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The Shape of Life: Sponges – PBS (2002)

August 2, 2015 at 9:30 pm / Evolution, Natural history, PBS Nature, Video

Evolutionarily, sponges are considered to be the oldest and most ancestral surviving species of the multicellular animal lineage going back to more than 750 million years ago. They are notorious filter feeders. Famous German zoologist Ernst Haeckel quite accurately illustrated many sponges as early as 1872. They have an extraordinary capacity to filter dissolved nutrients through a specialized group of cells called choanocyte. Encrusting sponge tissues are made of choanocytes forming canals that converge at the openings called oscula where […]

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Red Goat Moth (Cossus cossus) Caterpillar Searching for Pupation Site

May 16, 2015 at 4:28 am / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, NatureDocumentaries.org, Short Observations, Video

Recorded on May 4th 2015 at the Atatürk Arboretum of Istanbul University, Bahçeköy, Türkiye. The individual in the recording most probably belongs to Cossus cossus gueruenensis reported from Asia Minor. The caterpillar has reached its final growth stage as a caterpillar and is frantically searching for a place to burrow itself in the forest floor to become a pupa. Pupation is the final stage of a caterpillar before metamorphosing into adult butterfly form. The developmental transformation in these insects has […]

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European Yellow Jacket Wasp vs. Australian Bull Ant (and other ant-wasp clashes)

April 23, 2015 at 9:26 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Short Observations, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Ant – Wasp clash is a rather frequent interspecific competitive interaction between the two social insect groups. At first glance wasps may seem to be at an advantage by being aerial. On the other hand, ants can achieve high numbers and squirt formic acid which is a potent neurotoxin for most animals. Wasps and ants both can bite and sting and therefore they are somehow equal rivals. The main footage featured above was filmed in the Kosciuszko National Park of […]

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High-speed Filming of Hummingbirds – Harold Eugene “Doc” Edgerton (1936)

April 12, 2015 at 10:38 am / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Harold Eugene “Doc” Edgerton (1903 – 1990) was a professor of electrical engineering at MIT. He invented the stroboscopic electric flash to capture events happening at incredible speeds including the explosion of an atomic bomb. Even in today’s standards these images are hard to capture. His uncle was pivotal in beginning of his innovation filled career. He introduced him to the world of cameras. Edgerton invented and developed many different cameras including underwater cameras. One of his cameras was tested […]

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Whale Shark Aggregation in Belize – Cristiana & Alain Bontemps (2009)

March 31, 2015 at 8:28 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

External fertilization is a wasteful process but still enables survival of many aquatic species. For external fertilization to be successful certain prerequisites are needed: high population numbers, aggregation of these large groups and synchronous release of gametes. Animals are great resource maximizers. Once they discover a high value resource they will exploit it as efficiently as possible. Gametes (sperms and eggs) released during external fertilization of large groups of fish such as the Jack are extremely nutritious for filter feeders […]

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Rapid Worker Recruitment in Aphaenogaster Ants

March 27, 2015 at 12:43 pm / Natural history, NatureDocumentaries.org, Short Observations, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

In this short observation a single worker drags a yellow jacket wasp (Vespula spp.) until a point close to the nest and then switches to a different task. She leaves to recruit more workers as a scout. Until the first recruits arrive two other workers tend the prey. The location of the prey must have been close to the nest because a third worker joins them 55 seconds after the scout leaves. Based on the time stamp of the unedited […]

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Spider Mom – Alvaro Mendoza (2012)

March 26, 2015 at 3:51 pm / Natural history, Short Observations, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Egg laying by a female spider filmed by Alvaro Mendoza. Highly choreographed light use makes this short observation particularly striking. Spiders reproduce sexually. Fertilization is internal but the sperm is not inserted into the female’s body by the male’s genitals. Unlike many land-living arthropods, male spiders do not produce ready-made spermatophores (packages of sperm). Males spin small sperm webs on to which they ejaculate and then transfer the sperm to syringe-like structures on the tips of their pedipalps. Image source: […]

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Crippled Cranefly Orchid (Tipularia discolor) (2014)

March 23, 2015 at 3:12 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, NatureDocumentaries.org, Short Observations, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Crippled Cranefly Orchid (Tipularia discolor). Recorded on August 9th 2014, Georgia State Botanical Garden, Athens, GA, USA. The genus Tipularia has three species. Crippled cranefly orchid (Tipularia discolor) is the only species found in North America. The other two species are Asian found in the Himalayas and Japan. Tipularia discolor grows in organic humus-rich soils of closed canopy oak-pine forests in the Eastern United States. It is protected as Threatened, Endangered, or Rare in Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania. […]

