Jun 13, 2026
This week on The Backyard Naturalists, Debbie Foster, Laurie Horne, and Chris take a playful trip through the animal kingdom with a trivia-style episode all about the names for male and female animals. Some are familiar — like a buck and doe, bull and cow, or stallion and mare — while others are far less obvious, including cob and pen for swans, jack and jill for opossums, and even cock and hen for lobsters.
Along the way, the conversation wanders in true Backyard Naturalists fashion, from international listeners in places like Vietnam, Iraq, Uzbekistan, and Zambia to jellyfish at the Tampa aquarium, a “passel of possums,” and whether anyone could ever win a Jeopardy category devoted entirely to Young Sheldon, Tombstone, and O Brother, Where Art Thou? It’s a lighthearted, funny, and surprisingly educational episode that proves nature vocabulary can be just as wild as the animals themselves.
In this episode, you’ll hear about:
Animal-name trivia for ants, bears, coyotes, deer, donkeys, elephants, foxes, goats, geese, horses, jellyfish, lobsters, mallards, opossums, pigs, seahorses, squirrels, swans, tigers, and zebras
The difference between familiar terms like boar and sow, drake and hen, and billy and nanny
Why some animals share naming patterns across species
A few surprising terms, including vixen, cob, pen, sea mare, and sea stallion
A fun detour into group names, including a passel of possums
The podcast’s growing international audience and a warm invitation to visit Backyard Birds in Matthews, North Carolina
Whether you already know your ganders from your geese or you’re just here for the laughs, this episode is a fun reminder that the natural world is full of curious details hiding in plain sight.