Barbs. Spurs. Stinks. Scutes. Shrieks. Fashion. Drama. Animal behaviorist, evolutionary biologist, Cal State Long Beach professor, and your new favorite Zoohoplologist, Dr. Ted Stankowich, divulges about putting your dukes up or curling into a ball so you don’t die. Either/or, sometimes both. I went to his lab down at California State Long Beach, for a tour and a chat about armadillos, skunks, pangolins, horned lizards, wombats, coyotes, kit foxes, poodles, porcupines, tigers, deer and the will to keep living.

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Visit Dr. Stankowich’s Mammal Lab and follow him on Instagram, Bluesky, and Google Scholar

A donation went to the Pangolin Crisis Fund

Links to things we discussed:

Is there a fish alarm cue? Affirming evidence from a wild study

Attenuation and recovery of an avoidance response to a chemical antipredator cue in an invasive fish: implications for use as a repellent in conservation

CoyoteVest Review 2026: An Expert’s Breakdown

The Dog That’s Famous for Not Wanting to Be Eaten by a Coyote

Two programs for use of aversive conditioning to manage bold urban coyotes

Killdeer faking injury

Farting as a defence against unspeakable dread

Titrating the Smell of Fear: Initial Evidence for Dose-Invariant Behavioral, Physiological, and Neural Responses

“Flood the zone with shit”: How misinformation overwhelmed our democracy