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What does the warming climate mean for wildlife? Researchers study reptiles in the Amazon. Plus: Why ticks are becoming an ever-greater hazard in Germany.
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00:06Deep in the Brazilian rainforest, danger everywhere.
00:11Blue poison dart frogs and coral snakes call this place home, and not just them.
00:19Who will the researchers meet?
00:23This and more on DW's Science Show.
00:26Welcome to Tomorrow Today.
00:33It's a hot, humid night as the team sets out, on the lookout for the creatures that hide in the
00:39rainforest.
00:42The biologists spot a baby alligator, which immediately calls for its mother.
00:53The deeper they venture into the Amazon, the more its extraordinary biodiversity reveals itself.
01:07At first it feels uncomfortable being in the forest at night.
01:10You get used to it.
01:11But seeing the animals, that's an amazing feeling every single time.
01:19The Tefé Reserve sits in the heart of the Amazon.
01:23For a two-week period, it's become the base of operations for biologist Fernanda Werneck.
01:28A field laboratory in the middle of a vast and unpredictable wilderness.
01:35Looks like rain.
01:37She and her colleagues want to find out whether, and how, reptiles can adapt to climate change, or whether they're
01:44doomed to disappear forever.
01:45The team has set traps throughout the forest.
01:54We're trying to understand what will happen to species in the future, if CO2 emissions and temperatures keep rising.
02:02I sometimes call this crystal ball research, work where we hope many of our fears will not come true.
02:13Reptiles and amphibians are essential for the functioning of ecosystems, both predators and prey, which are far from an easy
02:20catch, as the researchers discover firsthand.
02:24A sudden downpour does not deter the team, who are never alone as they move through the forest.
02:31What's that?
02:33A tarantula.
02:34Wow, that's huge!
02:41The Amazon basin is home to around 230 amphibian species and 270 reptile species, likely more.
02:49Without these little mosquito eaters, viruses and diseases would spread faster and further.
02:58There are strict regulations on which animals the scientists are allowed to take from the forest to study.
03:04Unlike us, cold-blooded creatures' body temperatures depend entirely on their environment.
03:10When it gets warmer, they get warmer, making them especially vulnerable to climate change.
03:16Isn't he beautiful and elegant?
03:18He's not a typical tree frog, otherwise he would have jumped far away by now.
03:25The scientists expose the cold-blooded animals to different temperatures, testing how their bodies react to heat and cold, and
03:33whether their behaviour changes.
03:39These lively snakes are highly venomous and eager to escape.
03:44The men seem remarkably fearless.
03:48Who says research isn't exciting?
03:55Caught at last.
03:58I almost broke a sweat there.
04:00You do get a bit nervous, but it's also really cool.
04:03Since I was 17 or 18, I've been tattooing snakes on my body.
04:07They reflect my life and my past, my life project.
04:14There's good reason to believe that as temperatures rise, these animals move less,
04:18raising fears that they won't eat, won't mate, and will gradually die out if they can't adapt.
04:27The team expects results in about three years.
04:32They're building a unique biodiversity library, accessible to scientists around the world, as Fernanda explains.
04:42Most scientific papers and studies were developed with organisms from the global north, from temperate regions.
04:49But the biggest climate impacts are expected here.
04:53Losing these species, many of which we don't even know yet, would be an enormous loss for humanity as a
04:59whole.
05:02Fernanda believes knowledge shouldn't stay behind closed lab doors.
05:06Quite the opposite.
05:08She and her team want to share their discoveries, concerns and joys with the people who live along the Amazon.
05:1532 families live in the community of Villa de Siau.
05:19They too have to cope with the rising heat and the droughts caused by a climate crisis they didn't create.
05:27The team has brought along a collection of reptiles and amphibians,
05:31and everyone here is curious to experience them close up.
05:35Even babies.
05:39Seeing these animals and learning to value them, recognizing how important they are,
05:44I think that's truly enriching for us.
05:46In a word, simply gratitude.
05:50After the special lesson, the children take a solemn oath.
05:57I promise to be a protector of the Amazon and of biodiversity, they say, and a guardian of the climate.
06:07Will their voices be heard?
06:09Will the powerful of the world echo them?
06:12Fernanda hopes her work speaks of the future, not the past.
06:18I'm an optimist, because I believe we still have time to get involved, and to do something.
06:29These little creatures don't need any protection.
06:32Ticks have been around so long, they probably plague dinosaurs, and they're nothing if not fascinating.
06:40They are ancient organisms, hundreds of millions of years old, and they've not changed at all over that entire period.
06:51That's why I find ticks so fascinating.
06:56During some of their development stages, they can go without food for over a year.
