Global News Podcast - The Happy Pod: Time's up for monkey on the run

Episode Date: February 3, 2024

This week, the adventures and safe recapture of a runaway monkey in Scotland. Also: how scientists tracked down four previously undiscovered penguin colonies. And, the "Motorbike Grandma" riding the length and breadth of China.

Hello, this is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service, with reports and analysis from across the world. The latest news seven days a week. BBC World Service podcasts are supported by advertising. If you're hearing this, you're probably already listening to BBC's award-winning news podcasts. But did you know that you can listen to them without ads? Get current affairs podcasts like Thank you. Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts. Hi, I'm Una Chaplin, and I'm the host of a new podcast called Hollywood Exiles. It tells the story of how my grandfather, Charlie Chaplin,

and many others were caught up in a campaign to root out communism in Hollywood. Hollywood Exiles, from CBC Podcasts and the BBC World Service. Find it wherever you get your podcasts. This is The Happy Pod from the BBC World Service. I'm Jackie Leonard, and in this edition uploaded on Saturday the 3rd of February, we need help to find this monkey. Woo! Woo!

If you've heard him, please give us a call. The Simeon saga of King Yusy Kong, the macaque monkey that escaped from a Scottish wildlife park and captured world attention. Some positive news from the Antarctic. We have a couple of satellites that whiz around the Earth, and what scientists do is they rummage through those pictures looking for patches of poo. Because where there's poo there are penguins. Also in this podcast. People online have been

inspired by her courage, her sense of adventure and her attitude that you're never too old to learn something new. The Chinese woman who's become known as the motorbike granny, also the red-legged frog in Oregon and the superhuman efforts to protect it. And we begin with the adventures of Honshu, the Japanese snow monkey that escaped from a wildlife park in the Scottish Highlands and who, for more than five days, was the subject of a big search operation and quite a lot of internet amusement. Harry Bly has been following the saga. Woof! Woof! If you were trying to catch a monkey,

you might think of baiting a trap with a banana and waiting with a large net. The Highland Wildlife Park instead deployed drones fitted with thermal imaging cameras to scour the local area for the fugitive and made this appeal on national radio. Hello, my name's Dr Kirsty Graham. We need help to find this monkey. If you've heard him, please give us a call. But let's go from the beginning. The Japanese macaque, or snow monkey, named Honshu,

found his way out of the enclosure last Sunday morning. Later that day, in the nearby village of King Craig, there was a sighting. No way! This is... This is insane. I need a bird feeder. He's going to trash that feeder. Who cares? It's so awesome.

When the monkey was spotted in Carl Nagel's garden, three and a half kilometres up the road from the wildlife park. I was awoken by a call from my daughter saying, there's a monkey on your street, Dad, because it had been seen on a local Facebook group post in a garden across the street. And I was like, what are the chances? Came to my patio window and was indeed shocked to see a monkey going for my nuts. Online, people went bananas for the story of the runaway monkey.

One social media user created an AI-generated picture of a monkey wearing a Scottish tartan kilt, a woolen cardigan and running away from police officers. Gal Badahi is a research fellow at the University of St Andrews and an expert in primate behaviour. They're similar to chimpanzees and humans as primates in that they live in large social groups. So why did Honshu find the need to run away? Group dynamics can vary a lot depending on the time of year, what kind of conflicts or relationships are happening. So I don't know exactly what caused this particular escape.

It might have something to do with relationships going on in the group. It might be that he was just a bit curious. Experts at the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, which runs the park, say fights are not uncommon at this time of year, which is breeding season. On Thursday morning, five days after the macaque went missing, news came in. BBC News at two o'clock. A monkey that had been missing in the highlands for more than five days has been recaptured. The Japanese macaque... The newspaper The Daily Star ran the headline,

Wild monkey on a bender rescued after five days on the loose in Scotland. Honshu had been found alive just over three kilometres from the park in yet another person's garden. This time it was that of Stephanie Bunyan. He looked a little bit sad. He wasn't worried, just interested I suppose looking in. I don't know if he wanted to come in in the warm or not. Stephanie had accidentally lured Honshu to her bird feeder after leaving leftover Yorkshire puddings out overnight. Just 10 minutes after calling the wildlife park,

drone operators arrived at her house, followed by park keepers. Honshu was shot with a tranquiliser dart, sedated and taken back to the park's vet. After dodging heat-seeking drones, rangers with nets and eating bird feed and Yorkshire puddings, and inspiring some very creative artwork, Honshu's adventure had finally come to an end. That report by Harry Bly. And from one elusive monkey to quite a lot of new penguins.

