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Bald-faced Hornet Worker Collecting Nest Material

May 9, 2017 at 3:21 pm / Natural history, NatureDocumentaries.org, Short Observations, Video

A female bald-faced hornet worker (Dolichovespula maculata) was stripping the surface of a wooden fence post to collect nest building material. While stripping with mandibles the cellulosic material gets rolled up under her thorax. She strips a piece as long as her body and then climbs up again to strip another. Two consequtive strips must have been the optimal load size to carry into the nest. Leaf-cutter ants of the neotropics also use their bodies as yard sticks. The motivation […]

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Six Ways to Prepare a Coelacanth – Shelf Life – AMNH (2015)

April 27, 2017 at 4:11 pm / Evolution, Natural history

The Coelecanth was thought to be extinct. Its presence as a living species was discovered in 1938 by Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer. It is an immensely important species for evolutionary biology, especially in understanding tetrapod evolution. The story of the discovery of Coelecanth has been covered by many high profile magazines. Since its discovery from fossil remains the Coelecanth has been considered as the closest example for what could be as our last fish ancestor. This means that, it may have been […]

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A Ghost In The Making: Searching for the Rusty-patched Bumble Bee – Neil Losen & Nate Dappen (2016)

April 22, 2017 at 2:43 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Honeybees are fragile animals that have lost most of the traits that provide survival advantage in their wild counterparts. Public attention was particularly grappled when an experiment in the 1950s aiming to regain lost genes by hybridizing domesticated European honeybees with the wild African ones failed miserably. The experiment that started with good intentions lead to invasion of Africanized honeybees from Brazil to north all the way up to Texas. There’s clearly a disproportionately large emphasis on honeybees while neglecting […]

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Acid Test – Natural Resources Defense Council (2009)

April 8, 2017 at 5:05 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Global Patterns, Video

Since the beginning of the industrial revolution a quarter of the carbon that has been released into the atmosphere was absorbed by the oceans. As a result the acidity of the oceans has increased by %30. Increasing acidity makes it corrosive dissolving the calcium shells of marine organisms. Among them are planktons, corals and pteropods which form the base of the food web. Carbon dioxide dissolves higher quantities in cold water, therefore first biological signs of acidification is observed closer […]

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A Spawning Aggregation in a Bluehead Chub Nest – Brandon Peoples (2014)

April 6, 2017 at 10:52 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Short Observations, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

This short observation shows a spawning aggregation containing seven species of fish in a Bluehead chub (Nocomis leptocephalus) nest in Toms Creek, New River Drainage in Blacksburg, Virginia. These species are Mountain redbelly dace (Chrosomus oreas), White shiner (Luxilus albeolus), Rosefin shiner (Lythrurus ardens), Rosyside dace (Clinostomus funduloides), Central stoneroller (Campostoma anomalum) and Crescent shiner (Luxilus cerasinus). Bluehead chub with it’s impressive nesting behavior provides a rich natural history for ecologists. Brandon Peoples who recorded this short observation is a […]

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How We Measure Photosynthesis – NEON Education (2014)

March 25, 2017 at 6:14 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Technical Notes, Video

National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) is a large collaborative group of long-term ecological research sites spread over 81 locations in the United States including Harvard Forest and Smithsonian Ecological Research Center (SERC). This video is a part of the educational portfolio by NEON showing how researchers measure photosynthesis at single leaf level using infra red gas analyzers. Understanding photosynthesis at leaf level enables scaling up and extrapolate photosynthesis at forest level. Infact, there are computer models that treat forest canopies […]

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Cloud-Aerosol Transport System (CATS) on Board ISS – NASA/SVS (2017)

March 20, 2017 at 10:54 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Global Patterns, NatureDocumentaries.org, Video

NASA’s Cloud-Aerosol Transport System is a remote-sensing instrument installed on the International Space Station (ISS) in 2015. Using LIDAR technology it scans a vertical slice of the atmosphere for natural as well as human made aerosols and clouds. The near-real-time data transmitted from the ISS enables CATS team to process it within six hours. One of the natural aerosol sources is volcanoes. In April 2015, the CATS instrument provided a detailed profile of the south Chilean volcano Calbuco when it […]

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The Central Dogma of Biology – Kazufumi Watanabe (2008)