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How Chameleons Change Color? (2015)

March 18, 2015 at 10:11 am / Evolution, Molecular Nature, Natural history, Short Observations, Video

Long projectile tongue, independently movable eyes and rapid color change. Chameleons are indeed very interesting animals (see the detailed account of Aristotle at the bottom of this post). Main video is a concatenation of all five supplementary materials associated with the a study demonstrating color change in Chameleons. You can view them individually below. The following video by The Economist makes a successful summary based on the same material: Reproductively mature chameleon males rapidly switch on bold threatening colors when […]

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Crossection of a Dandelion Compound Flower – Rüdiger Hartmann (2015)

March 8, 2015 at 11:30 am / Natural history, Short Observations, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) is one of the most ubiquitous plants belonging to the family Asteraceae. The plant is native to Eurasia but has become naturalized to all temperate regions of the World introduced unintentionally by Humans. It’s compound flowers are self-pollinated and seeds are wind dispersed. In this short observation developmental biologist Dr. Rüdiger Hartmann of the University of Freiburg has done a wonderful job of showing the dynamics of the mature compound flowers (inflorescence) using timelapse videography in his […]

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Voyage of Darwin’s Beagle – Episode 2: Low Life on the Ladder of God (2009)

February 12, 2015 at 12:37 am / Evolution, Human Nature, Natural history, Video

When Darwin set foot in Rio de Janerio he witnessed the brutality of slavery. Brazil is a melting pot of genetic diversity. All fossil and genetic evidence points that Africa is the home continent where modern Humans originated about 200 thousand years ago. As Humans spread and colonized new continents genetic diversity eroded gradually proportional to the distance away from Africa. Loss of genetic diversity was because of joint effects of two well understood genetic phenomena known as population bottleneck […]

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Voyage of Darwin’s Beagle – Episode 5: The Paradise of Competition (2009)

February 12, 2015 at 12:27 am / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Global Patterns, Natural history, Video

The Galapagos islands has been a pivotal single location where everything came together in Darwin’s mind. The geology of the archipelago and almost every species (Tortoises, iguanas, finches) he observed on each island showed significant variation. The Galapagos Islands, which are part of Ecuador are about 1000 km (620 miles) west of South America. As the three craters on the largest island (Isabela Island) suggest, the archipelago was created by volcanic eruptions. Each year roughly 60,000 tourists visit these islands. […]

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Salmon Confidential – Twyla Roscovich (2013)

February 2, 2015 at 2:30 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Fish are cold-blooded animals and this property make them very efficient in terms of biomass accumulation. For this reason ecological trophic levels in aquatic systems can be more than terrestrial systems. Compared to fish, a warm-blooded cow is a furnace burning 90% of the food intake. Fish is a very valuable food. The global demand for seafood is so large that wild fisheries can’t meet that anymore. How are we going to feed fish to humanity? Two-thirds of the salmon […]

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Picture Wing Fly and Ant Competing for Nectar

January 27, 2015 at 1:01 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, NatureDocumentaries.org, Short Observations, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

A picture wing fly (Delphinium picta) and an ant (Formica palidefulva) are competing for nectar secreted from the extrafloral nectaries of the Passiflora vine (Passiflora incarnata). This short observation was filmed on August 25 2014. Georgia State Botanical Garden, Athens, GA, USA. Here we see multiple overlapping natural history stories. A passiflora vine is being defended by workers of a Formica palidefulva colony. A picture wing fly is sneaking around the vine looking for an opportunity to sip sweet nectar […]

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Seed Dispersal Under the Threat of Mustard Bomb – Michal Samuni-Blank (2012)

January 27, 2015 at 11:35 am / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, Video

Plants evolved diverse ways to disperse their seeds using animals. To give a few specific examples Long-wattled umbrella birds, Toucans and fruit eating bats are known for effective dispersal of palm tree seeds by eating the fruits. These dispersers regurgitate or defecate seeds after flying far away. On the other hand, most fruit eaters are also seed predators. Unlike birds and bats other animals such as agoutis, monkeys, peccaries and tapirs can chew and destroy the very same palm seeds. […]

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