Recent Videos

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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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  Ecology from the Air – Greg Asner (2009) TED Talk

  January 30, 2017 at 1:44 am / Ecological Documentaries, Global Patterns, Video

  Being able to measure interaction of the living and the non-living at large continental-scales is eye opening. That’s what successful scientist Greg Asner does with the Carnegie Airborne Observatory (CAO). NASA’s Landsat earth observation satellites have been feeding us invaluable global-scale data for more than 40 years. The new satellite Landsat 8 began transmitting near-realtime information. Thanks to these earth observation satellites we can instantly know scale of natural or human-made impacts on ecosystems. Deforestation for oil palm plantations in […]

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  The Navigators / Pathfinders of the Pacific – Sanford Low and Boyd Estus (1983)

  January 25, 2017 at 9:05 am / Human Nature, Video

  Navigation on the open ocean has been a grand challenge for Humanity. Vikings used Icelandic feldspar chrystals called sunstones enabling detection of the direction of the sun through polarizing light. Chinese used magnetic compass. Calculation of the longitude was an immense problem. Celestial objects have been used by almost all seafarers globally. Polinesians mastered the star compass technique and carried it to a new level in Human history. “The Navigators” was co-directed by Sam Low and Boyd Estus covering the […]

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  Geological History of the Continents/Paleomap Project – Christopher Scotese (2015)

  January 5, 2017 at 9:28 pm / Evolution, Global Patterns, Video

  Geology and biological evolution of life are inseparable. More than half of the minerals now incorporated into the upper crust of our planet were produced by living organisms. The movement of continental plates has played a fundamental role in the recycling of mineral resources by the biosphere. Scientists now predict that tectonic activity may have been one of the prerequisites for the origin of life. The acceptance of continental drift by the scientific community and how it affected Earth’s history […]

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  Western Ghats Program – CEPF/ATREE (2016)

  December 25, 2016 at 9:28 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Video

  India’s Western Ghats is an ecologically unique biodiversity hotspot recognized by the United Nations as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Critical Ecosystems Partnership Fund (CEPF) in association with Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) have been supporting projects by conservationists and researchers in the area. The exceptionally high level of biological diversity and endemism in this mountain chain represents some of the best representatives of non-equatorial tropical evergreen forests in the world. Natural history and evolution […]

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  Earthquakes and Tsunamis – PTWC/NOAA (2016)

  December 9, 2016 at 12:11 pm / Global Patterns, Video

  The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) of NOAA has produced a set of educational videos to inform public about earthquakes and tsunamis. The playlist includes seismological analysis of many destructive earthquakes and dynamics of subsequent tsunamis from tectonically active regions of the world. The first animation in the playlist graphically compares the relative sizes of some notable earthquakes by their moment magnitudes. Each circle’s area represents its relative energy release. Color of the circles indicate their tsunami potential. Their labels […]

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  How to Build a Climate Laboratory – Julia Slingo – Royal Institution (2016)

  October 19, 2016 at 6:03 pm / Global Patterns, Video

  Climate models have revolutionized our understanding of the world. Julia Slingo, the Met Office Chief Scientist and High Level Group Scientific Advisor to the European Commission, examines the processes controlling the planetary climate system. Realistic encapsulation of these processes in models increases our predictive power tremendously. Climate science works at so many different fields and scales with a common goal of converging into a common truth. Some scientists study mass balance of glaciers measuring growth and shrinkage of the cryosphere. […]

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  Cornell University Sapsucker Woods Pond Camera (Live)

  October 14, 2016 at 1:37 pm / Natural history, Video, webcams

  This live camera was initially established to monitor nest activities of a heron pair. The nest collapsed during spring 2014. The mating of a female and ‘Dad’ heron in the tree shortly after gave everybody the impression that herons may build a new nest. Unfortunately it looks like the male heron ‘Dad’ who has nested on the pond since 2009 may not have found a suitable mate this year. Volunteer camera operators have been watching the heron activity on the […]

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  Planet Earth – Jungles – BBC (2006)

  October 13, 2016 at 5:15 pm / BBC documentaries, Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

  Jungles is the 8th episode of the BBC TV series Planet Earth. It makes a rapid tour around the tropical belt and highlights a few key phenomena and spectacular behavior including mating dance of bird of paradise, forest regeneration after a treefall, plant-animal interactions in the forest canopy, fig trees as a keystone species, primate territoriality, forest sounds, mating leaf frogs, water cycle through evapotranspiration, nutrient cycle through decomposition, food webs, parental care in insects, fungal parasitism, gliding calugos, carnivorous […]

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  Plight of the North Atlantic Right Whale – Jeffrey Mittelstadt (2013)

  October 3, 2016 at 11:38 am / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

  Directed, edited and produced by Jeffrey Mittelstadt of WildSides the short documentary was made for Whale and Dolphin Conservation. North Atlantic right whales (Eubalaena glacialis) are highly endangered. Less than 500 North Atlantic right whales live in the wild. Close to 350 of them live in the East Coast of North America. The whale continues to be endangered but thanks to conservation measures like the acoustic stations its population more than tripled in a century. Apart from indirect negative Human […]

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  Climatic Dynamics of Monsoons – NASA SVS (2016)

  September 30, 2016 at 10:18 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Global Patterns, NatureDocumentaries.org, Video

  The monsoon was noticed for the first time in India. It is a seasonal rain and wind pattern that occurs in many places on our planet. The quasi-regular atmospheric pattern is hugely influential in Human history. The first truly global economy was established in the Indian ocean by sea faring merchants who traveled from Africa and middle east all the way to Indonesia and Malaysia and back. Predictability of the wind patterns around the Indian Ocean was the defining factor. […]

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