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And no copycat is stranger or more accomplished than the mimic octopus. True to its name, it impersonates a variety of other animals on the fly, morphing from an octopus to a banded sole to a lionfish to a sea snake. But this is no random assemblage of impressions: All of these creatures are toxic or venomous.

Shape of Life is a series of FREE short classroom videos that beautifully illustrate the evolution of the animal kingdom on planet earth. Based upon an original PBS Series, Shape of Life is especially designed for students and teachers who want a first-hand account of how animals adapt and thrive. The series is NGSS aligned with exquisite focus on diversity, biodiversity, adaptability, body structure, design, behaviors, and the innovative scientists who explore these creatures.

Shape of Life is a series of FREE short classroom videos that beautifully illustrate the evolution of the animal kingdom on planet earth. Based upon an original PBS Series, Shape of Life is especially designed for students and teachers who want a first-hand account of how animals adapt and thrive. The series is NGSS aligned with exquisite focus on diversity, biodiversity, adaptability, body structure, design, behaviors, and the innovative scientists who explore these creatures.

When plastic trash degrades in the ocean, it doesn't just go away: It becomes countless tiny particles, and little creatures called larvaceans sweep it up--and into the food chain.

In the deep, dark ocean, many sea creatures make their own light for hunting, mating and self-defense. Bioluminescence expert Edith Widder was one of the first to film this glimmering world. At TED2011, she brings some of her glowing friends onstage, and shows more astonishing footage of glowing undersea life.

Humans construct boundaries -- around our homes, our neighborhoods, and our nations -- to bring order to a chaotic world. But we rarely consider how these boundaries affect other creatures. In this episode of Think Like A Scientist, we meet conservation photographer Krista Schlyer, who has spent the last seven years documenting the environmental effects of the U.S./Mexico border wall, and biologist Jon Beckmann, who studies how man-made barriers influence the movement of wildlife. Schlyer and Beckmann have seen damaging impacts of the border wall firsthand, but they remain optimistic. Humans probably won't stop constructing walls and fences any time soon, but planning our boundaries with wildlife in mind can help prevent these structures from causing environmental harm.

Darwin's theory of biological evolution helps us understand how simple life forms can give rise to complex lifeforms, but how did the first reproducing creatures come about? The origin of life needs its own explanation.

You're swimming in the ocean when something brushes your leg. When the tingling sets in, you realize you've been stung by a jellyfish. How do these beautiful gelatinous creatures pack such a painful punch? Neosha S Kashef details the science behind the sting.

In our first animation of this series we learned how point mutations can edit genetic information. Here we see how duplication events can dramatically lengthen the genetic code of an individual. As point mutations add up in the duplicated region across generations, entirely new genes with new functions can evolve. In the video we see three examples of gene duplications resulting in new traits for the creatures who inherit them: the evolution of a venom gene in snakes, the evolution of leaf digestion genes in monkeys, and the evolution of burrowing legs in hunting dogs.

It's a common saying that elephants never forget. But the more we learn about elephants, the more it appears that their impressive memory is only one aspect of an incredible intelligence that makes them some of the most social, creative, and benevolent creatures on Earth. Alex Gendler takes us into the incredible, unforgettable mind of an elephant.

4:22 video Madagascar's top predator is a mysterious cat-like creature called the fossa. But dogs and humans are threatening its very existence. National Geographic's Luke Dollar investigates.

3:14 video November 7, 2011 - Watch as biologist Luke Dollar uses a blowgun to subdue and study Madagascar's top predator, the fossa. The catlike creature "will eat pretty much everything in the forest," but to survive, it'll still need help from conservationists like Dollar, a National Geographic Emerging Explorer.

7:00 video: This film is the first of a two part series on the evolution of new genetic information. Here we focus on Point Mutations - the simplest natural mechanisms known to increase the genetic information of a population. Our second film of the series will focus on duplication events - natural mutations that increase the total amount of genetic information of an individual. This film was produced under the guidance of molecular biologist Dr. Nicholas Casewell. http://www.lstmed.ac.uk/about/people/... Point mutations are small, natural edits in the DNA code of an individual. These edits can be passed from parent to child. Because they are mere edits, point mutations usually do not increase the total amount of information in an individual. As new information is gained, old information is lost. Point mutations do, however, increase the total amount of information within a population. In this film you will see several examples of beneficial point mutations which have enhanced a creatures abilities or even given rise to entirely new abilities. The first two examples were directly observed in bacteria by scientists in the lab. The third is a case found in domestic dogs, the last example was discovered in several species of wild animal.

This HD dramatic video choreographed to powerful music introduces the viewer/student to the microscopic kingdom of the Protists. It is designed as a motivational "trailer" to be shown in Biology classrooms in middle school, high school and college as a visual Introduction to the amazing world of these tiny creatures.

Dinosaurs evolved over millions of years into the modern birds we see today! How did such large creatures become so small? Trace is here to tell you the answer. 

The animal in question was a species of tardigrade, a microscopic creature sometimes referred to as a "water bear" that is perhaps the hardiest lifeform on Earth. There are over1,000 known species, all of which have eight legs and measure between 0.5 and 1.2 mm in length, and they are found more or less everywhere.

In the end, Darwin came up with an entirely new theory to explain the extraordinary lengths many animals will go to in order to woo a potential mate. He called it sexual selection. Simply put, sexual selection is the evolutionary process that favors adaptations that increase an animal's chances of mating. Darwin identified two kinds. In the first, males compete fiercely with each other for access to females. This kind favors the evolution of secondary sexual characters, such as large size and armaments like horns, that enhance a male's ability to fight. In the second, males compete to win over a female.

Focusing on this species of fruit fly, he and the other researchers in the lab of molecular biologist Sean B. Carroll, had made a prolonged assault on one of the key questions in evolutionary biology: how nature endows creatures with their colorful patterns, from a leopard's dark spots to a butterfly's bold swirls. In different species the patterns serve to attract mates, provide camouflage or provide other advantages in the struggle to survive. But what causes the colors to fall so precisely into place?

TED collection of video regarding oceanic research