals and, and habitats that we go into in the book and we won't have time for all of them. But since another one of my favorite fun facts is when we learn about sticky feet, I'm going to ask that we go to chapter three, which is where we learn about dormice. Can you tell us about dormice?

[Dr. Sophia Kimig]

So dormice are their own.

Group because usually people assume that they are like rodents, but they're not and they are really, really old. Like it's one of the oldest like mammal types that we have on the planet that are still around. And I actually don't know how many species are there in other places. In Germany there are three, but I don't know how many there are in the U.S. but yeah, they are really interesting because many of them hibernate and that's something that is really hard to put yourself into that idea. I can never imagine how it would be to sleep through half of the year. And yeah, there are little furry creatures roaming around our gardens. Depending on the species, they feed on plants or sometimes also on small insects.

And yeah, I don't know, there's. What else.

[Dr. Christina Gessler]

Will you tell us about this special adaptation they have where they, they can make their feet sticky?

[Dr. Sophia Kimig]

You mean like the fun fact that they have this.

Yeah, they, they kind of produce a natural glue. You know, it's. We know from other creatures that can walk up, like geckos, for example, or other animals that can walk along very smooth surfaces where we would just fall down, drop down. They usually use tiny little hooks so they're not actually sticking, they rather.

Attaching themselves towards the surfaces. But the.

Common dormouse or edible dormers seems to, yeah, really produce a kind of glue that helps it to. An adhesive, you know, that may helps it to stick to those surfaces.

[Dr. Christina Gessler]

And you take us into why a whole species of them are called the edible dormice because for a while they were a delicacy. So even though they're only 2 ounces, they were cooked and served. In chapter four we get to why are animals nocturnal and what do dinosaurs have to do with it? And we really get more into the evolution of night dwellers and how far back these Adaptations go we, we don't have a lot of time left, but are there anything you want to share with us about what dinosaurs do have to do with this?

[Dr. Sophia Kimig]

Yeah, it's interesting sometimes when you look into a topic and then you realize that you start with reading about some weird little pen shrew that lives in a nocturnal rainforest, lives nocturnally in a rainforest and drinks palm wine and gets drunk base it at night and then three hours later you find yourself reading about dinosaur evolution. And that's a very interesting and cool thing about biology that I really like. And the connection might not seem that obvious, but we have to look at the time that mammals and that mammals evolved like our ancestors. And many mammals evolved in a time where dinosaurs like dominated almost all the ecosystems on planet Earth and they were mostly dino species. So mammals kind of had to evolve in, in their shadow. And that might actually be the reason why still with mammals like the way larger proportion is nocturnal, we as the active mammals are in the minority. So probably for a very long time, for several millions of years actually the early mammals coexisted with dinosaurs. But most of them were small hairy little creatures, maybe rodent like or beaver like. And they have been already quite similar some, some species, but most of them were rather small and DIY and it's nocturnal. Sorry. And we have like adaptation that makes us, we as mammals that makes us very suitable for living at night, which is that we have a, we can hold a stable body temperature. And also fur came into the, into the world with mammals, you know, before all the other creatures had rather like smooth skin or scale or feathers in the first dinosaurs. But the mammals develop fur and this really strong fast metabolism which made them perfectly suitable to survive at the cooler dark hours. And we have no idea how the world would look like today if the dinosaurs wouldn't have got extinct. But after that, you know, there was just like, it's called adaptive radiation.

There was a huge open spot, many ecological niches became suddenly available. And then.

The mammals started taking over the world and became the most successful new group of life on the planet, dominating most ecosystems today. But everything began in those dark, shadowy small areas like under some giant's feet and you know, in the shadow of a very different branch of life in the history of Earth. And today even they're the last descendants, you know, of dinosaurs that still roam the world. Out there are the birds and they still use today. So it's kind of.

Yeah, follows their ancestors history that they were the one inhabiting or no. Yeah, I don't know. Owning the daytime.