Four new colonies of emperor penguins have been identified in Antarctica, and scientists believe that means they now know the whereabouts of all the world's remaining breeding pairs. Here's our science correspondent, Jonathan Amos. The Antarctic is big, and it's remote too, so it's not an easy place to go and walk and look for penguins. So you do it via satellite, and they're constantly taking pictures of the Antarctic.

And what scientists do is they rummage through those pictures, looking for patches of poo, Jackie, basically. So from about, so from several hundred kilometres up, you can't see the individual penguin, but if a large group of them huddle together and they start defecating on the white ice, then that brown patch will become apparent to a satellite. So that's essentially how they find these colonies of emperor penguins, by looking for poo.

And that's what the scientists have done. They've been looking and looking and looking, and they've found a further four, which brings the total to 66. Now, it's likely, if you look at the distribution of those colonies, that they've found pretty much all of them, certainly all of the significant nesting sites around the Antarctic. And this discovery, is it good news? What can we do with this knowledge?

It's good news that we're finding penguins and continue to find them, these emperors. But emperors, they're kind of an icon of climate change in the sense that they're perhaps the penguin species that is most vulnerable to the losses of ice in a warming world. Okay Jonathan this is the happy pod tell me something happy. You can't do anything about something unless you can measure it and knowing where all of these colonies are is a boon to conservation. The key thing here I think that we're learning about the emperors is that they're quite dynamic and adaptive. So if they get into trouble, they will look for new sites. They're not dumb. They don't sort of bash their heads against the ice wall. They will go looking for new nesting sites. seeing certain groupings find new places to do the breeding.

There's a famous one called Halley Bay, which at one stage was, I think, the second largest emperor colony in the Antarctic, completely wiped out in 2016. And they've finally found some ice where they're setting up a pioneer colony, a new one. So that is good news. We should be happy about that, Jackie, that

emperors, if they can find a way, they will find a way. That was Jonathan Amos. Now think motorbikes, the freedom of the open road and cool rebellion. And to the pantheon of biker legends, the mavericks and the free spirits, it's time to add Liu Xueying, a woman who has become something of a sensation in China, where she is also known as the motorbike grandma. Our China media analyst, Kerry Allen, takes up the story. This is Liu Xueying. She's 62 years old, and she's become a huge sensation online in China because of her adventures travelling all over the country by herself on her motorbike. She's originally from a small village on the outskirts of Boizhou in central Anhui province. And she only got her motorbike licence for the first time in 2021, just before

her 60th birthday. 2021 was a year that many of us remember as being the middle of the global pandemic. It was a time when people all over the world were discovering new hobbies, drawing, baking, gardening. Liu Xueying's decision to learn how to ride a motorbike came at a time when China had strict zero Covid policies in place. People were nervous about catching COVID-19 in public places and on public transport, as one case could lead to huge communities of people being locked down. So you might think that her decision to learn this new hobby was a way of feeling free at a time when much of the country was feeling very much under lockdown. But she's told media how when she was younger,

it was always her dream to learn how to ride a motorbike. She'd often looked at other people's bikes and thought, wow, that's really cool. But she simply not had the time to learn. And then before she knew it, she'd had four children and life had simply got in the way. When she first got her license, she kept it secret from her kids, but then decided to tell them that she was going to ride from Zhejiang in the east of the country, all the way down to Guangdong in the south. That's more than a thousand kilometers if you travel directly. But she wanted to see lots of cities along the way, places she'd heard and read about. She said her children had been a little bit worried, but she'd said, don't panic She said her children had been a little bit worried,

but she'd said, don't panic, I'll ride slowly. And she's told media, I've got very strong legs. And she was hooked. Within the first year, she'd managed to travel more than 20,000 kilometers. That's more than 12,000 miles. This is her describing some of the places she saw. And since then, she's only broadened her horizons. Her biggest journey to date has been to travel from Zhejiang, again in the east, all the way to Tibet. If you looked at a map of China, this is pretty much going from the far east of the country all the way through to the west.

