Mark Siddall: 30 Second Science

(pulsing electronic accents) (film projector whirring) (pleasant bell music) (pleasant piano music) - I am a curator at the Museum of Natural History.

Museums of natural history are like libraries of biodiversity and libraries without books are useless.

I run around and find the books, in this case, species of leeches.

Find out where they are, where they live, how they're related to each other, and once we figure out how they're related to each other, try to find out something interesting about that.

For example, with the leeches, how did they evolve?

What does that mean in terms of the evolution of blood feeding?

What does it mean in terms of the movement of continents around the globe?

Was that 30 seconds?

(laughs) I need a clock (chuckles).