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Here and now

All in the head; what gives us our oddly-shaped brain?
How touching noses sheds light on what we see
Coming up for air
Heated eyes give swordfish deep-sea ‘night vision’
Making waves; how moving our arms as we talk signals our ‘inner fish’
Blind evolution gives eyeless fish sleepless nights
What the fish have to say about how we found a voice
The reptile that almost became a fish
Bats; hunters that see in sound
Elephants’ aquatic ancestors; just below the surface
Learning to sing under water

Near horizons

Feeling the fear: the ecology of our most basic emotion
Seeing red: for happy faces, or snakes in the grass?
How did our stable body temperatures evolve?
On the tip of my tongue
Putting things into words
Gut feelings; are microbes in your intestines dictating your mood?
Telling Tales
What's so different about human speech?
Riddles in code; is there a gene for language?
Upon reflection; what can we really see in mirror neurons?

Far horizons

More than meets the eye; what is ‘seeing’?
Love in a time of Prozac; how did our emotions evolve?
What is language?
A sense of protection: is the immune system an extension of our minds?

Q&A

Is my dog conscious?
Can you make a brain the size of a human neuron?
Could your brain be five times bigger?
Do insects copulate with flowers?
Do birds have orgasms?
Are there Martians?
Can insects use tools?
Do animals use cosmetics?
Are dung-beetles astronomers?
Do animals ever go to hospital?
Do whales enjoy cocktail parties?
Can a fly ride a bicycle?
Can you fly using a comb?
Are dead animals ever alive?
Can sponges see?
Can kangaroos fly?
Can snakes glide?
Are crocodiles world travellers?
Can you starve at a banquet?
Can mushrooms hunt?
Can flies get drunk?
Are sponges dangerous?
Can you reinvent a sabre tooth?
Can you live on only water?
You can farm fish, but can fish farm?
Are ants shepherds?
Do plants need sunlight?
Are there aquatic flowers?
Are there extraterrestrials?
Are plants warm-blooded?
Can life survive in boiling water?
Do florists stock fungi?
Are clouds alive?
Can you have blue blood?
Can dandruff be green?
Can an ant turn into a berry?
Are there terrestrial mammals in New Zealand?
Can an animal turn itself into an amoeba?
Is the ichneumon beautiful?
Can humans interbreed with other species?
Can you see heat?
Are humans unique?

Pioneers

Louis Agassiz
Mary Anning
Agnes Arber
Nicolaus Copernicus
Charles Darwin
Michael Faraday
Ronald A. Fisher
John Frere
J.B.S. Haldane
Dorothy Hodgkin
James Hutton
Thomas Henry Huxley
Charles Lyell
Barbara McClintock
Gregor Mendel
Richard Owen
Louis Pasteur
Adam Sedgwick
George Gaylord Simpson
D’Arcy Thompson
Nikolai Vavilov
Alfred Wegener

Videos

Sir David Attenborough
Nicky Clayton, University of Cambridge
Simon Conway Morris, University of Cambridge
Robert Foley, University of Cambridge
Anjali Goswami, University College London
Peter Grubb, University of Cambridge
Elizabeth Harper, University of Cambridge
Michael Hendy, University of Otago
Rebecca Kilner, University of Cambridge
Peter Kjærgaard, Natural History Museum of Denmark
Eugene Koonin, NCBI
Carenza Lewis, University of Lincoln
Jonathan Losos, Harvard University
Ard Louis, University of Oxford
Nikku Madhusudhan, University of Cambridge
L. Mahadevan, Harvard University
Mark Maslin, University College London
George McGhee, Rutgers University
Josh Mylne, University of Western Australia
Ian Roberts, University of Cambridge
Peter Robinson, University of Cambridge
Walter Salzburger, University of Basel
Anders Sandberg, University of Oxford
Eörs Szathmáry, Eötvös Loránd University
Geerat Vermeij, University of California, Davis
Matthew Wills, University of Bath
Richard Wrangham, Harvard University

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Q&A

Can you live on only water?

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Sri Lanka flying snake
(Image: Wikimedia Commons)

Can snakes glide?

Aleiodes indiscretus wasp parasitizing a gypsy moth caterpillar(Image: Agricultural Research Service, the research agency of the United States Department of Agriculture/Wikimedia Commons)

Can insects use tools?

An ant collects honeydew from an aphid. The coexistence of ants and aphids is an example of a symbiotic relationship; the ants 'farm' the aphids for honeydew and in return the ants protect the aphids. For example, when it rains the ants might move the aphids to sheltered locations(Image: Dawidi/Wikimedia Commons)

Are ants shepherds?

Something completely different...

Der Liebeskranke Antiochus by Johann Anwander (1715-1770), portraying the lovesick king Antiochus; ruler of the Seleucid empire (now modern Syria) from 281-261 BC. In his novel Love in the time of Cholera author Gabriel Garcia Marquez explores the notion that lovesickness is literally an illness whose effects on the body are comparable to those of cholera. The word ‘choleric’ in English means depressed, irritable and angry, and in Marquez’ native Spanish, cólera can also denote passion, rage and ire. The metaphor illustrates the power our emotions have to affect our physical body and mental processes (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

Love in a time of Prozac; how did our emotions evolve?

Our feelings result a fast information processing mechanism found throughout the vertebrates, and which are highly developed in mammals. What then is ‘love’, really, and how did it evolve?

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