The Cambrian Explosion
The Cambrian explosion was a remarkable burst of evolution, beginning around 540 million years ago, when most of the major groups of animals appeared…
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The Cambrian explosion was a remarkable burst of evolution, beginning around 540 million years ago, when most of the major groups of animals appeared…
Endosymbiotic theory explains the origin of the complex cells that make up plants, animals, fungi, and other higher organisms. It proposes that key…
Lamarckism is the discredited idea that organisms can pass on to their offspring the characteristics they acquire during their lifetime. Its classic…
Whether animals have conscious experiences, an inner life of feelings and awareness, is a deep and genuinely contested question. That many animals…
The circulation of blood is the continuous movement of blood around the body, pumped by the heart through a network of vessels. This understanding,…
Mendelian inheritance is the set of principles describing how traits are passed from parents to offspring through discrete units we now call genes.…
The human skeleton is the internal framework of bones that supports the body, protects its organs, and allows it to move. An adult skeleton has 206…
Cell theory is one of the foundational ideas of biology. It holds that all living things are made of cells, that the cell is the basic unit of life,…
The human eye is the organ of sight, a remarkable structure that turns light into the images we see. Roughly the size of a ping pong ball, it…
Photosynthesis is the process by which plants, algae, and certain bacteria capture the energy of sunlight and use it to turn carbon dioxide and water…
The octopus is a soft-bodied marine animal with eight arms, a bulbous head, and a level of intelligence unmatched among invertebrates. A member of…
The polar bear is the largest land carnivore on Earth and the undisputed master of the Arctic. Superbly adapted to one of the planet's harshest…
Panspermia is the hypothesis that life exists throughout the universe and is spread between worlds by space dust, meteoroids, asteroids, and comets.…
The Gaia hypothesis proposes that life and its physical environment on Earth form a single, self regulating system that keeps the planet suitable for…
The human brain is the command centre of the body and the most complex object known in the universe. Weighing only about 1.4 kilograms, it contains…
The bald eagle is a large bird of prey native to North America and the national bird and emblem of the United States. With its white head and tail,…
The blue whale is the largest animal ever known to have lived, bigger even than any dinosaur. Reaching up to about 30 metres long and weighing as…
The lion (Panthera leo) is a large cat of the genus Panthera, the second-largest living cat after the tiger. Once spread across Africa, southern…
The Rare Earth hypothesis proposes that complex, multicellular life, of the kind found on Earth, is extremely rare in the universe, because it…
The honey bee is a flying insect famous for two things: producing honey, and pollinating a vast share of the plants that humans and ecosystems depend…