minuteearth

What Happens When Predators Disappear?

A world without predators. It sounds like a safer, happier world, but come on, this is SCIENCE…

Watch our latest video here on Patreon or on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlygle3Yd6o

Thanks for your support <3

-Ever

Why Don't Snakes Poison Themselves?

Many animal species stuff themselves with toxic chemicals for protection, which forces them to use a handful of distinct strategies to avoid becoming victims of their own weapons.

You can watch our latest video here on Patreon or on Youtube: https://youtu.be/EzoqvBZe_gI

Thanks for your support <3

-Ever

Why Do Butterflies Bother Being Caterpillars?

It seems wild that some animals basically trade in their bodies for new ones during their lifetime, but it's actually really common – and it makes a lot of sense.

You can watch our latest video here on Patreon or on Youtube: https://youtu.be/ErRQN_kRQrc

Thanks for your support! <3

-Ever

How To Take A Dinosaur's Temperature

Despite the seemingly basic things we don't know about dinosaurs, we do know some surprising things – like their body temperatures.

You can watch our latest video here on Patreon or on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNiJjW8uujg

Thanks for your support <3

-Ever

Why Did Some Species Stop Evolving?

The ancestors of gars, horseshoe crabs and coelacanths looked almost the same as their modern relatives. Darwin called species like these “living fossils'' because they seem like they are evolutionarily frozen in time. But Darwin was wrong.

Watch our latest video here on Patreon or on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_skYZFmr0Lg

Thanks for your support <3

-Ever

Why There Are No King Bees

Beehives always have a queen, who is the mother of the entire hive. But have you ever wondered, what happened to the king, if there was ever any? Can a male bee become a king?

You can watch our latest video here on Patreon or on Youtube: https://youtu.be/uKP3lc9SOaA

Thanks for your support <3

-Ever

How To Avoid Getting Pulled Out To Sea

You might think the most dangerous thing that can happen at a beach is a shark attack, or that the scariest thing might be a tsunami - but instead, rip currents kill more beachgoers than all other causes combined.

You can watch our latest video here on Patreon or on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA4ePvWQgO0

Also, there is a new 4K downloadable attached to this post. And Sarah wanted to r...

ALL Plants Have Color Vision?!

Plants can tell when competitors are nearby because they can see them.

Watch our latest video here on Patreon or on Youtube: https://youtu.be/KWT0yfU7zGk

Thanks for your support <3

-Ever

Introducing the MinuteUniverse Newsletter: Just A Minute!

Less doomscrolling - more interesting earth-themed facts and games!

✨ We just launched our newsletter - Just a Minute - our new hub for everything going on within our MinuteUniverse: MinuteEarth, MinuteFood, MinutePhysics, MinuteLabs, MinuteMinis, and even xkcd's What If?.

We'll share what our team has been interested in lately, cool science articles we've discovered, videos...

Why Monkeys Can Only Count To Four

There’s an island in the Caribbean where David used to perform magic tricks for monkeys. And it was super cool because it suggested that they have the ability to count! (but only up to four).

Watch our latest video here on Patreon or on Youtube: https://youtu.be/-9XKiOXaHlI

Thanks for your support <3

-Ever

The Truth About Petri Dishes 🧫

One of the best ways of studying bacteria is to grow them on a petri dish, but only a tiny percentage of bacterial species will grow on them. The other 98% of them simply refuse to.

Watch our latest video here on Patreon or on Youtube: https://youtu.be/2VY_SBwkCjw

Thanks for your support! <3

-Ever

Do Memes Spread Like Diseases?

When we say a meme goes “viral,” we aren't actually saying it's making people sick. But the math behind a meme’s spread suggests it's actually a pretty spot-on analogy.

You can watch our latest video here on Patreon or go to Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eQg_yVXRzc

Thanks for your support! <3

-Ever

How Does Birth Control Work?

You can think of the ovaries and testicles as little factories that produce eggs and sperm. The egg and the sperm can travel from their factories, meet up, and then implant into a cozy bed of tissue – that’s how pregnancy begins. But if you don’t want to get pregnant, there are a bunch of different ways to disrupt this process at basically every step along the way.

You can watch our latest video here on Patreon or on Youtube: 2024-05-29 06:20:23 +0000 UTC View Post

Why is the number of languages "increasing"?

Just over a decade ago, the last native speaker of Yurok died. And the language – which had been spoken by indigenous people in California for more than 10,000 years – died with him. And Yurok isn’t alone; every year, an estimated nine languages go extinct. That’s why, if you look at an official count of the total number of living languages in the world over time, you can see that … wait, huh? How are we gaining languages?

You can watch our latest video here on Patreon, or on ...

Why Don't We Eat Carnivores?

Most of you know I'm a big fan of carnivores, and a big fan of food. So I've long wondered why - considering all the animals we humans regularly eat around the world - so few of them are carnivores? I finally decided to dig in and look into the science behind this question.

You can check out our video here on Patreon, or on YouTube with this link: https://youtu.be/o7d6cZsLo6c

Let us know what YOU think the most p...

Behind the scenes: Storyboarding and Scratch narrations

There are many steps to creating our videos and a lot of the work is never seen by anyone outside of our team. The very first storyboard is normally something no one outside of the team will see: this has quick drawings and often a scratch narration (especially when we haven't fully finalized the script yet).

Because life is supposed to be fun, I like to play a little joke with the MinuteEarth intro in these storyboards. (it's the little things, you know)
Enjoy a little compilation ...

