Awesome Nature

Devin Supertramp and his crew take advantage of a nearly dried up waterfall in New Zealand by turning it into a waterslide. Judging from the (heavily sponsored) behind-the-scenes video, it’s just as fun and as risky as it looks.

Kalle Ljung filmed the Antarctic sights with a GoPro Hero 3+ Black on a DJI Phantom 2. Swathed in turquoise and white, free from man’s synthetic grasp and placidly desolate, the continent might as well be on another planet.

Walter Witt was at the Llanquihue National Reserve in Chile admiring the picturesque view. He moved his camera up to include the volcano in the background… only to see it wake up. He reacts accordingly.

The Calbuco volcano in Chile recently erupted for the first time in 42 years, spewing smoke and ash 6mi upwards, along with lava and volcanic lightning. YouTuber Rodrigo Barrera captured this amazing time-lapse of the eruption.

Incredible footage of a cast of spider crabs stacking into a pyramid. Divers from Australia’s Pink Tank Scuba stumbled onto these crustaceans, and say they were likely traveling in formation to protect themselves from predators.

Dakotalapse shares some of his best 4K time-lapse photography from 2014. Galaxies and thunderstorms dominate these overwhelming shots, which were taken in Wyoming, Utah and South Dakota. Buy the full 30min. version here.

National Geographic caught up with a giant Amazon river turtle in South America, and strapped a camera to its back. Let’s go for a ride with this majestic, endangered beast as it interacts with others of its species.

RISD film and video professor Dennis Hlynsky recorded this mesmerizing footage of hundreds of starlings as they move from power line to power line. Using a high-speed camera, he was able to record the flight path of each individual bird.

It’s rare to see a single shark swimming in the water, so that makes this occurrence even more amazing, as an oil rig worker captured a large group of migrating sharks swimming together in the Gulf of Mexico off the Louisiana coast.

The seed of the stork’s bill has a thorny appendage that twists into a spring-like shape when exposed to moisture. This allows the seed to launch itself from the stork’s bill’s fruit and then drill itself into the ground.

Snowboarder Mike Basich has fully embraced the outdoor lifestyle, and now lives in a tiny 225 square foot organic structure he built from stone and wood in the middle of his 40-acre property. Naturally, there’s plenty of snow outside.

To promote Russian airline S7 Airlines, advertising agency W+K Amsterdam asked kids to come up with imaginary locations, then showed that our planet is fantastic in its own ways. One-way ticket to Lake Chocolate please.

We already know the best way to attract piranhas is to feed them meat. So check out the feeding frenzy that happens when somebody tosses some bloody meat chunks into a river in Brazil. We certainly wouldn’t want to fall in that water.

Teton Gravity Research’s film crew used a GSS C520 gyro-stabilized camera setup and flew on a helicopter to take this wonderful ultra high-definition footage of the Himalayas, from 4,600ft. up to 20,000ft.

Like Slow Life, Sandro Bocci’s …Meanwhile… is a collection of close up time-lapse videos of corals, sponges and other peculiar marine animals. Equal parts beautiful and horrifying. We’re not gonna say they’re aliens, but they’re aliens.

Good Morning America and DJI used the Inspire 1 drone to stream live footage of Bardarbunga, an active volcano in Iceland. The reporter blabbered all through out, but to be fair she seemed genuinely amazed at what they were doing.

Jonathan Gordon was taken aback while snorkeling in the caribbean, as he stumbled onto this octopus and its amazing innate abilities to blend into its surroundings. It’s exactly like the plot of Octodad, but not.

The Grand Canyon National Park Service shared this time-lapse of a temperature inversion at the beautiful canyon. Trapped by warm air, a huge mass of fog blanketed the canyon, ebbing and flowing like water at a beach.

While the footage of this great horned owl taking a swim in Lake Michigan might appear to be a calming sight, there’s more to it than meets the eye – apparently the bird used this technique to escape from a pair of peregrine falcons.

A mullet isn’t just a bad haircut – it’s also the name of a small fish. In this amazing footage captured by BlacktipH Fishing in Florida, we witness thousands of the fish skimming the surface, and their predators thinning the schools.

We often see the Aurora Borealis – and Australis – preserved in time-lapse videos. But they’re much stranger in real time, as shown by photographer Kwon O Chul. He shot this video in Aurora Village in Yellowknife, Canada.

Welcome to Nat Geo Cribs! A colony of wasps have started building a nest on YouTuber Vang Tsal’s window, giving him a great cross-section view of the inhabitants and their nest as it’s made. Also, Vang can never open this window again.

YouTuber M Valenz had a problem with flies in his house, but instead of whipping out a can of Raid or a newspaper, he turned his pet praying mantis into an improvised fly swatter. Yes, we said “pet praying mantis.”