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Jessi: Life! It's just amazing! Living things are all over our planet: on high mountaintops, in deserts, and at the very bottom of the ocean. Life is pretty much everywhere you can think of, from the North Pole to the South Pole.

And you know who really loves life? Scientists called biologists. That's because their job is to study living things. That's what the word "biology" really means: the study of life. So a biologist is anyone who studies anything that's alive.

What kind of living things can you think of? There are plants and animals of course, but what else? What about fungi, like mushrooms in the woods and yeast in our kitchens, or the yucky mold that grows on old bread. And what about living things that are too small to see with just our eyes, like plankton in the rivers and oceans or tiny bacteria that live everywhere from the soil to our own bodies.

The list of different living things on Earth is practically endless and there are biologists who study every single one of them. Since there are so many types of living things, there are also many different kinds of jobs that biologists can do. Some biologists might only study one species of animal or plant.

For example, a biologist might study just three-toed sloths, but there's a bunch of things she might want to learn about them. She might study how tree sloths and jaguars live together in the same habitat or how m,any plants a sloth has to eat every day to survive. She might try to learn how to keep three-toed sloths from going extinct or how to clean up the pollution that's spoiling a sloth's home.

A lot of the time, biologists do their jobs in the field or outside. They go right to where the things that they want to study live and they observe or watch them in the wild. That might mean working on a boat to study dolphins that live in the ocean or in a cave to learn all about the bats that make their homes there.

Other biologists spend their days inside a laboratory using cool equipment to study living things. One of the most important tools that biologists use is a microscope. Microscopes help biologists see things that are just too small to see with their eyes alone. Microscopes work by magnifying or increasing the size of things so that the scientists can see them clearly.

Biologists often use microscopes to study cells. A cell is a part that makes up a living thing. Everything alive, including your own body, is made of cells. By studying cells, biologists have been able to make new medicines and have learned how to prevent or cure diseases.

So do you think you want to be a biologist? Then you need to be what all scientists are: curious. Biologists ask lots of questions to find out more about the living things that share the Earth with us. They might ask questions about what some things need to stay alive, like these colorful tubeworms at the bottom of the ocean. Or, they might ask how some living things like rays are distantly related far back in time to other living things like sharks. Or, they might try to learn more about animals' behavior or how they act, like how bees live and work together to make a colony.

But that's not all! On top of studying things, whether in the field or in the laboratory, biologists also need to be able to share what they find with other scientists and anyone else whose interested in living things. People like you and me. That might mean writing about what they find or taking pictures or teaching students in schools all about how fascinating living things are.

So there you have it, biologists are scientists who study any kind of living things. They're scientists that are really into life. Thanks for joining us on SciShow Kids and if you have any questions or there's something you'd like to learn more about, just let us know by leaving a comment below or emailing us at kids@thescishow.com and we'll see you next time.

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