Reel to Real: Science caught on tape
1. Poetry in motion
Aerial combat: Hawk 1, drone 0
Aluminum, four rotors and one tiny radio meet an ancient definition of territoriality — and talons and beak show who’s boss.
69 years: Patience pays at last!
Call me tar, asphalt or bitumen. I’m 2 million times as viscose as honey, but don’t call me “solid.” No siree! Watch one of the world’s oldest experiments bear [tarry] fruit!
Swarming starlings
Aerial ballet with a cast of thousands: See why everybody is murmuring about “murmuration,” and why you should be, too! One question: Who’s the master of this dance?
Want to take a dip?
First check out the black seadevil, filmed with its flashlight glowing and its needle-like teeth ready for fish paté. Caution: This ambush predator is best appreciated at a distance.
2. Earthly delights
Frozen, now fractured: Gigantic glacier gouged!
Watch a giant Greenland glacier join the ocean. Enjoy (is that the right word?) the slow-motion train wreck that is our in a portrait of the Anthropocene — the era of human domination.
Domes for one, domes for all
Giant gobs of granite form when magma cools below ground. As these “plutons” rise, pressure drops, and sheets of rock break off an “onion-like structure. “Exfoliation” shapes a vaguely spherical structure — like Half Dome at Yosemite.
Clouds do the wave
Plains-staters know whacky weather, including a weirdo cloud that’s taking Middle America by storm. Meet undulatus asparatus, the first cloud type up for induction in the International Cloud Atlas in 60+ years. Watch asparatus roll through the sky as buoyancy and gravity duke it out in the clouds!
3. Drinks and dining
Cat claims croc
It’s all in the technique as a jaguar stalks and captures a caiman — a relative of the crocodile.
Tubular trouble: Monster leech sucks down worm!
Tell us the truth: Is this the first time in your life that you ever felt sorry for a worm?
Primates pouring at publick house!
First vervet monkeys learned to eat fermented sugar cane. Then all hell broke lose. These drunken monkeys prove that even addiction studies don’t have to be all serious, all the time.
You got a license, pal? Gladiator spider traps with a net
Grab a ringside seat, fire up the fuzzy filament, and watch this lethal lady make her net — and use it. It’s easy to love — unless you are a cricket…
– David J. Tenenbaum