NOW WATCHING
Ecology · Facts
A mature tree produces roughly 120 kg of oxygen annually. The math behind 'plant a tree' campaigns is real — and most cities are catastrophically below replacement rates.
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Roughly 75% of crops depend on pollinators. Without bees, the supermarket shrinks dramatically — coffee, almonds, apples, blueberries and most fruit collapse.
Plastic photodegrades into microplastics, which then enter water, soil, fish and ultimately blood. Recent studies found microplastics in human placentas and arteries.
Livestock methane and CO₂ outweigh all transportation emissions globally. Eating one fewer beef meal per week measurably lowers your carbon footprint more than driving electric.
Trees release water vapour that forms clouds that fall as rain that feeds trees. Cut enough of it down and the loop snaps — the forest dries out and the system collapses.
Bacteria, fungi and microbes in one gram of healthy soil number in the billions. The biggest community on Earth is right under our feet.
A swirling mass of plastic debris floats between California and Hawaii — ~80,000 tonnes of it, mostly invisible microplastics, not bottles.
Around 2.7 tonnes. Its heart is the size of a small car and beats just once every 10 seconds when diving.
Mycorrhizal fungi connect forest roots in what biologists call the "wood wide web". Trees share nutrients, send pest warnings, and feed sick saplings.
Roughly 2,500 gigatonnes locked underground. Plowing or deforestation releases more CO₂ per acre than burning gasoline.
WWF's Living Planet Index shows monitored animal populations shrank by more than two-thirds in just 50 years. A single human lifetime erased two-thirds of vertebrate abundance.
Birds, insects, mammals, fungi, lichens, mosses. Cutting one oak isn't losing a tree — it's collapsing an entire small ecosystem.
We have better maps of Mars and the Moon than of our own seafloor. Most of Earth's largest ecosystem is invisible to humans.
They're the rainforests of the sea. Half of them have already died this century from warming and acidification.
Microplastics in seafood, salt, bottled water and tap water. Studies estimate ~5 grams of plastic ingested per person weekly.
Water cycles through atmosphere, oceans and deep aquifers for millions of years. The drink in your glass may have last fallen as rain 200 million years ago.
A typical Amazon hectare contains ~300 species. The entire North American continent has roughly 700 native tree species in total.
Gentoo and Adélie penguins search for the smoothest perfect pebble on the beach and present it to a chosen mate. If accepted, they bond for life.
Fungi share a common ancestor with animals about 1 billion years ago. They breathe oxygen, exhale CO₂, and digest food with enzymes — just like us.
Cave paintings show hippos, giraffes and great lakes where there's now sand. The same patch of Earth has flipped between savanna and desert at least seven times.
Turritopsis dohrnii can revert to its juvenile stage when injured or aged. In theory it never has to die — though most get eaten long before they prove it.
Of total global plastic production: 9% recycled, 12% incinerated, 79% sits in landfills or pollutes nature. The recycling triangle was largely an industry PR campaign.
A honey fungus in Oregon's Blue Mountains covers 9.6 km² underground. It's ~2,500 years old and one single genetically identical individual.
Up to 5 billion in North America in the 1800s. Within decades, hunting drove them to extinction — the last individual died in a zoo in 1914.
Ice loss accelerated from 40 billion tonnes per year in the 1980s to 252 billion tonnes per year by the 2020s. Sea level is rising in lockstep.