Home » Evolution (Page 10)

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  When and Why We Lost Hair?

  March 9, 2012 at 1:16 pm / Evolution, Human Nature, Nova Documentaries, Video

  When and why our ancestors began to wear clothing is a curious story. Clothing may have emerged for insulation of body heat. Similarly it also have provided a means to carry things and improve mobility. Cold snaps engulfed the earth many times. Using ice cores from Antarctica scientists identified 8 glacial cycles within the last 800 thousand years alone. An archaelogical site from Israel provides the earliest evidence of controlled fire by humans spanning the same time period. We know […]

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  The Botany of Desire – Michael Pollan – PBS (2009)

  February 15, 2012 at 10:40 pm / Evolution, Human Nature, PBS Nature, Video

  Domestication is a defining feature of recent human evolution. In animals first trait selected by humans was behavior. In plants harvestability through selection of non-shattering seeds was the first trait of domestication. Plant domestication paved the way to agriculture which enabled highly specialized sedentary human societies. Domesticated plants differ from their wild ancestors in distinct ways that can be categorized under a term called as the domestication syndrome. Domestication syndrome includes reduced shattering of seeds (seeds don’t separate from the […]

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  Ants – Nature’s Secret Power (2006)

  January 29, 2012 at 11:23 am / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

  Ants, bees and wasps make up only 3 percent of animal diversity yet they may constitute up to 50 percent of the total animal biomass in land habitats. Bert Hölldobler is a leading entomologist (scientist who studies insects). He collaborated with ant biologist E.O. Wilson and developed the field of Sociobiology. The documentary does an excellent job introducing us observations coming from both natural and laboratory setting. First observation comes from the European red wood ants (Formica polyctena). These ants […]

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  Daytime Hunting of Barred Owl (Strix varia)

  January 16, 2012 at 10:42 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, NatureDocumentaries.org, Short Observations, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

  On April 16th 2011, a barred owl glided over my head while I was filming something else along the Orange Trail of the State Botanical Garden of Georgia in Athens, GA. Hunting during daytime indicates that this individual has extra mouths to feed. You can hear the altruistic alarm calls of other nervous birds and rodents. The high pitched alarm call (of a chipmunk?) is particularly audible immediately before each move of the owl. I deliberately kept the scenes long […]

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