And she said that the whole journey was 12,000 kilometres and she'd managed to make it to Lhasa, one of the highest cities in terms of altitude in the world. People online have been inspired by her courage, her sense of adventure and her attitude that you're never too old to learn something new. She's been given the nickname Motorbike Grandma and people on the popular social network Weibo have called her cool, sassy and cute. She's won a legion of fans and has told media how she's met other riders along the way. So far, she's covered two-thirds of the country

and seen more than 100 different cities, so there's plenty more terrain for her to cover. And Liu Xueying says she wants to see more of the country while she still can, saying that riding a motorbike makes her feel happy, free and like she's following her dreams. Kerry Allen on the story of Liu Xueying. Now, some of the week's other notable stories. You might remember that in the last edition of the Happy Pod, we mentioned the Japanese craft that landed on the moon, but which came down in such a way that its solar panels couldn't generate

electricity. Well, hold your horses, because since then it has managed to resume operations. It's thought the craft's solar cells are working again due to a shift in lighting conditions that allowed it to catch sunlight. Also, a new report that suggests playing a musical instrument or singing can help keep the brain healthy in older age. A report in the International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry suggests that practicing and reading music may help sustain good memory and the ability to solve complex tasks. And we've talked before on the Happy Pod about the possibilities of the gene

splicing technique CRISPR. Now a small study in New Zealand, the Netherlands and the UK has shown a life-changing reduction in symptoms of angiodema, a genetic disorder that causes painful and unpredictable swelling attacks. It's hoped that the therapy also has big potential for treating other genetic conditions too. Well done to the users of a sauna boat that came to the rescue after a Tesla plunged into a fjord in Norway. Yes, a sauna boat is apparently a thing. The car sank into the water in Oslo.

The driver and the passenger were pulled from the chilly water and were able to warm up in the sauna afterwards. And history was made on Tuesday at the spectacular Up Helly Arr fire festival in Shetland, Scotland. It's part of a series of events to mark the end of the Yule season and to celebrate Shetland's Norse heritage, involving torch-lit processions and the burning of a replica Viking galley. And this year, for the first time,

women and girls were part of the lead Jarl squad through the main town, Lerwick. Jenna Moore is 16. I'm very grateful to be able to participate in the squad this year with lots of family and friends. It's a very good day, sun's shining, so we're all happy. I'm quite aware of the historic significance of it. I'm very grateful as my granddad was Yarra in 1982 and now dad 2024. I'm very grateful to be participating in the squad this year. It is the biggest fire festival in Europe. It is stunning and I will share a link to some pictures.

Still to come in this podcast, the woman blazing a trail as commentator and match analyst at the Africa Cup of Nations. I started out playing football as the only girl in the boys team. So those spaces for me don't intimidate me. I hold my own because I know that I've got something to offer. World Football at AFCON. World Football at AFCON brings you all the drama and excitement of the Africa Cup of Nations Festival of Football. Join me, John Bennett, and guests every matchday for the latest reaction and analysis of this year's Africa Cup of Nations in Ivory Coast.

All the action on and off the pitch. World football at Afghan from the BBC World Service. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts. If you're hearing this, you're probably already listening to BBC's award-winning news podcasts. But did you know that you can listen to them without ads? Get current affairs podcasts like Global News, AmeriCast and The Global Story, plus other great BBC podcasts from history to comedy to true crime, all ad-free. Simply subscribe to BBC Podcast Premium on Apple Podcasts

or listen to Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts. To Portland, Oregon in the US now, where the days are getting longer and the weather a little warmer and a young frog's fancy turns to thoughts of reproduction. And for the red-legged frog, and yes, I will share a picture, it isn't that easy. To get from the woodland where they usually live to the still water where they lay their eggs, they have to cross an increasingly busy highway.

Tim Gresseth of the Oregon Wildlife Foundation told us about the people trying to help. One individual in particular was out for an evening stroll and noticed these frogs for the very first time. And this person became extremely concerned about the fact that the frogs were on the road and then discovered that they were moving to a highway and attempting to make the crossing of this highway with lots of traffic. So this local resident got some local agency people together and said, what's the solution here? And they struck on this solution, which is to band together a group of local citizens

who would monitor for the movement of these frogs. And then they would start collecting the frogs in buckets and drive the frogs across Highway 30 to the wetland and release them there. Now, these frogs make a return journey two to three weeks after they finish their mating. And so the volunteers bring them back up into the forest area and release them there. You, though, Tim, you want to build a tunnel. Tell us a bit more about what that would mean, how big it would be, how difficult it will be to get it built. So putting a crossing underneath the highway is a solution that we've hit on. It's not an insignificant task to both get the permissions

