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  • Cornell University Hawk Camera

    Cornell University Hawk Camera

    Everybody is excited for the 2020 breeding season of the famous Cornell University campus hawks Big Red and her new mate Arthur. Unfortunately Big Red’s partner Ezra reportedly has died. Last year Big Red laid her first egg at about 11:38 ET on March 28th. The breeding season 2015 started with a surprise. Big Red and Ezra moved to their nest to the light pole they used in 2012. There were no longer cameras installed at this nest so some […]

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  • Albatross Nest Live from New Zealand

    Albatross Nest Live from New Zealand

    If you see a dark screen, bear in mind that it might be night time in New Zealand. Breeding season 2019 has ended happily. See y’all in 2020! We have previously relayed broadcast from Laysan Albatross (Phoebastria immutabilis) nest from the island of Kauai, geologically the oldest island of the Hawaiian archipelago. The webcam is operated by the Bird Lab of Cornell University. The Laysan Albatross gets its name from its Laysan breeding colony in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, where […]

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  • Decorah Eagle Cam – Nesting Season 2024

    Decorah Eagle Cam – Nesting Season 2024

    Live feed has begun from the new nest named N2 for Decorah bald eagles. Decorah Eagles 1-28-24 HM perches on the Y, visits N1. The pair known as “Mom” and “Dad” are visiting and maintaining the nest occasionally. Established by the Raptor Resource Project in 2007 this breeding pair of Bald Eagles in Decorah, Iowa has been under intense observation. The pair became famous after the PBS Nature Documentary “American Eagle” in 2008. At one point in 2012 the viewer […]

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  • Eyed Click Bug (Alaus oculatus) Ovipositing

    Eyed Click Bug (Alaus oculatus) Ovipositing

    On May 26th 2012, this click beetle began laying her eggs on a log along the Orange trail of the State Botanical Garden of Georgia in Athens, GA. These beetles are quite noticeable due to their large size and distinctive eye patterns on their pronotum. At the beginning of the video (while she is stationary), you can see some very tiny red mites walking across her body. She wondered around on a downed tree and assessed possible egg laying sites. […]

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  • Cannonball Tree – Couroupita guianensis (Lecythidaceae) – Singapore Botanical Gardens

    Cannonball Tree – Couroupita guianensis (Lecythidaceae) – Singapore Botanical Gardens

    Filmed on location at the Singapore Botanical Gardens on Nov 22nd 2016. The cannonball tree (Couroupita guianensis) from the Lecythidaceae (Brazil nut family) family is native to Neotropical forests. Its flowers are adapted for bat pollination possibly from an ancestral state of euglossine bee pollination. Here far away from its natural home, the flowers are being visited by stingless Meliponini bees. The flowers produce impressive levels of fragrance but yield no nectar. Therefore the reward for its visitors comes in […]

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  • Into Peru in Search of Plants – NYBG (2018)

    Into Peru in Search of Plants – NYBG (2018)

    Dr. Fabian Michelangeli is a curator at the New York Botanical Garden. Here in this short documentary, we see snaphots of phases of an expedition he organized to the Yanachaga–Chemillén National Park located in the cloud forests of Peru located in search of plants that help us better understand the state of global biodiversity, climate change, and other factors that contribute to far-reaching conservation efforts. The Andes mountain range of South America is a geological marvel that initiated the speciation […]

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  • Exploring the Amazon – Kew Botanic Gardens (2016)

    Exploring the Amazon – Kew Botanic Gardens (2016)

    This short documentary outlines a joint expedition to the Parc Amazonien de Guyane organized by CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), the French Foreign Legion and Kew Botanic Gardens. The area could be rather hostile to scientists where illegal gold mines are in operation in remote and unexpected places along French Guiana-Brazil border. As the prominent tropical biologist Stephen Hubbell described in the foreword of his book Neutral Theory of Biodiversity the state of tropical biology is still resembling […]

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  • The Passionate Wait

    The Passionate Wait

    This short documentary highlights events before the opening of the passionflower (Passiflora incarnata) flowers. Drought conditions during the summer of 2011 increased the activity of many insects and spiders around the extrafloral nectaries of the plant. The water budget of the plants is strongest early in the morning. Flowers do not open until the middle of the day. At first, passion flower is generous especially to the ants in the morning providing ample volume of nectar. Ants provide protection to […]

