Looking for the legacy site? Click here

Welcome to Ask A Biologist. This site has a large collection of biology learning materials that includes stories, games, activities, videos, and a podcast.

Read our stories

Listen and watch

Enjoy our activities

View zoom galleries

Solve puzzles

As the town faces unspeakable forces of nature, who will save the day?

There is more to our memory than you might think. In fact, we have three types of memory. Just how these memory systems work, and work together is the subject of this episode. We also learn that there are sometimes errors in our memory. Take a few minutes to learn how we remember things and even…

Well known animal behavior biologist and author John Alcock takes time out from his busy schedule to talk with Dr. Biology about his work and his writing.
How do animals keep warm when the temperatures drop? It is not like they can turn on heater or bundle up in a layers of warm clothes like humans do. Before you watch this video, try to think of ways animals might keep warm.

What happens when our brain fails us? As Dr. Biology, my work has never been involved with diseases that affect the mind, but I do have a personal experience with the shadowy realm of Alzheimer's and other dementias. My mother battled against this relentless adversary and I am not alone. …

Looking into the past can be strange and exciting. To understand a past that goes back millions of years, we often depend on the stories told by fossils. Dr. Biology talks with anthropologist Donald Johanson about Lucy, a fossil of human ancestors that has taught us some…

Have you ever wondered how evolution operates at a cellular level? Dr. Biology has a conversation with evolutionary biologist William Ratcliff in an episode that investigates the process of how single cell mutations can make the leap to coordinated groups of cells and ultimately…

An interview with mathematicians Cassie Pawling and Genevieve Toutain from the ASU Department of Mathematics and Statistics. A show filled with fun math tricks and even a bit of mind boggling mind reading.

What's Lurking in Lunch?

A game about discovering the cause of a foodborne illness outbreak.

Monster game

Monster Maker

Play Monster MakerBuild your own monster by decoding the monster genome in Monster Maker, a DNA game. It is not very different from what happens in every…
a cartoon of peas

Genetics and Mendel

Read Solving a Genetic Mystery and then take this quiz to test your knowledge!

Ant Gallery (Get up-close to ants)

Now is the time to check out these amazing animals from the safety of your own computer.

Pollen Gallery (Pollen up-close)

Pollen comes in many shapes and sizes. These are just a few of the thousands of examples.

Tiger Beetle Zoom Gallery (Up-close with tiger beetles)

Some of the fastest animals on Earth are below. That’s right, if these tiny insects were as large as a horse they would be running 200 miles an hour.

Feather Zoom Gallery (Feathers up-close)

There is nothing like seeing a feather up close.

Endangered animal list

Making the List

By the time the first endangered species list was made, many species had already gone extinct.  Some species, like whooping cranes, were almost extinct at that time.  But the US…

Wordsearch | Crossword
Mouse and snail taxonomy

Linnaeus and the World of Taxonomy

Have you ever wondered how animals and plants get their names? People give them names, lots of different names! That was how it used to be before Carl Linnaeus created the world of taxonomy.…

Wordsearch | Crossword
Half human, half animal eye

Seeing Color

Did you ever wonder why you see the colors you do or if other animals see the same colors that you see? We see light that bounces off of things around us. When the light enters our eyes,…

Wordsearch | Crossword
Wacky Weather

Crazy Climate and Wacky Weather

Climate is a hot topic in the news and on internet websites and blogs. But what exactly is climate? And how do we know it is changing?Also in:

Wordsearch | Crossword