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Catapulting Tentacles in a Sticky Carnivorous Plant – Siegfried R. H. Hartmeyer (2012)

February 8, 2014 at 9:37 pm / Short Observations, Video

Drosera glanduligera is a sundew (Droseraceae) from southwestern Australia growing in all kinds of soils. It supplements its diet with arthropods. It has evolved a sophisticated catapult mechanism to capture prey. The hairs found on the surfaces plants are called trichomes. Each trichome is a projection made out of one single cell. Trichomes are quite versatile structures. They can be tweaked to repel or capture water, reflect away or concentrate (focus) light on the photosynthetic cells. They can accumulate irritating […]

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Earth from Space – NOVA (PBS) 2013

January 30, 2014 at 3:57 pm / Global Patterns, PBS Nature, Video

Earth from Space is an excellent overview of global cycles. NASA visualizations based on Earth Observation System (EOS) show us how massive scale interactions among ocean, land, atmosphere and life determine the climate all driven by solar energy. The instruments in EOS satellites are so accurate that even the effects of most unexpected and sudden events like the Chelyabinsk Airburst Event of 2013 can be tracked and measured as it is happening in real time. These instant high resolution measurements […]

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Female Frog (Leptodactylus insularum) Leading Her School – Kristiina Hurme (2006)

January 29, 2014 at 2:23 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, Short Observations, Video

Leptodactylus insularum is a tropical frog occuring in Colombia, Costa Rica, Panama, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela. In this video, a female Leptodactylus insularum pumps her abdomen in the water, and tries to lead the school towards a different area in the swamp. Females attend schools for varying amounts of time, and this is a fairly young school, which may explain why they are slow to follow her. Or perhaps they’re feeding on a great patch and don’t want to leave! […]

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Damocracy – Todd Southgate (2013)

December 31, 2013 at 5:43 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Human Nature, Video

Damocracy is produced by Doğa Derneği, in collaboration with other founding members of the Damocracy movement: Amazon Watch, International Rivers, RiverWatch, Gota D’água (Drop of Water) Movement, Instituto Socioambiental (ISA) and Movimento Xingu Vivo para Sempre (MXVPS). Director is a Canadian environmental documentarist Todd Southgate. Current state of the Xingu River after construction of the Belo Monte Dam. Although one of the main focus of the documentary is the famous historical human settlement Hasankeyf threatened to be destroyed by dam […]

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Herbivory on Pecan Catkins by an Eastern Gray Squirrel

December 6, 2013 at 12:54 am / Natural history, NatureDocumentaries.org, Short Observations, Video

The eastern gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) is a successful mammalian species native to eastern north America but has been introduced to England and certain parts of the Europe. Early spring is the hardest time for these squirrels. It is especially burdensome for females who give birth to a litter between February and March. The young are weaned for about seven weeks. The videos were recorded on 8 April 2012 in Athens, GA which probably corresponded towards the most demanding last […]

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An Illustrated Introduction to Speciation – Cornell Lab of Ornithology (2013)

December 4, 2013 at 8:46 pm / Evolution, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Cornell Bird Lab produced a series of quite friendly short video programs to provide a scientific explanation for how new species have evolved (and are evolving). Indeed, how did 39 different bird of paradise species grouped in 15 genera evolved from one humble crow-like ancestor over 20 million years? At the heart of the story lies the biological species definition which is one of the many definitions biologists have derived for the species concept. Long-distance movement is a prerequisite for […]

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21st Century Temperature and Precipitation Scenarios from IPCC

November 11, 2013 at 1:22 am / Ecological Documentaries, Global Patterns, Video

Climate models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimate global temperature and precipitation patterns will change throughout the 21st century because of rising greenhouse gas concentrations. The visualization above is based on one of the four scenarios called Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) in which carbon dioxide concentrations reach 670 parts per million (ppm) by 2100, up from around 400 ppm today. The carbon dioxide concentrations in the year 2100 for each of the four RCPs are: RCP […]

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Mechanisms of Evolution – Philipp Dettmer (2013)

November 9, 2013 at 8:50 pm / Evolution, Video

Understanding how evolution works is fundamental for understanding nature. Mechanisms of Evolution is an infographic attempt to explain this very important concept. Philipp Dettmer is the person behind the concept, design and storyboarding of this production. Well crafted it is, the video is quite informative to reveal some of the misconceptions about Theory of Evolution. It is also missing one major mechanism called Genetic Drift whose theoretical foundations were laid in 1930s during the Modern Synthesis by influential geneticist Sewall […]

