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Part of "The Living Oceans" series. Reveals the hunting habits of the ocean's deadliest predators: sharks. Captures the mating habits of hammerhead sharks and the hunting habits of blue sharks, six-gilled sharks, sand-tiger sharks, and white-tipped reef sharks. Explores the great white shark hunting seals and sea lions near the Farrallon Islands, explaining that the bloodthirsty animal culls out animals that are weak or ill.
(Source: DCMP)
Canada's coastal forest is part of an ancient forest system of redwood, spruce, and cedar trees. It is also home to some of the largest aggregations of top predators in North America. The trees of this forest are huge, and forest productivity here rivals even some of the world's biggest tropical rain forests. Part of the "Nature's Microworlds" series.
Elephants can communicate over long distances using low-frequency sounds that travel both in the air and through the ground. Scientists are studying whether elephants can hear and interpret these ground vibrations. Using amplifiers, speakers, geophones, and video cameras, scientists have designed an experiment to test how elephant herds respond to an alarm call when it is played back through the ground.
Millions of monarch butterflies from the United States and Canada fly five thousand kilometers each year to hibernate in the forests of California and Mexico. This documentary explains their diet, as well as their protection against their predators, their migratory routes, the dangers they face due to deforestation, the effects of the ecotourism, and much more. Close-ups accompany descriptions of the metamorphosis and the life cycles of these curious insects. NOTE: Brief copulation scene.
The lionfish is invading the Atlantic and Caribbean waterways with catastrophic results. This non-native species has no local predators and is propagating at a rate that adversely impacts the coral reef habitats of the Eastern United States, Caribbean, and South America. This is a story of communities banding together to ensure the protection of native species. Scientists and citizens are monitoring the situation, and high school marine biology students are studying the feeding behavior of this voracious predator.
Many species of fish, including those that are important to the U.S. economy, migrate from the ocean to freshwater rivers and streams to spawn. If they make it past strong river currents and hungry predators, these determined fish may then find themselves blocked by man-made barriers, such as dams. Special “fish ladders” are built to help fish pass over these dams so they can continue swimming upstream to reach their spawning grounds.
Bay Mouth Bar holds what is reputed to be the largest diversity of predatory snails in the world. Dr. David Kimbro is investigating how top predators in this group of seagrass beds affect the system as a whole, which in turn affects local fisheries. Part of the series "In The Grass, On The Reef."
This creature was found 1,800 feet deep in the ocean. It’s called a basket star. This extraordinary invertebrate has a mass of twisting and turning arms that can measure a meter long. Each branch has tiny sharp hooks allowing the creature to capture prey, and it feasts mainly on zooplankton. Basket stars are able to grow their limbs back if they are broken or chopped off by predators. Part of the "Creatures of the Deep" series.
Climb aboard the Cyclops, a microscopic research vessel, and investigate an amazing hidden world on which all living things depend. The Cyclops houses a team of scientists known as the Micronauts and guides them through their discoveries of biological classification, diversity, and ecology. In this episode, the Micronauts take to the air and discover that lawns and flower gardens are home to a variety of insect pollinators and predators. From the air, they witness the role insects play in the backyard ecosystem. Part 11 of Microscopic Monsters Series.
The Hawaiian bobtail squid and its resident bacterium, Vibrio fischeri, have a powerful and still somewhat mysterious symbiotic relationship. The luminescent bacteria populate a small pouch on the squid’s underside called the light organ, and provide a sort of “Klingon cloaking device.” They produce light at night to offset the squid’s shadow and hide it from predators when it approaches the ocean’s surface to feed. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, microbiologist Margaret McFall-Ngai studies this unusual relationship. An understanding of these creatures’ rhythms could lead to new ways to treat disease. She is also studying how the squid and bacteria communicate, so they don’t harm each other.
New research led by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that the shape of some animals' pupils could reveal whether one is hunter or hunted. An analysis of 214 species of land animals shows that a creature's ecological niche is a strong predictor of pupil shape. Species with pupils that are vertical slits are more likely to be ambush predators that are active both day and night. In contrast, those with horizontally elongated pupils are extremely likely to be plant-eating prey species with eyes on the sides of their heads.
A quick glance at the marsh next to Saquatucket Harbor in Harwich Port, Massachusetts, reveals right away that some of the grass is missing. The cordgrass there, and all around Cape Cod, has been slowly disappearing for decades. Marine ecologist Mark Bertness of Brown University studies this critical ecosystem, which protects our coastal environment by nurturing a complex web of plants and animals, filtering nutrients, and serving as a critical storm barrier. Bertness says the marshes are being overrun by purple marsh crabs because their main predators, blue crab and finfish, are being overfished. So, the purple marsh crabs are free to gorge on healthy fields of cordgrass and once done feeding, they leave behind nothing but lumpy fields of mud.
The goal of this research is to determine the mechanisms underlying predatory and defensive behavior guided by an extraordinarily novel sensor in snakes. Pit vipers, pythons and boas possess special organs that form images in the brain of the thermal environment, much like vision occurs in the human brain. Thus, these snakes see heat, and this amazing system is the most sensitive infrared detector on Earth, natural or artificial. A better understanding of infrared-based thermal imaging in snakes is important not only for understanding complex behavior in these highly efficient predators, but also for understanding the evolution of imaging sensors and the behaviors they support in other animals including people. Part of the National Science Foundation Series “Science Nation.”
After the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago, populations of marine stickleback fish became stranded in freshwater lakes dotted throughout the Northern Hemisphere in places of natural beauty like Alaska and British Columbia. These little fish have adapted and thrive, living permanently in a freshwater environment drastically different than the ocean. Stickleback bodies have undergone a dramatic transformation, some populations completely losing long projecting body spines that defend them from large predators. Various scientists, including David Kingsley and Michael Bell, have studied living populations of threespine sticklebacks, identified key genes and genetic switches in the evolution of body transformation, and even documented the evolutionary change over thousands of years by studying a remarkable fossil record from the site of an ancient lake ten million years ago.
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Resources to teach younger students about animals
A collection containing 58 resources, curated by DIAGRAM Center
Resources related to vision
A collection containing 12 resources, curated by Charles LaPierre
