The World's Longest Beak
AdultsAnimalsMediaNatureBiology... The sword-billed hummingbird has exclusive access to food that other birds simply cannot reach, but having such a long bill does have its drawbacks.
Why So Many Ladybugs Don't Look Like Ladybugs
AdultsAnimalsLifeNatureBiologyEvolution... Ladybugs are red with black spots, right? Well, not always. There's a lot of genetic and evolutionary reasons that they can be different colors with wacky patterns.
Is Bigger Better?
AdultsAnimalsLifeNatureScienceBiology... Elephants might be strong, but they are weak compared to ants because ants have certain advantages that allow them to outlift their larger competitors.
Why Can't I Grow More Teeth?
AdultsBiologyEducationHumanScience... How come sharks get to have endlessly regrowing teeth when humans only get one set our entire lives? And how come some other mammals get to cheat the system? From elephants to baboons, we'll learn why teeth don't grow back.
How Species Make and Break Friendships
AdultsAnimalsHumanLifeScienceBiologyEcology... 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 Course Biology, we’ll examine the myriad interspecies interactions with examples, see how keystone species impact their environment and explore how communities rebuild when they are disrupted, through the lens of the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens.
The #1 way to strengthen your mind is to use your body | Wendy Suzuki
AdultsBiologyHealthHumanWellnessMental Health... Exercise gives your brain a “bubble bath of neurochemicals,” says Wendy Suzuki, a professor of neural science.
Blindness Isn't a Tragic Binary — It's a Rich Spectrum | Andrew Leland | TED
AdultsBiologyHumanScienceDisabilityHealthSociety... When does vision loss become blindness? Writer, audio producer and editor Andrew Leland explains how his gradual loss of vision revealed a paradoxical truth about blindness -- and shows why it might have implications for how all of us see the world.
The Reason Why Cancer is so Hard to Beat
AdultsBiologyHumanScienceHealth... An undead city under siege, soldiers and police ruthlessly shooting down waves of zombies that flood from infected streets, trying to escape and infect more cities. This is what happens when your body fights cancer, more exciting than any movie.
Neuroscientist debunks ‘lizard brain’ myth | Lisa Feldman Barrett
AdultsAnimalsBiologyHumanNeurosciencePsychology... Plato famously described the human psyche as two horses and a charioteer: One horse represented instincts, the other represented emotions, and the charioteer was the rational mind that controlled them.
What Biologists Do: Crash Course Biology
AdultsBiologyBiotechnologyEducationScience... 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.
How To Get Venom From The World's Deadliest Spider
AdultsAnimalsLifeNatureScienceBiology... The deadliest is probably the funnel-web spider and its relatives. The Sydney funnel web spider (Atrax robustus) can kill a toddler in about 5 minutes and a 5-year-old in about 2 hours.
The science of super longevity | Dr. Morgan Levine
AdultsBiologyHumanScienceHealth... Science can’t stop aging, but it may be able to slow our epigenetic clocks.
Are Life-Saving Medicines Hiding in the World’s Coldest Places?
AdultsEnvironmentLifeNatureScienceBiology... Could the next wonder drug be somewhere in Canada's snowy north? Take a trip to this beautiful, frigid landscape as chemist Normand Voyer explores the mysterious molecular treasures found in plants thriving in the cold.
What Are Plants Made Of? Crash Course Botany
AdultsEducationFoodLifeScienceBiology... When you eat a salad for lunch, you’re digging into a giant pile of plant organs. That’s right—plants are made up of organs, only theirs follow a totally different set of rules from our own.
Your Body Killed Cancer 5 Minutes Ago
AdultsBiologyHealthHumanScience... Somewhere in your body, your immune system just quietly killed one of your own cells, stopping it from becoming cancer, and saving your life. It does that all the time.
You’re Not a Lab Mouse, but You Might Be a Wild Mouse
AdultsAnimalsNatureScienceBiology... The lab mice we use for genetic studies are not only closely related, but live out their whole lives in a sterile environment, so they don’t tell us everything we need to know about actual humans.
How to master your sense of smell
AdultsBiologyHumanScienceHealthFood... Some perfumers can distinguish individual odors in a fragrance made of hundreds of scents; tea-experts have been known to sniff out the exact location of a particular tea; and the NYC Transit Authority once had a employee responsible only for sniffing out gas leaks.
The man who lost his sense of touch
AdultsBiologyHealthHumanNeuroscienceScience... Explore the science behind how your body and brain process different sensations like touch, pain, temperature, and spatial awareness.