Recent Videos

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  Raising a Weaver Ant Colony at Home – AntsCanada

  October 25, 2014 at 12:14 pm / Natural history, Video

  You have seen exciting and interesting documentaries where entire colonies are kept in captivity and their activities are carefully recorded and analyzed. Perhaps you yourself always wanted to keep ants right next to where you lived but always thought terrariums required the expertise and money only available through natural history museums or nature centers. It is indeed an art to maintain an ant colony. If you do it right you can join many people who do just that like Mikey […]

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  Cane Toads: An Unnatural History – Mark Lewis (1988)

  October 15, 2014 at 11:55 am / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

  Cane Toads is one of the classics of nature documentaries that focus on biological invasions. It is a remarkable story of a species being extremely successful in an environment that is free from diseases, parasites and predators. On top of that, cane toad is a predator itself. Feeding on naive prey that have evolved no defenses boosts the reproductive success. Cane toad become a paradigm for invasive species that achieved abnormally high population densities compared to that of it’s native […]

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  Cane Toads: The Conquest – Mark Lewis (2010)

  October 15, 2014 at 11:53 am / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

  Cane Toads: The Conquest is a remake of a hugely successful 1988 documentary that became one of the classics of nature documentaries focusing on biological invasions. It is a remarkable story of a species being extremely successful in an environment that is free from diseases, parasites and predators. Cane Toads: The Conquest updates the status of this biological range expansion after their introduction to Australia in 1935. Interviews with residents newly exposed to Cane Toads as well as follow ups […]

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  Cormorant Pursuing a Fish School – Lütfü Tanrıöver (2014)

  October 11, 2014 at 1:25 am / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Short Observations, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

  Lütfü Tanrıöver recorded this short observation in the eastern Mediterranean town of Fethiye. As the camera rolled it recorded some pretty interesting interactions. Most water birds ambush their prey. Cormorants are different. They actively chase their prey underwater. Here you can see one going after a small school of Mediterranean sand smelt (Atherina hepsetus). Predation pressure is intense. If you pay attention you will notice another predator of small fish, a blue-spotted cornet fish entering the screen from the very […]

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  Chromosome Evolution in Plants

  September 21, 2014 at 3:27 pm / Evolution, Molecular Nature, Video

  Accidents happen all the time and sometimes living cells fail to divide properly. During cell division the genetic material that was supposed to be distributed equally between two cells may all stay in one of the cells. If this happens in body cells a cancerous tumor may develop or the cell may die. If it happens in an embryo at the very early stages of development at rare occasions these individuals may survive to maturity and may even reproduce to […]

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  Bella – Hummingbird Nest Cam – Live from La Verne, CA

  September 19, 2014 at 5:42 pm / Natural history, Video, webcams

  2019-2020 breeding season has started! IF YOU SEE a BLACK SCREEN please WAIT until SUNRISE in CALIFORNIA! Bella is sleeping 🙂 Welcome to the busy and productive nest of the hummingbird called Bella from La Verne, southern California located on a branch of a fig tree. Allen’s hummingbirds on average have their breeding season between February and July. Studies done on ringed hummingbirds have shown that they can live up to 12 years. According to Karl Schuchmann, an ornithologist at […]

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  Chasing Ice (2012)

  September 15, 2014 at 10:27 pm / Global Patterns, Video

  The footage featured above is an excerpt from the documentary “Chasing Ice”. It is so incredibly impressive that it had to be posted by itself. For the first time a glacier calving event of this massive scale is recorded by the filmmakers. On May 28, 2008, Adam LeWinter and Director Jeff Orlowski filmed a historic breakup at the Ilulissat Glacier in Western Greenland. The calving event lasted for 75 minutes and the glacier retreated a full mile across a calving […]

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  Acid Oceans – Science Bulletins – AMNH

  September 8, 2014 at 12:33 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. Ocean acidification will affect fisheries by disrupting the very base of the food-webs. Sea urchins, hermit crabs, lobsters, coral polyp prefer ocean water with a pH of about 8.2 in order to […]

