This man reminds me of a favorite quote: A smart person can understand something; a VERY smart person not only can understand something, but can explain it in a way so others can understand it.
5:28 He chose the one most wholesome answer you could hope to receive. Mans basically said, "if I could bring back one species, it'd be the species that could save another that I love." 😭😭😭😭 The man is too wholesome, my heart.
This is why a lot of biologists tend to focus on "keystone" species & others that are believed to promote biodiversity in their native habitats like the Wooly Mammoth, Passenger Pigeon, Thylacine, etc. Wooly Mammoths, for example, could help preserve permafrost by restoring true steppe biomes, as they were the keystone species sustaining them. Northeastern forests in the Americas are nothing like they were when Passenger Pigeons were plentiful, providing seed dispersal & forest management that controlled burning cannot replicate. Thylacines were the only native predators of their size & nothing in Tasmania has successfully filled their niche, causing an imbalance in the ecosystem. Mainland Australia unfortunately would likely not be welcoming to them, as Dingos are almost certainly one of the main factors of their extinction there, but this is of course a matter of careful study. Mammals & birds are of course not the only candidates for deextinction efforts, either! Many amphibians, fish, arthropods(including insects & crustaceans), & so on are quite high on the list, as are a good number of non-animals!
This is recorded and edited video. Teachers have to interact with kids. The two-way nature of class rooms, means that a kid may ask what was already explained. And other things that will slowly wear down the patience of the teacher. In addition to the very nature of keeping kids attention. Much respect to teachers. I ALWAYS had to ask a question, even if i didnt need anything. Just because they said "does anyone has a question" I also was the one who had to have their hands up FIRST to answer the question. Sadly as smart as i was, i was also disruptive due to me always talking. To the teacher, explaining to another student, or just having a conversation during class time. The first two may not have been bad, but I'm kinda annoying after a while. Yeah I couldn't be a teacher to my younger self. I was an annoying brat. Smart but also a smart alec.
Dr. Hanson could have a show every single day for the next 10 years and I wouldn't miss one. Super fun, interesting, and laid back (it's amazing how much passion he has for his profession).
probably the few experts that managed to turn over-complicated question asked and explain them where most of the people can understand. i love how he can turn hard questions into simple words that i can understand. need more expert like Dr. Thor!
As someone who graduated with a Bio degree i truly wish he was a professor at my school. His natural excitement and passion for science is infectious and I feel like he would’ve made microbio so fun 😅💜
I had a cell biology professer like him. You could listen to him for hours turning a side note to an intersting excursion. On the flip-side, he always realised 5 min before ending class that he had to catch up on dozens of slides^^
THis was almost all the classes I took as a teacher. Almost every class would end with me saying, "Well, we didn't complete the topic but atleast you all were intrested in my detours."
My high school health science teacher was like that too. He often asked us to tell him if class was ending soon so he could summarize our lesson. We rarely told him because we didn't want class to end. 😁
He has all sorts of positive traits. He is likeable, knowledgeable, enthusiastic about his field of expertise and genuinely interested in satisfying people's curiosity. No need to use the most meaningless adjective that ever existed on the internet.
I love this guy. He's so enthusiastic. He's the kind of guy that 90% of high schoolers would roll their eyes at, while low-key inspiring the other 10% to become biologists or vets or botanists.
As a history major, he speaks the way that made me fall in love with history. He himself is fascinated by his own knowledge so it never becomes obvious or get boring
Exactly this. When I was in undergrad as an undeclared student, a history professor who taught with this sort of zeal and passion made me fall in love with history. The sciences have never been my strong suit or that interesting to me, but I could listen to this guy go on for hours.
Fun fact on that last question: a good 80-90% of the foods we refer to as 'vegetables' are actually fruits, there are actually not that many edible 'vegetable' kind of plants. The reason these fruits are called 'vegetables' is a result of culinary distinction rather than a biological one, labelling the plant by its use in dishes rather than what it is categorically.
And I'd believe the english language is also not the best one to discuss the biology-culinary difference, as both use the word fruit for different stuff.
Re: Mosquitoes and black flies and other biting insects. Adding to what Thor mentioned: Many plants rely on pollination by these small insects. A blueberry flower is much too small for bees, wasps or butterflies to pollinate them, so if you get rid of those insects you get rid of blueberries as well.
It's like I tell my son: every animal has an important part to play in nature, big or small, whether they're dangerous or not, whether you like them or not
I was thinking that perhaps the best way to get rid of diseases carried by mosquitos like malaria is to find a way to replace the mosquitos that carry them with mosquitos that don't carry the parasites.
Another explanation of the drop-off in bugs on windshields is the modern focus on aerodynamics in automobile engineering, causing them to slip over the surface of a vehicle rather than smack into it.
Guess it depends on where you are traveling. I now have to stop twice along my travels to clean windshield and my grill is crazy filled with dead bugs.
I love this guy's enthusiasm and passion! As someone who struggles to absorb lots of new information for extended periods of time, I feel like I could listen to him explain thing for hours and I'll absorb most if not all of it! he just explains things in a way that actually sinks into my brain
10:12 As a Biology student myself, I really liked the response Dr. Hanson made. Another way that I see it is that in nature, being bigger and wider is not always the most fit phenotype to survive. Although the Daisy is bigger which may allow for higher probability of reproducing and such, it also takes more nutrients and resources to survive. For example, animals require a huge amount of nutrients and very specific habitat to survive compared to a unicellular organism like a bacteria which requires much less nutrients to thrive.
I like your answer much more and don't like Dr. Hanson's response at all. I would even say he didn't answer. The question was "this is effective, why are flowers normally not like this". And he "answered" - "it is anomaly". Well yes. Duh.
