Category Archives: Videos
JUSTIFIED OR TOO SENSATIONALIST?
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 … Continue reading
Filed under Climate change, Ecology (political), Videos
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 … Continue reading
Filed under Chelicerates, Videos
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 … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
Filed under BBC, Birds, Uncategorized, Videos
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 … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
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?) … Continue reading
Filed under Videos
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 … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
Filed under Amphibians, Videos
