Nobody knows why some mushrooms are psychedelic. I mean, we know that they contain a compound called psilocybin, which messes with the brain chemistry of lots of animals, including humans. But we don’t know we don’t know why being psychedelic would be useful to mushrooms in the first place. H...
2025-10-17 02:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post
Ok so “misaligned AI” is dangerous. But if it does decide to kill us, what SPECIFICALLY could it do?
You can watch our latest video here on Patreon or on Youtube: https://youtu.be/AxHMvghsXXg
Thanks for your supp...
2025-10-02 03:44:55 +0000 UTC View Post
Krubera Cave, one of our planet’s deepest known caves, extends 2200 meters into the earth – that’s a depth of nearly six Empire State Buildings. Or at least, that's as far down as humans have been able to explore; there might be other undiscovered chambers that go down even farther. But the...
2025-09-19 04:24:09 +0000 UTC View Post
If you’ve ever owned a backyard trampoline –or jumped on someone else’s– you might have noticed that the grass underneath it is longer and lusher than the grass in the rest of the yard. It’s not just that that grass isn’t getting mowed… in fact, when it does get mowed, you can see t...
2025-09-04 04:42:52 +0000 UTC View Post
In the 1960s, NASA’s engineers were building the Apollo spacecraft. But they ran into a major problem that almost prevented them from getting to the moon. To solve it, they brought in some unexpected help: expert weavers.
You can watch our latest video here on Patreon or on Youtube: 2025-08-26 04:58:01 +0000 UTC View Post
In school, you probably learned about the water cycle with a diagram. The problem is…it’s wrong – or at the very least, pretty misleading.
You can watch our latest video here on Patreon or on Youtube: https://youtu.be/X7...
2025-08-07 04:35:45 +0000 UTC View Post
Disasters don’t just cause deaths right away; they often have long tails of destruction due to all the stress they cause and services they disrupt.
You can watch our latest video here on Patreon or on Youtube: https://youtu....
2025-07-24 16:45:20 +0000 UTC View PostHi there
We’ve got a new video coming out later this week that tells a story about the macaques of Monkey Island off the coast of Puerto Rico. Since that’s where I used to work as a primatologist back in the day - and because I got to go back there a few months ago to make the MinuteEar...
2025-07-23 00:47:54 +0000 UTC View Post
The canine family is a hugely diverse group of foxes, wolves, and –yes– doggos that have spread all over the world. In our latest video, we explain who they are and how they’re related.
You can watch this video here on Patreon or on Youtube: 2025-07-10 06:52:44 +0000 UTC View Post
Despite the fact that we've been trying to exterminate coyotes for hundreds of years, the species is thriving because of a special trait that causes their population to grow whenever one gets killed.
You can watch our latest video here on Patreon or on Youtube: 2025-06-27 05:54:32 +0000 UTC View Post
Venomous snakes kill nearly 100,000 people a year. Which is weird, because we have a pretty effective treatment for venomous snake bites; it’s actually been around for more than a hundred years. So why are so many people still dying?
You can watch our latest video here on Patreon or on Yo...
2025-06-12 06:31:51 +0000 UTC View Post
Eight years ago, David thought he had a great idea for a video. He was a fresh-faced new addition to the MinuteEarth team, and he proposed that we make a video explaining “What Is A Species?” But then everyone started laughing at him.
You can watch our latest video here on Patreon or o...
2025-05-22 03:46:09 +0000 UTC View PostHellllooooo friends
As a small token of our huge appreciation for your incredible support, we're going to be sending you a little something in the mail sometime in the next few weeks. Please update your mailing address in your account so we can make sure it's going to the right place...
2025-05-21 23:27:05 +0000 UTC View Post
This beetle is trying to mate with a beer bottle. And in fact, he's dedicated enough to the task that he may get so dehydrated that he dies doing it. Which seems like really dumb behavior… but don’t be too quick to judge, because there’s something MUCH deeper going on here.
You can wa...
2025-05-08 05:48:01 +0000 UTC View Post
This is a story about attention, memory, and headless goat hockey, which is a totally real sport played on horseback with a goat carcass standing in for a ball. It's known by many names throughout central asia, but Cameron first encountered it as "buzkashi". It's wild, and we swear it is relevant...
