Awesome Nature

Netflix shares a wonderful bit of footage from the David Attenborough-narrated series Our Planet, introducing us to a few species of exotic birds residing in New Guinea, highlighted by the western parotia, a fastidious little fellow who must put on quite the show to attract a mate.

Californian sequoia trees have been known to grow to heights over 400 feet. But that’s about where they top out. TED-Ed’s Valentin Hammoudi explores some of the biological and physical constraints which may mean that’s the tallest a tree ever could be.

Our favorite nature show host ZeFrank is here to school us about the Bolas spider – specifically, he’s here to introduce us to Nancy, a rotund little arachnid who enjoys luring in her buggy meals using sticky orbs she dangles from her butt ropes.

Good, bad, or ugly, most living creatures are aware of everything they experience throughout life (we think). But at what point did life forms become self-aware? Kurzgesagt digs into the puzzling nature of consciousness, and what makes sentience even a thing.

Nat Geo series Alaska’s Deadliest captured this awe-inspiring footage of thousands of moon jellyfish descending on a waterway in search of food. These highly toxic, gelatinous creatures make quick work of their prey thanks to the deadly toxins they release on contact.

The Field Guide to Dumb Birds of North America is the perfect reference book for identifying our flying friends (and enemies). It features 50 snarky descriptions of annoying, dumb, and stupid looking avians you might find in your backyard.

A team of scientists aboard the Okeanos Explorer used their deep sea camera beneath the Caribbean to catch a glimpse of this beautiful and mysterious undersea creature known as a crossota millsae. The jellyfish-like hydrozoa really does look like a living firework.

As George Carlin once taught us, there are no blue foods. It’s Okay To Be Smart explores the why there is so little naturally-occuring blue pigment in animals, plants, insects, and other organic matter. Oh, and those Morpho butterflies aren’t actually blue. Minds blown.

One of designer Takao Inoue’s artistic goals is to capture fleeting moments and preserve them. His unique tabletop curiosity does just that, freezing a puffy dandelion about to release its seeds inside an acrylic block, illuminated in space with a smooth, OLED light source.

Native to California, the turret spider is a sneaky predator. Instead of building a web, it builds a small tower out of silk and soil, and covers it with plants and moss. It lives inside the tower for all its life, only springing into action when it senses vibrations nearby.

Have you ever wondered how its possible for animals to rest for months on end without eating, drinking, or doing their business? Well it’s because sleep and hibernation are completely different things. TED-Ed presenter Sheena Lee Faherty explains.

We all know that the Tyrannosaurus rex was a gigantic and vicious dinosaur. PBS Eons explores why the killer dino evolved in the way that it did, and why it never lost its silly little dangly arms before going extinct.

Photographer Lars Leber captured this breathtaking footage captured from a vantage point above the clouds near Colorado Springs. By speeding up their movements using via time-lapse, the puffy white clouds look like the undulating waves of a surreal sky ocean.

“Now the anus of the dragonfly nymph is not your ordinary run-of-the-mill anus…” Yep, ZeFrank1 is back with another disturbing nature film, this time describing the weird and not-so-wonderful world of dragonflies, as they grow from larvae to adulthood.

Hundreds of millions of years ago, the earliest ancestors of cephalopods like squids rose up from the ocean floor, donning a hard shell. PBS Eons explores the evolutionary adaptations that caused the squid to shed its protective outer covering to improve its mobility.

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke teamed up with Greenpeace to release an instrumental piece to help support nature conservation in one of the world’s most precious locations. The track is accompanied by dramatic black and white footage captured by the ship Arctic Sunrise.

We always thought the whole gobble gobble sound that turkeys made was gibberish, but as naturalist and author Joe Hutto explained on the BBC series Natural World, these big birds actually have a whole lot to say, and are much smarter than you might think.

Unlike the undying affection and dedication that dogs offer their masters, cats seemingly couldn’t care less about us humans. SciShow provides a biological explanation for the expression of disdain that felines show for those of us who keep them warm and fed.

Zefrank1 introduces us to yet another of nature’s wonders… and by “wonders” we mean, we wonder where nature comes up with such things. The bobbit worm and his polychaetes pals are among the many strange worms that dwell beneath the sea.

It’s common knowledge that ants are great at working together to accomplish tasks. But we’ve never seen anything quite like this massive upside-down bridge structure that thousands of army ants built so they could storm into a wasps’ nest in Costa Rica.

If you’re squeamish at all, turn away. You have been warned. Otherwise, check out this incredible footage of a asterophysus batrachus aka “gulper catfish” chowing down on a fish nearly the same size as itself. It’s a big fish eats big fish world we suppose.

“Kiss a pangolin French style, and it can tell you what you ate yesterday.” Totally amateur naturalist Zefrank1 schools us on more of natures stranger creations – Myrmecophagidae and various other critters who enjoy a delicious dinner of ants and termites.

Science Friday introduces us to marine biologist Kim Stone, who specializes in cultivating a diverse array of living coral reef for the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta. Beyond maintaining captive environments, her team is working to improve life for coral in its natural habitat.