April Digital Download & Custom Stick Figures

Hi friends! This month's patron digital download is a classic MinuteEarth drawing - and it's one we find ourselves using daily amongst our team :) It's a handy little guide that tells you which of your fruits are already as ripe as they'll get, and which to keep an eye on before they turn overripe on your counter (ugh). Check out the attachments below or click th...

ME Explains: Solar Eclipses & NEW ECLIPSE APP!

Over the last year, we at MinuteEarth and MinutePhysics have had the privilege of working with NASA's Heliophysics Education Activation Team make a series of videos about the awesomeness of solar eclipses. Here they are, all seven of them!

Watch the video here on Patreon, or on Youtube at this link: https://youtu.be/wshkH64xDac?si=y7EsjLDnqYVSyN0b

*AND we have a very exciting soft launch of ...

Most Total Eclipses Happen North Of This Line

Solar eclipses can happen anywhere on earth, but if you want to see a total eclipse, you need to go to the far north, because the Earth’s shape and orbit determine the high latitudes and eclipse hotspot.

You can check out our video here on Patreon, or in Youtube with this link: https://youtu.be/1GrOLainIiA

Thank you so much for your support <3

-Ever

What’s Eating The Titanic?

When a ship sinks, lots of factors, like the ship’s materials, the water quality, and the depth of the seafloor all play a role in determining how long the ship will last down there – as a result, the Titanic will be gone in fifty years, while Byzantine wrecks in the Black sea remain.

Thanks for your support <3

-Ever

How the spiders Georg video came to be...

A few weeks ago, we published a video about statistics and old Tumblr memes - and this was a weird one in every way possible!

Normally, the ideas for our videos are pitched between the writers, who then discuss whether a topic will work or not and lean on their considerable experience and expertise to design the best narrative.

That did not happen for this script.

This script started as a joke between Lizah and Arcadi in between in-depth Rocky Horror Show and Stardew Valley ...

How To Keep MinuteEarth Weird and Wonderful (Featuring new Patreon perks!)

Hey friends!

What do YouTubers and crustaceans have in common? In this video, we use the phenomenon of “carcinization” - that is, the convergent evolution that keeps turning animals into crabs - to explain another convergence: the fact that so many YouTube videos look alike. There are outside pressures pushing YouTube videos towards a particular look and feel, and we want to resist them so we can keep making the kind of fun science explainers that make MinuteEarth MinuteEarth.

Who's Eating All These Spiders?

Hey friends!

We have a new video this week that’s a bit different from our regular ones. Normally, the ideas for our videos are pitched between the writers, who then discuss whether a topic will work or not. They lean on their considerable experience and expertise to design the best narrative.

That did not happen for this script.

This script started as a joke between Lizah and Arcadi, in between in-depth Rocky Horror Show and Stardew Valley discussions. Somewhere along the...

Thumbnail testing!

Hey friends,

In the past months, YouTube has allowed us to beta-test the new thumbnail testing feature. This feature allows us to upload up to 3 thumbnails to go with a title, and then YouTube tests all of them and gives us feedback on audience preference based on what YouTube calls 'watch time share' - which means that it doesn't just count clicks but also how long someone watches the video after having clicked the thumbnail.

We are pretty excited about this feature because we ar...

Weird Things Animals Do During Eclipses

For centuries, humans have reported animals freaking out during solar eclipses, like birds falling from the sky and bees hiding in their hives, but the animals most affected by eclipses might be us.

Thanks for your support <3

- Ever

Some MinuteEarth in the Curiosity Box!

Hey friends!

We have some fun news: we made a special edition of our book 'MinuteEarth explains' as a part of Michaels Curiosity Box. :)
The Curiosity Box is curated by Michael Stevens (VSauce), he collects his favorite science toys and collectibles to share with other people who are excited about this stuff. (some of those other people are us, Sarah had this box for a while :) )

This collaboration started April last year when some of us were at Thinkercon, a con where scienc...

5 Amazing Uses For Your Poop!

Because of the way digestion works, human poop not only contains dangerous microbes, it also contains a wide variety of other things, many of which we could potentially put to use. 

You can watch our latest video here on Patreon! 

Thanks for your support <3

- Ever

New Perks! Sticker Club or T-shirt Club?

Hi lovely Patrons, Sarah here! We're working on giving different tiers some new perks this year and would love for you to vote on which idea you're more excited about. We're hoping that the first one would be released by April. Read below for details...

The T-shirt Club would be one science/nature themed, illustrated t-shirt graphic each season (4 per year, every three months). We'd be sure they were the kind of super soft, cozy tees you'd love to live in.

The Sticker Club would...

Inside The Sunny Center of a Hurricane

Sometimes –right after a particularly nasty part of a hurricane– the wind calms, the sky clears, and the air warms; the weather isn’t just better, it’s beautiful. But then, just as suddenly, the weather turns wild again, battering the area with a second super-intense burst. This weird lull in a hurricane is called the “eye.” But why does this lull exist in an otherwise-violent storm? 

Watch our latest video here: 2024-01-11 04:21:08 +0000 UTC View Post

The Crabs Are Coming

As the waters warm in the deep sea around Antarctica, ecosystem-crushing crabs are able to live closer and closer to the continent.

This video will come out on our Youtube channel on Friday, but you get to watch it now. Also, there's a message at the end of the video for you all. Thank you for your support <3

- Ever