2025-05-04 07:59:07 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi! I'm Arcadi, one of the illustrators here at MinuteEarth. Here's the thing: I LOVE to sneak in lil secrets in our videos, and my favorite way to do that is using Ithkuil, which is a made-up language that I took up a couple of years ago. Ithkuil was designed by John Quijada in an effort to mini...
2025-04-17 08:26:35 +0000 UTC View Post
There is a point in human history where everyone alive at the time fits into one of two categories: Either they are the ancestor of nobody alive today, or they are an ancestor of everyone alive today because of how genealogy and genetic lineages work – and it is much more recent than you think....
2025-04-10 06:12:18 +0000 UTC View PostWhen Earth’s tectonic plates rub against one another, they create planet-shaking shockwaves that we Earthlings call “earthquakes”. Most other planetary bodies in our Solar System don't have tectonic plates, though, but, somehow?, they DO still have quakes.
You can watch our latest v...
2025-04-01 05:22:04 +0000 UTC View Post
If you’ve ever tried to keep hold of a wet bar of soap – well, you know what happens; soap is really slippery. Except that it also isn’t – a dry bar of soap isn’t slick at all. Why do soap and water create such a slippery situation?
You can watch our latest video here on Patreon ...
2025-03-19 05:23:53 +0000 UTC View Post
Plant pollen is everywhere in springtime, but because it is so small, you probably don't know that what is making you sneeze is a living, breathing, mobile version of the plant that forms half of the it's entire bizarre life cycle.
You can watch our latest video here on Patreon or on Youtub...
2025-03-07 03:40:28 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi folks,
The video we’re making this week is a bit of a departure from our usual fare, since it’s about the state of federally funded science research in the US - and the weird and unexpected impact it’s having on s...
2025-02-14 06:10:44 +0000 UTC View Post
The various ways new fish get into isolated lakes are a microcosm of the complicated ways that life has spread around the globe.
You can watch our latest video here on Patreon or on Youtube: https://youtu.be/CHTMZiXeB6A 2025-01-30 15:29:07 +0000 UTC View Post
This is part 1 of Miranda Cosgrove's favorite episodes from Science Minute with MinuteEarth, an illustration segment from her show: Mission Unstoppable.
We've been illustrating this segment for three years now, and it's been great. Hope you like it and thanks for your support <3
-...
2025-01-24 04:22:27 +0000 UTC View Post
There are several ways to think about ancestry, and all of them suggest you have fewer unique ancestors than you might think.
You can watch our latest video here on Patreon or on Youtube: https://youtu.be/5eMAmRER0y8
Plug your ears with your thumbs, and make a fist with each hand. Do you hear something that sounds like distant thunder? That’s the sound of your muscles working.
Watch our latest video here on Patreon or on Youtube: 2024-12-18 03:15:15 +0000 UTC View Post
AI is evolving so fast that soon it might be able to take over scientific research...but what would that look like?
In our latest video, Kate wonders whether spending all that time in school and the field for her PhD was worth it :)
You can watch our it here on Patreon or on Youtube:...
2024-11-27 00:37:18 +0000 UTC View Post
The Grand Canyon is super-wide and super-deep, which might make you think that the Colorado River, which carved it, is particularly old or powerful. Or at least that's what Cameron thought.
You can watch our latest video here on Patreon or on Youtube at: 2024-11-13 03:39:42 +0000 UTC View Post
Twenty years ago – thanks to a giant breakthrough – we thought we were about to cure cancer. We were wrong. Now, though, we have a new idea that flips the previous one on its head.
You can watch our latest video here on Patreon or on Youtube: 2024-10-31 06:11:15 +0000 UTC View Post
Most living things on Earth need oxygen to survive, but scientists discovered a species of bacteria that uses oxygen totally differently from every other organism on Earth.
You can watch our latest video here on Patreon or on Youtube: 2024-10-16 04:54:57 +0000 UTC View Post
Hey friends!
We recently started putting out some newsletters and we have had more fun with them than we originally expected.
You can subscribe to the free newsletter here: http://news.minuteearth.com/subscr...