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Evolution in Action – Campus Juncos at UCSD

October 15, 2013 at 10:31 am / Evolution, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Researchers from Indiana University at Bloomington has produced a series of videos titled “Ordinary Extraordinary Junco” covering a curious bird species belonging to genus Junco that has colonized the campus of the University of California at San Diego. We have decided to highlight the 6th episode of the series but other episodes are available for viewing from the vimeo channel of the project. The series are designed to reach public and student audiences of all backgrounds and ages. The key […]

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Six Spotted Tiger Beetle Ovipositing

September 7, 2013 at 5:56 pm / Natural history, NatureDocumentaries.org, Short Observations, Video

A short observation of six-spotted tiger beetle ovipositing recorded on April 30th 2013 in Sandy Creek Park, Athens, GA. Since this is a long (more than 30 minutes) observation, the middle portion of the footage is sped up 3x for brevity. Due to abundant rainfall in spring (and summer) of 2013, Oconee river flooded its banks fairly often. This tiger beetle (Cicindela sexguttata) with rather faint spots on her abdomen was ovipositing in the softened trail soil. In my opinion […]

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Guns, Germs and Steel – Jared Diamond (2005) episode 1

August 18, 2013 at 1:15 pm / Evolution, Human Nature, Video

Guns, Germs and Steel is a landmark Pulitzer prize winning book by Jared Diamond published in 1997. It is a very successful non-racist whirlwind tour of human history. Throughout the book historical and geographical roots of global inequality and resource distribution is explored. This first episode is dedicated to plant and animal domestication in different geographical settings. You can find a great encapsulation of this episode published in Nature Magazine in 2002. There’s also a simplified narrative of the book […]

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Harvest of the Seasons – Jacob Bronowski (1973)

August 17, 2013 at 12:26 pm / BBC documentaries, Evolution, Human Nature, Molecular Nature, Video

Harvest of the Seasons is the second episode of a thirteen-part documentary series called The Ascent of Man written and presented by Jacob Bronowski. The series reached wide audiences for Bronowski’s highly intellectual but simple and convincing analysis. Much of his long monologues were unscripted and were a source of inspiration for creating a template for Carl Sagan’s hugely sucessful Cosmos series. The motto used by Bronowski “A personal view” became “A personal voyage” in Sagan’s. The episode provides an […]

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Phoebe Allens Cam – Nesting Hummingbird in California (offline)

August 10, 2013 at 3:02 pm / Video, webcams

Welcome to the busy and productive nest of the famous hummingbird known as Phoebe Allens from Orange County, southern California. UNFORTUNATELY, PHOEBE DISAPPEARED on APRIL 12th 2014. CHICKS were TAKEN UNDER REHABILITATION. This nestcam page is now maintained as a memorial for this most industrious hummingbird. You can watch other active webcams here. Since 2007 this nesting location has created a web-frenzy of natural history lovers from all over the world and formed a community of citizen scientists. Real-time observations […]

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Predator Avoidance Strategy of the European Click Beetle

August 7, 2013 at 5:15 pm / Natural history, Short Observations, Video

Pascal Schneider from Mainz, central Germany recorded this interesting predator avoidance behavior on the night of May 23rd 2012. He heard a curious clicking sound coming from a corner of terrace next to his kitchen. He quickly realized that a Pholcid spider was attacking a beetle and didn’t hesitate to record the event. The beetle Athous haemorrhoidalis (Elateridae family) is species strictly found in europe. As in most insects, females are always larger than males. Larvae develop in soil and […]

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Is Picture Wing Fly a Predatory Jumping Spider Mimic?

August 6, 2013 at 3:45 pm / Evolution, Natural history, NatureDocumentaries.org, Short Observations, Video

The video of this picture wing fly (Delphinia picta) was recorded on April 24th 2011 in Athens, GA. It has a curious wing pattern which resembles a jumping spider but is it really? Mimicry is a type of species interaction that evolves in response to prey, predators and parasites. Examples of mimicry is abundant in nature and provide compelling cases for natural selection. A classic example is Heliconius butterflies living in tropical America. Some Heliconius species show Batesian mimicry. Wing […]

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