Madeleine Finlay
speaker
2,527 appearances
37 recordings
2 series
first heard Apr 2026
last heard 3d ago
Madeleine Finlay’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 37 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 8.
Appearances
You know, these are creatures that are really sort of derided, both terrestrial slugs and sea slugs.
And I think what the leaf sheep does is that it proves that they do not deserve this reputation.
They are helpful and it turns out they can be exceptionally adorable.
Okay, so it's about 5 to 10 millimetres.
So it's kind of like a grain of rice in size.
And I want you to start out imagining this by picturing a hedgehog.
But instead of its head, it has a sort of Disney-fied sheep's head.
So I don't know if Shaun the Sheep means anything to you, Ian, but it kind of looks a bit like Shaun the Sheep.
And it's got these two black beady eyes that are really close together and sort of two blushing cheeks.
And it's got what would be the sort of sheep ears.
And these are actually called rhinophores.
They look like antennae.
They're chemical sensors for the leaf sheep to kind of make sense of the world.
The hedgehog part, the spikes look more like...
aloe vera branches and the tips are kind of pink or white or purple and these are called serrata and you can find these things in waters around Japan and Indonesia and the Philippines they graze like sheep on algae and they even lay their eggs in these like cute little neat spirals and
But I haven't even told you the best thing about them.
that?
So the leaf sheep can perform a trick called kleptoplasty.
As the leaf sheep is going around grazing on the algae, they are eating, absorbing, stealing the algae's chloroplasts.
Now chloroplasts are the part of an algae that captures sunlight and performs photosynthesis.
Showing 861–880 of 2,527 · page 44 of 127
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