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A Bumblebee Mimic Robber Fly (Laphria macquarti) Hunting

June 28, 2018 at 4:55 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, NatureDocumentaries.org, Short Observations, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

A Bumblebee Mimic Robber Fly (Laphria macquarti) hunting. June 26th 2018, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Edgewater, MD. Robber flies (Asilidae) are predatory insects. Adult forms of both sexes launch grasping aerial attacks on other insects, including stinging insects such as bees and wasps. For this reason they are also known as ‘bee catchers’. Foraging occurs in sunny habitats. They are seldom found in deep woods where it is dark. Here in this observation, the habitat is an exposed sunny edge […]

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The Incredible Oyster Reef – Chesapeake Bay Foundation (2017)

June 28, 2018 at 4:01 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Wildlife Documentaries

Poor water quality, disease, and harvesting nearly put an end to native oyster (Crassostrea virginica) in Chesapeake Bay. Restoration of the bay to pre-Columbian levels is challenging. The film commissioned by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation explores the ecology of this keystone species providing services to maintain a healthy biological community. A single oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water in the Chesapeake Bay in a single day. Oysters filter nutrient and suspended sediment from the water column. Moreover, […]

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The Ecology of Fear – KQED/QUEST (2014)

May 28, 2018 at 5:32 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

The return of wolves had a profound impact on vast wilderness areas in North America. Biologist Aaron Wirsing explores why wolves and other top predators are necessary for maintenance of diversity in ecosystems. Using a “deer-cam” Wirsing is quantifying some of the behavioral relationships between predator and prey. Wildlife cameras provide unprecedented opportunities to view social lives of many wild animals including mountain lions. The gray wolf is one of the world’s most adaptable and widely distributed mammals, ranging over […]

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Anatomy of a Hunt: Speed, Strategy and Survival / Nature (2018)

March 7, 2018 at 1:00 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

As predators chase down their prey on the open savanna it’s a race for survival. Lions and cheetahs are some of the most athletic animals on the planet but strength and speed aren’t everything. By precisely measuring the movements of predators and prey during hunts, researchers have now modeled the optimum strategy of both hunter and hunted, unpacking the subtle details of this evolutionary arms race. During a typical run, a Cheetah can leap 25 feet on a single stride […]

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A Malayan Colugo and Her Baby in Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, Singapore (2016)

February 13, 2018 at 9:28 pm / Natural history, NatureDocumentaries.org, Short Observations, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

This Malayan colugo (Galeopterus variegatus) carrying a baby was observed on November 25th 2016 in Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, Singapore. The observation has been registered to iNaturalist database. No Malayan colugos have been successfully bred in captivity. Oldest known captive individual lived 17.5 years. Malayan colugos belong to the “skinwing” mammal order called Dermopterans. They are also known as Sunda flying lemurs. They are strictly arboreal, spending their time in the treetops of tropical rainforests entirely. The name “flying” is […]

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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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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 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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A Deeper Creek – The Watchable Waters of Appalachia

June 28, 2017 at 10:55 am / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Ecofocus Film Festival of Athens GA featured a number of short documentaries including Hidden Rivers of Appalachia filmed on location in Conesauga River by Freshwaters Illustrated. Like birdwatching, riverwatching could be a great immersive activity and have the potential to become a citizen science project. A Deeper Creek shows us how this could be done. Similar to organizing a BioBlitz, snorkeling in a river can generate a lot of informative observations. Rivers have a rich body of natural history and […]

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Open-air Processional Column Termites in Bukit Timah Nature Preserve, Singapore (2016)

June 17, 2017 at 5:05 pm / Natural history, NatureDocumentaries.org, Short Observations, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Social insects are a major force in land habitats. A mature leaf-cutter ant colony can consume leaf material equal to a weight of a cow every day. Termites are another insect group (related to cockroaches) evolved independently to achieve sociality. Their effects on ecosystems in terms of material and nutrient cycling can rival those of ants. Higher termites (family Termitidae) feed on a wide variety of plant-based material, including decaying wood, leaf litter, humus, fungi, lichens, dung, and grasses. Non-wood-feeding […]

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Seed Dispersal and Habitat Fragmentation | HHMI BioInteractive – Danny Schmidt (2017)

June 10, 2017 at 7:06 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Forests are under intense pressure. In the tropical forests, between 50-90 % of the canopy trees depend on animals for seed dispersal. Even in temperate forests animals such as deer, moose, boar and even bears disperse seeds. Today due to hunting for bush meat many tropical forests are becoming depleted of their seed dispersers. Here in this HHMI documentary, the researchers Andres Link and Carolina Urbina Malo of Los Andes University in Colombia in Colombia track brown spider monkeys to […]

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