The Kid Should See This.

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There's just so much science, nature, music, art, technology, storytelling and assorted good stuff out there that my kids (and maybe your kids) haven't seen. It's most likely not stuff that was made for them...

But we don't underestimate kids around here.

Kid-friendly not-made-for-kids videos for all! Collected by Rion Nakaya and her three four year old co-curator.

Tip Jar: Curating this blog takes work! If you like the videos on this site, please support the science education projects that we've picked on DonorsChoose.org.

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From photographer Joel Sartore’s Biodiversity Project, a video to promote his book Rare: Portraits of America’s Endangered Species, which beautifully showcases species that are in danger of disappearing in America, and some that “have come back from the brink.” 

Advice from Joel about helping animals? Start by: 

…visiting and patronizing your local zoo.  Zoos and aquariums are vitally important to conservation today.  Not only do they fund and manage captive breeding programs, but they are increasingly involved in conservation of habitat in the wild.  Find an accredited zoo or aquarium in your area here.

Last but not least, learn more about your favorite animal.  A simple web search will likely lead you to the organizations working on its conservation.  Support them.  And share what you know with your friends and family.  The more people who are informed and who care, the better.

There is also a pretty funny video from behind the scenes of his shoot: 

h/t NYT’s LENS.

Dear Hummingbirds, you are amazing in the air. But it looks like this fly has at least one trick up its sleeve: a somersault. And it won an award for it, too:

The move is seldom observed in real time due to its speed, but Joris Schaap and Emile van Wijk managed to capture the behaviour using a high-speed camera. The escape manoeuvre is performed when a fly is taken by surprise, allowing it to regain control during the tumble.

The same behaviour in fruit flies has been observed in the lab by biologists Michael Dickinson from the University of Washington and Gwyneth Card from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Dickinson and Card typically study fruit flies in flight, for example to find out more about wing dynamics and how the brain translates decisions into motion.

The short film is one of the winners in a competition organised by the Flight Artists group at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. The team taught amateur filmmakers how to use high-speed cameras to capture flying animals, or plant seeds, and selected the best results.

Flight Artists has a huge collection of slow motion flying creatures including this white dove, this red admiral butterfly, and this hovering robin.

And previously here: hummingbirds, owls, pollinators, and the northern goshawk.

via Science Dump.

YouTube member Beekalmer added sticks and stones to her backyard birdbath to make it easier for honeybees to get water. Parts of this video are in slow motion so you can get a good look at how honeybees drink.

via Neatorama.

In a world first, zookeeper Rohan Cleave captured the amazing hatching process of a critically endangered Lord Howe Island Stick Insect at Melbourne Zoo. The eggs incubate for over 6 months and until now the hatching process has never been witnessed. If you didn’t see it you wouldn’t believe it could fit in that egg!

Krulwich Wonders has a great post with excellent photos of this six-legged black giant and the incredible story of how, with just 24 of them living under one bush on a remote island cliff in 2001, scientists spent two years determining if they could move a few, finally breeding two at the Melbourne Zoo in Australia. This passage gives some detail on the conservation group’s success:

When Jane Goodall visited in 2008, Patrick [Honan, of the zoo’s invertebrate conservation breeding group,] showed her rows and rows of incubating eggs: 11,376 at that time, with about 700 adults in the captive population. Lord Howe Island walking sticks seem to pair off — an unusual insect behavior — and Goodall says Patrick “showed me photos of how they sleep at night, in pairs, the male with three of his legs protectively over the female beside him.”

The co-curator was into the suspense of the video. The details of the story echo that…

via @990000.

Discovered by a Washington, D.C., lawyer in search of antique furniture, this is truly a Cabinet of Wonders, for inside is the 1700-specimen personal collection of 19th Century British naturalist, field biologist and contemporary of Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace. 

From the Washington Post:

There are butterflies and beetles, moths and shells. There’s a small bird. Flies. Bees. Praying mantises. Tarantulas. Seedpods. A hornet’s nest… “I think it’s a fabulous thing,” said David Grimaldi, curator of invertebrate zoology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. “I think it’s a national treasure, actually.”

via Science Dump.

Meet the Bombyx Mori in its caterpillar, larva or “worm” state — silkworm to be specific (though it’s not a worm at all).

There’s an entire series of videos online showing the Bombyx Mori’s life cycle from egg to larva (small and larger) to pupa to its emergence as an adult moth. But the thing that makes this insect stand out is the silkworm’s creation of a unique cocoon made from its saliva: a one mile long single strand of silk. 

After they have molted four times (i.e., in the fifth instar phase), their bodies become slightly yellow and the skin become tighter. The larvae will then enter the pupa phase of their life cycle and enclose themselves in a cocoon made up of raw silk produced by the salivary glands. The cocoon provides a vital layer of protection during the vulnerable, almost motionless pupal state. 

The moth that emerges from the cocoon is furry, white, doesn’t fly, but of course, starts the cycle all over again.

Thanks, Annie.

Kinfolk Mag was harvesting honey and it looks amazing.

via Vimeo.

From the documentary, Ants: Nature’s Secret Power: A colossal ant hill (um… yes, my dear co-curator, let’s assume that they have all moved out already, shall we?) is pumped full of concrete, and then excavated to illuminate its subterranean structure — tunnels that were cleared of forty tons of dirt… by ants!

via Open Culture.

Bees and the waggle dance: a figure eight series of movements that a scouting honey bee will make on its return to the hive. 

By performing this dance, successful foragers can share with their hive mates information about the direction and distance to patches of flowers yielding nectar and pollen, to water sources, or to new housing locations…

Waggle dancing bees that have been in the hive for an extended time adjust the angles of their dances to accommodate the changing direction of the sun. Therefore, bees that follow the waggle run of the dance are still correctly led to the food source even though its angle relative to the sun has changed.

How amazing is that?! 

Thanks, Pete.

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