Posts by Uzay Sezen | Nature Documentaries

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A Scientific Visualization of the 2020 Atlantic Hurricane Season – NASA/SVS (2020)

April 16, 2021 at 10:28 pm / Global Patterns, Video

NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio (SVS) has released an animated summary of the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season. The visualization starts on May 1, 2020 showing Sea Surface Temperatures and cloud cover. Precipitation data layer enters in as hurricanes are tracked throughout 2020. Hurricane strengths pepresented with the letter “T” for Tropical Storm and numbers for each storm’s respective strength along the hurricane tracks. At the end by all storm tracks are projected together on the surface. The season stunned meteorologists and […]

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Horseshoe Crabs Mating in Maine

April 9, 2021 at 11:25 am / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, NatureDocumentaries.org, Short Observations, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

This is a quite rare footage of Atlantic horseshoe crabs (Limulus poyphemus) recorded during high tide about 10:00 am in Recompence Shore, Freeport Maine on May 26th 2010. Mating mostly happens in moonlit nights (romantic animals) on sandy beaches. Here they are mating in broad daylight on a rough pebble beach. External fertilization is one of the ancestral ways to produce offspring however it can be rather costly. Egg production requires more resources compared to sperm. Females therefore need more […]

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Big Bear Bald Eagle Cam – Friends of Big Bear Valley (2021)

March 4, 2021 at 2:28 pm / Natural history, Video, webcams

An eagles’ nest cannot have a better view that this! The pair of unbanded eagles, Jackie and Shadow have mated and laid their eggs. They have been tending the eggs with beautifully coordinated shift changes. Big Bear Bald Eagle Cam is presented by the Friends of Big Bear Valley from Fawnskin, California. Here you can find their brief history. NatureDocumentaries.org follows a number of webcams and these charismatic birds of prey occupy a significant chunk. Thanks to continent-wide conservation efforts […]

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My Africa – David Allen (2018) | Conservation International – (360 film)

March 4, 2021 at 1:25 pm / Human Nature, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

The the short film “My Africa” is directed by David Allen and narrated by Academy Award-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o. Commissioned by the Conservation International, it takes viewers to an elephant sanctuary in Kenya, where a community is reknitting the bonds that have long enabled people and wildlife to coexist. My Africa is presented in stunningly immersive virtual reality through a series of establishment shots of the African savanna including lions, wildebeests, and elephants. The movie introduces the intensity of wildlife […]

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Chasing Ghosts – bioGraphic / Eric Bendick (2019)

February 25, 2021 at 9:11 am / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Orchids have a special place in plant biologists’ hearts. How can they not? They are the beetles (*) of the plant world. One in every five flowering plant species living today is an orchid. Although orchids are so diverse, they are also rather rare. Most people think of orchids as showy, vibrant and beautiful, but Gastrodia agnicellus, named in 2020 from a forest in Madagascar, is quite the opposite. The evolutionary alliance of orchids and their pollinators go as far […]

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The Kingdom of the Lion Tailed Macaque – Poorna Kedar (2019)

December 18, 2020 at 11:37 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Lion Tailed Macaques is an endangered primate endemic to the Western Ghats of India with a restricted geographical range. Due to habitat loss and human pressures populations have been on the decline. The filmmaker Poorna Kedar has recorded these vulnerable primates at one of the critical habitats of this species near the town of Valparai. India’s Western Ghats is an ecologically unique biodiversity hotspot recognized by the United Nations as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The exceptionally high level of […]

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Visiting the most vulnerable place on Earth: the ‘doomsday glacier’ – PBS Newshour (2020)

October 5, 2020 at 4:45 pm / Global Patterns, Nova Documentaries, PBS Nature

For a little over more than 33 million years, the Antarctic continent remained an exceptionally isolated land mass due to the Antarctic Circumpolar Current that forms a thermal shield around it. The Antarctic Circumpolar Current is the strongest ocean current on our planet flowing without obstruction from any other land masses. Unfortunately human induced global warming is changing all that and the effects of the climate change is being felt at both poles of the planet through a phenomenon known […]

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Decoding COVID-19 – Sara Holt | NOVA / PBS (2020)

