Awesome Nature

Is the craziness at 1:05 CG magic from Youtuber denisfarmer or nature truly gone wild? Beats us. Maybe those old maps with personifications of wind were more fact than fiction. (Thanks, Martin!)

Jeff Chen Kuo Chih spent eight consecutive nights capturing the night time scenery of Eastern Sierra –  forests, waterfalls and the magnificent Milky Way, on his Nikon D5100 and D3 cameras.

Spanish-based artist Lorenzo Duran puts plain old leaves through a painstaking process of washing, drying, molding and careful cutting away to create his precise and detailed art.

BBC Earth outs its latest gadget for capturing wildlife, a robot camera that camouflages itself into its surroundings using the oldest trick in the book – mirrors. Its first subjects don’t seem to mind at all.

Time-lapse of the phenomenon known as the Midnight Sun, where the sun never quite sets and may be visible for 24 hours. This one was shot in the Arctic, but it also occurs in the Antarctic.

A thousand screenshots can’t capture the beauty of this time-lapse of the Canary Islands, masterfully shot by Tenerife-based photographer Daniel López. This is just Mother Nature showing off.

A nasty set of thunderstorms in Fort Worth, Texas, set off a chain-reaction of exploding powerline transformers across the city in this amazing video captured 5 miles away and 34 floors up.

A video showing fire ants making a nigh-unsinkable raft out of their bodies, taken by Georgia Tech graduate student Nathan Mlot. The ants can also make a bubble of air if submerged underwater.

Blooming planktons are a feast for shoals of herring. The gathering creates a feast for seafaring birds, who gang up on the herring, pinning them from above and below. The – ohmygod.

Randy Halversen’s beautiful time lapse video of desolate sub-zero nights in South Dakota (with wind chills of -25) makes us thankful for the crummy forty degree weather we’re having here.

Here’s an old gem from NPR science guy Robert Krulwich, about an experiment conducted by Harald Wolf and Matthias Whittlinger that seems to prove that desert ants can count their steps.

“Hey man, yeah I’m at the parking lot, and so is a tornado. What? Yep, it’s headed towards me. Huh? No, no I’ll be fine. I’m thinking of getting out of the car and punching it away or something.”

YouTube user alkulaib and his friend could only stand in awe as a lazy but colossal sand storm descended upon them. The transition from normal day to silent darkness begins at 2:30.

Sir Richard Branson opens up his seemingly limitless checkbook to launch Virgin Oceanic, a project designed to visit the unexplored depths of our seas. He should invite James Cameron along.

NPR Science Correspondent Robert Krulwich on the existence of an invisible highway of wind drafts thousands of feet above us, filled with a staggering number of different kinds of insects.

Watch this haunting footage shot from inside a moving vehicle as the recent tsunami hit Japan. Thankfully, the driver managed to escape without injury. Rainbows aren’t always a good omen.

The New York Times has an interactive gallery that compares satellite images from last year with ones taken after the March 11 tsunami. You can donate to the Red Cross disaster relief for Japan here.

Not, it’s not a collaboration between two indie bands. But it is a wonderful combination, a lazy dust devil gently uncovering a strawberry field, turning the sheets into an impromptu sculpture.

This video starts out like one of those typically disturbing nature films, as a giant wild feline bears down his fangs on its helpless prey. But things don’t always turn out the way you think they will.

(NSFW: Language) This week, we learned that nature is awesome. Here’s more proof, as the Ammonoosuc river transforms from a still, peaceful thing to a rushing river of ice in minutes.

Third-degree burns left Hachi looking like a menacing T-800, but he remains sweet and loyal. Rescued by firefighters in Torrance, California, he’s now looking for someone to adopt him.

So many awesome things about this video: that there’s a place called Unalaska, Alaska, at times they have daylight even at 11pm, and there are freakin’ eagles (and a fox) in their backyards.

From the documentary Ants – Nature’s Secret Power: scientists poured 10 tons of concrete into an ant hill to preserve its insides. After weeks of digging, they uncovered an awe-inspiring ant city.