Abstracted shapes “as living creatures – each given locomotion by the possibilities and restrictions inherent in it’s own physical form - the objects ‘finding their own way’ both despite & because of their own physical properties & limitations.“ The Wool Parade was created by Studio AKA for the Danish textile company Kvadrat.

Related watching: plankton.

via Vimeo.

Wired Science has an incredible gallery of the Best Microscope Videos of 2012, via Nikon’s video competition. We have a few favorites: This is a Bay Scallop Argopecten irradians. (Those blue things are tiny eyes.) And here’s a beating heart display of a Danio rerio (zebrafish).

The above video shows a Limnias melicerta (a rotifer) at 200x: 

This microanimal lives in a self-built tube attached to waterplants. We see the rotifer using fast moving cilia to create a vortex. This enables it to sweep in food particles like algae. Inside the organism we can also see a jaw-like structures that grind the food.

Check out another rotifer and more microscopic views in the archives.

Every gut microbe has a job to do. Find out who these millions of different microbes are and what their jobs are within the ecosystem that is you, from the wonderful TEDEd. Full lesson here.

jtotheizzoe:

You Are Your Microbes

Sure, you feel human, but that’s only mostly right. In and on your body, you’re outnumbered by ten times when it comes to microbes. And many of them have essential duties that we just couldn’t do by ourselves. Here’s a trip through your microbial inner universe … what we call the “microbiome”.

A lesson by Jessica Green and Karen Guillemin for TEDEducation.

Previously: The family tree of your microbiome, the “kitten microbiome” and more.

And don’t miss this Radiolab episode all about Guts.

From the team that brought us The Secret Life of Plankton and The Plankton Chronicles comes this wonderful TEDEd video from their amazing microscopic footage, re-created to explain How Life Begins in the Deep Ocean:

Where do squid, jellyfish and other sea creatures begin life? The story of a sea urchin reveals a stunningly beautiful saga of fertilization, development and growth in the ocean depths.

from TEDEd.

After watching The Secret Life of Plankton, oh how happy we were(!) to find Para Films‘  The Plankton Chronicles. There are so many beautiful videos shot in microscopic detail that we haven’t watched them all yet.

In this video, the Sea Urchin and its cone-shaped echinopluteus larvae demonstrate the cell-division cycle. Other excellent vids: Protists - Cells in the Sea, Iridescent Ctenophores, Pelagia - Fearsome Jellyfish, and Pteropods - Swimming Mollusks. Stunning film work and really breathtaking science.