This video from campaigning group Plane Stupid has just been released in UK cinemas. Grim viewing, which younger children might find upsetting, even if you tell them it’s all done on computers. I’m not letting my 11 year old see it, or she’ll never get on a plane again, no matter how necessary/useful [...]
Entries Tagged as ‘Videos’
09/11/2009
BEAUTIFUL JUMPING SPIDER
These stunning pictures of the Australian Salticid, Maratus volans, were taken by Jurgen Otto and can be found on this Dutch website. Like many Salticids, this tiny jumping spider has a marked sexual dimorphism. Known as the peacock spider, the male – like the bird he is named after – has amazing irridiscent markings.
Courting a female [...]
06/11/2009
A FLYING ADVERT
The recent Frankfurt Book Fair saw this rather unusual living advert – little flyers attached to flies. They were released into the Book Fair to delight (or irritate) the worthies of the book world who were there to wheel and deal. What are the ethics of this? Where should it stop? Here, or with the [...]
02/11/2009
A silly fruit fly song
In 1907-8, Thomas Hunt Morgan began to study Drosophila melanogaster in the laboratory. Morgan wasn’t the first to focus on the tiny fruitfly – in 1901 William E. Castle had begun breeding flies in Harvard.
Mendel’s laws had been rediscovered in 1903, but Morgan wasn’t interested in inheritance – indeed he was unconvinced about what was to [...]
28/10/2009
THE GATHERING OF THE KNOT
Red Knot are rather unprepossessing waders, but at certain times of the year they gather in enormous flocks. The BBC’s programme Autumnwatch recently had an item on this amazing spectacle. [Unfortunately, neither video will work outside the UK...] Here’s an extract for UK readers:
Autumnwatch presenter Chris Packham has written a blog in which he reckons that, [...]
05/05/2009
SAHARA, THE CONFUSED SEAL
November 2007
Dealing with wild animals is difficult. This video tells the amusing/sad story of an arctic seal, which was found – very lost – off the coast of Africa, was brought to the UK, fed, then eventually released from the north coast of Scotland, pointed in the right direction. What happened next?
05/05/2009
DANCING COCKATOO
November 2007
This video from Natalie Beresford (First Year). Why might this cockatoo dance? Is it like a bored tiger or an emprisoned polar bear, or is there something else going on? Why does it do the bow at the end?
24/04/2009
PROTEIN SYNTHESIS – A MOLECULAR HAPPENING!
November 2007
This has got nothing particularly to do with Zoology, but it really is worth watching. You think chalk-and-talk lectures are boring? Here’s an example of how they did things in the 1970s. A group of hip lecturers in California (where else?) decided to teach protein synthesis by getting their students to dance it… The first 2-3 minutes have [...]
24/04/2009
FAINTING GOATS
November 2007
This video from Natalie Beresford (First Year). This is actually quite a serious question – these goats have a mutation in a muscle protein that makes them fall down. What human diseases might be related to this? What natural behaviours in other animals look like this?
24/04/2009
TOADS BREAK THE RULES
November 2007
You all know the generally-accepted “biological” definition of a species – a population of interbreeding organisms. Toads don’t seem to be quite so clear about this. A new article in Science looks at inter-specific hybridisation, which in two species of toad appears to be linked to environmental conditions.
BBC summary, including videos of toads; original article in Science (you [...]
