Season 2022
68 episodes · 2022
1How our deadliest parasite turned to the dark side
Around 10,000 years ago, somewhere in Africa, a microscopic parasite made a huge leap. With a little help from a mosquito, it left its animal host - probably a gorilla - and found its way to a new host: us.
2Primates vs Snakes (An Evolutionary Arms Race)
The Snake Detection Hypothesis proposes that the ability to quickly spot and avoid snakes is deeply embedded in primates, including us - an evolutionary consequence of the danger snakes have posed to us over millions of years.
3How the Rise of Social Insects Shrunk These Dinosaurs
We often think of dinosaurs as either preying on other dinos or mammals, or as plant-eaters -- but in ecosystems today, those aren’t the only two options. So why would we expect dinosaurs to have only been carnivores or herbivores, with the occasional omnivore thrown in the mix?
4How Vertebrates Got Teeth... And Lost Them Again
As revolutionary as teeth were, they would go on to disappear in some groups of vertebrates. But why?
5How Horses Went From Food To Friends
Do our modern horses descend from just one domesticated population, or did it happen many times, in many places? Answering these questions has been tricky, as we’ve needed to bring together evidence from art, archaeology, and ancient DNA…Because, as it turns out, the history of humans and horses has been a pretty wild ride.
6Why We Only Have Ten Toes (It's a Long Story)
Today, all mammals from humans to bats have five fingers or fewer. Yes, even whales, whose finger bones are hidden in their fins. Birds have four or fewer and amphibians get the best of both worlds, often having four digits on their “hands” and five on their “feet.” But no species of vertebrates have more than five digits, let alone eight!
7Sharks nearly went extinct 19 million years ago #shorts
There used to be SO MANY sharks...where did they go?
8Dire wolves aren’t wolves at all #shorts
Dire wolves aren’t actually wolves but what they are might be even cooler.
9Could humans survive if they traveled back in time 3 billion years? #shorts
Could humans survive during the Precambrian?
10Some trees are more closely related to broccoli than to other trees #shorts
Don’t be fooled by convergent evolution.
11Human knees are the worst and we have evolution to thank for that #shorts
Why do human knees suck?
12A crater in Turkmenistan has been on fire for about 50 years #shorts
And it’s been reported that one of the geologists started it on purpose?
13When a Giant Pterosaur Ruled the European Islands
The ecological niche of apex predators was empty on Hateg Island, waiting to be occupied by something large, mobile, and powerful enough to fill it.
15Could humans survive a giant space rock colliding with Earth 66 million years ago? #shorts
Would you have survived the K-Pg Impact?
16The Sudden Rise of the First Colossal Animal
A truly enormous ichthyosaur around the size of a modern sperm whale, reached its size within just a few million years of taking to the water - a blink of an eye in evolutionary time.
17The Tasmanian tiger is definitely extinct. So why do people keep report sightings of them? #shorts
Thylacines are definitely extinct!
18The Extreme Hyenas That Didn't Last
Hyenas weren’t always able to eat bones. In fact, only a few million years ago, they lived very different lives.
20After this bird went extinct the first time, evolution just hit replay #shorts
The bird that evolved twice!
23An ancient insect trapped in amber has a parasitic mushroom erupting out of it? #shorts
I will pass on the parasitic mind-controlling mushroom, thanks
24How the Smallest Animal Got So Simple
We tend to think that evolution only goes in one direction— toward getting bigger and more advanced. But that’s not always the case. This tiny, simple animal, the Myxozoans, (yes, animal!) evolved from something bigger and more complex.
26Why Sour May Be The Oldest Taste
While sour taste's original purpose was to warn vertebrates of danger, in a few animal groups, including us, its role has reversed. The taste of danger became something it was dangerous for us to avoid.
27The Ancient Human Species With A Missing Body
Only a handful of Denisovan fossils have been identified. In the absence of actual body fossils, it’s impossible for us to reconstruct their morphology, right?
31When Ants Domesticated Fungi
While we’ve been farming for around 10,000 to 12,000 years, the ancestors of ants have been doing it for around 60 million years. So when, and how, and why did ants start … farming?
32The Curious Case of the Cave Lion
A mysterious, large feline roamed Eurasia during the last ice age. Its fossils have been found across the continent, and it’s been the subject of ancient artwork. So what exactly were these big cats?
33Is This The Oldest Dad In The Fossil Record?
Fossil evidence suggests Diictodon used burrows to breed, and that a parent stayed behind to feed and protect their young. And the parent that stayed behind? It might’ve been the male.
34Why did so many predators die at the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry? #shorts
There’s something weird going on at the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry in what’s now Utah.