07:01They can withstand temperatures as low as minus 20 or minus 25 degrees Celsius, and they can also survive extreme
07:09heat.
07:11Our common wood tick is blind, and yet still manages to find the host it needs to survive.
07:17The entire design of these organisms is just incredible.
07:24Parasitologist Uta Machenstedt is fascinated by ticks.
07:28She's been conducting research at the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart for 30 years.
07:34While most people are disgusted by the little creatures, she can't get enough of them.
07:39She could have long retired by now, but she doesn't want to.
07:44Just saying, I'm going to lock the door now, go home and just focus on my dog, that wasn't an
07:49option for me.
07:52Fortunately, as an emeritus professor, she'll continue her research for another few years.
07:58And she still has so many questions, like, how do ticks spread to new regions?
08:04It could be birds that bring them in, or wolves, or raccoon dogs.
08:08Thinking about and discussing these things. That's my thing.
08:13Or the role that pets play.
08:16Yes, exactly. The influence of pets. How did the brown dog tick get here, for example?
08:22The two scientists are investigating all of that.
08:26Katrin Fachet-Lehmann has just completed her doctoral thesis on the subject.
08:32I discovered that these ticks have come to Germany through holidays, or imported dogs.
08:38And our climate has changed so much since the 1970s that ticks can survive outdoors here for up to 11
08:45months.
08:49Dogs can contract canine malaria from ticks. Very few of them are protected by a tick collar.
08:58It's not much better with people. Even in Germany's high-risk areas, only about one in five is adequately vaccinated.
09:07Few get booster shots, like this patient.
09:11Irina Langefeld, a GP in Stuttgart, wants more people to get vaccinated.
09:17That's because there is no way of treating TBE, the tick-borne encephalitis.
09:27The vaccine is the only thing that really helps. That's why it's so important.
09:31TBE is transmitted by viruses, and once you're infected, there's nothing you can do except mitigate the symptoms.
09:38The crossover between biology and medicine, the interaction between ticks and humans, that's what fascinates Ute Machenstedt.
09:46When she first became a professor, she was one of very few women in a male-dominated environment.
09:54Yes, I was a rare exception, that's true.
10:00When you're the only woman, and you're surrounded by male professors and male research assistants completely alone, it really affects
10:08you.
10:12And that can drive one to push for change.
10:15For nearly 20 years, Ute Machenstedt has been advocating for more women to be appointed to professorial roles.
10:23She wants it to become easier to balance family and work life.
10:28But her main focus continues to be ticks, with the help of PCR tests.
10:34She and her colleague are investigating the presence of Borrelia bacteria in the parasites,
10:39which can attack the human nervous system if not treated quickly with antibiotics.
10:46They are also tracking the spread of tick-borne encephalitis in Germany over the past 20 years.
10:54What you can see very clearly is that ever more parts of southern Germany are now classified as high-risk
11:00areas with regular cases of TBE.
11:06And what we can see here on this map for 2025 is that more and more areas country-wide are
11:12being affected.
11:16We can no longer be sure that any part of Germany is 100% free of infected ticks.
11:25How will these hardy parasites continue to spread?
11:29Will new species be introduced?
11:31What diseases can they transmit?
11:33What role does climate change play?
11:36Questions like these keep the scientists up at night.
11:39The university, parasitology and partly gender equality.
11:43That's my life. That's what I want to do.
11:47Ute Machenstedt has some years left to conduct research here.
11:50An exciting and fulfilling prospect.
11:56All of this will end up as scrap.
11:58Loads of it. All lost? No.
12:02These students at the University of Stuttgart were offered a challenge.
12:07To conduct research into an unexplored area of their choice, right on through to industrial implementation.
12:13They boldly took it on.
12:16Thousands of cars are built in Germany every day and we asked ourselves how sustainable the whole process actually was.
12:24After a bit of research and a few phone calls, it was clear that only a fraction of these cars
12:28are actually recycled.
12:32Catalytic converters, for example, contain the precious metal platinum.
12:36But recovering it is difficult. It requires a lot of energy and chemical processes.
12:41Time to develop a new, more sustainable way to recover it.
12:47The bacteria produce oxalic acid, something that they don't normally do.
12:52And this acid is used to extract the platinum from the spent catalytic converter dust.
12:57The plan was to get the bacteria to take on the recycling work.
13:01An ambitious aim, something the young researchers were well aware of.
13:08We had no idea what to expect, which felt a bit intimidating at first.
13:12But our professors said, try it and see what happens. If it doesn't work, it's no big deal.
13:21The bacterium they wanted to use for the recycling process had one drawback.
13:25It didn't produce acid.
