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Chase Tag Championship and the Evolutionary Dynamics of Predator Prey Interaction

November 4, 2023 at 11:10 am / Evolution, Human Nature, Video

Playing chase is arguably one of the oldest in the game repertoire of human and non-human mammals. Chase Tag Championship is a sport event that has its roots in the parkour movement. Here, we see a fantastically beautiful demonstration of performance and human agility with fairly clear rules. Of course, biologically speaking there’s also a quite interesting story in terms of evolution of the predator-prey dynamics in the game. In the anatomy of a hunt researchers have shown that predators […]

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Can Money Stop Deforestation? – The Economist (2023)

September 29, 2023 at 12:08 pm / Global Patterns, Human Nature, Video

In the 1980’s due to governmental policies favoring agriculture, the landcover of tropical rainforests decreased from 75 % (in the 1940s) down to 21 % in Costa Rica. Many tropical countries followed suit. The world’s largest rainforest the Amazon also experienced decades of deforestation. Money clearly drives deforestation. But can it also help save the forests? The promise of REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) is fairly straightforward: Forest owners keep their standing vegetation intact and in return […]

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From rainforest to charcoal | DW Documentary (2019)

September 28, 2023 at 8:21 am / Ecological Documentaries, Human Nature, Video

Charcoal production takes a heavy toll on African forests. For instance in Mozambic, the economical drive is so intense that even valuable food trees providing monetary income such as the cashew trees (Anacardium occidentale) are harvested. In 2019 an investigative journalism revealed that Europe has been burning American trees as biomass for power generation. Something similar is sinisterly happening in European charcoal market as the investigative journalism of Deutsche Welle finds out. Europeans consume approximately 800,000 tons of charcoal for […]

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Cannonball Tree – Couroupita guianensis (Lecythidaceae) – Singapore Botanical Gardens

June 28, 2023 at 9:59 am / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, NatureDocumentaries.org, Short Observations, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Filmed on location at the Singapore Botanical Gardens on Nov 22nd 2016. The cannonball tree (Couroupita guianensis) from the Lecythidaceae (Brazil nut family) family is native to Neotropical forests. Its flowers are adapted for bat pollination possibly from an ancestral state of euglossine bee pollination. Here far away from its natural home, the flowers are being visited by stingless Meliponini bees. The flowers produce impressive levels of fragrance but yield no nectar. Therefore the reward for its visitors comes in […]

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How El Niño and La Niña Cause Extreme Weather – The Economist (2023)

June 1, 2023 at 4:47 pm / Global Patterns, Video

El Niño and La Niña are opposite states of one of Earth’s most important climate processes together constituting the El Niño Southern Oscillation, or ENSO. It can lead to devastating weather events all over the world. But how does it work, what kinds of extreme weather does it cause and how is global warming affecting it? The ENSO observed during the 1997/1998 period was a legendary one. It appears 2023/2024 could be another significant ENSO event. Since 1950 the amplitudes […]

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FAST: The World’s Largest Telescope | China Icons (2016)

June 1, 2023 at 1:48 pm / Cosmological, Video

Large scale project management is in the tradition of China. Construction of impressively large Junk ships in dry dock environment, the terra cotta army with uniquely sculpted soldiers and the Grand Canal is just a few examples among many. Large projects also require risk management skills enabling adapting to inevitable series of changes as the timeline advances. Yet, here we see another recent marvel proudly created by the Chinese. The Five-Hundred-Metre Aperture Spherical Telescope, known as FAST had been constructed […]

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Drone Footage of the Geldingadalur Volcano, Iceland – Olivier Grunewald (2021)

May 12, 2023 at 11:38 am / Evolution, Global Patterns

The drone footage by Olivier Grunewald shows the crater filling up and forming a short lived lava lake like the one that was present in the crater of Mount Nyiragongo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or that of Erta Alé in Ethiopia. Subsequently. the lava begins to cascade at high speed through an opening in the walls of the crater. The surface of the lava lake experiences bubbly explosions releasing hot gasses similar to Bembow and Marum craters […]

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Updates from NASA’s Curiosity Rover [Mars Science Laboratory]

April 15, 2023 at 11:38 pm / Cosmological, Global Patterns, NatureDocumentaries.org, Video

Geological evolution of the Earth and Mars have started from very similar origins but yet the two planets have followed quite different trajectories. Geology of our planet has shaped the evolution of life (and vice versa). Understanding Mars will also help understand our own planet. For this reason, Nature Documentaries will be paying attention to this ambitious Mars rover project. Jet Propulsion Laboratory has been holding regular detailed update sessions. You can follow some of these updates below starting from […]

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MAP Kinase Signaling – Ribosome Studio (2020)

February 15, 2023 at 1:14 am / Molecular Nature, Video

In order to learn a subject matter that has detailed sequential stages, it is best to consult multiple resources that tell the same story with their own twists. Mitogen Activated Protein Knase (MAPK) signaling pathway is one of these important subjects. Here as part of the molecular nature series you can find three such narratives focusing on MAPK signaling. The first and the main video was produced by the Ribosome Studio commissioned by of the Applied Sciences/ZHAW Life Sciences Pharmaceutical […]

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Cornell University Hawk Camera

January 27, 2023 at 10:42 am / Natural history, Video, webcams

Everybody is excited for the 2020 breeding season of the famous Cornell University campus hawks Big Red and her new mate Arthur. Unfortunately Big Red’s partner Ezra reportedly has died. Last year Big Red laid her first egg at about 11:38 ET on March 28th. The breeding season 2015 started with a surprise. Big Red and Ezra moved to their nest to the light pole they used in 2012. There were no longer cameras installed at this nest so some […]

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