Mars, Moon and the Earth share a common planetary history. At about 4 billion years ago they were all bombarded by meteorites during a time known as the Late Heavy Bombardment period. Because of tectonic movements the traces of Late Heavy Bombardment is almost completely erased from the face of the Earth. However craters are still intact on Moon and Mars. There are about 30 very large impact craters on Mars that are larger than 1000 km in diameter and […]
Moon, Mars and the Earth share a common planetary history. At about 4 billion years ago they were all bombarded by meteorites during a time known as the Late Heavy Bombardment period. Because of tectonic movements the effects of Late Heavy Bombardment is almost completely erased from the face of the Earth. However craters are still intact on Moon and Mars. Evolution of the Earth and Moon have started from very similar origins due to the collision of Earth with […]
On April 21 2013, a family (4 juveniles 2 adults) of Carolina Wrens (Thryothorus ludovicianus) were hanging around a downed tree. The chicks were learning to forage while being actively fed by their parents. In the middle of all this a chipmunk approached which made both parents rather nervous. Then the chipmunk made a darting attack. The wren parents defended their chicks quite effectively. One parent dove on the chipmunk with a flying kick. It was so powerful that the […]
Our planet is no stranger to meteorites. Take a look in the Moon and see what has been erased from the surface of the Earth by tectonic movements. Evolution of life took many sharp turns because of catastrophic impacts. On February 15, 2013 a meteor weighing 10,000 metric tons exploded only 23km above the city of Chelyabinsk in Russia. The so called airburst event created a very strong ultrasound that was picked up by listening stations established to monitor nuclear […]
Nature reveals its ability to heal when amphibians, reptiles, birds and plants repopulate a recently abandoned rock quarry to create a flourishing wetland in Fort Collins, Colorado. However, the scarred earth of this healing quarry causes salamanders to undergo a rare and peculiar shift in their morphology. Time-lapse sequences show seasonal changes of the wetland over one year accompanied by underwater footage of amphibians breeding and undergoing metamorphosis. Everybody is familiar with the metamorphosis of butterflies and moths. The following […]
This video produced by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories takes us on a tour of about 650,000 nucleotides from the tip of the short arm of human chromosome 11. From a distance we can discern 28 genes, denoted by red and yellow blocks. The red exons carry the DNA code for protein, while the yellow introns are noncoding. Also prominent are more than 500 transposons, or jumping genes, denoted by blue and purple blocks. If we zoom in, we can take […]
May 23rd 2009 in Georgia State Botanical Garden in Athens, GA, USA. The ant (Formica palidefulva) is tending a number of treehopper (Entylia carinata) nymphs. If watched carefully, the honeydew secreted by the instars are visible at [00:22, 00:28, 00:37] seconds into the video. The mother treehopper is still sitting around the midrib of the thistle where she laid her eggs (dark necrotic patch around her). The story got published in the November 2009 issue of the Atlas Magazine under […]
[Video streams have no sound and will be off air when it’s night time in Alaska] (Ursus arctos) are Caniform (dog-like) mammals. Except the polar bear (Ursus arctos horribilis) who is strictly a carnivore all other brown bears (Grizzly, Kodiak and Siberian brown bear) are omnivores and biologically are the same species. This means they can interbreed when species barriers gets lifted. As Arctic sea ice disappears polar bear habitat shrinks and thus they are forced to move southern latitudes […]
15 Haziran 2013 günü Georgia Eyalet Botanik Park’ında dururken gözlemlediğim Apatelodes torrefacta türü güve kelebekler neredeyse tüm Kuzey Amerika’nın doğu yarısında yaygın olarak gözlemlenebilir. Dişiler erkeklerden daha iridir. Bu türün tırtılları dişbudak kiraz vişne akçaağaç ve meşe cinsinden ağaçlar üzerinde beslenirler. Görüntüler iki cinsiyetin tek bir çerçevede görüntülemesi ve yaşam döngüsü içinde olmazsa olmaz niteliğindeki bir davranışı özetlemesi açısından önemli. Örneğin Almanya’da bulunan 47 milyon yıllık iki kaplumbağa taşılı yine benzer bir davranışı belgelemesi nedeniyle büyük ilgi toplamakta.
In this short but condensed observation you can watch a female Anna’s hummingbird (Calypte anna) construct her nest over 10 days between 18-28th January 2010 recorded in Victoria, British Colombia, Canada. She uses fluff feathers of other birds, spider webbings and cotton tissue around seeds of poplar trees as nest material. The size of the finished nest is typically about 5cm across x 4cm high. Unlike most other bird species in all hummingbirds nest construction and parental care is always […]
It is ironic that biologically diverse habitats are usually rather poor in nutrients. Coral reefs are one of them. Crystal clear waters of the tropical seas is a “clear” indication of nutrient poor environment. Because nutrients in the water column are scarce microscopic plants and animals (planktons) that form the basis of food webs cannot maintain high numbers and the water column remains clear. Dissolved organic carbon is a nutrient that is inedible for most organisms living in a reef. […]
On September 22 2012, I encountered this caterpillar eating another fuzzy insect part along the White Trail of the State Botanical Garden of Georgia in Athens, GA. While the munching was going on, a familiar bully of the bushes the ground beetle (Calleida punctata) came in. The beetle harassed and eventually forced the caterpillar away from the leaf. I desperately needed help in explaining the sequence of events happening in this video. Why was the ground beetle so interested in […]
BBC Wildlife Division’s Natural World series tells the natural history of the honeypot ant (Myrmecocystus mimicus) in the Arizona desert. This is the first footage to show honeypot ant queens co-operating in the wild. Filmmakers spent 150 days in the deserts of Arizona, US to capture the behavior of the ants. Filming the foundation of a new colony was a considerable challenge because the insects rarely ventured above ground. The team was fortunate enough to witness a mating swarm that […]
In the days long before the term “documentary” had even been coined this full feature movie did it all. The filmmaker Robert Flaherty (1884-1951) had an early exposure to people of the Arctic. Born in Michigan, he spent quite a bit of time traveling with his father in northern Canada. He developed an ethnographic eye and casually filmed many short sequences of the daily lives of Inuit people. He later decided to put all these clips together to create a […]
Cornell Bird Lab produced a series of quite informative teaching materials to provide scientific explanation for how new species have evolved (and are evolving). Evolution is not only a struggle for existence, it is also an effort to pass on genes to next generation. Modern biology has described mechanisms of evolution with fine details and this video effectively tells how natural selection works with three cartoonified traits in an island setting at the first few minutes. In many animals females […]
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