We need to care for and live in harmony with the environment, says climate and gender activist Ernestine Leikeki Sevidzem. The best way to do that? Nurture a forest generation: one that learns to protect nature. Sevidzem shares how she's...

Why Only Some Monkeys Have Awesome Tails

Worms cause major changes to ecosystems, but those changes aren’t always new.ommunication.

This video explores the fascinating world of orchids, showcasing their unique strategies for survival and reproduction. From mooching off fungi to cheating pollinators and thriving in inhospitable environments, orchids have evolved into...

Today, our closest evolutionary relatives, the apes, live only in small pockets of Africa and Asia. But back in the Miocene epoch, apes occupied all of Europe. Why aren't there wild apes in Europe today?

Scientists are discovering new species at the bottom of the ocean and deep in the rainforest, but there are also plenty of new animals being discovered in cities around the world!

Save the rainforest is an environmental slogan as old as time — but Tasso Azevedo catches us up on how the fight is actually going these days. Spurred by the jaw-dropping losses of the 1990s, new laws (and transparent data) are helping...

So, what is fire, exactly? What causes fires in the wild, and how do we put them out? SciShow answers your burning questions about the science of fire. (See what we did there?)

Economics PhD Sebastião Salgado only took up photography in his 30s, but the discipline became an obsession. His years-long projects beautifully capture the human side of a global story that all too often involves death, destruction or...

Earthworms may be good for your garden, but they also have the potential to disrupt forest ecosystems across much of North America.

Without water, a human can only survive for about 100 hours. But there's a creature so resilient that it can go without it for decades. This 1-millimeter animal can survive both the hottest and coldest environments on earth, and can even...

The blurred line between legend and science.

In this video Paul Andersen explains how land is developed for human use. Urbanization has occurred through the last century as people have moved to cities in large numbers. Transportation and the arrival of the car have led to urban...

Indigenous communities have looked after their ancestral forests for millennia, cultivating immense amounts of knowledge on how to protect, nourish and heal these vital environments. Today, 470 million Indigenous people care for and...

Unlike their friendly, flower-pollinating cousin, the bee, wasps are best known for stinging people, ruining picnics, and generally being jerks... so should we just totally get rid of them?

Forests don't usually come to mind as a habitat for sharks. But marine forests provide a home for 35% of the world's sharks. Mangrove forests in particular function as an essential bridge between land and sea and have evolved various...

Paul Andersen explains how disruptions in homeostasis can affect biological systems at all levels. He uses the example of dehydration in animals to explain how disruptions at the cellular level can affect an organism. He also uses the...

Bamboo is the world’s fastest growing plant thanks to the cell elongation process it shares with all grasses and its unique cell wall layering adaptation, allowing it to shoot up to 100 ft (30m) in just 8 weeks.

Our early ancestors relied on lightning to cause forest fires, from which they could collect coals and burning sticks to help them cook food and clear land. Yet, it wasn't just humans who benefited from these natural phenomena. Even as...

Research suggests that more diverse ecosystems are better for the bottom line.

In the world of ecology, the only constant is change - but change can be good. Today Hank explains ecological succession and how ecological communities change over time to become beautiful, biodiverse mosaics.

Hank reveals the latest discoveries, including a way to make new, beating heart cells, ancient Egyptian jewelry made from meteorites, and the first mammal to be discovered in the Americas in 35 years, the adorable olinguito.

It's lights up in America! This week, we're headed to North America. We'll look at Native American storytelling traditions, the theater that Europeans brought along starting in the 17th century, and how theater developed before and after...

Forests don't have to be far-flung nature reserves, isolated from human life. Instead, we can grow them right where we are -- even in cities. eco-entrepreneur and TED Fellow Shubhendu Sharma grows ultra-dense, biodiverse mini-forests of...