Watch Free Nature Documentaries

Home » Video (Page 2)

From rainforest to charcoal | DW Documentary (2019)

September 28, 2023 at 8:21 am / Ecological Documentaries, Human Nature, Video

Charcoal production takes a heavy toll on African forests. For instance in Mozambic, the economical drive is so intense that even valuable food trees providing monetary income such as the cashew trees (Anacardium occidentale) are harvested. In 2019 an investigative journalism revealed that Europe has been burning American trees as biomass for power generation. Something similar is sinisterly happening in European charcoal market as the investigative journalism of Deutsche Welle finds out. Europeans consume approximately 800,000 tons of charcoal for […]

Continue reading »
Cannonball Tree – Couroupita guianensis (Lecythidaceae) – Singapore Botanical Gardens

June 28, 2023 at 9:59 am / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, NatureDocumentaries.org, Short Observations, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Filmed on location at the Singapore Botanical Gardens on Nov 22nd 2016. The cannonball tree (Couroupita guianensis) from the Lecythidaceae (Brazil nut family) family is native to Neotropical forests. Its flowers are adapted for bat pollination possibly from an ancestral state of euglossine bee pollination. Here far away from its natural home, the flowers are being visited by stingless Meliponini bees. The flowers produce impressive levels of fragrance but yield no nectar. Therefore the reward for its visitors comes in […]

Continue reading »
How El Niño and La Niña Cause Extreme Weather – The Economist (2023)

June 1, 2023 at 4:47 pm / Global Patterns, Video

El Niño and La Niña are opposite states of one of Earth’s most important climate processes together constituting the El Niño Southern Oscillation, or ENSO. It can lead to devastating weather events all over the world. But how does it work, what kinds of extreme weather does it cause and how is global warming affecting it? The ENSO observed during the 1997/1998 period was a legendary one. It appears 2023/2024 could be another significant ENSO event. Since 1950 the amplitudes […]

Continue reading »
FAST: The World’s Largest Telescope | China Icons (2016)

June 1, 2023 at 1:48 pm / Cosmological, Video

Large scale project management is in the tradition of China. Construction of impressively large Junk ships in dry dock environment, the terra cotta army with uniquely sculpted soldiers and the Grand Canal is just a few examples among many. Large projects also require risk management skills enabling adapting to inevitable series of changes as the timeline advances. Yet, here we see another recent marvel proudly created by the Chinese. The Five-Hundred-Metre Aperture Spherical Telescope, known as FAST had been constructed […]

Continue reading »
Updates from NASA’s Curiosity Rover [Mars Science Laboratory]

April 15, 2023 at 11:38 pm / Cosmological, Global Patterns, NatureDocumentaries.org, Video

Geological evolution of the Earth and Mars have started from very similar origins but yet the two planets have followed quite different trajectories. Geology of our planet has shaped the evolution of life (and vice versa). Understanding Mars will also help understand our own planet. For this reason, Nature Documentaries will be paying attention to this ambitious Mars rover project. Jet Propulsion Laboratory has been holding regular detailed update sessions. You can follow some of these updates below starting from […]

Continue reading »
MAP Kinase Signaling – Ribosome Studio (2020)

February 15, 2023 at 1:14 am / Molecular Nature, Video

In order to learn a subject matter that has detailed sequential stages, it is best to consult multiple resources that tell the same story with their own twists. Mitogen Activated Protein Knase (MAPK) signaling pathway is one of these important subjects. Here as part of the molecular nature series you can find three such narratives focusing on MAPK signaling. The first and the main video was produced by the Ribosome Studio commissioned by of the Applied Sciences/ZHAW Life Sciences Pharmaceutical […]

Continue reading »
Cornell University Hawk Camera

January 27, 2023 at 10:42 am / Natural history, Video, webcams

Everybody is excited for the 2020 breeding season of the famous Cornell University campus hawks Big Red and her new mate Arthur. Unfortunately Big Red’s partner Ezra reportedly has died. Last year Big Red laid her first egg at about 11:38 ET on March 28th. The breeding season 2015 started with a surprise. Big Red and Ezra moved to their nest to the light pole they used in 2012. There were no longer cameras installed at this nest so some […]

Continue reading »
Into Peru in Search of Plants – NYBG (2018)

October 22, 2022 at 12:20 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, Video