13:27So, first of all, they had to get it to do so, by genetically modifying it.
13:34It didn't work for at least five months.
13:36That was one of those moments when I thought, maybe this won't work.
13:39Maybe the bacterium is simply not right for this.
13:43Trial and error, over and over.
13:46No matter what they changed in the process, they still didn't get the results they needed.
13:50They spent nights in the lab, weekends, all while juggling their studies.
13:56They motivated each other to keep going.
13:58And it was that not giving up that ultimately made the difference.
14:02One day, they had a breakthrough.
14:05They mixed the shredded catalyst in powder form with the acid produced by the bacteria.
14:12And hours later, the shredded, black material had turned into white platinum.
14:21Next, they entered the iGEM, the world's largest competition for young scientists, and won a gold medal.
14:29Standing there with a gold medal as a team together in Paris, that was an amazing feeling.
14:35Us students together, that was something special.
14:38You don't experience something like that very often.
14:40It was cool.
14:42And what's also cool is that the sustainable solution has made waves among car makers too.
14:51As if by magic. Here, researchers' dreams turn into glass reality.
15:00When heated to nearly 2,000 degrees Celsius, glass can be blown, a bit like bubblegum.
15:08Daniela Einhard blows glass equipment for scientists.
15:12Here, she's joining two tubes at a specific angle.
15:17Because the glass contracts in the heat, she has to blow it again and again.
15:24And also the uneven edges that can form when the pieces are put together.
15:28Those have to be smoothed out too.
15:30That's called blowing it out.
15:34That's what we're doing.
15:37Daniela Einhard and her colleague work at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in southern Germany.
15:43They transform individual pieces of glass into complete laboratory apparatuses.
15:47She did an internship at a glassblower's while still at school and knew this was what she wanted to do.
15:54It's a fascinating material. It's highly versatile.
15:59We grind glass, we saw glass, we drill glass.
16:02There's all the wet processing and the hot processing on top of that.
16:06It's really fun. Plus, we always get to see the results of our work.
16:12The individual glass components are bought in and then customised in the workshop for research institutes.
16:18Sometimes zoologists and meteorologists place orders, but the team's main clients are chemistry labs.
16:25That's why the glassblowers need to have a good understanding of chemistry.
16:31We don't have a complete overview of all the processes and experiments, but we do need some knowledge because we
16:37have to be able to advise researchers.
16:40We need to tell them what's possible, and which applications the glass is suitable for, and which not.
16:48Researchers typically have specific needs for their experimental setups.
16:53Particularly in foundational research, scientists rely on custom-made equipment, which can't be bought off the rack,
17:00and which would be very time-consuming to order separately.
17:03Parts like these come in different sizes, and we have to fit certain components onto them.
17:08It comes down to precise measurements, and the whole communication process is much easier when you can do it on
17:14site.
17:14So it's a huge advantage to have a glassblowing workshop here at the Institute.
17:20And because this customised equipment can cost up to several thousand euros,
17:25Daniela Einhard and her colleague repair the glassware on a regular basis.
17:29It's highly skilled work, and certainly can't be done by machines.
17:36When I grow up, I want to be what?
17:39In the age of AI.
17:46AI is dramatically changing the world of work.
17:49What does that mean for young people like Luca, Demian, Jula and Dina?
17:56How will it impact the jobs they hope to do?
18:01I really want to work with people, as a social worker or kindergarten teacher.
18:08I want to be a chef.
18:10In the restaurant industry or as a teaching assistant.
18:13Some kind of skilled trade.
18:15The future is far more than just a job.
18:18It's about where I'm headed and what I'll be doing in 20 years.
18:22Of course, it's not easy to imagine how life will be then.
18:24If we think back to when we were 15 and how we imagined we'd be in 20 years, it's really
18:29hard to do.
18:31Michael Maschke runs this youth centre in Kassel in Western Germany.
18:35Today, the teens are exploring different career paths and testing a new online tool from the German Institute for Employment
18:43Research.
18:43This reveals how much of a particular job could already be done by AI.
18:48Let's take the role of chef.
18:51What's a robot going to do?
18:53The cooking.
18:55Discovering that their dream job is at risk from AI can be very worrying for young people.
19:00We talked to Katharina Greenberger from the Institute for Employment Research.
19:07So it's not about what AI might take away from us, but instead about the new opportunities and jobs it
19:13creates.
19:16The researchers identify which professions are changing and to what extent.
19:21Will some jobs completely disappear as a result of AI?
19:26What we don't often see is that entire professions are going.
19:30That's rare, although it does happen.
19:32For example, tasks like performing calculations, which any computer can do these days, are being phased out of job descriptions.
