Search Results for HHMI | Nature Documentaries

Home » Search results for 'HHMI' (Page 3)

Development of a Salamander Embryo – Yale University Department of Anatomy (1920s)

November 10, 2017 at 4:08 pm / Evolution, Molecular Nature, Technical Notes, Video

Everyone of us started life from one single cell formed by the fusion of an egg and a sperm. That single cell gave rise to every structure in our bodies. How did that happen? Salamanders are known to be able to regenerate limbs while frogs and lizards cannot. How and why? The time lapsed footage of salamander embryos developing from single fertilized eggs forms the basis of our morphological understanding of animal development. The footage recorded by Yale University researchers […]

Continue reading »
Cameras Reveal the Secret Lives of a Mountain Lion Family – Sharon Negri (2013)

May 29, 2017 at 10:01 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Mountain lions were once thought to be solitary animals. They are feared and hunted by humans. New footage captured by motion-triggered cameras in secluded areas deep in the Wyoming Wind River range shows a mountain lion family and the animals’ previously unknown social bonds. In this short documentary produced by WildFutures, we also learn about how hard it can be to be a mountain lion. They face an increasing loss of habitat, harsh winters, trophy hunters and even predators. Like […]

Continue reading »
A Wolf’s Place – Annie White (2013)

May 29, 2017 at 5:26 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Ecological theory predicts that by keeping herbivore populations under check predators can indirectly enhance growth of vegetation and can even alter local climate. The influential ecologist Robert Paine has demonstrated this phenomenon of keystone species on predatory starfishes and sea otters maintaining species diversity in coastal rocky communities in Washington. Directed and produced by Annie White, “A Wolf’s Place” tells the story of wolf reintroduction to Yellowstone national park in 1995. Wolves became locally extinct in much of the United […]

Continue reading »
Leave It to Beavers – PBS (2014)

May 22, 2017 at 1:14 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, PBS Nature, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

There are two species of beavers in the temperate zones of the world. North American (Castor canadensis) and Eurasian (Castor fiber) beavers were almost exterminated to extinction. These rodents are the largest after the tropical capybara that lives in wetlands of the South American tropics. Now bouncing back from extinction beaver populations are recovering under protection. Beavers are being recognized as keystone species by ecologists and conservation biologists. As habitat constructors and brilliant hydro-engineers, beavers can recharge water tables and […]

Continue reading »
Genesis: Final Point – Fernando Gonzalez-I. Sitges (2000)

May 16, 2017 at 7:23 am / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Galapagos archipelago occupies a special place in our quest to understand nature. It sits right on the junction of the Pacific ocean current where warm and cold water shifts. The nutrient levels reaching the islands by cold Humboldt current show a drastic decline when warm surface waters engulf the archipelago. The Galapagos lies at the southeast trade winds. When the current shifts the rainfall pattern changes drastically. The

Continue reading »
Six Ways to Prepare a Coelacanth – Shelf Life – AMNH (2015)

April 27, 2017 at 4:11 pm / Evolution, Natural history

The Coelecanth was thought to be extinct. Its presence as a living species was discovered in 1938 by Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer. It is an immensely important species for evolutionary biology, especially in understanding tetrapod evolution. The story of the discovery of Coelecanth has been covered by many high profile magazines. Since its discovery from fossil remains the Coelecanth has been considered as the closest example for what could be as our last fish ancestor. This means that, it may have been […]

Continue reading »
A Ghost In The Making: Searching for the Rusty-patched Bumble Bee – Neil Losen & Nate Dappen (2016)

April 22, 2017 at 2:43 pm / Ecological Documentaries, Natural history, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Honeybees are fragile animals that have lost most of the traits that provide survival advantage in their wild counterparts. Public attention was particularly grappled when an experiment in the 1950s aiming to regain lost genes by hybridizing domesticated European honeybees with the wild African ones failed miserably. The experiment that started with good intentions lead to invasion of Africanized honeybees from Brazil to north all the way up to Texas. There’s clearly a disproportionately large emphasis on honeybees while neglecting […]

Continue reading »
The Central Dogma of Biology – Kazufumi Watanabe (2008)

March 18, 2017 at 1:45 am / Evolution, Molecular Nature, Video

Riken Omics Center from Japan presents a well-crafted animation that summarizes one of the most important subjects of biology since 1958. The central dogma is our first systematic approach in understanding nature of the information flow and manufacture of structures within a living cell. The viewer must be warned that the structures in this animation are artistic representations and in reality they look quite different from space ships. For example RNA Polymerase II is one of the most well-studied enzymes […]

