Faster than a Speeding Bullet - is it a bird or a train?

Look up in the sky it's...well nothing because this week we're talking about some low hanging fruit. Is it possible that the so called 'bullet train' of Japan was designed with owls and kingfisher birds in mind? Or, is this yet another example of a story that makes the rounds on podcasts and social media that is based entirely on myth?

Come join us this week on Seemingly Unrelated as Andrew does a deep dive into the truth behind the Shinkansen's connection to wildlife and Jason makes some inappropriate jokes about tunnels.

BBC News. ‘How a Kingfisher Helped Reshape Japan’s Bullet Train’. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/science-environment-47673287.

Common Kingfisher. Bird Catching a Fish. David Attenborough’s Opinion., 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veQ2ilQrzMU.

‘CyberSec Pro’. https://www.googletagmanager.com/static/service_worker/4c30/sw_iframe.html?origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.csuci.edu.

Experiment! How Does An Owl Fly So Silently? | Super Powered Owls | BBC, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_FEaFgJyfA.

‘GTAC | The Kingfisher and the Bullet Train – In the News’. https://gtac.edu.au/the-kingfisher-and-the-bullet-train-in-the-news/.

‘High Speed Train Inspired by the Kingfisher AskNature’. https://asknature.org/innovation/high-speed-train-inspired-by-the-kingfisher/.

Hood, Christopher P. ‘The Shinkansen’s Local Impact’. Social Science Japan Journal 13, no. 2 (2010): 211–25.

Japan House London. ‘Shinkansen Bullet Train’. https://www.japanhouselondon.uk/read-and-watch/shinkansen/.

JFS Japan for Sustainability. ‘JFS Biomimicry Interview Series: No.6’. https://www.japanfs.org/en/news/archives/news_id027795.html.

JRailPass. ‘History of the Shinkansen: The Japanese Bullet Trains | JRailPass’. Japan Rail Pass Travel Blog | JRailPass (blog), 12 March 2018. https://www.jrailpass.com/blog/shinkansen-bullet-train-history.

Penwell, Cameron. ‘South Manchurian Railway Company Publications in the Japanese Collection | 4 Corners of the World’. Webpage. The Library of Congress, 19 February 2019. https://blogs.loc.gov/international-collections/2019/02/south-manchurian-railway-company-publications-in-the-japanese-collection.

‘STEM and Biomimicry | National Inventors Hall of Fame®’. https://www.invent.org/blog/trends-stem/biomimicry.

Seemingly Unrelated is a podcast all about exploring how everyday things connect to major movements in history, politics and culture.

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