Sorting organisms into categories seems pretty simple at first, but look a little closer and things get weird.

There are a few forests out there where the trees seem to be especially... polite. Can scientists explain why these species give each other space?

Find out why more species live near the equator!

As a species, we’re getting better at preventing viral diseases. But eradication, or eliminating them completely, is much harder. So how did we eradicate the Cattle Plague?

Some of the animals you think of as just cute grass-eating creatures might actually be more interested in chomping on your meaty bones.

We humans like to think we’re special in basically all ways, but if the history of life is any indication, our species has a limited time on this planet. So the question is: when are we gonna go extinct?

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...

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

In the African grasslands, a gazelle suffering from tuberculosis takes its last breath. The animal's corpse threatens to infect the water, but for the vulture, this isn't a problem: it's a feast. With a stomach of steel that can digest...

When you think "sand dunes" you probably wouldn't think to look up in the northern reaches of Canada, but there lies one of earth's most unique habitats.

Picking common and scientific names is a puzzle of taxonomy, and sometimes we end up naming huge frogs "Mountain Chickens". So, let's figure out this puzzle.

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...

So we've talked a lot in this series about how computers fetch and display data, but how do they make decisions on this data? From spam filters and self-driving cars, to cutting edge medical diagnosis and real-time language translation,...

Also known as cercarial dermatitis, swimmer’s itch is more than just an annoying rash…

From daffodils to dangerous snakes, toxins are everywhere. Here's a collection of episodes about our favorite poisonous, venomous, and generally toxic organisms.

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

Some scientists say we’re in the midst of Earth’s sixth mass-extinction event, caused entirely by us. But some animals have a knack for surviving in a human-dominated world. What’s their secret?

It sounds like science fiction, but journalist Stephen Petranek considers it fact: within 20 years, humans will live on Mars. In this provocative talk, Petranek makes the case that humans will become a spacefaring species and describes...

As benign as it may look up close, the tiny seaweed Caulerpa taxifolia can wreak quite a bit of havoc on coastal ecosystems. This super algae is very adaptable; it also grows fast and spreads easily. Eric Noel Munoz gives the details of...

This time, we're the asteroid

For decades, one of the most abundant kinds of fossils on Earth, numbering in the millions of specimens, was a mystery to paleontologists. But geologists discovered that these mysterious fossils could basically be used to tell time in...

Everyone knows the name Charles Darwin, but his lesser known frenemy, Alfred Russel Wallace, was developing a lot of the same ideas around the same time.

Louise Leakey asks, "Who are we?" The question takes her to the Rift Valley in Eastern Africa, where she digs for the evolutionary origins of humankind -- and suggests a stunning new vision of our competing ancestors.

Our bones are multi-functional body builders, but perhaps their most mysterious function is the production of blood. Scientists now think they have a pretty good idea why this is where our blood gets made.