MinuteEarth

By Minute EarthScience Earth Sciences

MinuteEarth episodes

March 10, 2025Why Pets Have Surprisingly Small Brains
To learn more about this topic, start your googling with these keywords:
Domesticated animal: a species of animal bred by humans over generations to become nonreactive and gain characteristics suitable for life as a farm animal or pet
Tame animal: an individual animal raised in a way that it has become less dangerous and frightened of people
Feral animal: an animal that escapes from captivity or domestication (& regains some similar & some different characteristics compared to its pre-domesticated state)
"Fight or flight": an instinctive physiological response to a threatening situation that readies a creature to either to resist forcibly or escape
Limbic system: the brain’s “panic button” - a system of nerves and networks near the bottom of the cortex that controls basic emotions (e.g. fear, pleasure, anger) and drives (e.g. hunger, sex, dominance)
Telencephalon: the most developed and anterior part of the forebrain, consisting chiefly of the cerebral hemispheres, and the brain region that shrinks most in domesticated animals
Domestication: a sustained multigenerational, mutualistic relationship in which one species (e.g. humans) assumes a significant degree of influence over the reproduction and care of another species (e.g. cows) in order to secure a more predictable supply of a resource of interest (e.g. milk/meat/traction), and through which the domesticated organisms gain advantage over individuals that remain outside this relationship (e.g. aurochs, which went extinct), thereby benefitting and often increasing the fitness of both species involved

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3 min
March 09, 2025 Tongue Tanning
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2 min
March 08, 2025 Leather Making
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2 min
March 07, 2025Why Do Some Animals Get Gigantic?
To learn more about this topic, start your googling with these keywords:
Spiracles: External respiratory openings on insects
Carboniferous Period: The time period from 359-299 million years ago when the Earth’s oxygen levels increased rapidly.
Square-Cube Law: A mathematical principle that describes the relationship between area and volume.
Buoyancy: An upward force exerted by a fluid that opposes the weight of an immersed object.
Phytoplankton: Microscopic plants eaten by krill and other zooplankton.
Baleen: A filter-feeding system inside the mouth of some whales.

MinuteEarth is produced by Neptune Studios LLC
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4 min
March 06, 2025Why Bird Penises Are So Weird
To learn more about this topic, start your googling with these keywords:
Sex chromosome: A chromosome involved in determining the sex of an individual.
Cloaca: A posterior orifice that serves as the only exit for the gastrointestinal, urinary and genital tracts.
Mutation: An alteration in the DNA sequence that makes up a gene.
Sexually-selected Trait: A trait based on a mutation that confers a reproductive advantage.
BMP4: A protein whose presence halts the growth of bird penises in the egg.

MinuteEarth is produced by Neptune Studios LLC
https://neptunestudios.info
If you like what we do, you can help us!
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4 min
March 05, 2025Where Do Our Drugs Come From?
To learn more about this topic, start your googling with these keywords:
Bioprospecting: the systematic search for and development of new sources of chemical compounds, genes, micro-organisms, macro-organisms, and other valuable products from nature.

MinuteEarth is produced by Neptune Studios LLC
https://neptunestudios.info
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4 min
March 04, 2025Why Do Female Hyenas Have Pseudo-Penises?!
To learn more about this topic, start your googling with these keywords:
Pseudopenis: a structure that resembles a penis but is developmentally (and functionally) different
Masculinization: the process by which female genitalia is made to appear more like male genitalia

MinuteEarth is produced by Neptune Studios LLC
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If you like what we do, you can help us!
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4 min
March 03, 2025Why Farming is Broken (And Always Has Been)
To learn more about this topic, start your googling with these keywords:
Annual plant: living for a year or less, perpetuating itself by seed
Perennial plant: living for several years
Polyculture: the simultaneous cultivation or exploitation of several crops or kinds of animals
Natural systems agriculture: cropping systems based on processes found in nature
Agroforestry: land use management that combines the cultivation of trees/shrubs with crops/pasture to create more productive and sustainable land-use systems
Alley cropping: planting agricultural crops between rows of trees or shrubs

MinuteEarth is produced by Neptune Studios LLC
https://neptunestudios.info
If you like what we do, you can help us!
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4 min
March 02, 2025 Avoid Tannins
MinuteEarth is produced by Neptune Studios LLC
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2 min
March 01, 2025 Rabbit Poop
MinuteEarth is produced by Neptune Studios LLC
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If you like what we do, you can help us!
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2 min

About MinuteEarth

From the publisher's feed

From the creators of the popular science show with millions of YouTube subscribers comes the MinuteEarth podcast. Every episode of the show dives deep into a science question you might not even know…