Biology

• How animals find their way

  How birds, sea turtles, salmon and desert ants find one particular place, using the sun, the stars, the Earth’s magnetic field and smell.

  • 8min read
  • 11min listen
  • 29questions
• Ecosystems

  Food chains and webs, the flow of energy, the cycles of carbon and water, and what follows when one species goes missing.

  • 8min read
  • 9min listen
  • 29questions
• Food and fuel

  Why food has to be taken apart before you can use it, why the stomach does not digest itself, and where in a cell the energy of a meal is finally released.

  • 8min read
  • 11min listen
  • 32questions
• Blood and breath

  How the heart, blood and lungs carry oxygen to every cell, and how Ibn al-Nafīs worked out the route blood takes through the lungs.

  • 8min read
  • 10min listen
  • 28questions
• How plants live

  Where a tree’s wood comes from, how water climbs a hundred metres with no pump, and why a cherry is sweet.

  • 8min read
  • 10min listen
  • 31questions
• Microbes and viruses

  The few microbes that make us ill, the many that keep us alive, and why an antibiotic that cures a throat infection can do nothing for a cold.

  • 9min read
  • 11min listen
  • 35questions
• Natural selection

  Why the moths of a smoky city turned dark, why antibiotics stop working, and how farmers made wheat out of a wild grass.

  • 9min read
  • 10min listen
  • 30questions
• Heredity

  How Mendel found the rules of inheritance in pea plants, why a trait can skip a generation, and how it is settled whether a child is a boy or a girl.

  • 8min read
  • 10min listen
  • 29questions
• DNA and genes

  How four chemical letters hold the instructions for a body, how DNA copies itself, and how a gene becomes a protein.

  • 8min read
  • 10min listen
  • 31questions
• The cell

  What a cell is, what is inside it, why cells stay small, and how one cell becomes two.

  • 8min read
  • 11min listen
  • 31questions