[Dr. Christina Gessler]

And there is a fun fact there that I will leave for listeners to dive into the book to find out. It's a good one. The final animal I'd like to take a few moments to talk about is the owl. The COVID of the book has a beautiful picture of an owl and throughout the book there are a number of illustrations, including the owl. Again, you tell us in this section that there are two hundred and forty species of owls worldwide and that there are about 13% of those living in Europe. And you bring us into a number of interesting things about owls, specifically taking us into a study of barn owls and talking to us about the importance of owls for, for farmers and the benefits that owls can give that mean that farmers don't have to use rodent poisons.

[Dr. Sophia Kimig]

Yeah, that was a very interesting project. Also because of the political dimension, you know, we all know that there's this very long lasting and severe conflict between.

Israel and Palestina. And of course over this long time that affects every, you know, every person living in that area. Also when you're not a political person or you know, directly involved in the conflict, I mean those are all just most of the people, just ordinary people living their lives, but still there's a lot of.

Yeah, anger and hatred also between the two opponents, you know, as a result of that very sad history. And interestingly, this owl brought a little bit of connection and friendship to this area. That.

Is a very nice side effect of that project. And the idea was scientists thought that.

Because poisoning rats produces so much collateral damage, there's some studies that for example, every fifth animal that dies of those poisons is not a rodent. You know, so this, there's like so many victims of this policy of using rodenticides in agriculture, for example, that were not intended to be killed, but yeah, are just a collateral damage. So they started a project where they worked together with local farmers and they.

Tried to make their area where their fields are more suitable for barn owls by providing, for example, nesting sites. And the very cool result was that they could get partly rid, completely rid of that, you know, use of.

Sorry, toxins and.

Poisons. Because the, the old took over that job. You know, they started feeding on all those mice that were destroying the, the yield. And yeah, that's how, you know, there was like a win win for the farmers and also for all the other animals around. And the nice extra effect was that this was so successful that farmers across the border, you know, started working together. So this was then.

Yeah, and became an international cooperation on that issue of saving local wildlife by reducing the use of poison in local agriculture. So sometimes.

Those things or, you know, sometimes science or studies on animals can have surprising side effects, apart from the practical aspects about it in this case.

[Dr. Christina Gessler]

And there's a section in the owl studies that takes us into how they can work cooperatively to help rear each other's young, which I found very heartening. I live in a country where we don't have a lot of childcare.

The fun fact there is about the owl's head rotation, that they can turn their head 270 degrees. And scientists were very curious about this, because if humans rotate their neck too far, they risk damaging their artery and having a stroke. What is so different about the owl's vertebrae and their neck that allows them to do this?

[Dr. Sophia Kimig]

Yeah, that's very interesting, right? Because sometimes those are those kind of questions that you never thought about, but when you hear them, you think like, yeah, wait, how. How do they do that? Like, how is it possible that if we would tilt our head like that, we would just fall from. From the branch? You know, we would have a stroke and possibly die? So how is it possible that they. That they have this movement? And also an interesting aspect is why do they need it? Because let's. Well, let's start with how they do it. They have a different anatomy. Like, for example, when. When children look at a giraffe, they would always assume that they have more of these, you know, bones in their neck. I don't know at the moment what the English name of that type of bone is. You know, we have seven of them. And sometimes when you look at large animals like a giraffe, people assume that they would have lots more because they are so big, but actually they don't. And then there comes the old. And they actually doubled the number so that they become, you know, more flexible. But that's not the only adjustment. They also have the nerves have more space to move around. Like, if you would imagine you have a cable at your desk that you would put into a tube so that it's not so visible. And the tube has a bigger diameter so that it can be used more, moved a little more flexibly, like twisted a little bit without being squeezed. So, yeah, there's. That's mostly their spine and this, like, protection of their nerves that makes sure that nothing happens to them. And the interesting thing is that they need to.