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  • Acid Attack

    Acid Attack

    Nectar is an effective concoction for establishment and maintenance of plant-animal interactions. Using nectar, plants can build a community of allies for defense and even manipulate the behavior of pollinators. We are accustomed to nectaries found in flowers. Plants however, have evolved nectaries in other locations in their above-ground parts including the base of the flowers and petioles. These are called extrafloral nectaries. The sugary reward coming from the extrafloral nectaries invites ants to defend them. Here we can see […]

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  • Prominent Features of Leaf-footed Stinkbugs

    Prominent Features of Leaf-footed Stinkbugs

    The leaf-footed stinkbugs have quite a few eye-catching body features including highly specialized mouthparts, offensive and defensive adaptations. This is an order of insects on which evolutionary pressures are visibly active shaping their morphologies. The evolutionary trade-offs underpinning these structures are an active research subject by biologists. Here, three characteristic body parts in leaf-footed stink bugs are highlighted: The labium, the pronotum and the components of the hind leg (femur and tibia). Entomologically, the femur and the tibia are the […]

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  • Great White Shark Pup off the Northern Aegean Coast of Turkey

    Great White Shark Pup off the Northern Aegean Coast of Turkey

    Be prepared to hear a fascinating piece of natural history about the Mediterranean great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias). The story is fascinating for multiple reasons. First, the great whites are one of the most charismatic, vulnerable, cryptic and misunderstood predator fish species. Second, it takes place in a quite unexpected location. Altınoluk is a town on the northern Aegean coast of Turkey. It is located to the south of Troy on a legendary sea route known as the Argonaut route […]

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  • A Frequently Yawning Rough Green Snake (Opheodrys aestivus)

    A Frequently Yawning Rough Green Snake (Opheodrys aestivus)

    This beautifully bright green snake is a master of disguise. Although they are fairly long (can be up to 81 cm) it is almost impossible to notice them unless you have been curiously scanning the vegetation with a purpose. The Rough Green Snake (Opheodrys aestivus) is behaviorally very docile. It must be a slow day for this particular individual since s/he was frequently yawning. The observation was recorded on 9th of September 2012 at the Georgia State Botanical Garden in […]

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  • Grey Reef Sharks Mating – Yann Hubert

    Grey Reef Sharks Mating – Yann Hubert

    Shark life cycle has many elusive stages. Mating is one of these secretive moments. Here in this short observation filmmaker Yann Hubert captures a pair of Grey Reef Sharks (Carcharhinus amblyrhynchos) during copulation. Characteristic clasper organs used by the male to latch onto the female during copulation is very striking. The location and time of the year in this extremely serendipitous encounter is not specified perhaps to avoid disturbance from many curious divers. Grey Reef Sharks are common and live […]

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  • Australian Walking Stick Insects are Three Times Weirder Than You Think | PBS – Deep Look (2022)

    Australian Walking Stick Insects are Three Times Weirder Than You Think | PBS – Deep Look (2022)

    It is a seed, no it is an ant, no it is a leaf, no it is a stick,… Actually, it is all of the above through a temporally spaced sequence of disguises (*): It is the Australian walking stick (Extatosoma tiaratum). This insect is indeed a master of deception. It is a fascinating example of a series of adaptations that maximized its survival by multiple versions of mimicry successfully fooling predators at every stage of their life cycle. (*) […]

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  • Cone-headed Planthoppers (Acanalonia conica) on Passion Flower

    Cone-headed Planthoppers (Acanalonia conica) on Passion Flower

    This observation has been registered in the iNaturalist database with the following accession 105647409. Observed on August 9, 2014 at the Georgia State Botanical Garden in Athens, GA, USA. Here, you can see a number of cone-headed planthoppers (Acanalonia conica) feeding on a passion flower vine (Passiflora incarnata). The passion flower family (Passifloraceae) is well known for its sugar producing glands called extrafloral nectaries. These nectaries attract ants and here in this observation we see two species of ants (Formica […]

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