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Welcome to Ask A Biologist. This site has a large collection of biology learning materials that includes stories, games, activities, videos, and a podcast.
A tiny creature that flies and swims at the same time caught the attention of Arizona State University Professor Richard Satterlie a few years ago.
Imagine being the size of an ant. Be careful - a face-to-face encounter with an ant would be scary and potentially life-threatening! But, if you avoided being eaten, you could learn a lot about ant anatomy from a close-up view. Ants have many body parts that are normally hard to see without a…
Almost all life forms start out as small cells, but how do they grow into entire animals? Read about the first step here: when cells in an embryo form germ layers that give rise to every organ and tissue in the body.
Arianne Cease isn't just any locust biologist. She's also a sustainability scientist, as she's bringing together all kinds of researchers to work on reducing the number of locust swarms, which affect 1 in 10 people across the globe.
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…
Imagine a day at work where your clients range from tiny reptiles to massive elephants, each with their own unique health needs. That's a regular day for our guest in today's episode, Dr. Gary West, the Senior Vice President of Animal Health and Living Collections at the Arizona…
Bee Movies are not just for Hollywood. Dr. Biology catches up with bee movie maker and neurobiologist Brian Smith who uses film and video to unlock the mystery behind bees and how they sense and communicate with the environment. This movie director may not bee up for an Academy…
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…
When Water Gets Icy
In this experiment, we will look at one major difference between frozen freshwater and frozen saltwater.
Ant Gallery (Get up-close to ants)
Now is the time to check out these amazing animals from the safety of your own computer.
Bone Zoom Gallery (Up-close Inside Bones)
Take a look at the microscopic world of bone in our virtual bone histology lab. Just pick a microscope slide from below and click on it to view under the virtual microscope.
Pollen Gallery (Pollen up-close)
Pollen comes in many shapes and sizes. These are just a few of the thousands of examples.
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,…
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Not So Scary Scorpions
Scorpions are often misunderstood. Many people say that scorpions are so aggressive they will sting themselves to death, but this is not a natural behavior of scorpions in the wild. Also in:…
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Migrating Monarchs
Thousands of orange and black shapes flutter through the trees. Welcome to one of the few wintering homes of the monarch butterfly. Also in: Español…
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Sonoran CSI
Little water, sweaty, hot summer days and frigid winter nights make the desert an uninviting place for most animals and plants. But hiding just below the surface, the desert is alive with…
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