Tales from the Ant World, by Edward O. Wilson (author), Jonathan Hogan (narrator)

Recorded Books, ISBN 9781980091714, August 2020

Edward O. Wilson was a highly respected and accomplished myrmecologist, i.e., an expert on ants.

You may not think ants are fascinating, but in this book, narrated by Jonathan Hogan, Wilson geeks out about them with joy. In this short book, he gives us overviews of twenty-five different species of ants. Fire ants and leafcutter ants, the fastest-moving ants and the slowest-moving ants, ants who conduct slave raids to steal juveniles who will emerge into adulthood in the raiders' colony and grow up as part of that colony. Ants who farm and ants who keep "cattle." 

The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World, by Andrea Wulf (author), David Drummond (narrator)

Highbridge Audio, October 2015

This is a fascinating biography of an impressive scientist, whom I don't believe I ever heard of before.

Alexander von Humboldt was the second son of an aristocratic Prussian family, who used his inheritance to pursue a career as, essentially, the first real naturalist. At 27, he went on an expedition to South America, with one other scientist and a couple of guides. In the course of his expedition he invented the concept of isotherms, which made global study of climate possible. He collected specimens, climbed mountains, and took detailed notes on plant and animal life, climate, and the effects of wholesale clearing of trees and other inconvenient plants and animals. Humboldt's journey, and his letters reporting home on it, were widely covered in the newspapers, worldwide, not just in his native Prussia. He returned home, and continued to be both a celebrity and a working scientist--and in many was perhaps the first science popularizer. 

A Most Remarkable Creature: The Hidden Life and Epic Journey of the World's Smartest Birds of Prey, by Jonathan Meiburg (author, narrator)

Penguin Random House Audio Publishing, ISBN 9780593349014, March 2021

During his voyage on the Beagle, Charles Darwin encountered a bird in the Falklands, a falcon, but oddly crow-like. It was unwary of people, extremely curious, and prone to rather aggressively stealing anything that caught its interest, whether potential food, or not. And the bird's view of what's "potential food" was quite broad. Darwin was puzzled by this crow-like falcon that existed nowhere but in a fairly narrow range of South America, but it was one of many mysteries he noted on his voyage, and this wasn't one he returned to.