19:41AI quickly and flawlessly completes tasks like sorting, logging, formatting. So such jobs are not future proof.
19:51Other industries are seeing changes to roles thanks to AI. The skilled trade sector, for example.
19:59AI can play a useful, supportive role here in the form of drones for roof construction or predictive maintenance, where
20:06heating systems automatically reorder any parts they need, and we already have 3D printed houses.
20:14Healthcare, meanwhile, is an example of a sector in which AI offers scope for expansion of particular tasks.
20:21In healthcare and medicine, AI can take a lot of the burden off people. Doctors can focus on their patients
20:28while the computer assists with tasks like diagnosis.
20:31Or, for example, AI can help nursing staff with documentation work, leaving them more time for their actual duties, which
20:38means more time for their patients.
20:43Back at the youth club. What percentage of a chef's tasks can already be done by AI?
20:5060%?
20:54Forget becoming a chef.
20:57Yula wants to work in service in a restaurant, but AI can already do 29% of the job's tasks.
21:06What about Dina's dream of becoming a social worker?
21:109%? That's okay.
21:14What about Damien's plans?
21:16Try Bricklayer.
21:17Zero percent.
21:21Bingo.
21:22But with demand for specialized knowledge declining in many sectors, which skills are needed?
21:29I'd say the ability to get along with different kinds of people is very important, as is believing in your
21:35own competencies, knowing that you can do something.
21:40It's all about solving problems and being creative.
21:44Katharina Grinberger says that AI shouldn't put people off.
21:49We advise young people and their parents to go for a career that matches their own strengths and interests.
21:59If you're a team player and can play to your strengths, like these four, there's no need to fear rapid
22:05change.
22:05Instead, you can help shape it.
22:10Time for a science quiz. Can you get three out of three?
22:13What helps with itchy mosquito bites?
22:18Heat can help numb the bite and also helps your body break down toxins from the mosquito's saliva.
22:25Why does your cold drink get sweaty?
22:30Condensation.
22:31The drops come from water vapor in the air that turns to liquid water on the drink's cold outer surface.
22:37How do trees know when to shed their leaves?
22:43Special receptors called phytochromes can sense amounts of daylight.
22:47When nights get longer, it's time to shed.
22:50How many did you get right?
22:54Do you have a science question for us?
22:57Then send it to us as a video, text or voice message.
23:01If we answer it in the show, we'll send you a little gift as a thank you.
23:06So, just ask.
23:10Did unicorns and dragons exist?
23:16Mythical beasts are found in legends from cultures across the world.
23:21Wherever humans told each other stories, sooner or later fantastical creatures would make an appearance.
23:26But one in particular has been around for over four millennia.
23:31From Europe, to China, to India, to the Americas.
23:39Dragon-like beings show up over and over again.
23:47And although no fire-breathing giants ever roamed the Earth, real giant reptiles once did.
23:54In fact, lots of experts believe the fossilized remains of dinosaurs and other creatures may have been mistaken in the
24:01ancient world for dragon teeth and bones.
24:06And the trunks of some fossilized giant ferns look scaly as well.
24:11So, long dead plants may have helped convince people that living dragons must be out there somewhere.
24:20Remains of large, long dead species of both plants and animals are found in many different parts of the world.
24:27So, it's one possible explanation for why the dragon legend is common to so many cultures.
24:33Though it's hard to prove.
24:37The legend of the unicorn, on the other hand, appears to be a more recent construct.
24:42One that's more rooted in Europe and Asia.
24:44Greek historian Theseus was the first to mention a mythical animal similar to a horse with a single horn growing
24:51from its head, around 2,500 years ago.
24:55His description was likely based on second-hand reports by travelers who'd glimpsed another animal.
25:02The Indian rhinoceros.
25:05Later, tusks from narwhals that washed ashore also provided what looked like evidence.
25:10In males of the whale species, these dramatically elongated teeth look like spiraling horns.
25:17Which ancient scholars assumed came from the mythical beast.
25:23But in fact, there's no credible scientific or archeological evidence that either unicorns or dragons ever existed.
25:32Instead, stories of both likely grew out of humanity's attempts to make sense of the natural world they saw around
25:39them.
25:39And to share it with others through stories.
25:45Rainforest research, future-proof jobs and unicorns.
25:50We have many more such science stories to share with you.
25:53So see you again soon on DW's Tomorrow Today.
26:09You may say a lot of different ways of preeministENE.
26:10You may never want to be able to do that somewhere else.
26:10But it does all just cancel.
26:10So which man speaks with us?
26:10Because if the habitat cub crazy, the habitat must be able to open the habitat when you're afraid and your
26:11habit must damage enemies to normal level.