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 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 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 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
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
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
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.
SciShow
Meet CERN's New Particle: A Double-Charm Baryon!
This week, CERN announced a new particle that will help further understanding of the fundamental forces, and a simulation of ancient creatures may give us a clue as to how life grew beyond the microscopic.
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
Hospitals are Hotspots for Antibiotic-resistant Germs
While antibiotics have saved millions of lives, misusing them can speed up how fast bacteria evolve to resist them. And it turns out that one of the biggest hotspots for these antibiotic-resistant bacteria…is hospitals.
SciShow
What is Taxonomy and Why is it So Complicated?
The classification of animal groups is essential to the the development of modern biology—but it's extremely complicated. Trying to shoehorn the messy, complicated web of interrelationships that is biology into neat boxes has resulted in...
SciShow
This Robot Filled the Deep Ocean Gap in the Carbon Cycle
Carbon is fundamental to life on Earth. And it goes through a complex cycle, from up in the atmosphere, to the depths of the ocean. But down there, the carbon trail gets harder to follow. Or at least, it was that way until this little...
SciShow
Do Bacterial Cells Store Memories?
Some bacteria seem to be using a type of memory to help them alter future behaviors, based on their past experiences.
SciShow
Biofluorescence: A Neon World Hidden in Plain Sight
Lots of life on Earth can fluoresce, creating a beautiful neon world of camouflage, communication, and adaptation that is hidden from the human eye.
SciShow
Bdelloids: The Most Hardcore Animals in the World?
Bdelloid rotifers have a superpower. If their DNA is shredded to pieces, whether from a lack of water or a blast of radiation, they can put it back together. Hosted by: Hank Green
SciShow
The Mystery of the Biggest Genomes
3 billion base pairs is a pretty typical genome size for organisms like us, but there are a few plants and animals with genomes so huge they completely blow this number out of the water. Hosted by: Olivia Gordon
SciShow
6 Types of Odd Body Armor
From medieval knights to face shields, humans are pretty big fans of armor. But it turns out that other organisms use armor, too! Except sometimes, their armor doesn’t look like anything we’d expect. Hosted by: Rose Bear Don't Walk