Deep Look

For thousands of years, mysterious bacteria have remained dormant in the Arctic permafrost. Now, a warming climate threatens to bring them back to life. What does that mean for the rest of us? SUBSCRIBE: http://goo.gl/8NwXqt

There's a story in every grain of sand: tales of life and death, fire and water. If you scooped up a handful of sand from every beach, you'd have a history of the world sifting through your fingers. From mountain boulders to the shells of tiny ocean creatures, follow the journey that sand takes through thousands of years across entire continents to wind up stuck between your toes. SUBSCRIBE: http://goo.gl/8NwXqt

Every winter, California newts leave the safety of their forest burrows and travel as far as three miles to mate in the pond where they were born. Their mating ritual is a raucous affair that involves bulked-up males, writhing females and a little cannibalism. SUBSCRIBE: http://goo.gl/8NwXqt These amphibious creatures are about five to eight inches long, with rust-colored skin, except for their bright yellow eyes and belly. They began to arrive at the UC Botanical Garden around November, and will stay here for the duration of the rainy season, usually through the end of March. While California newts (Taricha torosa) are only about six inches long, they might travel as far as three miles to return to their birthplace. That's the equivalent for a human of walking about a marathon and a half, without any signs or road maps. Scientists aren't sure exactly how they find their way, but they think it might be based on smell. Why do newts live in a pond? California Newts live most of their time in the forest, but mate in the pond where they were born.

How do hummingbirds eat? With spring in full bloom, hummingbirds can be spotted flitting from flower to flower and lapping up the sugary nectar inside. These tiniest of birds have the highest metabolism of any warm-blooded animal, requiring them to consume their own body weight in nectar each day to survive. By comparison, if a 150-pound human had the metabolism of a hummingbird, he or she would need to consume the caloric equivalent of more than 300 hamburgers a day. But it's not just an extreme appetite that sets hummingbirds apart from other birds. These avian acrobats are the only birds that can fly sideways, backwards and hover for long stretches of time. In fact, hovering is essential to hummingbirds' survival since they have to keep their long, thin beaks as steady as a surgeon's scalpel while probing flowers for nectar. How do Hummingbirds fly? Hummingbirds don't just hover to feed when the weather is nice. They have to keep hovering and feeding even if it's windy or raining, a remarkable feat considering most of these birds weigh less than a nickel. More great Deep Look episodes: Newt Sex: Buff Males! Writhing Females! Cannibalism! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m37Q...

Every one of us started out as an embryo, but only a few early embryos – about one in three – grow into a baby. Researchers are unlocking the mysteries of our embryonic clock and helping patients who are struggling to get pregnant. SUBSCRIBE: http://goo.gl/8NwXqt

Artificial light makes the modern world possible. But not all kinds of light are good for us. Electric light has fundamentally altered our lives, our bodies and the very nature of our sleep. SUBSCRIBE: http://goo.gl/8NwXqt

What does it mean to be blue? The wings of a Morpho butterfly are some of the most brilliant structures in nature, and yet they contain no blue pigment -- they harness the physics of light at the nanoscale. Learn more about these butterflies: http://goo.gl/dGo5XE

Banana slugs are important members of the redwood forest community, even if they aren't the most exalted. They eat animal droppings, leaves and other detritus on the forest floor, and then generate waste that fertilizes new plants. Being slugs, they don't move very quickly, and without a shell, they need other protection to keep themselves from becoming food and then fertilizer. Their main defense: slime. Slime refers to mucus-the same stuff that coats your nose and lungs-found on the outside of an animal's body. Banana slug slime contains nasty chemicals that numb the tongue of any animal that attempts to nibble it, discouraging predators like raccoons, who have to go to the trouble of removing the slime if they want to eat the slug. But this is just one of many ways slugs depend on slime, and they use it for everything from locomotion to nutrition. SUBSCRIBE: http://goo.gl/8NwXqt

Most plankton are tiny drifters, wandering in a vast ocean. But where wind and currents converge they become part of a grander story… an explosion of vitality that affects all life on Earth, including our own.

Sea otters aren't just cute -- they're a vivid example of life on the edge. Unlike whales and other ocean mammals, sea otters have no blubber. Yet they're still able to keep warm in the frigid Pacific waters. The secret to their survival? A fur coat like no other. SUBSCRIBE to Deep Look: http://goo.gl/8NwXqt Find out more about the sea otter's fantastic fur: http://goo.gl/kdPvWV Check out UC Santa Cruz's Marine Mammal Physiology Project: http://goo.gl/ntwUHp Find out what Monterey Bay Aquarium is doing to save Southen sea otters: http://goo.gl/bbnxm0

Plenty of animals build their homes in oak trees. But some very teeny, tricky wasps make the tree do all the work. "What nerve!" you might say. What… gall! And you'd be right. They're called gall-inducers. And each miniature mansion the trees build for the wasps' larvae is weirder and more flamboyant than the next. SUBSCRIBE: http://goo.gl/8NwXqt Even more gall-waspy goodness in the form of a blog post can be found here: http://blogs.kqed.org/science/2014/11... Created by KQED Public Media in San Francisco and presented by PBS Digital Studios.

Tiny and delicate, pygmy seahorses survive by attaching to vibrant corals where they become nearly invisible to both predators and researchers. Now, biologists at the California Academy of Sciences have successfully bred them in captivity for the first time. Finally, they're able to study the seahorses' amazing act of camouflage up close. Visit kqed.org/deeplook to learn more about the series and pygmy seahorses at the California Academy of Sciences.