When fishermen cast their nets, they often catch a lot more than the species they're after. Those unlucky creatures are called bycatch, and it's a huge problem in the industry. Fortunately, scientists have been working hard to solve it...

The world is full of microbes and viruses that can get us sick, but we’ve got an Avengers-style defense system ready to take them on. In this episode of Crash Course Biology, we’ll learn about an animal’s immune system, from their skin...

Everywhere you look on Earth, you’ll find wonderful and diverse living things, from tiny tardigrades to soaring sequoias. And incredibly, everything alive today, and everything that’s ever lived, is related. In this episode of Crash...

Community ecology is the study of interactions between different species of living things, and lets ecologists examine the effects of predator-prey relationships, parasites, and mutually beneficial interactions. In this episode of Crash...

Scott Loarie has a challenge for you: go outside and take a picture of a living thing. He introduces the global community of people building a living atlas of the natural world by sharing their nature photos with scientists — and shows...

Why do wolves howl? With the help of AI, we're getting closer to an answer. Linguist and software engineer Jeffrey T. Reed shares his research on wolf sounds in the wild, revealing the surprisingly complex range of vocalizations — barks,...

We can't know if or how animals understand death, but behavioral changes in some species could mean they experience something similar to human grief.

From cosmetics to nutrition, collagen is seemingly everywhere — but we don't often discuss its ethically questionable sources, says chemical engineer Fei Luo. She delves into the groundbreaking technology that uses genetically modified...

Today, rats are often regarded as the most successful invasive species in the world. The most common species of rat scurried onto the scene roughly 1 to 3 million years ago in Asia. There, they craftily survived Earth’s most recent ice...

Many animal species stuff themselves with toxic chemicals for protection, which forces them to use a handful of distinct strategies to avoid becoming victims of their own weapons.

Electric eels can emit some of the largest shocks in the animal kingdom - but why don't they shock themselves?

It seems wild that some animals basically trade in their bodies for new ones during their lifetime, but it's actually really common – and it makes a lot of sense.

We've long known that animal pollination is an important way plants reproduce on land, but we're only just finding out animals also pollinate plants underwater.

As the waters warm in the deep sea around Antarctica, ecosystem-crushing crabs are able to live closer and closer to the continent.

Life in Antarctica's ocean has followed a completely different evolutionary path from other ocean life because of how cold and isolated the ocean is.

Despite the seemingly basic things we don't know about dinosaurs, we do know some surprising things – like their body temperatures.

There’s an island in the Caribbean where David used to perform magic tricks for monkeys. And it was super cool because it suggested that they have the ability to count! (but only up to four)

Plants can tell when competitors are nearby because they can see them.

Solar eclipses can happen anywhere on earth, but if you want to see a total eclipse, you need to go to the far north, because the Earth’s shape and orbit determine the high latitudes and eclipse hotspot.

For centuries, humans have reported animals freaking out during solar eclipses, like birds falling from the sky and bees hiding in their hives, but the animals most affected by eclipses might be us.

Charles Darwin introduced the notion of “survival of the fittest,” where the fittest animals are those who can survive long enough to produce healthy offspring. The fittest animal can also be the most stealthy, resourceful, or even the...

Insects are the world’s most numerous and diverse animals. Even where you’d least expect them in some of Earth’s most extreme environments, there they are. From a scalding volcano, parched desert, to a frigid glacier, insects are living...

You're familiar with the story: a sperm and an egg meet to create an embryo, which has the potential to give rise to new life. But what if you could create a sperm or egg from any cell, even a single skin cell? Biologist Katsuhiko...

You're about to hear the sounds of several different creatures — from the voice of one single musician. In a spellbinding talk and performance, singer Snow Raven mimics the hoot of an owl, the grumble of a bear, the howl of a wolf and more.