to construct something like we're talking about, but also to make it happen from an engineering perspective. And we know where it needs to be located. Now it's the heavy lift is actually the design, make sure it's something that is conducive for frog use, and then raising the money needed to actually finish engineering and then get it constructed. The other thing that we know is that we have very passionate people, and I expect them not only to be donors, but to be advocates for this crossing. I think it's going to be hard for agencies to ignore the need and I do believe we'll get this done. I do hope the frogs appreciate the effort that you're putting in for them. Now, I have to ask this as someone who has pets myself and I buy things for them and then they

turn up their noses. If you build a tunnel, are you absolutely sure that they'll use it? This is not a novel solution. So across the United States, there are somewhere between 150 and 160 passages like this that have been constructed for a variety of different amphibian and reptile species, there is documented use by amphibians and reptiles. So we know if we build it correctly, that it will get used. How much money will it cost to get something like this constructed? It's probably going to be somewhere between one and a half to two million dollars to complete engineering and design for the structure.

And the estimated cost for installation is probably somewhere between $8 and $10 million. So we're talking altogether about $12 million to raise. Wow, that is such a lot of money. But if you're successful, it saves this special little frog. Absolutely, absolutely. And make a lot of people happy. So you have a lot of work to do, a lot of fundraising to do. If you do get it built, will you invite us to the inauguration? Happily, we'll do that. Absolutely. We'd love to have you there.

We are so there. That was Tim Gresseth of the Oregon Wildlife Foundation. And that story came to us courtesy of listener Crystal True Love. So thank you, Crystal. Now, if you're on a ventilator, you are susceptible to dangerous acquired infections because you can't just cough your airways clear when you need to. And that bothered Indian innovator Nitesh Jhangir. So he came up with a system harnessing some very clever artificial intelligence to prevent the problem arising. And for that, he has been recognised by the Royal Academy of Engineering as a trailblazer. He told us about his inspiration. I was born in a really remote area of a state in Rajasthan. So the nearest hospital to us

was around 180 kilometres away. So I've seen a lot of people in my family around my village losing their life because they don't get access to good quality treatment on time. And that's what led me to get into the field of healthcare, where I feel that technology and healthcare can come together and increase access to high quality healthcare to everyone. What was the problem that you were trying to fix? There were many patients who were coming to the ICU who were on ventilator, but losing their lives because they were acquiring a deadly infection

from the ICU called ventilator-associated pneumonia, which is the most common and the most deadly hospital-acquired infection responsible for more than a million deaths. And that's where I saw that this is something which is secondary, should not happen. And what, as an engineer, as a technologist, we can do to reduce this problem as much as possible. OK, so what did you come up with? So we came up with this device, we call it VAC care, which is world's only automated device which can remove excessive saliva and secretions from patients

who are on ventilator while doing mouthwash. We are using quite advanced AI algorithms because if it is done more than what is required, it can lead to suction-induced injury. So more is bad, less is also bad. And by doing this, it reduces chances of acquiring this deadly infection quite significantly. Now, the Royal Academy of Engineering has described you, Nitesh, as a trailblazer.

What does that mean for you? Organisations like Royal Academy is enabling us to reach to more and more people and enhance our impact. Our products have already impacted thousands of lives positively. Right now, majorly our operations are in India, but we are entering into US, UK and European market along with a big focus on sub-Saharan Africa. So we can ensure that every baby born, every patient who is in ICU would receive the gold standard care regardless of where they are born. Everybody should receive the same care, rather they are at Oxford or they are in a remote part of Uganda or India. Nitesh Jangir in Bangalore.

The ocean is endlessly astonishing, and even now, remarkably little of it has been explored by humans. That's where the RV Falkor II comes in. It's a research ship run by the Schmidt Ocean Institute, which is sending an underwater robot to depths of 4,500 metres. And it's already yielding amazing results, like the recent discovery of four new species of deep-sea octopus. And you can watch its discoveries live. Dr Jyotika Vermaai, Executive Director of the Schmidt Ocean Institute, told my colleague Amol Rajan about the RV Falco 2. It's 110 meters in length and it's about seven stories tall so it's a massive floating laboratory basically it's got

state-of-the-art equipment on board over 200 square meters of lab space and dozens of scientific sensors and, as you mentioned, our underwater robot, ROV Sebastian. ROV stands for Remotely Operated Vehicle. So lots of capabilities and we offer it at no cost to scientists from around the world to conduct their research and test cutting-edge marine technology. And when you're pursuing parts of our planet which are unknown what are your aims? Is your aim to sort of see what you find out or do you have a suspicion and intuition that you might find out specific things and you go after those things? The ocean is a huge area of our planet. It covers 71% of the surface of earth and it's mostly unknown. Only

about 5% has really been explored and so so, as you mentioned, there's countless new marine species out there. There's landforms we've not yet even seen by the human eye. So our aim is to boldly explore our unknown ocean. Just tell us what this vessel actually does. So you'd send it, it's vast, I had no idea it was so big. You send it into the murky depths. And how does it transmit the information back? What kind of information does it get you?

