In the 1930’s, a grand panda drama unfolded at the Chicago Zoo. Zookeepers procured a female panda named Mei Mei, and they were determined to find her a mate. They found a prospective suitor named Mei Lan, and the public eagerly awaited the patter of tiny panda paws. But the wait dragged on... and on. Why weren’t the bears breeding? Lucy Cooke s...

Sloths have been on this planet for more than 40 million years. What's the secret to their success? In a hilarious talk, zoologist Lucy Cooke takes us inside the strange life of the world's slowest mammal and shows what we can learn from their ingenious adaptations.

What if we stopped seeing females (of every species) as passive and instead welcomed the extraordinary diversity of sexuality? Through tales of same-sex bird couples, sexually transformative fish and unexpectedly promiscuous chimps, zoologist Lucy Cooke invites us to embrace the "genderless continuum" of females in nature, ditching archaic sexua...

In 1822, Count von Bothmer shot down a stork in Germany. However, the bird had already been impaled by a yard-long wooden spear. The stork had been speared in Africa and then flew over 2,500 km. This astonishing flight proved to be an essential clue in a mystery that had plagued scientists for centuries: the seasonal disappearance of birds. Lucy...

From Ancient Greece to the 20th century, Aristotle, Freud, and numerous other scholars were all looking for the same thing: eel testicles. Freshwater eels could be found in rivers across Europe, but no one had ever seen them mate and no researcher could find eel eggs or identify their reproductive organs. So how do eels reproduce, and where do t...

What is it like to raise a child who's different from you in some fundamental way (like a prodigy, or a differently abled kid, or a criminal)? In this quietly moving talk, writer Andrew Solomon shares what he learned from talking to dozens of parents -- asking them: What's the line between unconditional love and unconditional acceptance?