Ecogeeks : Untamed Science Video Podcast

Rob Nelson gives a quick overview of 5 crazy animal births including the platypus, echidna, hammerhead shark, african cichlids, gastric brooding frog and the Surinam toad.

Rob jumps out of a plane to help explain the basic concepts of acceleration.

World Water Day is held annually on 22 March as a means of focusing attention on the importance of freshwater and advocating for the sustainable management of freshwater resources.

An international day to celebrate freshwater was recommended at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). The United Nations General Assembly responded by designating 22 March 1993 as the first World Water Day.

Each year, World Water Day highlights a specific aspect of freshwater. In 2013, in reflection of the International Year of Water Cooperation, World Water Day is also dedicated to the theme of cooperation around water and is coordinated by UNESCO in collaboration with UNECE and UNDESA on behalf of UN-Water.

Rob interviews people at the local gym to see what they think about love.

Rob gives a summary of the work we've been doing on bear hibernation

Have you ever stopped to think it's kind of weird that a country (Turkey) has the same name as our wild thanksgiving bird of choice? You might have thought it was a coincidence, but get this. In turkey, they call it greek chicken. In Greece, they call it Peru. In Peru, they call it French Chicken and in France they call it Indian Chicken. The bird we now know as the turkey, was actually a name given because of the country of Turkey!

As it turns out, the first explorers brought the turkey back to Europe through Turkey. Because of that, the bird was colloquially called Turkish guinea fowl. It was later just shortened to turkey.

Here in the United States we are accustomed to eating only a handful of fruits such as apples, oranges and bananas. Yet, there are a lot of fruits that are extremely common in other places of the world. In this weekly video, Jonas, takes a look at durian, a fruit called the "king of fruits" in SE Asia. Durian has one of the strongest smells, and is actually illegal to carry on all forms of public transportation. To understand why, Jonas opens up some of the basic chemistry of this incredible fruit.

If you've been watching the news lately, you'll have noticed that there are a lot of mass strandings occurring around the world. This includes the nearly 100+ turtles that stranded off the coast of Cape Cod in November and the multitudes of dolphins and whales in NZ during the same month. But why is it that these animals are stranding? Is it a freak of nature or are they stranding because of something we're doing? For that matter, is there anything we can do to help stop it? In this week's Untamed Science video update, I attempt to explain what we know about the nature of marine animal strandings. What is really going on with cetacean and turtles that end up on the beaches?

Lindsay Zanno helped walk us through the details of what it's like to get a dinosaur from the field into a display. The key things she emphasized were that a) it's a lot of work b) it's not glamorous c) rarely to they find complete skeletons d) they don't excavate it with little brushes out in the field and e) they spend close to 50 times the effort on a skeleton, in the lab, once it's been pulled out of the ground.

This video gives a broad overview of sampling techniques. It doesn't touch on every single sampling method, but gives a quick intro as well as looking more specifically at distance sampling.