Eons Season 6, Episode 41: Giant Viruses Blur The Line Between Alive and Not

How our deadliest parasite turned to the dark side

Around 10,000 years ago, somewhere in Africa, a microscopic parasite made a huge leap. With a little help from a mosquito, it left its animal host - probably a gorilla - and found its way to a new host: us.

10 min

Primates vs Snakes (An Evolutionary Arms Race)

The Snake Detection Hypothesis proposes that the ability to quickly spot and avoid snakes is deeply embedded in primates, including us - an evolutionary consequence of the danger snakes have posed to us over millions of years.

10 min

How the Rise of Social Insects Shrunk These Dinosaurs

We often think of dinosaurs as either preying on other dinos or mammals, or as plant-eaters -- but in ecosystems today, those aren’t the only two options. So why would we expect dinosaurs to have only been carnivores or herbivores, with the occasional omnivore thrown in the mix?

10 min

How Vertebrates Got Teeth... And Lost Them Again

As revolutionary as teeth were, they would go on to disappear in some groups of vertebrates. But why?

10 min

How Horses Went From Food To Friends

Do our modern horses descend from just one domesticated population, or did it happen many times, in many places? Answering these questions has been tricky, as we’ve needed to bring together evidence from art, archaeology, and ancient DNA…Because, as it turns out, the history of humans and horses has been a pretty wild ride.

10 min

Why We Only Have Ten Toes (It's a Long Story)

Today, all mammals from humans to bats have five fingers or fewer. Yes, even whales, whose finger bones are hidden in their fins. Birds have four or fewer and amphibians get the best of both worlds, often having four digits on their “hands” and five on their “feet.” But no species of vertebrates have more than five digits, let alone eight!

10 min

Sharks nearly went extinct 19 million years ago #shorts

There used to be SO MANY sharks...where did they go?

1 min

Dire wolves aren’t wolves at all #shorts

Dire wolves aren’t actually wolves but what they are might be even cooler.

1 min

Could humans survive if they traveled back in time 3 billion years? #shorts

Could humans survive during the Precambrian?

1 min

Some trees are more closely related to broccoli than to other trees #shorts

Don’t be fooled by convergent evolution.

1 min

Human knees are the worst and we have evolution to thank for that #shorts

Why do human knees suck?

1 min

A crater in Turkmenistan has been on fire for about 50 years #shorts

And it’s been reported that one of the geologists started it on purpose?

1 min

When a Giant Pterosaur Ruled the European Islands

The ecological niche of apex predators was empty on Hateg Island, waiting to be occupied by something large, mobile, and powerful enough to fill it.

10 min

Only one human has been excavated from the La Brea Tar Pits #shorts

1 min

Could humans survive a giant space rock colliding with Earth 66 million years ago? #shorts

Would you have survived the K-Pg Impact?

1 min

The Sudden Rise of the First Colossal Animal

A truly enormous ichthyosaur around the size of a modern sperm whale, reached its size within just a few million years of taking to the water - a blink of an eye in evolutionary time.

10 min

The Tasmanian tiger is definitely extinct. So why do people keep report sightings of them? #shorts

Thylacines are definitely extinct!

1 min

The Extreme Hyenas That Didn't Last

Hyenas weren’t always able to eat bones. In fact, only a few million years ago, they lived very different lives.

10 min

Who forged one of the most famous fake fossils of all time? #shorts

1 min

After this bird went extinct the first time, evolution just hit replay #shorts

The bird that evolved twice!

1 min

Someone lost the only fossil from what might’ve been the biggest dinosaur ever #shorts

1 min

Would you have survived the biggest mass extinction of all time? #shorts

1 min

An ancient insect trapped in amber has a parasitic mushroom erupting out of it? #shorts

I will pass on the parasitic mind-controlling mushroom, thanks

1 min

How the Smallest Animal Got So Simple

We tend to think that evolution only goes in one direction— toward getting bigger and more advanced. But that’s not always the case. This tiny, simple animal, the Myxozoans, (yes, animal!) evolved from something bigger and more complex.

8 min

We know a lot about dinosaurs but...what was the first dinosaur? #shorts

1 min

Why Sour May Be The Oldest Taste

While sour taste's original purpose was to warn vertebrates of danger, in a few animal groups, including us, its role has reversed. The taste of danger became something it was dangerous for us to avoid.

8 min

The Ancient Human Species With A Missing Body

Only a handful of Denisovan fossils have been identified. In the absence of actual body fossils, it’s impossible for us to reconstruct their morphology, right?

10 min

Are there dinosaur fossils in space? #shorts

1 min

Why don’t rabbits get really, really big? #shorts

1 min

An extinct human species was discovered deep within a cave system #shorts

1 min

When Ants Domesticated Fungi

While we’ve been farming for around 10,000 to 12,000 years, the ancestors of ants have been doing it for around 60 million years. So when, and how, and why did ants start … farming?

10 min

The Curious Case of the Cave Lion

A mysterious, large feline roamed Eurasia during the last ice age. Its fossils have been found across the continent, and it’s been the subject of ancient artwork. So what exactly were these big cats?