@@Knuckles2761 Thank you for liking my explanation 👍. Dr. Hanson is correct in his explanation as well. He just didn't go into deep detail about it, let me explain. Dr. Hanson explained the biological term fasciation in his explanation. Fasciation is the abnormal growth of the tip of a plant or flowering plant. Fasciation is caused mainly by genetic mutations on plants, but it can also be caused by bacterial and viral infections to the plant. The reason why you don't see other daises with that size is because that genetic mutation, or that mutated genotype is not usually passed to the next generation of daises via reproduction. Another reason why that size is not seen is because not every daisy is going to be infected by microorganisms that causes fasciation. I hope this helps✌.
I was expecting him to answer along these lines, explaining that every adaptation is a compromise and was disappointed he only went with the proximate explanation. The question I think was more about why some plants have small and some big flowers. Good job on writing this comment and giving the explanation!
I manage a bar and own a handyman company; if it ain’t dealing with fruit flies or other “pest” control, I don’t think of it often. But the way this gentleman shares his knowledge with such rigorous passion into easily-absorbed knowledge is absolutely stunning. Mad props Doc
12:00 on this topic... There is a difference between the BOTANICAL and CULINARY definitions of produce. A tomato is botanically a fruit, but culinarily a vegetable. A banana is botanically a berry, but culinarily a fruit. The botanical definition is scientific. The culinary definition depends on the way that certain item is used.* *in Western kitchens.
On the “bugs on windshield” topic: I honestly believe this largely comes down to improvements in car aerodynamics. I drive a 2002 Land Rover that’s a big box with wheels. On a road trip, a friend driving a Subaru got almost no bugs on their windshield while mine was COATED. Of course insect populations are dropping, but the oft cited windshield anecdote seems a bit misleading to me, someone nearly blinded by bug splatter in my highly inefficient vehicle.
@ the "what causes cells to die" I feel like he should've mentioned that programmed cell death like he describes is called Apoptosis. Its just a really fun word to say.
I honestly hope you guys film these for a few hours and you've got a bunch on the back burner for a later release. The Tech Support series is one of my favourite things on the internet and you always have great guests.
I would’ve absolutely LOVED to have him as my Bio professor in college. I feel like having a teacher that actually seems interested in the subject helps learning a lot.
I wish you’d been my high school biology teacher. I find your explanations interesting and fun, and I think you’d have made science far more understandable and exciting. I watch you and feel all fired up about learning more. Thank you!
I love him! It was people like him that passed the passion for science on to me when I was a child. Now I have a Bachelor's degree in physics and since my main field of interest is biophysics, I am currently doing a Master's degree in biomedical engineering focused on biomaterials and biomechanics. If I one day can pass the torch to the younger generation with such excitement as he does, all I have ever dreamt of has come true!
He clearly loves the field he's in and honestly that makes me want to listen to him even more. It shows in his enthusiasm to answer any type of question
I wanna hand this guy a science textbook and like listen to all the rants he would go on seeing someone so passionate about what they do gives me so much joy
My favorite part is when the question is like “I’m sorry if this is a dumb question” and Dr Hanson doesn’t even flinch, just gives them a direct and passionate answer that’s both easy to understand and intelligent, and never once makes the person feel like their question didn’t have any value.
As other comments have stated he makes hard and complex questions easier to understand with how he explains them in a simple way. And his personality makes it all the more fun and wholesome.
9:25 - Corvus birds seem to be particularly good at understanding traffic. I would say they are better than most humans. I've seen crows staying in the road to eat something there, then dart out of the way when a car approaches, then go straight back to the middle of the road to eat. No land animal I've seen in traffic understand cars enough to do anything close to that. So at least some birds can handle cars better than other animals.
If I ever ran into this guy I could quiz him for hours! He’s clearly super passionate about biology but also his explanations are so well put together. They’re detailed enough to be super interesting but easy to understand if you don’t have knowledge of the subject. And it seems like he’s really excited to share the information, where sometimes with an expert in any field their answers can seem patronising and are filled with exclusive jargon. Love it.
Man, I wish this guy was my biology teach in school. He's so entertaining and animated. Not to mention he seems to have a good deal of knowledge about not only biology in general but it's relationship to many other aspects of life including entertainment media. He's great!
Thank you for this awesome mini-series. I hope dr Hanson will be back, I love when people talk about their field of studies with wide-eyed passion and without being jaded.
My question would be (and yes, i know this is probably futile): how/why did plants evolve to allow the pollination of their seeds by other creatures, surely it would behoove them to evolve some mechanism of doing it themselves, or is it a question of saving resources? And further, what does the evolutionary process look like for that? I mean, how do the plants know that insects/birds/mammals are carrying their seeds to another location to sprout another representative of their species? Since they have limited perception of their surroundings, how would evolution "know" to utilize a totally different species for this purpose? These may be dumb questions, i realize, but i've never understood that part of evolution - how does "it" "know"?
I'm no evolution expert, but since your Good questions are yet to be answered I'll give my 2 cents. Fruit bearing plants evolved to be because it's more efficient for them to be so. Seeds developing around their parent plant leads to overcrowding and poor development. A plant growing on it's own has greater chances of maturing. This gets repeated enough and becomes part of the genome. Some plants disperse their seeds far without animal help. There is water dispersal and wind dispersal. Some plants have even developed seed pods that explode and fling the seeds as far as possible. Evolution does not "know" per se, it's a time based process chalk full of a multitude of "prototypes" before a settled system can become dominant.
For some creatures we do not like, the might simply exist - because they do. They do not need to write a long answer on why they exist. It is the same question, why do we exist? When asking the question "Why do some creatures exist?" we automatically assume that they should be "useful" in some way - to us. No species is obliged to be useful to us or even have a purpose that we understand.
