Awesome Nature

On his trip to the Amazon, Smarter Every Day encountered a tailless whip scorpion, a harmless arachnid. Sure, it’s not venomous, but its fearsome appearance could still cause a heart attack.

BBC cameraman Gordon Buchanan hangs out inside of a clear safety box to capture face-to-face footage of a deadly polar bear. You’ll have to move to the UK and watch The Polar Bear Family & Me for more.

Here’s another unbelievable video showing Kevin Richardson’s uncanny ability to mingle with lions. The animal behaviorist has fun playing – and napping! – with a lioness and her newborn cubs.

Vimeographer Jean-Michel chanced upon this spider weaving a web and decided to document the process. He used a Nikon D4 in time-lapse mode, shooting once every 4 secs. for about 1-1/2 hours.

A tourism ad for Canada that was made using videos submitted by locals who shared their travel experiences. And encounters with wolves, bears and whales. The song is My Girl by Yukon Blonde.

Another wonderful video from the diverse world of Devin Graham, featuring shots of the Alaskan wilderness and its inhabitants. Filmed using a Canon 5D Mark III. Original score by Stephen Anderson.

Artist JM Gershenson-Gates of A Mechanical Mind creates various creatures including spiders, dragonflies, and this here creepy, yet awesome metal scorpion using old watch parts. More here.

Bloemencorso in The Netherlands is a parade that features floats made from flowers. And by floats, we mean gigantic, twisting architectural structures and straight up weird animatronic animals.

A time-lapse video of Switzerland by photographer Alessandro Della Bella.The sheer number of locations Della Bella shot from and his long exposure shots near the end are breathtaking.

(NSFW:Language) Here’s hoping our East Coast readers are overcoming any difficulties that Sandy dealt them. We can only imagine what it’s like to witness nature’s fury like what imasharky captured.

(Gore) Photographer Paul Nicklen talks about a strange trip to Antarctica and his encounter with a leopard seal in which this vicious predator displayed surprising compassion for a human stranger.

Dr. Fred Urquhart tracked Monarch Butterfly migration for 40 years to find their secret hideaway. Now we can all enjoy the magic of discovering a forest teeming with millions in IMAX.

GOTM Films shot over 80,000 photos of the Grand Canyon over the course of 7 weeks. Their goal was to show the scope of the natural wonder. We think they succeeded. The song is Don’t Waste by Figgy.

This hill is called Yanar Dag, which is Azerbaijani for “fire mountain”, and for good reason. The hill’s base is eternally on fire, thanks to a steady leak of natural gas from subsurface. Video here.

If you thought that bullfrogs only ate flies, think again. These impressive amphibians can use their massive mouths to hunt down and kill just about anything you put in front of their faces. Even frogs.

Explorer Mike Horn and Photographer Chase Jarvis were off the coast of South Africa when a “super-pod” of about 2000 dolphins started to follow their boat, leaving a lasting impression in their wake.

Not content with mapping our streets, Google partnered with the Caitlin Seaview Survey to create underwater panoramas of six beautiful underwater spots in Hawaii, Australia and the Philippines.

Geoff Mackley, Bradley Ambrose and Nathan Berg descended to the lava lake of the Marum volcano in Vanuatu, becoming the first people to ever come this close – about 98ft – to the scorching lake.

Designed by Nendo for the Momofuku Ando Center in Nagano, it has 78 birdhouses on one side and a tree house on the other. People can look at the birds in the nests from inside the tree house.

Henry Jun Wah Lee went to California’s Joshua Tree National Park and Ancient Bristlecone Forest to capture the Perseid meteor shower this past August, but our planet put on quite a show as well.

These baby owls want to having a staring contest with you, but one of these little guys can stare you down without blinking while all the others eventually succumb to dry eye.

Photographer Steve Simonsen captured this footage of millions of hermit crabs as they migrated on the island of St. John. Mother Nature sure likes to show off sometimes.

Scientists experimenting with the axons of a longfin squid piped music (as electrical signals) into the marine creature’s fin nerve, and then observed its chromatophores with astounding results.