9 min

Is This The Oldest Dad In The Fossil Record?

Fossil evidence suggests Diictodon used burrows to breed, and that a parent stayed behind to feed and protect their young. And the parent that stayed behind? It might’ve been the male.

8 min

Why did so many predators die at the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry? #shorts

There’s something weird going on at the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry in what’s now Utah.

1 min

What is the most successful human species? #shorts

Does Homo erectus beat out Homo sapiens?

1 min

Sharks have antibacterial skin. Can we use that to save lives? #shorts

Sometimes modern problems require ancient, evolutionary solutions.

1 min

This Ice Age pup's last meal was a woolly rhino #shorts

What was this ancient pup’s last meal?

1 min

What came first, the sabertooth or the cat? #shorts

The newest oldest saber-toothed mammal

1 min

How To Build A Woolly Mammoth (But Should We?)

In the quest to understand how evolution basically built the woolly mammoth, we may have found the blueprints for building them ourselves.

8 min

Something Has Been Making This Mark For 500 Million Years

Paleodictyon, a hexagonal-patterned fossil, is a bit of a mystery. We don’t even know if it’s a trace fossil, or the organism itself. So… what could it be?

11 min

This new giant bacterium is visible to the naked eye #shorts

Microbiology goes macro with a new giant bacterium!

1 min

Another Spinosaurus study, another opportunity to debate if Spinosaurus was aquatic #shorts

Spinosaurus had dense bones!

1 min

There were dinosaurs with basically no arms at all, just hands! #shorts

Guemesia: a new no-arm dino

1 min

When Giant Millipedes Reigned

This giant millipede was the largest known invertebrate to ever live on land. So how did it get so big??

8 min

How Plate Tectonics Transformed Los Angeles

Despite the profound changes we’ve made here in recent history, the epic saga of Los Angeles' natural history is still visible - and even striking - if you know where and how to look for it.

14 min

Why Does Caffeine Exist?

Today, billions of people around the world start their day with caffeine. But how and why did the ability to produce this molecule independently evolve in multiple, distantly-related lineages of flowering plants, again and again?

11 min

This was the biggest earthquake humans ever experienced #shorts

One of the biggest earthquakes humans ever experienced happened around 3800 years ago in what's now northern Chile.

1 min

Someone stole two of the most important documents in the history of science #shorts

We have no idea where they were all this time, or who stole and returned them and why.

1 min

You can thank evolution for flesh-eating bees #shorts

Flesh-eating bees exist!

1 min

This is one of the oldest art workshops ever discovered! #shorts

Archaeologists have discovered an ancient art workshop

1 min

Did An Ancient Pathogen Reshape Our Cells?

There is one - and only one - group of mammals that doesn’t have alpha-gal: the catarrhine primates, which are the monkeys of Africa and Asia, the apes, and us.

9 min

How Whale Evolution Kind Of Sucked

Mystacodon is the earliest known mysticete, the group that, today, we call the baleen whales. But if this was a baleen whale, where was its baleen? Where did baleen come from? And how did it live without it?

11 min

The Fungi That Turned Ants Into Zombies

This fungus was actually manipulating ants’ movements, forcing them to do something they’d never ordinarily do, something strange, yet specific…

9 min

Did you know that fossils can get sick? #shorts

Did you know that fossils can get sick? – Specifically with Pyrite Disease

1 min

A supervolcano in Idaho once caused a disaster 900 miles away. #shorts

Disaster in the great plains!

1 min

A bunch of very important fossils disappeared during WWII. #shorts

80 years ago, a bunch of fossils of ancient humans disappeared.

1 min

Did this animal poop cubes? Giant cubes? #shorts

Congrats! You just found a wombat burrow. And the cubes are its poop.

1 min

Are wisdom teeth a problem for us because of evolution? Or because of our development? #shorts

Wisdom teeth can be such a pain

1 min

Our extinct relative was an ancient leopard’s lunch. #shorts

Paranthropus got chomped by a leopard

1 min

When did we start wearing clothes? #shorts

We didn’t always wear clothes!

1 min

Did Megalodon go after whale faces specifically? #shorts

Ancient sperm whale heads belonged on every shark-cuterie board

1 min

Where Did Water Come From?

Mercury, Venus, and Mars are all super low on water – so where did ours come from and why do we have so much of it? We think our water came from a few unlikely sources: meteorites, space dust, and even the sun.

12 min

Our Ancient Relative That Said 'No Thanks' To Life On Land

Around the time that some of our fishapod relatives were crawling out of the water, others were turning around and diving right back in.

10 min

Imagine a cat's mouth fully covering up their saber teeth. #shorts

We might’ve been wrong about how this saber-toothed cat looked

1 min

Darwin correctly predicted an animal existed without ever seeing it. #shorts

Sometimes evolution is completely predictable.

1 min

Neandertals weren’t dumb cavemen. In lots of ways, they were just like us. #shorts

Shanidar 1 got by with a little help from his friends

1 min

Here are two ways to get a fossil species named after you. #shorts

Here are two ways to get a fossil species named after you.

1 min