Wildlife Documentaries | Nature Documentaries

Home » Wildlife Documentaries (Page 7)

Cane Toads: An Unnatural History – Mark Lewis (1988)

October 15, 2014 at 11:55 am / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Cane Toads is one of the classics of nature documentaries that focus on biological invasions. It is a remarkable story of a species being extremely successful in an environment that is free from diseases, parasites and predators. On top of that, cane toad is a predator itself. Feeding on naive prey that have evolved no defenses boosts the reproductive success. Cane toad become a paradigm for invasive species that achieved abnormally high population densities compared to that of it’s native […]

Continue reading »
Cane Toads: The Conquest – Mark Lewis (2010)

October 15, 2014 at 11:53 am / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Cane Toads: The Conquest is a remake of a hugely successful 1988 documentary that became one of the classics of nature documentaries focusing on biological invasions. It is a remarkable story of a species being extremely successful in an environment that is free from diseases, parasites and predators. Cane Toads: The Conquest updates the status of this biological range expansion after their introduction to Australia in 1935. Interviews with residents newly exposed to Cane Toads as well as follow ups […]

Continue reading »
Cormorant Pursuing a Fish School – Lütfü Tanrıöver (2014)

October 11, 2014 at 1:25 am / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Short Observations, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Lütfü Tanrıöver recorded this short observation in the eastern Mediterranean town of Fethiye. As the camera rolled it recorded some pretty interesting interactions. Most water birds ambush their prey. Cormorants are different. They actively chase their prey underwater. Here you can see one going after a small school of Mediterranean sand smelt (Atherina hepsetus). Predation pressure is intense. If you pay attention you will notice another predator of small fish, a blue-spotted cornet fish entering the screen from the very […]

Continue reading »
Orphaned Mediterranean Monk Seal Pups Under Rehabilitation – SAD/AFAG (2010)

June 8, 2014 at 6:19 pm / Short Observations, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

The Mediterranean monk seal is a critically endangered marine mammal. Only about 100 indididuals (including reproducing adults and juveniles) are left in the wild along the 8500 km long Turkish coast. Dilara and Tina are two orphaned Mediterranean monk seal pups (Monachus monachus) found in December 2010 along Turkish Mediterranean coast. Both pups were immediately taken under ex-situ rehabilitation and care in Foça Monk Seal Rehab Unit by SAD-AFAG. Unlike the previous experiences, SAD-AFAG team tried an innovative feeding technique, […]

Continue reading »
Last Remaining Asian Lions – Pride – Roshan Patel (2013)

May 22, 2014 at 11:14 pm / Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Big cats are under threat in every part of the world. Asiatic lions (Panthera leo persica) once roamed all the way up to Europe. Now only 50 left in the wild in Gujarat, India. Pride looks into how rural communities started working with the government to create a protected habitat for the highly endangered Asiatic lions. The documentary was produced by Roshan Patel as a project for masters degree program in the School of Film and Photography of Montana State […]

Continue reading »
Brown Wood Rail singing in the Chocó forests of Ecuador – Luke Browne (2013)

March 7, 2014 at 2:13 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Short Observations, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

The Brown Wood Rail (Aramides wolfi) is a poorly known bird from western Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. Because of extensive habitat loss,it’s considered vulnerable to extinction with less than 4,000 individuals remaining. Here, we recorded an individual singing in front of a motion-activated camera trap at Bilsa Biological Station, one of the largest remaining pieces of Chocó forest in western Ecuador. Bilsa is located within Machine-Chindul Ecological Reserve, Esmeraldas province, Ecuador. The Karubian lab at Tulane university has described the […]

Continue reading »
Invasive Lionfish of the Tropical Atlantic – Marine Ecology Expeditions – Lorenzo Mittiga (2012)

February 28, 2014 at 4:09 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Lionfish are popular aquarium fish native to the Indo-Pacific region. The lionfish invasion in the western Atlantic began in the mid 1980s off the southern coast of Florida, USA. From Florida, lionfish have spread in all possible directions. By 2000, individuals had been sighted off the coast of North Carolina and Bermuda. First lionfish were reported from the Bahamas in 2004, where they quickly dispersed throughout the archipelago by 2007. The range of lionfish has increased further southward. Lionfish now […]

Continue reading »
Pitcher Plants of Palawan – Stewart McPherson (2010)

February 26, 2014 at 3:18 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

The naturalist and explorer Stewart McPherson sets out to discover new species of pitcher plants on the Island of Palawan in the Philippines. Carnivorous plants have the most impressive adaptations that help them survive comfortably in low-nutrient environments. Most plants absorb nutrients through their root but carnivorous plants trap and digest various invertebrates to get nutrients. Even small frogs and mammals can become prey. McPherson previously discovered 5 new species of pitcher plants and photographed one that has trapped a […]

Continue reading »
Crows Mobbing a Bald Eagle – Kevin Ebi & Jennifer Owen (2011)

February 10, 2014 at 1:28 pm / Natural history, Short Observations, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Many of us might have witnessed this pre-emptive behavior but never had the chance or reflexes to record it. Kevin Ebi and Jennifer Owen successfully documented the predator deterrence behavior of crows. This observation is a part of a much larger project. Kevin has spent three nesting seasons with a pair of bald eagles nesting in Heritage Park, Kirkland, Washington and wrote a book. According to his account the video is from June 12, 2011. Two cameras were used to […]

Continue reading »
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 […]

Continue reading »
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 […]

Continue reading »
A Carolina Wren Family Attacked by a Chipmunk

July 30, 2013 at 6:25 pm / Natural history, NatureDocumentaries.org, Short Observations, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

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 […]

Continue reading »
Metamorphosis – Tale of a Wetland (Bryan Maltais 2012)

July 24, 2013 at 12:08 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

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 […]

Continue reading »
Ant Tending Treehopper Larvae

July 18, 2013 at 12:52 am / Natural history, NatureDocumentaries.org, Short Observations, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

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 […]

Continue reading »
Brown Bears during Salmon Run in Katmai National Park – Live from Alaska

June 19, 2013 at 12:28 pm / Natural history, Video, webcams, Wildlife Documentaries

[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 […]

Continue reading »