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Anole Lizard Aggression – Neil Losin (2011)

May 31, 2016 at 11:34 am / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

We humans rarely have punch ups with each other to decide who will mate. However, an anole lizards life is frequently interrupted by brawls. Neil Losin is an evolutionary biologist from UCLA who studies aggressive behavior among anole lizards. Anole lizards not only have punch ups among each other (intraspecific aggression) but they also have such interactions with other species (interspecific aggression). This is when things get even more interesting. In less than 10 minutes this documentary outlines the research […]

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Bowerbird’s Grand Performance – Life Story – BBC

May 22, 2016 at 9:20 pm / BBC documentaries, Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, Wildlife Documentaries

With its retina punishing feather colors this is a spectacular solo mating dance performed by a male bowerbird advertising his male qualities. The independent dilation and contraction of the pupils is a striking part of the choreography at the beginning of the performance. In Humans male brains perceive dilated eyes as a signal for sexual readiness of females. Seeing the exaggerated form here should make us curious about our “inner reptile” since birds and mammals have evolved from independent reptilian […]

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Kars Ardahan Documentary – Alkım Ün (2007)

May 4, 2016 at 5:50 pm / Human Nature, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Director of the KarsArdahan documentary is an emerging Turkish documentarist Alkım Ün. In 2009 he received an award in Boston Turkish Film Festival with this production. Alkım Ün has a degree in biology education and has a particular talent in “reading the landscape” with the eyes of a biologist. Just before the project he had made lengthy observations on wildlife of the region. Kars – Ardahan Plateau is a biologically and geologically distinct region of Turkey. It sits between two […]

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Conserving Colombia’s Cotton-Top Tamarin – Federico Pardo (2011)

April 21, 2016 at 11:20 am / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

About the size of a squirrel, the cotton-top tamarin (Saguinus oedipus) is a New World primate. It has a characteristic shock of white hair on it’s head. Males and females do not vary in size (not sexually dimorphic). The cotton-top tamarin was declared endangered in 1973 following the exportation of 20,000-40,000 tamarins to the United States for use in biomedical research. Cotton-top tamarins were found to spontaneously develop colorectal cancer and for this reason served as an ideal model for […]

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The World’s Fastest Runner – Greg Wilson – National Geographic (2012)

April 14, 2016 at 10:42 am / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

A well-designed filming set up to capture the motions of running Cheetahs. Since late MIT professor Doc Edgarton’s time highspeed cameras have evolved wonderfully enabling technical capabilities for producing great slow motion films. In this production the filming crew used a Phantom Flex highspeed recording camera. The following talk by the director Greg Wilson gives us the behind-the-scenes view of the project. The entire set up was constructed on the running alley specially designed for exercising the Cheetahs of Cincinnati […]

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BioBlitz!

February 17, 2016 at 7:31 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

NEW! UConn BioBlitz June 3rd – 4th 2016 in Two Rivers Magnet School, Hartford CT. 2016 BioBlitz will possibly be the biggest ever organized thus far. You can have more information here. BioBlitz 2015 was a huge success held at UConn Campus on July 24th – 25th 2015. In May 2013, National Park Service/National Geographic organized a BioBlitz in Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve near New Orleans, Louisiana. The video above is based on experiences of young participants. […]

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Lord Howe Stick Insect (is not extinct!) / Sticky – Jilli Rose (2013)

February 12, 2016 at 9:26 am / Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Evolutionarily speaking, extinction is like the massive hidden part of an iceberg. More than 99% of nature’s experiments have failed but the successful 1% that is remaining is stunning us as we continue to learn. Not all extinction is natural however. As we are more and more certain Anthropocene, Human caused extinction rate is becoming much higher than the natural background extinction rate. Scientists are rushing to assess the on going rate of the extinction in different parts of the […]

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Long-term Behavioral Observations on Big Cats of Africa – Beverly and Dereck Joubert / TED Talk (2010)

January 6, 2016 at 1:48 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Short observations are relatively easy to capture and can be quite informative. On the other hand, long-term observations can be rather expensive and require dedication but enable recording of rare and unusual events. Beverly and Dereck Joubert are certainly one of the most successful long-term observers of our time. Events they capture on film are seemingly serendipitous. Such once in a life time events can only be recorded by being there on a long-term basis and require an almost unblinking […]

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Long-wattled Umbrellabird Eating Oenocarpus fruit in the Chocó Forests of Ecuador – Luke Browne (2013)