So we have the research vessel. And then off the research vessel, we deploy the underwater robot. And it's tethered to the vessel. And so we have a great communication system on board the vessel. And it sends back video images. And these video images are actually transmitted live so anyone anywhere in the world with an internet access can watch at the same time as the scientists who are on board and see for the first time for the first time for humans

some of these places and discover as the scientists narrate, what they're seeing. It's amazing. It is indeed. And that was Dr Jyotika Vermaai, Executive Director of the Schmidt Ocean Institute. And you can see the live stream on the Schmidt Institute YouTube channel. The Africa Cup of Nations Football Championship is currently underway in Ivory Coast and it's been full of surprises so far. History has been made both on and off the pitch and one of the groundbreakers is South African Amanda Dlamini. She used to be a player herself and has become the first woman to commentate at AFCON. She's been speaking to Audrey Brown.

What motivated me a lot was the fact that there are these existing stereotypes back home that football players are not educated or we don't like to read or we don't like to go to school. So I think it was very important for me to change the narrative. And I went above and beyond just media training. I had to read books. I had to read newspapers. If I read newspapers, it was not necessarily the back page of sports. I'd go into finances and just read how you construct sentences. And it was important to me to try and change the narrative. Now, you're the first woman to do commentary at a men's African Cup of Nations. How has that gone down? Because we know that

those spaces are quite closely guarded and lots of people don't like being told things by women. Sure. It's been a long time coming, to be honest, because like you say, there are certain barriers that women have had to overcome in the sports space in entirety. And one of which still exists is an opinion from a female in the sporting space, especially football. One, women are not paid equally as well in football spaces. So who would want to listen to a woman speak football? But for me, I've been in spaces a lot of times where I've just been the only girl. I started out playing football

as the only girl in the boys' team. So those spaces for me don't intimidate me. I hold my own because I know that I've got something to offer. And I've just trusted the process that at the right time, someone will have to step up and it would be important

that whoever gets that opportunity, someone who's had to go through all the stages of what it's like to be an only woman, probably in the male-dominated space. Once you just hold your own and you really do your research, you prepare well, they start respecting actually what you have to bring on the park. It's no longer just, oh, no, we accommodate her because she's a woman and she's coming to add a female voice. But once you actually know what you're talking about, that's when they start respecting you, not accommodating you anymore. So tell us about the memorable moments for you at Afcon Sofa. Sure. It has to be, I guess, the fans, man. I am so in love with the fans. Even just the city that we're at, San Pedro, the town that we're at,

it's no longer just a town that belongs to people of Cote d'Ivoire. It's a Morocco town because the Moroccans are everywhere. So the fans are really bored, you know, the fire and the passion at the stadiums. It's just a thing of bringing people together and I'm just so happy to be part of it. Amanda Dlamini. And that's it from us for now. But we will be back next week. However, it'll be one day later. And here's Celia Hatton to explain why. Sometimes to understand what's really going on inside China, it helps to look at the numbers. For a special edition of the Global

News podcast, just in time for the Lunar New Year, I've gathered eight numbers to understand China and some amazing people to explain why those digits matter. From nine years of falling marriage rates. It's becoming more difficult, especially if you're a woman, to get a divorce. That's another reason that marriage is no longer so appealing. To China's 7.2 million empty apartments. There's a lot of apartment and buildings they just build there and maybe somebody buy it but no one actually live in it. That's eight numbers to understand China coming next week. You'll be able to find it by searching for the Global News Podcast or wherever you get

your BBC podcasts. Thank you, Celia. And the happy pod will be back one day later. If you would like to say hello to us or suggest a story, please do. Our address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. This edition was mixed by Jack Graysmark. The producers were Anna Murphy and Haring Bly. Our editor is Karen Martin. I'm Jackie Leonard. And until next time, one day later, remember, goodbye. If you're hearing this, you're probably already listening to BBC's award-winning news podcasts. But did you know that you can listen to them without ads? Get current affairs podcasts like Global News, AmeriCast and The Global Story, plus other great BBC podcasts from history to comedy to true crime, all ad-free. Simply subscribe to BBC Podcast Premium on Apple Podcasts

or listen to Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts.