We are a funny bunch with our superstitions, and it's surprising how many of them involved animals. It can be good or bad luck to see a cat, magpies, and pigs are believed to bring good luck and prosperity.
Slime's a funny thing, weird and wonderful. It can help salamanders to wet so they can breathe through their skin, provide a life-support bubble or developing frogs and even get snails from A to B.
Ghosts and ghouls go bump in the night, but so do many of the planet's most weird and wonderful creatures. The list of the secret creatures of the dark is endless, fascinating, and bizarre.
Return to President John F. Kennedy’s early years as an adventurous student in the 1930s as he travels across the Atlantic, discovers his love for Europe and searches for his path in life.
Traveling north across the planet, eventually, you’ll run out of forest, a land too harsh for even trees to take root. This is tundra. But with dramatic seasonal changes, it offers rich rewards for those tough enough to take on the challenge.
We take our features, our noses, eyes, and ears for granted, but they are pretty weird things until you look at the nose of a tapir or desman, the eyes of a cuttlefish or chameleon, or the ears of a seal or elephant. There is an almost endless variety of designs, and some are downright odd!
This talk is given by Steve Brusatte of University of Edinburgh.
"Thunder Road", a term coined to identify the nighttime route from Harlan, Kentucky, to Knoxville, Tennessee, traveled by illegal whiskey haulers. Tracing its origins to European immigrants who showed up with barely a shirt on their back and a recipe for making hooch.
They might not look as impressive as wolves, but the little dogs of the world are just as complex and endearing. By following dog families from across the world, we’ll see the similarities and differences in how they live, from how they interact and defend themselves to how they find food.
From the arctic tundra to the great planes, the kingdom of the wolf extends across the entire northern hemisphere. They are icons of the wilderness, spectacular creatures that live and die by the sword.
We've all heard of the Ox and the ass, and the donkey that carried Mary, but did you know gazelles are mentioned in the Bible? Or whales, lions, scorpions. A whole menagerie is featured. Some are creatures of the holy lands, but others have been selected for traits that make them ideal symbols.
Feeling out of shape? You're not alone. The pandemic has totally crushed most exercise routines. But a revolution in "connected fitness" is changing that, bringing hi-tech gear, live instruction and social interaction right into our homes.
All habitats present challenges to life, but few more so than the desert, but still, even here, life abounds, from little foxes to speed lizards and light-footed gazelles to huge camels. Each one finds its own ways to exploit and conserve food and water, creating new dramas every day.
Whatever you think of pigs, you’re probably underestimating one of the world’s most amazing animals. A year with wild boars and their relatives reveals a tender and dedicated matriarchal society, playful youngsters, and powerful warriors.
Mini oceans inland, lakes are treasure troves of aquatic wonders, each zone, from the depths to the surface, the banks to the mud at the bottom, hosts its own animal communities of predators and prey. Fish, birds, insects, even mammals, enjoy the bounty of their freshwater home.
Some creatures play hard and die young. Small bodies are more susceptible to heat loss need a lot of calories to stay warm. With high metabolisms, creatures like shrews, hummingbirds, and porpoises must devote their lives to eating and might perish between meals.
Much loved, clowns of the sea, seals are endlessly fascinating. Agile hunters and graceful in the water, and yet bloated sausages on land, seals entertain us with dramatic courtships, an endless playful sense of curiosity, and some of the cutest fluffy white babies on the planet.
Most visitors to the UK head for London, maybe Stonehenge or ancient cities, but for its tiny size, the UK has surprisingly rich and diverse wild places, and wildlife, hidden from view unless you seek it out.
Dangerous since 1896" is the saying that shrouds one of the country's most notorious prisons. Tucked in a remote section of the Cumberland Plateau and surrounded by miles of rough terrain, the prison once housed Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassin, James Earl Ray, where he escaped more than once.
During the 1930s, communities across Appalachia were in the dark at night because electric lines still had not connected them to the 20th Century. The TVA turned to the watersheds draining the Great Smoky Mountains and built a series of hydroelectric complexes that sparked the South’s economy.
In 1925, one of the greatest legal showdowns in history happened in the quaint town of Dayton, TN where Clarence Darrow squared off against William Jennings Bryan about Darwin’s theory of evolution. One man wasn’t prepared to be swept up in a trial that would change American education forever.
Give nature more space with rewilding. This new, cost-effective conservation strategy boosts biodiversity and protects the climate by reintroducing “key” animal species and developing larger wilderness areas.
What started in the 1970s as a gathering of hippies became what is known as the whitewater industry and Steep Creek Kayaking. Where boaters are pulled underwater by rapids, spit out downstream and come back for more.
Forests are dense, dark habitats, a realm of shadows, ideal for predators to stalk, whether it’s mink on the forest floor, goshawks in the canopy, and the big predators, lynx, and wolves in between
