Archives for 2019 | Nature Documentaries

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An Interactive Exhibit – “The Legacy of a Lifetime of Collecting: The Carl & Marian Rettenmeyer Story”

May 4, 2019 at 10:53 am / Natural history, Video

The interactive exhibit “The Legacy of a Lifetime of Collecting: The Carl & Marian Rettenmeyer Story,” was inspired by a fascinating collection of army ants and their hundreds of closely associated organisms, or “guests.” The specimens collected over the course of 50 years of fieldwork in South and Central America by the late Carl and Marian Rettenmeyer. Filmed entirely on location at La Selva Biological Field Station in Costa Rica Rettenmeyers produced a two part documentary series on this ecologically […]

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Climate Change – The Facts / David Attenborough – BBC (2019)

April 23, 2019 at 8:46 pm / BBC documentaries, Global Patterns, Human Nature, Video

This documentary has a very urgent message (so urgent that I don’t even have time to write up an accompanying text about it!). It is a call to arms. Climate change from global warming due to Human activities is now a well-established fact. Global atmospheric carbon dioxide level is now more than 410 ppm. In fact, you can check the most up to date atmospheric CO2 reading from Hawaii yourself. We have less than a decade to curb our emissions […]

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A Diverse Tropical Forest Canopy and Crown Shyness – Dimitar Karanikolov (2019)

April 22, 2019 at 7:21 am / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Video

This is a wonderfully poetic and at the same time quite informative piece of short observation captured by the photographer Dimitar Karanikolov. The video successfully demonstrates a botanical phenomenon known as “crown shyness” by providing a nicely stabilized vertical view of canopy trees swaying by the wind in Tulum Mexico. Tree canopies are some of the most diverse sections in tropical forest. The exact mechanism of crown shyness is still not resolved but there are quite a few convincing hypotheses. […]

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How Enzymes Work? – PDB/RCSB

April 20, 2019 at 3:55 pm / Molecular Nature, Video

Enzymes are a catalytic subgroup of proteins formed as end products of the Central Dogma of biology. They are essential for cellular functioning. Here in this Protein Data Bank (PDB) video the enzymes constituting the hugely important metabolic pathway –the citric acid cycle– that connects carbohydrate, fat and protein metabolism are briefly visualized. Subsequently, the enzyme aconitase (aconitate hydratase; EC 4.2.1.3) in this hugely important metabolic pathway is highlighted as an example. The steps taking place in the active site […]

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What is a Protein? – Protein Data Bank/RCSB

April 19, 2019 at 3:17 pm / Molecular Nature, Video

Proteins are end products of the Central Dogma of biology. They are essential for cellular structure and function. Proteins have dizzyingly diverse structures. Since the invention of X-ray chrystallography by the Australian physicist William Lawrence Bragg structures of many complex molecules have been resolved including proteins. Solved structures of proteins are deposited in the Protein Data Bank (PDB), a free and curated structural data resource for thousands of biological molecules. These structures are stored in the form of Cartesian coordinates […]

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The Red-Shanked Douc Langur – Ryan Deboodt (2019)

April 11, 2019 at 8:54 pm / Evolution, Natural history, Wildlife Documentaries

The douc langurs are among the most visually striking primates in the world. There three species of douc langurs: the red-shanked douc langur (Pygathrix nemaeus), black-shanked douc langur (Pygathix nigripes) and gray-shanked douc langur (Pygathix cinereus). All are endemic to Indochina. Here the filmmaker Ryan Deboodt has filmed the Red-Shanked Douc Langur of the Vietnam forests. Habitat loss, disease and trappers are threatening this species. Doucs are found in a variety of habitats: from lowland to mountainous terrain up to […]

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Hurricane-induced Selection on the Morphology of an Island Lizard – Nature (2018)

April 10, 2019 at 4:15 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Video

Hurricanes are catastrophically destructive and can have long-lasting effects on ecological systems. For instance, the Atlantic hurricane season of 2005 was a particularly strong one with record breaking 27 named storms. Mass mortality observed after hurricanes may be a force of natural selection. The hypothesis that destructive events such as hurricanes could drive natural selection has been controversial. In order to test this, scientists surveyed a common, small-bodied lizard (Anolis scriptus) that lives throughout the Turks and Caicos archipelago before […]

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Ritualized Aggression in Humans – Haka / Ben Hall (2011)

