Ideas worth spreading

You have no idea where camels really come from

3,374,094 views |

Latif Nasser |

TED Talks Live

• November 2015

Camels are so well adapted to the desert that it's hard to imagine them living anywhere else. But what if we have them pegged all wrong? What if those big humps, feet and eyes were evolved for a different climate and a different time? In this talk, join Radiolab's Latif Nasser as he tells the surprising story of how a very tiny, very strange fossil upended the way he sees camels, and the world. This talk comes from the PBS special "TED Talks: Science & Wonder."

Camels are so well adapted to the desert that it's hard to imagine them living anywhere else. But what if we have them pegged all wrong? What if those big humps, feet and eyes were evolved for a different climate and a different time? In this talk, join Radiolab's Latif Nasser as he tells the surprising story of how a very tiny, very strange fossil upended the way he sees camels, and the world. This talk comes from the PBS special "TED Talks: Science & Wonder."

This talk was presented at an official TED conference. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.

About the speaker

Latif Nasser

Radio researcher

See speaker profile

Latif Nasser is the director of research at Radiolab, where he has reported on such disparate topics as culture-bound illnesses, snowflake photography, sinking islands and 16th-century automata.

This talk was presented at an official TED conference. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.