Every Animal Living in Your Backyard Explained

Step into almost any backyard in North America and you’re walking into a crowded neighborhood. Most of your neighbors stay hidden, but they’re busy every single day and night. This video introduces the animals sharing your yard and the surprising things each one is doing. The squirrel that fakes burying nuts to fool thieves, the raccoon with a brain wired for touch, the opossum with fifty teeth, and the groundhog whose heart drops to about five beats a minute in hibernation. Then the birds: the blue jay that has no blue pigment at all, the chickadee whose alarm call encodes how dangerous a predator is, and the crows that remembered a researcher’s mask for years. We also get into the tiny crowd underfoot, from monarch butterflies and native bees to ladybugs, cicadas, and the pill bugs that turn out to be crustaceans, plus the cold-blooded residents like the wood frog that freezes almost solid every winter. Along the way we bust a few myths, like daddy longlegs being the most venomous spider and toads giving you warts, and we finish with the part that matters most: what’s happening to this web of wildlife, and the simple things you can do in your own yard to help. Which of these have you actually spotted in your backyard? Tell us in the comments. #backyardwildlife #wildlife #naturedocumentary