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The Most Groundbreaking Scientist You’ve Never Heard of – TED-Ed | Addison Anderson (2013)

February 11, 2018 at 11:41 am / Evolution, Global Patterns, Natural history

Seventeenth-century Danish geologist Nicolas Steno [11 January 1638 – 5 December 1686] studied anatomical details of many species including cadavers at a young age. Steno’s contributions to geology influenced Charles Lyell, James Hutton and Charles Darwin. Here in this TED-Ed short animation Addison Anderson tells Steno’s little-known legacy. Steno was a groundbreaking scientist demonstrating the power of empiricism a scientific tradition that was started by Aristotle. Steno, in his Dissertationis prodromus of 1669 is credited with four of the defining […]

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A Sunfleck Over a Sapling in Barro Colorado Island

January 19, 2018 at 10:25 am / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, NatureDocumentaries.org, Short Observations, Video

Recorded during the dry season on Jan 26th 2017 at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Barro Colorado Island, Panama. A short duration sunfleck passes over a sapling of Nectandra cissiflora (Lauraceae). Plants growing in the forest understory habitats can be exposed to fast microclimatic changes. Although light is essential for plants, sudden exposure to high light can be detrimental to shade adapted leaves. Sunflecks can be destructive for the photosystem II (PSII), a component of the photosynthetic apparatus […]

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A Chimpanzee’s Tale – Pierre Stine (2002)

January 16, 2018 at 9:26 am / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Illegal chimpanzee trade has been a big problem. Pet and animal circus industry has been trafficking these endangered animals by using brutal ways. Many lost their lives caught in snares. Naive pet owners eventually learn that chimps become very strong and hard to maintain in a Human-scale habitation. The organization HELP Congo has been combating the illegal chimpanzee trade and habitat loss through deforestation in Congo for many years and the film covers what happened after their first successful attempt […]

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Humpback Whales Bubble Fishing – BBC Earth (2015)

January 15, 2018 at 4:38 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Video

Cetaceans are the largest animals on our planet. Whales could evolve into such enormous sizes only very recently through the geological time. This became possible due to pulses of nutrients coming from a cycle of glaciations fertilizing the seas for plankton growth. Feeding efficiency is a prerequisite for gigantism to evolve. Truly gigantic animals have always been close to the base of trophic levels and have found a way to maximize feeding on a rich food resource. Sauropod dinosaurs for […]

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Devonian Fossil Forest of Gilboa

January 10, 2018 at 5:23 pm / Evolution, Natural history, Video

Spectacularly preserved plant remains unearthed at the Riverside Quarry site in Gilboa, NY date from the Middle Devonian period, approximately 390 million years ago. The site of the “oldest fossil forest” was found in the 1920s. Here in this playlist you can watch six videos highlighting the findings. The videos feature two paleontologists William Stein of the Binghamtom University and Christopher Berry of Cardiff University. The Devonian period was a hugely transformational time for land plants evolving towards forest ecosystems. […]

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Largest Egg Mass Ever Observed – Lütfü Tanrıöver (2015)

January 9, 2018 at 12:55 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Short Observations

On July 9th 2015, a Turkish underwater videographer Lütfü Tanrıöver encountered a curious semi-transparent gelatinous mass at a depth of 22 meters (72 feet) while diving with his friends near his hometown of Fethiye on the Mediterranean coast of Anatolia. As every citizen scientist instinctively would, he explored and successfully recorded this observation of huge biological importance on film. It didn’t take long before the BBC Wildlife Service reached out to him about the observation. According to Dr. Michael Vecchione […]

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Forest Elephants – The New Yorker (2015)

January 4, 2018 at 10:00 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

African forest elephants have been featured in quite a few documentaries including the tropical rainforests episode of the Planet Earth series. Here in this short documentary we listen to Andrea Turkalo’s wonderful lecture on behavior of these charismatic megafaunal animals. She has been observing the elephants in Dzanga Research Camp at the Dzanga-Sangha National Park in Central African Republic for more than two decades. Andrea Turkalo is Associate Conservation Scientist at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and cofounder of Cornell […]

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The Tiniest Fossils – Shelf Life/AMNH (2017)