Dr. Fabian Michelangeli is a curator at the New York Botanical Garden. Here in this short documentary, we see snaphots of phases of an expedition he organized to the Yanachaga–Chemillén National Park located in the cloud forests of Peru located in search of plants that help us better understand the state of global biodiversity, climate change, and other factors that contribute to far-reaching conservation efforts. The Andes mountain range of South America is a geological marvel that initiated the speciation […]

Continue reading »
Exploring the Amazon – Kew Botanic Gardens (2016)

October 20, 2022 at 1:33 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Video

This short documentary outlines a joint expedition to the Parc Amazonien de Guyane organized by CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), the French Foreign Legion and Kew Botanic Gardens. The area could be rather hostile to scientists where illegal gold mines are in operation in remote and unexpected places along French Guiana-Brazil border. As the prominent tropical biologist Stephen Hubbell described in the foreword of his book Neutral Theory of Biodiversity the state of tropical biology is still resembling […]

Continue reading »
The Passionate Wait

October 6, 2022 at 12:23 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, NatureDocumentaries.org, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

This short documentary highlights events before the opening of the passionflower (Passiflora incarnata) flowers. Drought conditions during the summer of 2011 increased the activity of many insects and spiders around the extrafloral nectaries of the plant. The water budget of the plants is strongest early in the morning. Flowers do not open until the middle of the day. At first, passion flower is generous especially to the ants in the morning providing ample volume of nectar. Ants provide protection to […]

Continue reading »
Acid Attack

September 22, 2022 at 10:22 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, NatureDocumentaries.org, Short Observations, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Nectar is an effective concoction for establishment and maintenance of plant-animal interactions. Using nectar, plants can build a community of allies for defense and even manipulate the behavior of pollinators. We are accustomed to nectaries found in flowers. Plants however, have evolved nectaries in other locations in their above-ground parts including the base of the flowers and petioles. These are called extrafloral nectaries. The sugary reward coming from the extrafloral nectaries invites ants to defend them. Here we can see […]

Continue reading »
NatureDocumentaries.org Showcase

August 26, 2022 at 9:51 am / NatureDocumentaries.org, Short Observations, Video

This is a playlist of a subset of minimally edited footage showcased in Short Observations category of NatureDocumentaries.org. Most observations have been registered in the iNaturalist global biodiversity database. You can find links to some of the individual observations that have been detailed in a post from the list below. Short Observations category aims to bring out the beauty of mostly overlooked casual observations with an unofficial motto “Let’s heal the world with daily dosage of natural history… An extended […]

Continue reading »
Prominent Features of Leaf-footed Stinkbugs

August 5, 2022 at 8:18 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, Video

The leaf-footed stinkbugs have quite a few eye-catching body features including highly specialized mouthparts, offensive and defensive adaptations. This is an order of insects on which evolutionary pressures are visibly active shaping their morphologies. The evolutionary trade-offs underpinning these structures are an active research subject by biologists. Here, three characteristic body parts in leaf-footed stink bugs are highlighted: The labium, the pronotum and the components of the hind leg (femur and tibia). Entomologically, the femur and the tibia are the […]

Continue reading »
Stalking Seal on the Spring Ice – Quentin Brown & Asen Balıkçı (1968)

June 7, 2022 at 7:58 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Human Nature, Video

Diverse ways of sustenance on the frontiers of the world fascinate us about Human adaptability and effective resource use. Stalking for seals on sea ice is one of the best documented hunting technique which employs quite exceptional behavioral deception tactics. The hunter uses a cognitive ability called “theory of mind” to overcome behavioral tripwires for prey to escape. The hunter projects the world from the view point of the prey and adjusts own behavior to a successful intercept. The hunter […]

Continue reading »
Newtok | The Water is Rising / Patagonia Films (2022)

June 7, 2022 at 11:27 am / Global Patterns, Human Nature, Video

Human induced climate change is creating fast coastal landscape changes and during that process turn many indigenous communities into climate refugees. Co-directed by Michael Kirby Smith and Andrew Burton, Newtok | The Water is Rising highlights demise of a population. Rising sea levels threaten Newtok, Alaska. The Arctic permafrost is melting at an increasing rate. Due to Polar Amplification the speed of climatic change in the Arctic is rather fast. To keep their culture and community intact, the Yup’ik residents […]

Continue reading »