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Great White Shark Pup off the Northern Aegean Coast of Turkey

April 6, 2022 at 1:03 pm / Evolution, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

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

February 11, 2022 at 3:20 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, PBS Nature, Short Observations

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

February 5, 2022 at 2:11 pm / Evolution, Natural history, Short Observations, Video

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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Ants Defending Plants

February 4, 2022 at 11:00 am / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, NatureDocumentaries.org, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Plant eaters are called herbivores and they pose a threat for plants. Understandably, nobody would like to get eaten. In order to prevent tissue loss and damage from herbivores plants have evolved defensive adaptations such as hard to digest tissues and poisonous chemicals. Some plants however, have evolved a different solution. Plants can use nectar as drivers of beneficial behaviors such as pollination and protection from herbivores. Nectar is an attractive fluid for many animals. It is a rich calorie […]

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Domestication as a Signature of Human Nature / One Man and His Dog – BBC (1985)

August 10, 2021 at 10:06 pm / Evolution, Human Nature, Video

Johnny Wilson and his dogs earned their fame when they won BBC2’s One Man and His Dog competition. Here in this short clip we see a remarkable section from the program that highlights a signature of one of the hallmark characters in Human nature: Domestication. Domestication expanded Human abilities beyond the natural boundaries. Note that domestication in animals almost always starts with selection of “behavior”. Using this unintentional primary cue as a starting point Humans in different parts of the […]

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Synthetic Cells: Building Life to Understand It – Katarzyna Adamala | iBiology (2021)

July 9, 2021 at 10:31 pm / Evolution, Molecular Nature, Video

Dr. Katarzyna Adamala of the University of Minnesota describes what synthetic cells are and how they can teach us the fundamental principles of life. By looking at the fundamental molecules of (RNA, DNA and Proteins) biologists are certain that life on Earth evolved only once. All biological systems (including viruses that are technically non-living) on our planet are rooted in the same fundamental framework. This framework appears extremely complex and we have yet to fully understand the processes inside living […]

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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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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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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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Plants are Cool Too! (All Episodes)

May 20, 2020 at 10:27 am / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

The “Plants are Cool Too!” series is supported by the Botanical Society of America (BSA) and hosted by Dr. Chris Martine. Here you will find all episodes of the series in reverse chronological order (last-in-first-out). Ecologists have hypothesized that there has to be a level of disturbance acting pretty regularly on communities. The intensity of disturbance has to be “mild” so that it doesn’t wipe every living thing but clear out some habitable zones for re-colonization by some species that […]

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Electron Transport Chain – HarvardX / BioVisions (2013)

April 27, 2020 at 9:14 am / Evolution, Molecular Nature

Understanding molecular nature of life is not easy without informative scientific visualizations. Distillation of this rich body of information generated over decades or even century long research into a visual medium can be key to grasp complexities of subcellular structures. Take the Central Dogma of biology for instance. The Central Dogma animation distills more than half a century of intense laboratory research that started with Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling’s extraordinarily historic X-ray diffraction photograph in 1952. Photo 51 was […]

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Eye of the Pangolin – Pangolin.Africa (2019)

April 2, 2020 at 11:21 am / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

The etymological origin of the name pangolin comes from the Malay word pengguling. It means “one who rolls up”. The animal has at least eight species with a wide geographical distribution ranging from Africa to Indian subcontinent and southeast Asia including Malayan Archipelago and Indonesia. Unfortunately we know very little about this highly elusive animal and its existence is under threat. Scaly anteaters are quite unusual among mammals since their skin is covered by large and overlapping keratinized scales hugely […]

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When Plants Fight Back – bioGraphic (2017)

September 25, 2019 at 12:50 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Even Aristotle got it wrong. He thought plant roots convert soil into wood and grow that way. Plants resemble bizarre upside down animals. Their superior mouth parts (roots) are located in an inferior position. According to Aristotle, plants are ‘lower’ level living things. They are the first basic steps in procession of life from the inanimate to the animate (animals). Plants don’t move and are without ‘sensory soul’ but still have ‘souls’. Plants do not have any excrement, do not […]

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Wallace in Borneo – Bill Bailey’s Jungle Hero – BBC (2013)

June 27, 2019 at 2:35 pm / BBC documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, Video

The theory of evolution was co-discovered independently by two biologists that lived within the same time period. Darwin and Wallace were well known in their time but Wallace’s name gradually has been overshadowed by Darwin. Today we rarely (almost never) hear the name Alfred Russell Wallace. In the past there have been a few documentaries making a rare attempt to focus on the biography of this very influential biologist including an episode in Jacob Bronowski’s 1973 The Ascent of Man […]

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The Red-Shanked Douc Langur – Ryan Deboodt (2019)

April 11, 2019 at 8:54 pm / Evolution, Natural history, Wildlife Documentaries

The douc langurs are among the most visually striking primates in the world. There three species of douc langurs: the red-shanked douc langur (Pygathrix nemaeus), black-shanked douc langur (Pygathix nigripes) and gray-shanked douc langur (Pygathix cinereus). All are endemic to Indochina. Here the filmmaker Ryan Deboodt has filmed the Red-Shanked Douc Langur of the Vietnam forests. Habitat loss, disease and trappers are threatening this species. Doucs are found in a variety of habitats: from lowland to mountainous terrain up to […]

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