December 30, 2015 at 2:11 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Short Observations, Wildlife Documentaries

Long-wattled Umbrellabirds (Cephalopterus penduliger) are important seed dispersers for many plant species, especially the palm Oenocarpus bataua. Here, a motion-activated camera records a male Umbrellabird eating ripe Oenocarpus fruit on the ground at Bilsa Biological Station in the Chocó forests of western Ecuador. You can notice the pronounced wattle and crest characteristic of male Umbrellabirds. Because of extensive habitat loss across its range (Ecuador and Colombia), populations of Umbrellabirds are declining rapidly and are considered vulnerable to extinction. The Karubian […]

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Coelacanth: The Fish That Time Forgot – PBS NOVA (2001)

December 12, 2015 at 7:00 pm / Evolution, Natural history, Nova Documentaries, PBS Nature, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Coelacanth morphology and genome has been extremely informative in understanding tetrapod evolution. Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer was the curator of a natural history museum in East London. In 1938 a local fisher brought a curious fish specimen which was to become a major discovery in evolutionary biology. Latimer described the fish as Latimeria chalumnae. The fish was over 1 m long, bluish in color. Most interestingly it had fleshy fins that resembled the limbs of terrestrial vertebrates. The discovery was a hugely interesting […]

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Secrets of the Hive – Why Puerto Rico’s Killer Bees Stopped Killing – Smithsonian Institution (2015)

October 27, 2015 at 1:04 am / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Human Nature, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Secrets of the Hive is a Smithsonian Institution documentary directed by Dennis Wells. It focuses on the decline of the honeybees and reviews potential solutions to restore pollination service provided by these important domesticated insects. A major emphasis of the documentary is on the Africanized honeybees. These bees are a result of a failed experiment that started with good intentions in Brazil. Researchers in 1950s wanted to introduce the genetic vigor lost in honeybees due to domestication. Trials to selectively […]

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Dagger Flies (Empididae) Mating with Nuptial Gift

October 4, 2015 at 7:05 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, NatureDocumentaries.org, Short Observations, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Dagger flies Mating. Filmed in Sami Dino Parkı, Ferahevler, İstanbul on May 12th 2015. Male hilarine flies (Diptera: Empididae: Empidinae) present their mates with silk-wrapped gifts. The nuptial gift keeps the female busy during copulation. The silk around the gift is produced by specialized cells located in the foreleg basitarsus of the male fly. Here in this observation the hind legs of the male appear to have multiple functions: They form a resting platform for the female and at the […]

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Planet Ant – Life Inside the Colony BBC (2012)

October 2, 2015 at 10:39 pm / BBC documentaries, Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Self-organization skills of ants are impressive. How do they achieve such large-scale project management? Without central control individual behavior of each worker ant contributes to the collective emergent behavior. Once they discover a resource they are extremely efficient in utilizing it. We have a lot to learn from them. This documentary is quite unique in its approach. It documents an entire leafcutter ant colony (Atta cephalotes) re-organize itself from scratch in an artificial nest purposefully built to observe colony-scale behavior […]

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Aristotle’s Silkworm (Saturnia pyri) in Endemic Liquidambar Forest

August 19, 2015 at 10:02 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, NatureDocumentaries.org, Short Observations, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Filmed in Günlüklü forest, Fethiye, Turkey on May 27th 2015. A Turkish version of this article was published in the Atlas Magazine. Saturnia pyri is the largest moth in Europe. It lives in Southern Europe, parts of Asia and North Africa but it occasionally makes a northward move. It was recorded in England only once in 1984. Its caterpillars are polyphagous and feed on many different tree species such as blackthorn, ash, walnut, poplar, plum, apple, pear and cherry (please […]

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Aristotle’s Silkworm / Great Peacock Moth (Saturnia pyri) Life Cycle – Adam Grochowalski (2015)

August 19, 2015 at 10:01 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Great Peacock Moth / Aristotle’s Silkworm (Saturnia pyri) Life Cycle – Adam Grochowalski, Kraków, Poland (2015). The filmmaker Adam Grochowalski of the Kraków University of Technology found the female butterfly in the Komarno district of Slovakia. The butterfly was attracted to light at night. He brought the female butterfly to his home studio in Kraków Poland and captured almost the entire life cycle in exquisite detail. The observations include emergence from the eggs, larval (caterpillar) stages, pupation (chrysalis) and overwintering […]

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