Could Frozen Zoo DNA Stave Off Species' Extinction?

Could Frozen Zoo DNA Stave Off Species' Extin...

Up next

How Did Mastodons Defend the Legitimacy of America?

In the 1700s, fossil finds along the Ohio and Hudson Rivers indicated that North America was home to mysterious beasts. Learn how mastodon bones proved both that extinction is real and that America isn't full of degenerates in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: ht ...  Show more

BrainStuff Classics: Why Do Some People Eat Dirt?

The craving for and practice of eating earth is more widespread than you might think. Learn why researchers think people engage in this form of pica (i.e., geophagy) in today's classic episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://people.howstuffworks.com/culture-traditio ...  Show more

Recommended Episodes

The Frozen Zoo
Overheard at National Geographic

Right now, one million animal and plant species are threatened with extinction. Conservation scientists are doing whatever they can to save them, or at least of piece of them. For the last 45 years, a team of researchers at the San Diego Zoo has been freezing the cells of endange ...  Show more

Playback: The Frozen Zoo
Overheard at National Geographic

San Diego is home to the world’s first frozen zoo—a genetic library where scientists are racing to bank the tissues and stem cells of disappearing animals. As scientists begin to clone endangered species, we revisit an episode from our archives that delves into what conservation ...  Show more

Back From the Dead: the Future of De-Extinction
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know

As the world struggles through an ongoing mass extinction, scientists across the planet are getting closer and closer to bringing entire species back from the dead -- a process known as de-extinction. Inspired by an earlier episode on the thylacine, Ben and Matt dive into the ...

  Show more

Game changers
BBC Inside Science

Nations are racing to protect 30% of the planet by 2030 in an attempt to halt biodiversity loss, but one novel approach may be able to safeguard species under threat of imminent extinction. Vic visited Nature’s Safe in May, a cryogenic biobank, storing the genetic information of ...  Show more