Having bacteria in your food doesn't really sound great, but you couldn't have yogurt without it! Learn why in this week's QQ!

Ever not felt completely like yourself? There's a good reason for that. Because a large part of you isn't actually you. Our bodies are home to ten times as many microbes as human cells. We are walking ecosystems, each of us home to...

Each day, the animal kingdom produces roughly enough poop to match the volume of water pouring over Victoria Falls. So why isn't the planet covered in the stuff? You can thank the humble dung beetle for eating up the excess. Eleanor...

We need a radically new approach to ocean conservation, says marine biologist and TED Fellow Alasdair Harris. In a visionary talk, he lays out a surprising solution to the problem of overfishing that could both revive marine life and...

In this video Paul Andersen explains how biodiversity can be measured through genetic, species, or ecosystem variety on the planet. Species diversity is increased through speciation and decrease through extinction. The mechanism for...

As we keep pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, more of it is dissolving in the oceans, leading to drastic changes in the water's chemistry. Triona McGrath researches this process, known as ocean acidification, and in this talk...

Beavers have done more to shape North American landscapes than any animal beside humans. We don't notice them much today because there aren't many left, but before colonization, North America was home to hundreds of millions of these...

In this brief talk from TED U 2009, Jonathan Drori encourages us to save biodiversity -- one seed at a time. Reminding us that plants support human life, he shares the vision of the Millennium Seed Bank, which has stored over 3 billion...

Thanks to The National Trust for Historic Preservation, in partnership with American Express, for sponsoring this video celebrating 100 years of the National Park Service! Now through July 5th, you can help your favorite park win an...

In 2013, a treasure trove of unusual fossils were uncovered in a cave in South Africa, and researchers soon realized: these were the remains of a new species of ancient humans. Paleoanthropologist Juliet Brophy takes us inside the...

Last time we put a Polar Bear in the desert and we still feel bad about that, but there's a lot more going on in ecosystems than just temperature. In fact, there are so many elements in ecosystems, that if just one leaves or gets out of...

Hank tells us the story of bunny and planet Wonderful, and the impacts of exotic invasive species on ecosystems while introducing us to a couple interesting individuals.

The gharial and king cobra are two of India's most iconic reptiles, and they're endangered because of polluted waterways. Conservationist Romulus Whitaker shows rare footage of these magnificent animals and urges us to save the rivers...

Hank veers away from human anatomy to teach us about the (mostly) single-celled organisms that make up two of the three taxonomic domains of life, and one of the four kingdoms: Archaea, Bacteria, and Protists. They are by far the most...

Paul Andersen explains the differences between an r and a K selected species. He starts with a brief description of population growth noting the importance of; r or growth rate, N or number of individuals in the population, and K the...

Hank guides us through the process of natural selection, the key mechanism of evolution.