This site is a searchable encyclopedia of thousands of photos, descriptions, sound recordings, and other information about individual animal species. Find out about amphibians, arthropods, birds, fishes, insects, mammals, mollusks, reptiles, and sharks. Explore special features on mammals, skulls, and frog calls. Students are invited to contribute.

This video discusses the social and economic impacts (worldwide and in the US) of sea level rise caused by global warming (aired April 1, 2011). Note: you may need to scroll down the Changing Planet video page to get to this video.

In the warm and blue waters off Hawaii, Oceanic White Tip sharks often follow behind pods of Pilot whales. For the longest time, biologists have had no idea what is going on. Are they eating the whales? Are they stealing food from the whales? In this video of an expedition to follow the sharks and observe them, Jonathan finally figured out what is going on, and you won‰ŰŞt believe the disgusting truth! Please see the accompanying study guide for educational objectives and discussion points.

This short video illustrates how warming ocean temperature is a major factor in climate change, particularly the increase in severity of extreme weather (notably storms and drought).

This video features the Thresher shark, which may very well be the strangest looking shark in the world, with a tail almost as long as its body. This shark is very rare, almost never seen by divers...until now. Using advanced diving technology, Jonathan visits a remote reef in the Philippines where Thresher sharks show up every morning to be cleaned by small fish. Please see the accompanying study guide for educational objectives and discussion points.

Arctic warming produces biological winners (whales) and losers (polar bears). This article explains why they are impacted differently and includes supplemental images. This lesson is part of the Climate Kids website, a NASA education resource featuring articles, videos, images and games focused on the science of climate change.

This lesson incorporates sea surface data collected by NASA satellites. Data for three surface characteristics- height, temperature and speed- are used for several activities. Students examine the differences in speed of currents relative to distance from the Equator. Sea surface data anomalies are charted and further analyzed. In addition, surface current data is presented to examine patterns related to El Niño. Note that this is lesson three of five on the Ocean Motion website. Each lesson investigates ocean surface circulation using satellite and model data and can be done independently. See Related URL's for links to the Ocean Motion Website that provide science background information, data resources, teacher material, student guides and a lesson matrix.

This video highlights students taking scientific measurements to support investigations in atmospheric science, hydrology, soils, and land cover. It shows students reporting data through the Web, creating scientific visualizations for analysis, and collaborating with students and scientists around the world. This is one two introductory videos in the 24-part GLOBE video series. GLOBE (Global Learning and Observation to Benefit the Environment) is a worldwide, hands-on, K-12 school-based science education program.

This multi-part activity introduces users to normal seasonal sea surface temperature (SST) variation as well as extreme variation, as in the case of El NiÃo and La NiÃa events, in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. Via a THREDDS server, users learn how to download seasonal SST data for the years 1982 to 1998. Using a geographic information system (GIS), they visualize and analyze that data, looking for the tell-tale SST signature of El NiÃo and La NiÃa events that occurred during that time period. At the end, students analyze a season of their own choosing to determine if an El NiÃo or La NiÃa SST pattern emerged in that year's data.

This series of two lessons uses cutting-edge scientific research on the effects of climate change on communities in the intertidal. Through a combination of a dynamic presentation and several videos, students are introduced to the effects of climate change on the ocean (ocean acidification and temperature increase) and what is known about how ocean organisms are affected. Then students read and interpret graphs and construct a scientific explanation based on data from this research.

This video introduces viewers to oceanic thermohaline circulation - the system of global ocean currents that cycle warm and cold water across the planet.

Coral Reefs in Hot Water is a short video displaying computerized data collected on the number of reefs impacted by coral bleaching around the world.

This visualization is a collection of maps, by continent, that project the impact on coastlines of a 216-foot rise in sea level, which is assumed to be the result of melting all the land ice on Earth.

In this video, Jonathan travels to Holbox, Mexico in search of the massive whale shark‰ŰÓthe world‰ŰŞs largest fish. Reaching 50 feet long, these animals grow larger than a school bus, but they are completely harmless since they eat only plankton and small fish. Jonathan gets up close and personal to a mouth the size of a small car in his investigation to discover why so many whale sharks visit Holbox every summer. Please see the accompanying study guide for educational objectives and discussion points.

In a quiet forest in central Florida, a mysterious pond filled with warm clear water hides a secret at the bottom. In this video, Jonathan explores the pond to find a spring which leads into a cave. As Jonathan travels underground, he meets unexpected marine life in the dark depths and learns how water travels through an aquifer from the underground world to the surface. Please see the accompanying study guide for educational objectives and discussion points.

This activity engages learners in exploring the impact of climate change on arctic sea ice in the Bering Sea. They graph and analyze sea ice extent data, conduct a lab on thermal expansion of water, and then observe how a scientist collects long-term data on a bird population.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Oceanic microbiomes are critical to the global carbon cycle and to oceanic carbon and energy cycling, and the Deltaproteobacteria clade SAR324 is one of the few microbial groups inhabiting all oceanic depth zones. Although the metabolic potential of dark-zone SAR324 has been investigated, the ecology and metabolic traits of euphotic- and twilight-zone SAR324 remain unclear. To learn more, a recent study collected SAR324 from various depths of the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. A pangenomic analysis including published genomic data revealed considerable intra-clade diversity, as indicated by the average nucleotide identity (ANI). The bacteria clustered into four ecotypes with different spatiotemporal distributions, and bacteria at different depths had different metabolic characteristics. The deep- and twilight-zone bacteria exhibited genomic and metabolic traits consistent with sulfur-based chemolithoautotrophy..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

In this activity, students examine the effects of hurricanes on sea surface temperature using NASA data. They examine authentic sea surface temperature data to explore how hurricanes extract heat energy from the ocean surface.

In this lab activity, students determine density differences of water samples with varying temperature and salinity levels. Students synthesize information to predict the effects of oil in given water samples.