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Into Peru in Search of Plants – NYBG (2018)

October 22, 2022 at 12:20 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, Video

Dr. Fabian Michelangeli is a curator at the New York Botanical Garden. Here in this short documentary, we see snaphots of phases of an expedition he organized to the Yanachaga–Chemillén National Park located in the cloud forests of Peru located in search of plants that help us better understand the state of global biodiversity, climate change, and other factors that contribute to far-reaching conservation efforts. The Andes mountain range of South America is a geological marvel that initiated the speciation […]

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Exploring the Amazon – Kew Botanic Gardens (2016)

October 20, 2022 at 1:33 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Video

This short documentary outlines a joint expedition to the Parc Amazonien de Guyane organized by CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), the French Foreign Legion and Kew Botanic Gardens. The area could be rather hostile to scientists where illegal gold mines are in operation in remote and unexpected places along French Guiana-Brazil border. As the prominent tropical biologist Stephen Hubbell described in the foreword of his book Neutral Theory of Biodiversity the state of tropical biology is still resembling […]

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The Passionate Wait

October 6, 2022 at 12:23 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, NatureDocumentaries.org, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

This short documentary highlights events before the opening of the passionflower (Passiflora incarnata) flowers. Drought conditions during the summer of 2011 increased the activity of many insects and spiders around the extrafloral nectaries of the plant. The water budget of the plants is strongest early in the morning. Flowers do not open until the middle of the day. At first, passion flower is generous especially to the ants in the morning providing ample volume of nectar. Ants provide protection to […]

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Acid Attack

September 22, 2022 at 10:22 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, NatureDocumentaries.org, Short Observations, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Nectar is an effective concoction for establishment and maintenance of plant-animal interactions. Using nectar, plants can build a community of allies for defense and even manipulate the behavior of pollinators. We are accustomed to nectaries found in flowers. Plants however, have evolved nectaries in other locations in their above-ground parts including the base of the flowers and petioles. These are called extrafloral nectaries. The sugary reward coming from the extrafloral nectaries invites ants to defend them. Here we can see […]

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NatureDocumentaries.org Showcase

August 26, 2022 at 9:51 am / NatureDocumentaries.org, Short Observations, Video

This is a playlist of a subset of minimally edited footage showcased in Short Observations category of NatureDocumentaries.org. Most observations have been registered in the iNaturalist global biodiversity database. You can find links to some of the individual observations that have been detailed in a post from the list below. Short Observations category aims to bring out the beauty of mostly overlooked casual observations with an unofficial motto “Let’s heal the world with daily dosage of natural history… An extended […]

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Prominent Features of Leaf-footed Stinkbugs

August 5, 2022 at 8:18 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, Video

The leaf-footed stinkbugs have quite a few eye-catching body features including highly specialized mouthparts, offensive and defensive adaptations. This is an order of insects on which evolutionary pressures are visibly active shaping their morphologies. The evolutionary trade-offs underpinning these structures are an active research subject by biologists. Here, three characteristic body parts in leaf-footed stink bugs are highlighted: The labium, the pronotum and the components of the hind leg (femur and tibia). Entomologically, the femur and the tibia are the […]

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Stalking Seal on the Spring Ice – Quentin Brown & Asen Balıkçı (1968)

June 7, 2022 at 7:58 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Human Nature, Video

Diverse ways of sustenance on the frontiers of the world fascinate us about Human adaptability and effective resource use. Stalking for seals on sea ice is one of the best documented hunting technique which employs quite exceptional behavioral deception tactics. The hunter uses a cognitive ability called “theory of mind” to overcome behavioral tripwires for prey to escape. The hunter projects the world from the view point of the prey and adjusts own behavior to a successful intercept. The hunter […]

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Newtok | The Water is Rising / Patagonia Films (2022)

June 7, 2022 at 11:27 am / Global Patterns, Human Nature, Video

Human induced climate change is creating fast coastal landscape changes and during that process turn many indigenous communities into climate refugees. Co-directed by Michael Kirby Smith and Andrew Burton, Newtok | The Water is Rising highlights demise of a population. Rising sea levels threaten Newtok, Alaska. The Arctic permafrost is melting at an increasing rate. Due to Polar Amplification the speed of climatic change in the Arctic is rather fast. To keep their culture and community intact, the Yup’ik residents […]

