Be Smart
The Great Oxygenation
New ReviewLife’s been around on Earth for at least 3.7 billion years. But for most of that time, it was incredibly boring — just simple little cells squirming around in water. It only got interesting in the last few hundred million years. And that...
SciShow
This Is The Best Predator Defense Of All Time
It's a hard world out there, especially for a little guy. So what's a soft-bodied animal to do? Turns out that marine invertebrates basically figured out the best defense system of all time, and nobody's a better demonstration of that...
Crash Course
What Biologists Do: Crash Course Biology #3
A biologist’s natural habitat is anywhere questions about life are being asked—whether the subject is a nematode or a narwhal, a single cell, or a whole ecosystem. In this episode of Crash Course Biology, we’re flipping the microscope...
Crash Course
Sexual & Asexual Reproduction: How Animals Do It: Crash Course Biology #47
When it comes to animal reproduction, there’s no one-size-fits-all strategy. Some animals need a mate, others don’t, and for some, it depends! In this episode, we’ll learn about sexual and asexual reproduction, internal and external...
Crash Course
Multicellular Function: Why We Aren’t Just One Big Cell: Crash Course Biology #41
There are countless types of plants and animals on Earth, but how do they work? In this episode of Crash Course Biology, we’ll take a bird’s eye view of how multicellular life functions, including how it’s organized, how it regulates...
Crash Course
Intro to Evolution: What We Can Learn From a Giraffe's Neck: Crash Course Biology #11
From a single-celled common ancestor, evolution has brought us all of Life’s Greatest Hits — including butterflies, beetles, bacteria, and human beings. In this episode of Crash Course Biology, we’ll learn how evolution explains life’s...
Crash Course
Natural Selection: Life's Way of Stayin' Alive: Crash Course Biology #13
There are lots of ways that evolution happens, and natural selection is just one of them. In this episode of Crash Course Biology, we’ll find out how this process works and shapes traits in all living things —from ginkgo trees to howler...
Crash Course
Bioinformatics: How Data Saves Lives: Crash Course Biology #40
On its own, a huge DNA sequence is a meaningless pile of data — so, how do biologists figure out what it means? They turn to the power of bioinformatics! In this episode, we’ll learn what bioinformatics is, how it works, and how...
MinuteEarth
Electrical Wires Made Of Bacteria
Most living things on Earth need oxygen to survive, but scientists discovered a species of bacteria that uses oxygen totally differently from every other organism on Earth.
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: Scientists are obsessed with this lake | Nicola Storelli and Daniele Zanzi
In the millions of years since oxygen began saturating Earth’s oceans and atmosphere, most organisms have evolved to rely on this gas. However, there are some places where oxygen-averse microorganisms like those from Earth’s earliest...
SciShow
The Volcanoes That May Have Started Life on Earth
The nitrogen cycle is essential to life on Earth, but biological nitrogen must be fixed before it can be used. Scientists aren't sure how the first nitrogen became available... but it might have been volcanoes.
SciShow
The Ocean's Most Important Crystal
When we think of the ocean and what's in it, you probably think of stuff like fish, or salt, or seaweed. But there's a crystal that is so vital to marine life that they take dissolved materials in that salty water and build it...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: What really killed the dinosaurs? (It wasn’t just the asteroid) | Sean P. S. Gulick
Sixty-six million years ago, near what’s now the Yucatán Peninsula, a juvenile sauropod feasted on horsetail plants on a riverbank. Earth was a tropical planet. Behemoth and tiny dinosaurs alike soared its skies and roamed its lands...
SciShow
Why Hairworms Don’t Have Hair
Hairworms, sometimes called horsehair or Gordian worms, are mind-controlling parasites with a twist. A genetic study found these nematomorph worms are missing 30% of their genome, and we don't understand how they live without genes for...
PBS
The Giant Bird That Got Lost in Time
The California condor is the biggest flying bird in North America, a title that it has held since the Late Pleistocene Epoch. It's just one example of an organism that we share the planet with today that seems lost in time, out of place...
PBS
How Worm Holes Ended Wormworld
Elongated tubes, flat ribbons, and other “worm-like” body plans were so varied and abundant that a part of the Ediacaran is sometimes known as Wormworld. But in the end, the ancient Wormworld was ended by the actions of its very own worms.
PBS
How We Identified One of Earth’s Earliest Animals
Scientists had no idea what type of organisms the life forms of the Ediacaran were—lichen, colonies of bacteria, fungi or something else. It turns out, the key to solving the puzzle of Precambrian life was a tiny bit of fossilized fat.
PBS
Are We All Actually Archaea?
The unexpected discovery of an entirely new domain of life was pretty huge and surprising - even if archaea do just look like bacteria. But, in recent years, it’s been their connection to us that's turned out to be particularly full of...
PBS
How Blood Evolved (Many Times)
Blood is one of the most revolutionary features in our evolutionary history. Over hundreds of millions of years, the way in which blood does its job has changed over and over again. As a result, we animals have our familiar red blood....
SciShow
Why Astronauts Need Farm-to-Table
Growing food in space will be necessary to support the future of space exploration. And it won't be monoculture, either. Here's why astronauts will be growing whole ecosystems in space.
SciShow
Parasites Are Good, Actually
Parasites give most of us the heebie-jeebies. But new research shows they're pretty dang important for ecosystems, and climate change is putting them in danger. So here's some of the reasons you should care about those guys!
SciShow
You're Basically A Mushroom
The tree of life you learned in school is wrong, even if you just graduated. We like to sort eukaryotes into big kingdoms or supergroups, but scientists can't agree what those groups should be. Here's why that's a good thing.
SciShow
The Carbon Impact of the World’s Largest Mass Migration
Thanks to the Monterey Bay Aquarium and their research and technology partner MBARI for partnering with us on this episode of SciShow. They worked together on an exhibition, “Into The Deep: Exploring Our Undiscovered Ocean,” to give...
SciShow
Meet Our Nitrogen-Breathing Bacterial Relative
Oxygen is pretty great stuff, but this recently discovered organism couldn’t care less about oxygen. It breathes nitrogen and may offer a window into how the types of cells in OUR bodies may have evolved billions of years ago.