ANCIENT GIANTS: Discover Earth’s Oldest Living Residents🌳🌍

Fun Kids Science Weekly

Fun Kids

Education For Kids, Kids & Family, Science

4.4 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 13 December 2025

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Get ready for another action-packed adventure into the world of science on this week’s Science Weekly. We’re travelling back to the dawn of time to uncover how Earth was created and meeting some of the planet’s oldest and most extraordinary residents.

In Science in the News, we explore why UK woodlands are facing a huge crisis, discover the shocking behaviour of rats in Germany, and hear from Connor Bamford from the British Antarctic Survey about what’s been happening to elephant seals in the South Atlantic.

Then it’s time for your questions. EJC wants to know how hydrochloric acid cleans pennies, and Joe Williams from Exeter University explains exactly how Earth formed in the first place.

Dangerous Dan is back with a creature straight out of a horror movie: The Zombie Snail Parasite.

And in Battle of the Sciences, May Chemais from the Ancient Tree Inventory joins us to reveal why ancient trees are some of the greatest survivors on Earth.

Plus, K-Mistry and Kareena dive deep into the oceans to uncover how they absorb CO2, why they’re at risk from climate change, and what we can do to help.

This week, we learn about:
• How Earth was created
• Why UK woodlands are in trouble
• The surprising hunting skills of German rats
• What’s happening to elephant seals in the South Atlantic
• The terrifying zombie snail parasite

All that and more on this week’s Science Weekly!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome along, Explorer. My name's Dan. Not sure about you, kind of bored of life down here on planet Earth.
0:08.5	Should we leave for just a little bit? See what else is floating around the universe. It's time for a brand new Fun Kids Science Weekly.
0:17.4	Around here, we search out all of those glorious science secrets scuttling through the solar system.
0:24.5	And this week, we'll take a trip back to the dawn of time to uncover the incredible story of how Earth was created.
0:33.1	If Earth had managed to form first, it may well have done exactly that.
0:36.4	It may have become a gas giant if it managed to form at the right time.
0:39.7	And when we look at planets, exoplanets, around stars that aren't our own, elsewhere and universe,
0:44.7	so we see lots and lots of gas giants.
0:46.5	We see them in a very different place in their solar system.
0:50.0	You can learn all about a parasite with one of the most terrifying names in the animal kingdom,
0:54.9	and we're meeting Earth's oldest residents, ancient giants that were standing tall back in Roman times.
1:04.5	I find the most unique ones for me are the yew trees because they've been around since the Norman period,
1:12.1	and some of them are thousands of years old. They'll typically be near churchyards and they'll be really, really large,
1:18.5	so much so that sometimes they decay to the point that you can walk into them.
1:23.1	That's all on the way with a brand new Fun Kids Science Weekly.
1:30.2	Let's start off this week with your Science in the News.
1:33.8	Now, a wildlife charity in the UK has said there is a woodland crisis,
1:39.2	as trees are suffering from more diseases than ever before.
1:43.0	The Wildlife Trust for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire says that of 6,000 trees they've looked at,
1:49.2	one third have got diseases, and it gets worse for ash trees.
1:52.0	82% of them are suffering from ash dieback fungal disease.
1:56.9	Oh, it sounds, well, fungles, doesn't sound good, does it? They're trialing techniques like spraying animal repellents on the trees to stop the spread of these illnesses, them being taken from one tree to another by the creatures, also cutting them down and stopping wildflowers being trampled to try and halt the issue.
	...

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