MinuteEarth

A honeybee hive might seem like a peaceful utopia, but in reality, it’s buzzing with internal conflict between warring factions. And the biggest conflict is between the queen and the worker bees.

Most medical science moves at super-speed; researchers are constantly developing new medications, techniques, surgeries, you name it. Except for antibiotics: we haven’t gotten a single new type of antibiotic ready to give to patients in over 40 years.

When a baby sand tiger shark hatches from its egg, it finds itself trapped inside its mom’s uterus, forced to eat its siblings, or be eaten. It’s super weird, but pitting your kids against each other can sometimes be a winning parental strategy.

The Quetzalcoatlus – one of the largest pterosaurs that ever lived – was able to fly even though it was the size of a giraffe! How on Earth did this giant manage to fly?

Even though there are a lot of causes of death out there, they all actually boil down to one thing.

You've probably heard that bees use a complex series of movements – often called the "waggle dance" – to tell other worker bees where to find new sources of nectar…it’s a super clever and sophisticated system. But it turns out that bees almost never immediately jump up to follow the directions they just got, which, weirdly, is also super-clever and sophisticated.

The most massive land animals in the world all eat little stuff: grass and leaves. And almost all of the most massive aquatic animals also eat something itty bitty: tiny crustaceans called krill. Why do such big things eat such small things?

Rabies is the one of the deadliest diseases we know of; if you don’t get treatment soon after getting exposed, you’re almost certain to die. But rabies’ intent isn’t actually to kill – it's to control.

Volcanoes are one of the most powerful forces on Earth; their lava can destroy cities and their ash clouds can blot out the sun. And there is basically nothing we can do to make sure a volcano will never erupt again – except wait for it to die. So while we wait, what is it, exactly, that kills a volcano?

In 1973, an airliner struck a bird called a Rüppell's griffon vulture – which, on its own, isn't that weird; planes hit birds pretty regularly during takeoffs and landings. But this collision happened at a cruising height of over 11,000 meters – WAY above the height at which most birds fly – which makes us wonder: what is the highest a bird can actually fly?