Continue reading »
X Inactivation and Epigenetics – Etsuko Uno & Drew Berry / WEHI (2012)

June 26, 2016 at 7:42 pm / Video

Why all calico cats are female? In all mammals sex is genetically determined by X and Y chromosomes. In Humans females carry two X chromosomes (XX). Males carry both X and Y chromosomes (XY). The mammalian Y chromosome has began to evolve from the X chromosome at about 170 million years ago. For some strange genetic recombinational quirk that happened in the ancestor of all mammals Y chromosomes lost their ability to exchange information with X. Currently, more than 95% […]

Continue reading »
Bowerbird’s Grand Performance – Life Story – BBC

May 22, 2016 at 9:20 pm / BBC documentaries, Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Natural history, Wildlife Documentaries

With its retina punishing feather colors this is a spectacular solo mating dance performed by a male bowerbird advertising his male qualities. The independent dilation and contraction of the pupils is a striking part of the choreography at the beginning of the performance. In Humans male brains perceive dilated eyes as a signal for sexual readiness of females. Seeing the exaggerated form here should make us curious about our “inner reptile” since birds and mammals have evolved from independent reptilian […]

Continue reading »
Attenborough and the Giant Dinosaur – BBC (2016)

April 10, 2016 at 10:56 am / BBC documentaries, Evolution, Natural history

On February 19th 2016, a replica of the massive Titanosaurus dinosaur (Patagotitan mayorum) discovered in Argentinian Patagonia was unveiled at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. It is continuing to send strong waves of excitement to all natural history enthusiasts worldwide. Based on accurate dating of the volcanic ash surrounding the fossil we now know that the animal lived 100.6 million years ago during the Cretaceous. It belongs to the Sauropod group and yet is the largest […]

Continue reading »
Coelacanth: The Fish That Time Forgot – PBS NOVA (2001)

December 12, 2015 at 7:00 pm / Evolution, Natural history, Nova Documentaries, PBS Nature, Video, Wildlife Documentaries

Coelacanth morphology and genome has been extremely informative in understanding tetrapod evolution. Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer was the curator of a natural history museum in East London. In 1938 a local fisher brought a curious fish specimen which was to become a major discovery in evolutionary biology. Latimer described the fish as Latimeria chalumnae. The fish was over 1 m long, bluish in color. Most interestingly it had fleshy fins that resembled the limbs of terrestrial vertebrates. The discovery was a hugely interesting […]

Continue reading »
What Caused the Cambrian Explosion? – The Economist (2015)

September 3, 2015 at 4:33 pm / Evolution, Global Patterns

It was a big curiosity for early geologists. For roughly 90% of the Earth’s history it appeared as if there was no life. After this long static period at about 542 million years from present life forms as we know of today began to appear bursting over a relatively short time (over 20 million years). Colloquially, this time period is called “Cambrian Explosion”. All of these life forms were of course aquatic: Annelids, arthropods, brachiopods, echinoderms, molluscs and ancestors of […]

Continue reading »
Voyage of Darwin’s Beagle – Episode 2: Low Life on the Ladder of God (2009)

February 12, 2015 at 12:37 am / Evolution, Human Nature, Natural history, Video

When Darwin set foot in Rio de Janerio he witnessed the brutality of slavery. Brazil is a melting pot of genetic diversity. All fossil and genetic evidence points that Africa is the home continent where modern Humans originated about 200 thousand years ago. As Humans spread and colonized new continents genetic diversity eroded gradually proportional to the distance away from Africa. Loss of genetic diversity was because of joint effects of two well understood genetic phenomena known as population bottleneck […]

Continue reading »
Voyage of Darwin’s Beagle – Episode 8: The Ruins of Progress (2009)

February 12, 2015 at 12:07 am / Ecological Documentaries, Evolution, Global Patterns, Human Nature, Video

In this last episode of the series the crew of Stad Amsterdam visits Mauritius island before making a final stop in South Africa where the journey of modern Human ancestors began 200 thousand years ago. San culture in South Africa is the most ancestral Human population finding Like many island ecosystems Mauritius has been impacted by introduced species such as macaques. Species evolved on island systems are more prone to extinction. The flightless bird the Dodo is the icon of […]

Continue reading »