March 26, 2019 at 8:46 am / Human Nature, Video

Ritualization of aggression is a beneficial strategy to tone down conflicts and avoid serious damaging consequences. Most of the time fighting is risky, wasteful and destructive. Ritualized aggression can resolve conflicts without resorting to actual violence. Besides humans ants, dogs and crayfish are known to engage in mock battles. Analytical tools used by evolutionary biologists have been very successful in explaining emergence of complex human and non-human behavior. Ritualized aggression is among them. The workers of the Malaysian giant forest […]

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Bald Eagle Cam – Live from Minnesota – Breeding Season 2019

March 17, 2019 at 11:32 pm / Natural history, Video, webcams

The 2019 breeding season for a pair of iconic Bald Eagles in Minnesota is continuing. After pair bonding and nest repair (nestoration) eagles started incubating eggs again in! A pair of iconic Bald Eagles have been raising their chicks in Central Minnesota on a nest constructed at 75 feet altitude on a cottonwood tree. You can learn more about this nest from the FAQs page of the website hosting this nestcam. Last year on March 9th Mom got into labor […]

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An Introduction to Zebrafish Brain

March 16, 2019 at 6:18 pm / Evolution, Molecular Nature, Video

What is consciousness? How do we learn complex coordinated movements like riding a bicycle and never forget afterwards? How does your brain know where your body ends and bicycle starts? The humble Zebrafish has all the clues to these questions and more. Systems simple enough to understand and complex enough to make generalizations always attracted scientists. The 80,000-neurons in the brain of the developing the zebrafish embryos provides one of those ideal systems to understand vertebrate brain evolution and function. […]

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Nice Guys Finish First – Richard Dawkins (1987)

March 16, 2019 at 1:54 pm / BBC documentaries, Evolution, Human Nature, Video

In this BBC documentary Richard Dawkins explores the evolution of cooperation. The problem has been discussed intensely since Darwin’s time and is still being investigated scientifically. Cooperative species are quite successful but rare. Social insects (ants, wasps, bees and termites) make up only 3 percent of animal diversity yet they may constitute up to 50 percent of the total animal biomass in land habitats. Among 43,678 known species of spiders cooperative behavior evolved in only a few. How could a […]

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A Virtual Tour of a Cell – XVIVO Scientific Animation (2018)

March 9, 2019 at 8:12 pm / Molecular Nature, Technical Notes, Video

The Cellscape is one of the many fascinating scientific visualizations created by XVIVO Scientific Animation Studio. The project was supported by Google Making and Science Team. The creators did a wonderful job in introducing us to the major parts of the cell visible to a viewer in the cytoplasm in a virtual environment. Conjuring the physico-chemical structures such as proteins and enzymes inside a cell is a rather difficult thing to do. The textbooks and diagrams, don’t do a justice […]

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An Annotated Animation of Zebrafish Embryo Development – Edwin Mutuma Murungi (2017)

March 3, 2019 at 7:37 pm / Evolution, Molecular Nature, Video

Evolutionarily speaking all of us are tetrapods and contain a fish inside! Take the retention of embryonic gill arches for example, still observed in quite a few people. Preaurucular pit is the scientific term for this ancestral structure. Its presence in Humans reflects the “evo-devo” aspect of our shared biological heritage with all vertebrates living on earth. Here, animated by Edwin Mutuma Murungi, the annotated animation of zebrafish embryo development produced by Norwegian University of Life Sciences – NMBU Learning […]

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The Axolotl: A Cut Above The Rest – Science Friday/Christian Baker (2016)

March 2, 2019 at 8:57 pm / Evolution, Molecular Nature, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Tissue regeneration is a fascinating biological subject. Many invertebrate organisms such as crabs, starfishes, sponges, jawless fish such as the lampreys and planarian flatworms can regenerate body parts. Among the vertebrates salamanders, especially the axolotl is a legendary study species for biologists. The axolotl is a highly endangered Mexican salamander with a fascinating ability to regenerate. Curiously, although both are amphibians salamanders can regenerate but frogs cannot. Comparison of such contrasting groups is particularly useful in understanding organ and tissue […]

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Sounds of Survival – Katie Garrett / bioGraphic (2018)

March 2, 2019 at 7:17 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

“Sound can be a tool for conservation”. — Ben Mirin Sound can be extremely informative in wildlife context. Many animals including mammals from cetaceans to bats appear to have mastered acoustic communication. Cooperative animals such as marmosets can take turns during their conversations and relay multi layer information through seemingly simple high pitched calls such as identity, age, location and gender which can be very effective in dense forest environments. Therefore it is real important to tap into this highly […]

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