If you’ve been brave enough to open your eyes underwater, you might have noticed that everything is blurry. But fish have no trouble finding their way beneath the waves. So why can’t we see as clearly below as we do above?

We're all embedded in vast social networks of friends, family, co-workers and more. Nicholas Christakis tracks how a wide variety of traits -- from happiness to obesity -- can spread from person to person, showing how your location in...

In which Hank and John Green teach you about humanity conquering the Earth. Or at least moving from Africa into the rest of the Earth. As human beings spread out across the world and populations grew, humanity reached a critical mass of...

It’s the dream of kids all around the world to see giant beasts walk the Earth again. Could -- and should -- that dream be realized? Hendrik Poinar talks about the next big thing: the quest to engineer a creature that looks very much...

Consider the claw. Frequently found on animals around the world, it's one of nature's most versatile tools. Bears use claws for digging as well as defense. An eagle's needle-like talons can pierce the skulls of their prey. Even the...

Some of the biggest evolution questions finally answered.

Explore speciation with The Amoeba Sisters. This video discusses sympatric and allopatric speciation and covers several types of isolation types including behavioral, temporal, and habitat isolations. Table of Contents: Intro 00:00...

A common misconception is that evolution is a long chain of progress, where organisms gain cool, new features over time. However, if a trait doesn't help with survival or reproduction, eventually it can disappear. Here are a few...

The decisions we make while we browse the internet are suprisingly similar to the ones animals make as they forage for food...here's why.

What we call language is something more specific than communication. Language is about sharing what's in our minds: stories, opinions, questions, the past or future, imagined times or places, ideas. It is fundamentally open-ended, and...

In which John Green and Hank Green teach you about how human primates moved out of Africa and turned Earth into a real-life Planet of the Apes. And the apes are people! John and Hank teach you about how humans evolved, and the sort of...

What do you get when you combine the strongest materials from the plant world with the most elastic ones from the insect kingdom? Super-performing materials that might transform ... everything. Nanobiotechnologist Oded Shoseyov walks us...

Why can amphibians, fish and even some reptiles regenerate limbs, while birds and mammals can’t? Researchers think they might have found a clue on the tip of the alligator’s tail.

Imagine what we could learn about diseases by studying the history of human disease, from ancient hominids to the present. But how? TED Fellow Christina Warinner is an achaeological geneticist, and she's found a spectacular new tool --...

Paul Andersen defines microevolution as any change in the frequency of the allele pool. He then explains the five mechanisms of evolution; small sample size, non-random mating, mutations, gene flow and natural selection.

Humans are special, and we got that way thanks to evolution and natural selection. The proof is right there in our bodies! From anatomy to genes, here are some stories of how you got to be the way you are.

In this video Paul Andersen defines adaptations and explains how organisms can become better adapted to their surroundings using the process of natural selection. Specific examples of adaptations, like coat color in rock pocket mice, as...

Hod Lipson demonstrates a few of his cool little robots, which have the ability to learn, understand themselves and even self-replicate.

Hank and his cat Cameo help teach us about animal behavior and how we can discover why animals do the things they do.

If you’ve ever been scratching a dog and seen them do the kicky leg thing, it’s truly adorable. But it might not necessarily be a feel-good thing.

Crocodiles have four-chambered hearts, just like we do! But, while our hearts do just fine with four valves, they have a slightly different approach…

Seventy thousand years ago, our human ancestors were insignificant animals, just minding their own business in a corner of Africa with all the other animals. But now, few would disagree that humans dominate planet Earth; we've spread to...

Paul Andersen details the evolutionary processes of speciation and extinction. Stickleback evolution in Lake Loberg is used as example of rapid speciation. Adaptive radiation is illustrated using the Hawaiian honeycreeper. A brief...

Hank explains speciation - the evolutionary process by which new biological species arise - in terms of finches, ligers, mules, and dogs.