Be able to turn the head that much because they cannot move their eyes. Like a very common thing for us, that you could sit in a library and watch someone else and see whether the person is actually reading their book and studying or maybe looking out of the window, dreaming, or maybe looking at you. Because we can move our eyes very well. But.

The eyes of owls are like, stiff in their head. So if they want to look around, they have to move their head.

[Dr. Christina Gessler]

There's so much in the book about the animals and how they are so important to the planet, how they take care of the planet, how they take care of each other. We're starting to come to the end of our time together, and I want to take a few moments to consider some of the wisdom that you give us in the epilogue. You say we look at the stars to be filled with wonder. You take us into you going outside to spend the night and to camp. You consider our fear of darkness within, our tendency to avoid darkness without. And you invite us into how time in nature is really helpful, not only to you, but to human beings in general. Can you share some of that with us, please?

[Dr. Sophia Kimig]

Yeah. The more I read about the night, the more I realized that we do not only underestimate the nights. Important for life on earth out there and for nocturnal life, but also for ourselves, because we are always so focused on the day, because everything that we have to do happens there. You know, we go to work, we do our chores, we. That's where life takes place mostly. But.

If we wouldn't have the contrasting program for sleeping, resting, calming down, having time to process thoughts, we also couldn't exist. And there's a lot of.

Culture, art, literature, things that only exist because people dreamt about things or, you know, took the time to process all the things that we discovered during daytime, calm down and take the time to.

Yeah, kind of assemble the things in a new way. Like you. You pick you. You see all those things during daytime. You get your tiny informations, and then you create something new out of this information. And for that, it takes a certain peace of mind and a certain time. So even for the creatures that chose.

I know it's not really an active decision, but, you know, evolutionary spoken chose the bright side of the day. Even for us, nighttime is a really important time. And I think that we miss out a lot if we don't take that time for ourselves, for our mental health and for our physical health. But also, we just miss so many wonders. I think, like, in my hometown where I live, there's a forest very close to my apartment. And in summertime, you can see fireflies there. And like, standing in. In this forest in the middle of all Those dancing lights flying around me as if there was some certain kind of magic happen is one of the most. Yeah. Wonderful experiences that I have ever had. And I think the nighttime holds many of those very promising and exciting experiences. And we miss them if we don't try, you know, if we never experience the nighttime, if we never spend a nice warm summer night under the open sky or watch the fireflies dancing or, you know, spend a long night talking with friends, looking at stars and trying to find funny patterns and stars, or there's just this entire parallel world out there that is waiting for us to explore it.

[Dr. Christina Gessler]

My final question is, what do you hope this episode will spark for listeners?

[Dr. Sophia Kimig]

Oh, that's a tough question.

I mean, of course I'm always happy when people read the things that I wrote about because, I mean, there are so many topics out there. And if I take the time and effort to do all the research to write a book, then it's because something really fascinated me. And I mean.

You know, scientists, you know, when we are fascinated by something, then we are so excited about it. We really want everybody else to be. To get excited about it as well. So I hope that some people will find that this is an interesting thing to read about. But I think for me, the most important thing, or the thing that I hope the most usually when I talk about those things in public is that people would get at least a tiny glimpse of this, like.

Huge joy that I experience when I. Yeah, when I have the pleasure to experience nature, you know, it's whether it's watching, watching those fireflies dancing or whatever else experience you have in nature, it can just be so fulfilling and bring so much joy to your life and also.

Calming down to the mind that I really hope that it may inspire some people to find that excitement, joy, but also peace that nature brings to me that my words, my writing can motivate people and bring those great emotions and experiences to their lives as well.

[Dr. Christina Gessler]

Thank you so much for joining us, Dr. King, and sharing from your book Living Night on the Secret Wonders of Wildlife After Dark. You've been listening to the academic life. Please join us again.

[Dr. Sophia Kimig]

Sam.