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Cancer Immunotherapy – Nature Reviews Genetics

May 7, 2022 at 3:50 pm / Human Nature, Molecular Nature, Video

Cancer touches almost everybody’s life. Here in this playlist you can watch a comprehensive summary about molecular and cellular mechanisms involved in cancer biology. Based on this knowledge, various new approaches for treatment is now on the agenda. Some have already showed considerable success. Advances in cancer therapy comes from a number of cutting edge studies and projects including genomics, antibody research and metabolic understanding of cancer cells. The Cancer Genome Atlas project has been revolutionary in understanding the genomic […]

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Popped Secret: The Mysterious Origin of Corn – Nathan Dappen & Neil Losin – HHMI (2015)

May 1, 2022 at 10:02 am / Evolution, Human Nature, Molecular Nature, Video

Domestication of plants and animals is a key transformation in recent Human evolutionary history leading to sedentary farming societies. Domestication of Maize particularly followed a different trajectory from the agricultural crops of the old world. This HHMI documentary tells how the ancestral wild grass called Teosinte was domesticated to evolve into Maize. In the old world, most domesticated grasses had a surprisingly similar “first step” that paved the way towards agriculture. In old world grasses including rice, wheat, barley and […]

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Great White Shark Pup off the Northern Aegean Coast of Turkey

April 6, 2022 at 1:03 pm / Evolution, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Be prepared to hear a fascinating piece of natural history about the Mediterranean great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias). The story is fascinating for multiple reasons. First, the great whites are one of the most charismatic, vulnerable, cryptic and misunderstood predator fish species. Second, it takes place in a quite unexpected location. Altınoluk is a town on the northern Aegean coast of Turkey. It is located to the south of Troy on a legendary sea route known as the Argonaut route […]

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A Frequently Yawning Rough Green Snake (Opheodrys aestivus)

March 4, 2022 at 8:25 am / Natural history, NatureDocumentaries.org, Short Observations, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

This beautifully bright green snake is a master of disguise. Although they are fairly long (can be up to 81 cm) it is almost impossible to notice them unless you have been curiously scanning the vegetation with a purpose. The Rough Green Snake (Opheodrys aestivus) is behaviorally very docile. It must be a slow day for this particular individual since s/he was frequently yawning. The observation was recorded on 9th of September 2012 at the Georgia State Botanical Garden in […]

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Grey Reef Sharks Mating – Yann Hubert

March 1, 2022 at 1:11 pm / Natural history, Short Observations, Video

Shark life cycle has many elusive stages. Mating is one of these secretive moments. Here in this short observation filmmaker Yann Hubert captures a pair of Grey Reef Sharks (Carcharhinus amblyrhynchos) during copulation. Characteristic clasper organs used by the male to latch onto the female during copulation is very striking. The location and time of the year in this extremely serendipitous encounter is not specified perhaps to avoid disturbance from many curious divers. Grey Reef Sharks are common and live […]

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Australian Walking Stick Insects are Three Times Weirder Than You Think | PBS – Deep Look (2022)

February 11, 2022 at 3:20 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, PBS Nature, Short Observations

It is a seed, no it is an ant, no it is a leaf, no it is a stick,… Actually, it is all of the above through a temporally spaced sequence of disguises (*): It is the Australian walking stick (Extatosoma tiaratum). This insect is indeed a master of deception. It is a fascinating example of a series of adaptations that maximized its survival by multiple versions of mimicry successfully fooling predators at every stage of their life cycle. (*) […]

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Cone-headed Planthoppers (Acanalonia conica) on Passion Flower

February 5, 2022 at 2:11 pm / Evolution, Natural history, Short Observations, Video

This observation has been registered in the iNaturalist database with the following accession 105647409. Observed on August 9, 2014 at the Georgia State Botanical Garden in Athens, GA, USA. Here, you can see a number of cone-headed planthoppers (Acanalonia conica) feeding on a passion flower vine (Passiflora incarnata). The passion flower family (Passifloraceae) is well known for its sugar producing glands called extrafloral nectaries. These nectaries attract ants and here in this observation we see two species of ants (Formica […]

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