35What is the most successful human species? #shorts
Does Homo erectus beat out Homo sapiens?
36Sharks have antibacterial skin. Can we use that to save lives? #shorts
Sometimes modern problems require ancient, evolutionary solutions.
37This Ice Age pup's last meal was a woolly rhino #shorts
What was this ancient pup’s last meal?
38What came first, the sabertooth or the cat? #shorts
The newest oldest saber-toothed mammal
39How To Build A Woolly Mammoth (But Should We?)
In the quest to understand how evolution basically built the woolly mammoth, we may have found the blueprints for building them ourselves.
40Something Has Been Making This Mark For 500 Million Years
Paleodictyon, a hexagonal-patterned fossil, is a bit of a mystery. We don’t even know if it’s a trace fossil, or the organism itself. So… what could it be?
41Giant Viruses Blur The Line Between Alive and Not
In 2003, microbiologists made a huge discovery. One that would force us to reconsider a lot of what we thought we knew about the evolution of microbial life: giant viruses.
42This new giant bacterium is visible to the naked eye #shorts
Microbiology goes macro with a new giant bacterium!
43Another Spinosaurus study, another opportunity to debate if Spinosaurus was aquatic #shorts
Spinosaurus had dense bones!
44There were dinosaurs with basically no arms at all, just hands! #shorts
Guemesia: a new no-arm dino
45When Giant Millipedes Reigned
This giant millipede was the largest known invertebrate to ever live on land. So how did it get so big??
46How Plate Tectonics Transformed Los Angeles
Despite the profound changes we’ve made here in recent history, the epic saga of Los Angeles' natural history is still visible - and even striking - if you know where and how to look for it.
47Why Does Caffeine Exist?
Today, billions of people around the world start their day with caffeine. But how and why did the ability to produce this molecule independently evolve in multiple, distantly-related lineages of flowering plants, again and again?
48This was the biggest earthquake humans ever experienced #shorts
One of the biggest earthquakes humans ever experienced happened around 3800 years ago in what's now northern Chile.
49Someone stole two of the most important documents in the history of science #shorts
We have no idea where they were all this time, or who stole and returned them and why.
50You can thank evolution for flesh-eating bees #shorts
Flesh-eating bees exist!
51This is one of the oldest art workshops ever discovered! #shorts
Archaeologists have discovered an ancient art workshop
52Did An Ancient Pathogen Reshape Our Cells?
There is one - and only one - group of mammals that doesn’t have alpha-gal: the catarrhine primates, which are the monkeys of Africa and Asia, the apes, and us.
53How Whale Evolution Kind Of Sucked
Mystacodon is the earliest known mysticete, the group that, today, we call the baleen whales. But if this was a baleen whale, where was its baleen? Where did baleen come from? And how did it live without it?
54The Fungi That Turned Ants Into Zombies
This fungus was actually manipulating ants’ movements, forcing them to do something they’d never ordinarily do, something strange, yet specific…
55Did you know that fossils can get sick? #shorts
Did you know that fossils can get sick? – Specifically with Pyrite Disease
56A supervolcano in Idaho once caused a disaster 900 miles away. #shorts
Disaster in the great plains!
57A bunch of very important fossils disappeared during WWII. #shorts
80 years ago, a bunch of fossils of ancient humans disappeared.
58Did this animal poop cubes? Giant cubes? #shorts
Congrats! You just found a wombat burrow. And the cubes are its poop.
59Are wisdom teeth a problem for us because of evolution? Or because of our development? #shorts
Wisdom teeth can be such a pain
60Our extinct relative was an ancient leopard’s lunch. #shorts
Paranthropus got chomped by a leopard
61When did we start wearing clothes? #shorts
We didn’t always wear clothes!
62Did Megalodon go after whale faces specifically? #shorts
Ancient sperm whale heads belonged on every shark-cuterie board
63Where Did Water Come From?
Mercury, Venus, and Mars are all super low on water – so where did ours come from and why do we have so much of it? We think our water came from a few unlikely sources: meteorites, space dust, and even the sun.
64Our Ancient Relative That Said 'No Thanks' To Life On Land
Around the time that some of our fishapod relatives were crawling out of the water, others were turning around and diving right back in.
65Imagine a cat's mouth fully covering up their saber teeth. #shorts
We might’ve been wrong about how this saber-toothed cat looked
66Darwin correctly predicted an animal existed without ever seeing it. #shorts
Sometimes evolution is completely predictable.
67Neandertals weren’t dumb cavemen. In lots of ways, they were just like us. #shorts
Shanidar 1 got by with a little help from his friends
68Here are two ways to get a fossil species named after you. #shortsfinale
Here are two ways to get a fossil species named after you.