August 17, 2020 at 8:46 pm / Nova Documentaries, PBS Nature, Video

Center for Disease Control (CDC) has been one of the most effective institutions in fight against emerging diseases. Yet, strikingly, the US has become the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. Elimination of the immensely important the Global Health Security and Biodefense unit — responsible for pandemic preparedness — established in 2015 is now deemed one of the biggest political mistakes of our time. Unfortunately political interference continued to render experts of this most cutting edge organization largely ineffective and left […]

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Human Bot Fly – Piotr Naskrecki (2015)

August 5, 2020 at 12:10 am / Human Nature, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Piotr Naskrecki achieved what many tropical biologists (including the author of this post) tried but failed multiple times: raising a tropical Human bot fly (Dermatobia hominis). This parasite is frequently covered by major TV channels since it is quite gruesome to the unititiated and most certainly attracts viewers. In my opinion this is the best bot fly documentary ever. In the video Dr. Naskrecki outlines the life cycle very well with the calmness of an entomologist without drama. You can […]

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A Window into the Twilight Zone – Jennifer L. Berglund / WHOI (2020)

August 2, 2020 at 12:51 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Video

The Ocean Twilight Zone is the largest habitat on Earth. It is a vast ecosystem that does not depend on sunlight directly. This is the place where organisms have evolved seemingly bizarre adaptations such as bioluminescence and reproduction modes such as the Angler Fish with a parasitic male. The clues for chemical origins for how life may have started could be there in thermal vents. The discovery of diel vertical migration of fish and zooplankton forming the deep sound scattering […]

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NOAA Hurricane Hunters – PBS NewsHour (2018)

July 31, 2020 at 10:11 pm / Global Patterns, PBS Nature, Video

Every hurricane season a fleet of “Hurricane Hunter” planes are deployed to “airtruth” the atmospheric conditions of storms long before they make a landfall. A pair of Lockheed P3 Orion turboprop planes nicknamed “Kermit and “Miss Piggy” are among them. Hurricane Hunter missions are crucial to verify and fine-tune satellite measurements. Hurricane Hunters fly directly into the hurricanes and traverse the eye of the storm several times in order to collect atmospheric data equipped with airborne Doppler weather radar. During […]

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Observations and Simulations of 2005 Atlantic Hurricane Season by NASA

July 25, 2020 at 8:53 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Global Patterns, NatureDocumentaries.org, Video

Atlantic hurricane season typically starts from June 1 and ends in November 30 in the northern Atlantic. There’s a noticeable peak from late August through September. Each season peak activity occurs around September 10th. The 2005 Atlantic hurricane season had an unusually high cyclone activity surpassing any other season. The number of category 5 hurricanes, and the most intense hurricane ever measured (Hurricane Wilma) by atmospheric pressure was recorded during this time period. The visualization ’27 Storms: Arlene to Zeta’ […]

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Life’s Rocky Start – PBS/NOVA (2016)

July 12, 2020 at 3:33 pm / Evolution, Global Patterns, Nova Documentaries, Video

Geology and biological evolution of life influence each other tightly. The title of the documentary “Life’s Rocky Start” reflects this relationship superbly. The six stage transformation of our planet from black, gray, blue, red, white to green is a wonderfully concise way of outlining the geological and biological evolution. More than half of the minerals now incorporated into the upper crust of our planet were produced by living organisms. The movement of continental plates has played a fundamental role in […]

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Baby Ground Squirrels Endemic to Anatolia – Hakan Gür (2020)

July 10, 2020 at 8:09 am / Natural history, Short Observations, Video

They indeed are Meerkat look-alikes. But no they are not Meerkats. Locally they are known as “Gelengi”. Scientifically, they are the Anatolian ground squirrels (Spermophilus xanthophrymnus). In this short observation you can see 5 juveniles that are reported to be approximately 5-6 weeks old hanging out in their nest entrance. A Turkish research team lead by Dr. Hakan Gür who studies their population dynamics recorded the observation on May 8th 2020 near Ankara. Female ground squirrels mate soon after they […]

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A Red Shouldered Hawk (Buteo lineatus)

July 7, 2020 at 4:41 pm / Natural history, NatureDocumentaries.org, Short Observations, Video

It appears like nothing too exciting is going on in this short observation but in reality there’s a lot happening inside that brain of this bird perfectly chilling with the self confidence of a top predator. The confidence is well earned: they are the descendants of dinosaurs. Looking and seeing are two separate actions. In order to “see” a higher order brain function called “attention” is needed. Scientists define the foundation of attention with two concepts called Context Generalization and […]

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