MinuteEarth

An amazing new technology will let scientists grow new kidneys for patients using their own stem cells inside of pigs.

The pigments in our food all get destroyed on their way through our digestive system...so where do the colors of our poop and pee come from?

Doctors beat back a disease that was killing tens of thousands of babies a year with a machine based on a simple principle of physics.

It's easy to assume that every trait - including stubby arms on a terrifying predator - must be beneficial, but the forces of evolution don't really work like that.

Snakes occupy a special place in the human brain because they’re so weird.

How whale poop becomes perfume. Thanks to Crunchyroll for sponsoring this video!

Collective nouns are a great way to have fun with language and nature.

Due to a revolution in our understanding of the tree of life, birds are dinosaurs, while dimetrodons are not.

Check out how cats became our favorite little murder machines.

A tiny change in a molecule’s geometry completely changes its effects on the human body.

Getting wet isn’t REALLY what makes wool shrink; it merely exacerbates the friction between the wool fibers, which is stronger in one direction than another, so when agitated in the washer or dryer, they migrate in relation to each other in a process called “felting.”

Sled dogs are the best endurance athletes in the world thanks to a weird quirk in their metabolism.

Less than half of the rain that falls from a cloud makes it all the way to the ground – because a lot evaporates while falling or after landing in treetops.

Our diets are more global than we realize, because our common food crops and animals were domesticated far away in diverse locations.

It can be hard to distinguish bees from all the other insects out there that look like bees.

A monitoring system developed to listen for secret nuclear tests mostly hears other events happening all around Earth.

Because of space physics, one faraway asteroid is likely the progenitor of almost a third of all the meteorites on Earth.

Worms cause major changes to ecosystems, but those changes aren’t always new.

Thanks to spotted hyenas’ unusual social structure, males experience a tough life of solitude, harassment, and deprivation.

Infinitesimally small quantum dots can turn a window into a see-through solar panel!

The "Mountain or Valley?" illusion makes our brains turn valleys inside out. But inside-out valleys are a real thing, both on Earth and on Mars.

It’s becoming harder and harder to categorize moons as moons.

What exactly makes sugary syrups so sticky, when neither water nor sugar is very sticky on its own?

India and China have so many people today because they’re good for farming and big, but they’ve always been that way, so they’ve actually had a huge proportion of Earth’s people for thousands of years.

Nutrition during the first few years of life has a huge impact on adult height, and since nutrition has been getting better over time, humanity - including your family - is getting taller.

To feed everyone in the future, we may need to disrupt 10,000 years of farming practices and turn agriculture into a closed system.

Female hyenas don't have penises, but it sure looks like they do - and we still aren't quite sure why.

The incredible chemical weapon-making abilities of fungi, bacteria, and plants have created a diverse array of compounds that are useful to humans.

Male birds have the largest genital diversity of any class of animals because their sex chromosomes make it easy to pass male-helping mutations down the line.

Even the parts of our brains that don't control physical movement show a lot of rhythm, and that might be integral to how our brains work.

Occasionally, internal or external factors change, allowing certain animals to become giant versions of themselves.

When we domesticate an animal species, their brains shrink and they freak out less.

Considering humans' increased impact on the environment, we may want to reconsider whether there is still a place in our legal system for the Act of God defense.

Migrating birds care more about the ease of their trip than the distance they travel, and that leads to some truly roundabout routes.