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Instructional Video4:55
TED-Ed

TED-Ed: David Ian Howe: A brief history of dogs

Pre-K - Higher Ed
Since their emergence over 200,000 years ago, modern humans have established communities all over the planet. But they didn't do it alone. Whatever corner of the globe you find humans in today, you're likely to find another species as...
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Instructional Video2:49
MinuteEarth

Why Sharks Are Covered In Teeth

12th - Higher Ed
Sharks wouldn’t be known for their fierce teeth today if it weren’t for their ancient scales.
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Instructional Video19:28
TED Talks

Susan Blackmore: Memes and "temes"

12th - Higher Ed
Susan Blackmore studies memes: ideas that replicate themselves from brain to brain like a virus. She makes a bold new argument: Humanity has spawned a new kind of meme, the teme, which spreads itself via technology -- and invents ways to...
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Instructional Video11:41
SciShow

6 Species Unlike Anything Else | Evolutionary Loners

12th - Higher Ed
What happens when a species is the only of its kind? This phenomenon is called a monospecific taxon. Studying these special species can help us better understand not just those sparse groups, but all life on this planet! Join Olivia...
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Instructional Video9:48
Curated Video

How Plants Became Carnivores

12th - Higher Ed
How and why does botanical carnivory keep evolving? It turns out that when any of the basic things that most plants need aren’t there, some plants can adapt in unexpected ways to make sure they thrive.
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Instructional Video7:00
Bozeman Science

Endosymbiosis

12th - Higher Ed
Paul Andersen explains how eukaryotic cells were formed through a process of endosymbiosis. He describes how aerobic bacteria became mitochondria and cyanobacteria became chloroplasts. He mentions an example of symbiosis that occurs...
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Instructional Video10:12
TED Talks

TED: Questioning the universe | Stephen Hawking

12th - Higher Ed
In keeping with the theme of TED2008, professor Stephen Hawking asks some Big Questions about our universe -- How did the universe begin? How did life begin? Are we alone? -- and discusses how we might go about answering them.
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Instructional Video4:47
TED-Ed

TED-Ed: The genes you don't get from your parents (but can't live without) | Devin Shuman

Pre-K - Higher Ed
Inside our cells, each of us has a second set of genes completely separate from our 23 pairs of chromosomes. And this isn't just true for humans— it's true of every animal, plant, and fungus on Earth. This second genome belongs to our...
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Instructional Video5:28
SciShow

How People Have Evolved to Live in the Clouds

12th - Higher Ed
High elevations can be a problem for humans. Since the air is thinner, you get less oxygen with every breath, leading to all kinds of negative side effects. But there are millions of people around the world who spend their whole lives at...
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Instructional Video15:29
TED Talks

Louise Leakey: A dig for humanity's origins

12th - Higher Ed
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.
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Instructional Video6:13
TED Talks

Hod Lipson: Building "self-aware" robots

12th - Higher Ed
Hod Lipson demonstrates a few of his cool little robots, which have the ability to learn, understand themselves and even self-replicate.
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Instructional Video5:28
TED Talks

Christina Warinner: Tracking ancient diseases using ... plaque

12th - Higher Ed
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 --...
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Instructional Video10:18
TED Talks

Hendrik Poinar: Bring back the woolly mammoth!

12th - Higher Ed
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...
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Instructional Video18:10
TED Talks

Nicholas Christakis: The hidden influence of social networks

12th - Higher Ed
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...
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Instructional Video14:42
TED Talks

Nina Jablonski: Skin color is an illusion

12th - Higher Ed
Nina Jablonski says that differing skin colors are simply our bodies' adaptation to varied climates and levels of UV exposure. Charles Darwin disagreed with this theory, but she explains, that's because he did not have access to NASA.
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Instructional Video9:51
Curated Video

When Humans Were Prey

12th - Higher Ed
Not too long ago, our early human ancestors were under constant threat of attack from predators. And it turns out that this difficult chapter in our history may be responsible for the adaptations that allowed us to become so successful.
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Instructional Video5:18
SciShow

How Neanderthals Ended Up With Human Chromosomes

12th - Higher Ed
This week we learned that the Neanderthal/Denisovan/Human family tree is pretty complicated, thanks to a close look into some Neanderthals' Y chromosomes.
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Instructional Video20:07
TED Talks

Mark Pagel: How language transformed humanity

12th - Higher Ed
Biologist Mark Pagel shares an intriguing theory about why humans evolved our complex system of language. He suggests that language is a piece of "social technology" that allowed early human tribes to access a powerful new tool:...
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Instructional Video3:21
SciShow

How These Snakes Evolved to Spit… IN YOUR EYE

12th - Higher Ed
If you spook a spitting cobra, it might literally shoot venom at your eyes... And our ancestors might have caused them to do this, evolutionarily speaking.
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Instructional Video8:13
TED Talks

Theo Jansen: My creations, a new form of life

12th - Higher Ed
Artist Theo Jansen demonstrates the amazingly lifelike kinetic sculptures he builds from plastic tubes and lemonade bottles. His creatures are designed to move -- and even survive -- on their own.
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Instructional Video5:07
TED-Ed

TED-Ed: Chris A. Kniesly: History through the eyes of a chicken

Pre-K - Higher Ed
The Ancient Egyptian king Thutmose III described the chicken as a marvelous foreign bird that "gives birth daily." Romans brought them on their military campaigns to foretell the success of future battles. Today, this bird occupies a...
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Instructional Video13:27
TED Talks

Suzana Herculano-Houzel: What is so special about the human brain?

12th - Higher Ed
The human brain is puzzling -- it is curiously large given the size of our bodies, uses a tremendous amount of energy for its weight and has a bizarrely dense cerebral cortex. But: why? Neuroscientist Suzana Herculano-Houzel puts on her...
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Instructional Video19:24
TED Talks

Robert Full: The sticky wonder of gecko feet

12th - Higher Ed
Biologist Robert Full shares slo-mo video of some captivating critters. Take a closer look at the spiny legs that allow cockroaches to scuttle across mesh and the nanobristle-packed feet that let geckos to run straight up walls.
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Instructional Video17:46
TED Talks

Paul Ewald: Can we domesticate germs?

12th - Higher Ed
Evolutionary biologist Paul Ewald drags us into the sewer to discuss germs. Why are some more harmful than others? How could we make the harmful ones benign? Searching for answers, he examines a disgusting, fascinating case: diarrhea.

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