Crash Course Zoology

So what is an animal anyway? In our inaugural episode of Crash Course Zoology, we’ll endeavor to answer just that because as it turns out, it’s complicated! But before we get there we’ll need to introduce you to zoology more broadly, tell you about taxonomy (the branch of science dedicated to naming and describing organisms), and then we’ll get to phylogenetics (which looks at traits, evolutionary history, and relationships among living things). And it’s here that we’ll finally close in on an answer: Animals eat, move, sexually reproduce, and are multicellular. Well, most of the time. Let us explain!

Picture an “animal” in your mind right now. What does it look like? A dog? A lion? Maybe a sloth, pangolin, naked mole-rat, or even just a human? There’s a good chance that you imagined a mammal, which is understandable since we are mammals after all, but there is so much more animal life out there! Today, we’re going to try to figure out what that “average” animal would really look like - its size, what it eats, how many legs it has, if it even has a head, if it flies or walks or swims, you get the idea. And what we’ll find might just surprise you, or maybe not, they’re pretty common after all! But what we’ll also discover along the way is that what we think of as average is based on what we KNOW and there is so much animal life still to be identified. So maybe if you’re watching this in five years after you’ve identified a ton of new nematode species our answer will be totally different!

Even though animals can look very different on their surface, there are surprising similarities in how they’ve evolved to solve major problems - like how to support and move their bodies. Today, we’ll take a look at the various ways animals can grow, learn how and why some animals evolved to have a head and others evolved to not have a head, and examine the different types of skeletons - from those inside bodies (like our own), to skeletons outside bodies (like in insects), and even those made of water (like in jellyfish). Evolution is a wild journey that brings us so many different animals with a huge array of bodies and sizes - that is, until everything turns into a crab!

Animals have evolved to eat a lot of different things, even stuff that barely passes for food, and it shapes our entire lives from what we look like to where we live. Today, we’ll talk about why being a carnivore is just easier than being a herbivore, why there are so few omnivores out there, and dedicate a little time to the remaining 2% of animals that really push the definition of food. So grab a snack because today’s episode is gonna make you hungry… well until we start talking about what happens to food after you’ve digested it.

Today we're going to take a closer look at brains, how animals use them, and how some animals have even evolved to lose them! It turns out a brain (and intelligence more broadly) isn't easy to define, but what we do know for sure is that brains have evolved over time in response to the challenges in an animals' environment. And what we'll find is that sometimes it's much smarter to have a tiny, simple brain than a big, complicated one!

One of the most common adaptations seen in the animal kingdom is vision. Nearly 96% of all animals have some kind of eyes and they've proven so evolutionary advantageous that they've evolved multiple times in multiple ways and in a surprisingly short amount of time! So today, we'll walk you through the different types of eyes, show you how they work, and even take you on the day in the life of one of the most complex visual systems ever discovered in the mantis shrimp!

Today we're going to talk about what an ear even is, how ears have evolved, how they work, and some of the cool ways animals have tweaked their ears to work for their lifestyle. So perk up whatever you use for hearing because we're going to be sending vibrations your way for the next 10ish minutes!

Today, we're going to talk about one of the earliest animal senses, one that every life form we've ever found seems to have -- chemosensation -- or our sense of taste and smell. We'll discuss how animals use these senses to explore their environment and communicate, and how that pair of nostrils of yours is an example of convergent evolution. Also, before we wrap up our discussion of animal senses we're going to talk about a couple so specialized that seem straight from the pages of comic books -- the ability to sense electric and magnetic fields!

Today we're (finally) going to talk about animal babies! But more than just puppies and piglets we're going to be looking at their genes. Sexual reproduction is part of the very definition of what it means to be an animal and as you'll see life has found a variety of methods to pass down genetic information. We'll also discuss the differences between sex and gender, take a closer look at sex determination systems, examine how same-sex behavior happens all across the animal kingdom, and live a day-in-the-life of the serially hermaphroditic clownfish!

Social behavior like caring for our young, fighting off rivals, joining a pack, or even fusing together into a huge super animal like the Power Rangers, adds a whole other layer of complexity to the lives of animals out there. And it even raises questions about being, culture, and what it means to be an individual. So today, we're going to dive into the amazing ways animals interact with other animals, live a day in the life of the Portuguese Man O'War, and learn how these complex social interactions can go way beyond anything humans are capable of!

Nearly every environment on Earth — and that includes animals — is home to some kind of parasite. Today we’re going to talk about parasites not just because they’re an essential part of their ecosystems, but also because by studying them we can learn more about their hosts and even their shared evolution and ecology. So stick with us, this one is going to get a little weird!

In today’s episode of Crash Course Zoology we’re going to solve some phylogenetic mysteries! There are so many more questions we have yet to answer in Zoology so grab some fossils, fire up the DNA sequences, and bring your best hypothesis as we try to figure out where all the baby eels are, explain why spiders seem so lonely, and decide once and for all if horseshoe crabs are arachnids!

Today, in the penultimate episode of Crash Course Zoology, we're going to use everything we've learned so far to try and figure out what a "species" even is anyway! As you'll see, the incredible diversity of animals makes it really difficult to fit animals into neat categories so scientists have employed a variety of approaches to categorizing animals.

In this final episode of Crash Course Zoology, we review everything we've learned and even look at advances in the field that took place just in the 14 weeks of this course! Rae also shares various ways YOU can get involved in the zoology field!