Curated playlist
Tool-using mammals
- Humpback whaleHumpback whales fell to fewer than 5,000 by the 1960s, but around 135,000 lived worldwide in 2018.
- CattleThe word cattle comes from a Latin word meaning a sum of money. It first meant movable property, as opposed to land.
- ElephantAn elephant can crack a peanut shell without breaking the seed inside.
- ChimpanzeeChimpanzee first appeared in print in 1738, meaning "mockman." The London Magazine credited the word to "the Angolans."
- Homo erectusA Dutch scientist joined an army to hunt for the missing link in Java. His team found Homo erectus bones in 1891.
- OrangutanIn 2022, an orangutan named Rakus chewed leaves and packed them onto a wound on his face. It closed within five days.
- Early modern humanRemains from the Jebel Irhoud site in Morocco have been dated to about 315,000 years ago, and they are counted among the oldest known members of our own species. They belong to what scientists call early modern humans, or anatomically…
- Sea otterThe sea otter, Enhydra lutris, carries up to 150,000 strands of fur on a single square centimetre of its body. That is the densest coat of any animal. The sea otter is a marine mammal native to the coasts of the northern and eastern North…
- BonoboThe bonobo, known to science as Pan paniscus, lives in the wild in just one country, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Its home is a region of roughly 500,000 square kilometres in the Congo Basin. Primary forest, secondary forest and…
- HumanAny two humans share over 99% of their genetic code. That makes people more uniform than chimpanzees.
- Honey badgerIn 2007, while British forces occupied Basra Governorate in Iraq, rumours spread of man-eating badgers. The animal behind the story was the honey badger, Mellivora capensis. Some accounts even claimed that British troops had released the…