January 3, 2018 at 9:20 pm / Evolution, Natural history, Video

Foraminiferans or “forams” are extremely fast responding single-celled shelled organisms to climatic changes. They can be extremely small for one could easily mistake foraminifera fossils for flecks of dust. Over thousands and millions of years these tiny specimens adjusted their shapes based on Earth’s climatic fluctuations. Here in this AMNH production scientific assistant Bushra Hussaini, researcher Ellen Thomas, curator Neil Landman, and intern Shaun Mahmood show how they are preserving this invaluable collection. Forams initially were mistaken for another kind […]

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Collecting the World: Inside the Smithsonian – Great Big Story (2017)

January 2, 2018 at 7:46 pm / Evolution, Natural history, Video

The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (NMHM) in Washington D.C. was visited by more than 7.1 million people in year 2016. The museums rich collection has over 144 million different artifacts. Only a very small fraction (less than 1 percent) of these collections are on display to the public. The bottom of the iceberg, the 99 percent of the Smithsonian’s treasures remain behind the scenes. Scientists and curators work with these objects to study and understand the world we […]

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The Lichenologist – Matthew Killip (2017)

November 28, 2017 at 7:56 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, Video

This is the second installment from the filmmaker Matthew Killip following the “-omist/ogist” theme. Evolution of cooperation is a curious subject for biologists. The evolution of cooperation is investigated within the framework of game theory and has been encapsulated in a 1987 BBC documentary called “Nice Guys Finish First” by Richard Dawkins. How do organisms belonging to different kingdoms coordinate to live together? What are the rules of symbiosis? Lichens provide this type of study system where algae and fungi […]

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The Anomalies: Acorn Woodpecker – Nate Dappen & Neil Losin (2017)

November 28, 2017 at 11:48 am / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, Wildlife Documentaries

Acorn Woodpeckers (Melanerpes formicivorus) are quite distinctive from other woodpecker species: They are communal. How did the cooperative behavior evolve? Biologists are working on answers for this curious question. Evolution of cooperative behavior is a matter of game theory and has been encapsulated in a 1987 BBC documentary called “Nice Guys Finish First” by Richard Dawkins. One of the most ubiquitous example for cooperative behavior comes from ants. Why do certain individuals altruistically give up their reproduction and help others? […]

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Chain Forming Leptogenys Ants from Cambodia – Stephane de Greef (2014)

November 15, 2017 at 10:00 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Short Observations, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

The ant behavior described in these observations were first recorded by citizen scientists in Cambodia (see the original recording at the end of this post) where ants have been shown to form chains to transport large prey. The level of cooperation is so striking that myrmecologists scrambled to find out whether it is genuine. Two researchers have successfully documented the behavior by filming them in Angkor Thom, Siem Reap, Cambodia. Self-assembling cooperation in ants is known to take many interesting […]

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Dingo of the Australia – Adam Geiger (2013)

October 30, 2017 at 12:35 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Dingo (Canis lupus dingo) appears in the archaeological record of Australia at 4230 years before present. They ruled the continent as apex predators together with the now extinct Tasmanian tiger within the last few thousand years. Dingoes successfully colonized the continent spreading into diverse habitats including tropical rainforests, temperate Eucalyptus forests, mountainous highlands and grasslands. The only exception is the dry inhospitable central deserts. Dog domestication is the earliest among other animals going back to 40,000 years ago. The Dingo […]

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Run Hide be Invisible – Revealing the Leopard – PBS/NATURE (2010)

October 22, 2017 at 12:16 am / Natural history, PBS Nature, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

The Leopard (Felis pardus Linnaeus, 1758) is one of the most successful big cats of our time. It’s ability to adapt to different climates and habitats enabled spreading out of Africa into Asia. They live in diverse habitats such as forests, subtropical and tropical savannas, grasslands, rocky and mountainous regions, and even deserts. The leopard can live in both warm and cold climates. It has a very broad food base ranging from insects to large mammals. In Africa this cat […]

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Parasitoid Wasp (Labena grallator) Ovipositing

July 20, 2017 at 11:09 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, NatureDocumentaries.org, Short Observations, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Recorded at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Edgewater, MD, USA on July 18th 2017. Here you can see a parasitoid Ichneumon wasp (Labena grallator) searching for a prey living inside a dead branch. She uses her antennae to locate the prey and sets out to drill with her ovipositor straight into the wood. She does a few exploratory oviposition exercise before committing to a full injection. At multiple instances the wasp is chased away by ants. Indeed, in the last […]

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