Videos

When the Oroville Dam spillway cracked and failed after a wet California winter, a team of scientists created a one fiftieth–scale model of the damaged concrete and eroded hillside to help guide the reconstruction.

Chimpanzees have been known to cooperate when there is no foreseeable personal cost. Watch and learn whether chimps are capable of riskier, more complex forms of collaboration.

Tamed cats spread across the globe beginning almost 10,000 years ago, becoming the rodent-killing helpers of early farmers, mariners and Vikings.

This video was reproduced with permission and was first published on June 19, 2017. It is a Nature Video production.

A thousand years of Venetian records, maps and images could digitally reconstruct this city's deep history, giving researchers insight into urban life, from disease patterns to trade trends. 

This video was reproduced with permission and was first published on June 14, 2017. It is a Nature Video production.

Do you suffer from allergies? Follow the dendritic cell and the entire Scientific American Allergy Orchestra to discover how allergens from pollen to pet dander can change the body's tune.

Astronomers recently tapped Einstein's concept of gravitational lensing to determine the weight of a distant star. Watch and learn how this concept came to be and how it works.

Creatures living among the hydrothermal vents burbling under the Arctic Ocean's ice layer have been historically difficult to study, but an underwater vehicle, the Nereid Under Ice, can get close to the vents to peek in at the animals and their homes without disturbing their environment with icebreaking ships.  Scientific American caught up with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution senior scientist, Chris German, on the R/V Neil Armstrong to discuss how studying these Arctic dwellers could shape our understanding of how life evolved.

Ladybird beetle wings fold themselves into a tidy package after flight, and now scientists understand how it works.

This palm-size parrot uses a touch of wing to leap from branch to branch so it can save energy as it looks for dinner or a mate.

After learning how the waterway transports a billion tons of sediment into the sea each year, scientists built a tool that may help predict the inundations that impact some 80 million people.

The release of 400 alewife herring marks a significant milestone in a broader river cleanup effort.

See how a giant Larvacean’s intricate mucus house, constructed for filter feeding, contributes to oceanic carbon cycling.