March 18, 2017 at 1:45 am / Evolution, Molecular Nature, Video

Riken Omics Center from Japan presents a well-crafted animation that summarizes one of the most important subjects of biology since 1958. The central dogma is our first systematic approach in understanding nature of the information flow and manufacture of structures within a living cell. The viewer must be warned that the structures in this animation are artistic representations and in reality they look quite different from space ships. For example RNA Polymerase II is one of the most well-studied enzymes […]

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The World’s Most Boring TV … and Why It’s Hilariously Addictive – Thomas Hellum – TED Talk (2014)

March 12, 2017 at 1:23 pm / Technical Notes, Video

The idea of “slow-TV” was there. For years live cameras have been showing bears hunt fish in rivers, birds nesting and rearing their chicks with viewers in the millions. A Discovery Channel series called “Earth Sunrise” recorded a full hour of realtime sunrise in spectacular locations from around the world. Recording of a total solar eclipse in Brazil and Turkey was quite a memorable event. Slow-TV concept is a paradigm invented by real-time nature observers. The Norwegian television producer Thomas […]

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Chimpanzee – Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield (2012)

February 27, 2017 at 3:09 pm / Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

The Chimpanzee is a heavily anthropomorphosized docu-feature movie targeting young audiences. It was filmed on multiple locations including Taï National Park in southwestern Ivory Coast, Ngogo and Kibale national parks in Uganda and Gabon by two British nature filmmakers Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield. Martyn Colbeck was the person behind the camera. Tim Allen did the narration. Filmmakers stitched the footage recorded in these locations and consolidated into a single story creating a drama around an orphaned baby Chimpanzee they […]

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Origins of Human Cumulative Culture – UCL (2017)

February 27, 2017 at 10:43 am / Evolution, Human Nature, Video

Captain James Cook was fascinated by Polynesians’ ability to converse with each other. In Tahiti a high priest named Tupaia got on board and accompanied him along their voyage to Hawaii. Despite the fact that the two islands were separated by more than 2500 miles Tupaia was able to converse perfectly with Hawaiians. In order to maintain a common language these seemingly isolated islands must have been connected by frequent trans-oceanic voyages. Genetical and ecological theory dictates that connectivity is […]

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At an Mbendjele Camp in Congo – Gül Deniz Salalı (2015)

February 26, 2017 at 8:48 am / Human Nature, Video

These footage were recorded in an Mbendjele BaYaka Pygmies camp of northern Congo-Brazzaville during a year long field study on Human behavior by a UCL researcher Gül Deniz Salalı. The Mbendjele camp filmed here is called Masia. The videos highlighted here are a part of a much larger project aiming to understand the origins of the human cumulative culture. The main video shows how a woman named Semoi (wearing red African fabric) harvests tubers of wild yam (Dioscorea) locally called […]

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A Tour of the Cryosphere – NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (2009)

February 19, 2017 at 10:26 pm / Global Patterns, Video

The cryosphere covers parts of the Earth’s surface where water is found in the form of snow, sea ice, glaciers, permafrost, ice sheets, and icebergs. Ice and snow exist close to their melting point. Fluctuations in surface temperatures of our planet leads to frequent state changes in water from solid to liquid and back. Using satellite observations scientists monitor such changes in the global and regional climate. The Earth’s cryosphere shrink and expand on a yearly basis. Antarctica The animation […]

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A Day in the Life of an Elite Male Greater Sage-Grouse on the Lek – Marc Dantzker – Cornell Lab of Ornithology (2015)

February 16, 2017 at 2:10 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, Short Observations, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Here’s another fascinating piece of natural history from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. In this series of short observations staff producer and biologist Marc Dantzker breaks down the mating behavior and social interaction of the Greater Sage-Grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) in five sections. Lekking or lek mating is a breeding behavior where males come together in a place and perform competitive displays to impress visiting females. While males do their “hello check me out” dances, females asses their qualities and choose […]

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A Leafcutter Ant Colony in Barro Colorado Island

February 13, 2017 at 6:10 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, NatureDocumentaries.org, Short Observations, Video

Filmed on Jan 28th 2017 during the dry season. Smithsonian Tropical Research Institue (STRI) Barro Colorado Island (BCI), Panama. Leafcutter ants are an impressive group with more than 40 different species. All evolved and diversified in the New World at around 12 million years ago. Phylogenetic evidence suggests their evolution could go back as far as 50 million years ago when America separated from Africa. A mature colony can have more than 8 million workers collectively farming a subterranean fungus. […]

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