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  Göbekli Tepe – National Geographic (2012)

  July 31, 2014 at 9:43 pm / Human Nature, Video

  Discovered by renowned German archeologist Klaus Schmidt (sadly passed away in 2014), Göbekli Tepe changed our view on how recent cultural evolution of humanity migh have unfolded. Civilization as we hypothesized was a sequential progression in the following manner: Agriculture > Sedentary societies > Religion Early documentaries such as The Ascent of Man by Charles Bronowski is an example of the way our thinking was organized. Göbekli Tepe now suggests the order of religion and agriculture may need a swap: […]

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  Salt Marsh Watch – Dean Hardy

  July 28, 2014 at 10:46 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Global Patterns, Video

  How will rising sea levels affect coastlines? As this is written, rate of sea level rise is about 3 milimeters per year worldwide. The main video above is a quick “snapshot” of the tidal flow in a Georgia salt marsh replete with smooth cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora) and marsh fiddler crabs (Uca spp.) scurrying about over the mud. The perspective of the camera, between two and three feet above the marsh sediment, can be thought of as from that of a […]

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  RNA Interference (RNAi) – Nature Reviews Genetics

  June 25, 2014 at 10:06 am / Evolution, Molecular Nature, Video

  Welcome to another post of Molecular Nature series highlighting a gene silencing mechanism known as RNA interference. The discovery was made by Craig Mello and Andrew Fire who shared 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. Please keep in mind that this video is quite advanced in content and assumes the viewers know about basic molecular biological concepts such as the Central Dogma of Biology. RNA interference (RNAi) is a process used by wide range of organisms to regulate the […]

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  Orphaned Mediterranean Monk Seal Pups Under Rehabilitation – SAD/AFAG (2010)

  June 8, 2014 at 6:19 pm / Short Observations, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

  The Mediterranean monk seal is a critically endangered marine mammal. Only about 100 indididuals (including reproducing adults and juveniles) are left in the wild along the 8500 km long Turkish coast. Dilara and Tina are two orphaned Mediterranean monk seal pups (Monachus monachus) found in December 2010 along Turkish Mediterranean coast. Both pups were immediately taken under ex-situ rehabilitation and care in Foça Monk Seal Rehab Unit by SAD-AFAG. Unlike the previous experiences, SAD-AFAG team tried an innovative feeding technique, […]

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  Last Remaining Asian Lions – Pride – Roshan Patel (2013)

  May 22, 2014 at 11:14 pm / Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

  Big cats are under threat in every part of the world. Asiatic lions (Panthera leo persica) once roamed all the way up to Europe. Now only 50 left in the wild in Gujarat, India. Pride looks into how rural communities started working with the government to create a protected habitat for the highly endangered Asiatic lions. The documentary was produced by Roshan Patel as a project for masters degree program in the School of Film and Photography of Montana State […]

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  The Hidden Life of the Cell – BBC (2012)

  May 16, 2014 at 11:33 pm / BBC documentaries, Evolution, Human Nature, Molecular Nature, Video

  Ebola virus is threatening to spread out of Africa. Zika virus is evolving and circulating in more than 50 countries. At this stage we must inform ourselves and others about viruses. The Hidden Life of the Cell does just that by illustrating a real scenario of adenovirus infection and while doing that introduces major cellular components. The documentary is quite successful in explaining the biology behind events. However, you might also want to see Inner Life of Cell and the […]

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  Inner Life of the Cell – David Bolinsky (2006)

  May 15, 2014 at 10:52 pm / Molecular Nature, Video

  The Inner Life of the Cell is a 3D computer graphics animation by David Bolinsky, former lead medical illustrator at Yale. He collaborated with lead animator John Liebler, and Mike Astrachan at XVIVO for this production. It illustrates the molecular interactions that occur when a white blood cell (Leukocyte) in the blood vessels of the human body is triggered by inflammation. This is also called leukocyte extravasation. It begins with a white blood cell rolling along the inner surface of […]

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