Every so often a giant emerges on the stage of science, someone who transcends the narrow boundaries of a particular line of research and alters our perspective on the world. E.O. Wilson is such a man.

Ant expert E.O. Wilson has spent his career studying tiny creatures. Yet what sets him apart is his ability to step back and see the grand scheme of things. Newly appointed to Harvard, Wilson ignores charges by molecular biologists that his work with ants is mere “stamp-collecting.” He goes on to discover ants’ extraordinary means of communication, which opens up whole new areas of study.

Wilson realizes that the chemicals governing an ant’s behavior must have a genetic basis. Does this hold true for other animals, including humans? His answer, the 1975 book Sociobiology, unleashes a firestorm of controversy. As the controversy slowly dies down, Wilson turns his attention to a new crisis: the ongoing loss of biodiversity. In the Florida Keys, he undertakes a groundbreaking experiment that provides data critical to the new field of conservation biology.

Now in his sixth decade at Harvard, Wilson launches his Encyclopedia of Life and continues writing books and actively campaigning to protect what’s left of the world’s endangered ecosystems. (Excerpt from pbs.org)

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It means even on the lower levels of life, there is a profound consciousness or awareness that bonds all things together. Published in 1973, The Secret Life of Plants was written by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird. It is described as “A fascinating account of the physical, emotional, and spiritual relations between plants and man.” Essentially, the subject of the book is the idea that plants may be sentient, despite their lack of a nervous system and a brain. This sentience is observed primarily through changes in the plant’s conductivity, as through a polygraph, as pioneered by Cleve Backster. The book also contains a summary of Goethe’s theory of plant metamorphosis.

That said, this book is about much more than just plants; it delves quite deeply into such topics as the aura, psychophysics, orgone, radionics, kirlian photography, magnetism/magnetotropism, bioelectrics, dowsing, and the history of science. It was the basis for the 1979 documentary of the same name, with a soundtrack especially recorded by Stevie Wonder.

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Since we all inhabit the Earth, all of us are considered earthlings. There is no sexism, no racism, or speciesism in the term earthling. It encompasses each and every one of us, warm or cold-blooded, mammal, vertebrae or invertebrate, bird, reptile, amphibian, fish, and human alike. Humans, therefore, being not the only species on this planet, share this world with millions of other living creatures as we all evolved here together. EARTHLINGS is a feature length documentary about humanity’s absolute dependence on animals (for pets, food, clothing, entertainment, and scientific research) but also illustrates our complete disrespect for these so-called “non-human providers.” The film is narrated by Academy Award nominee Joaquin Phoenix (GLADIATOR) and features music by the critically acclaimed platinum artist Moby.

With an in-depth study into pet stores, puppy mills and animals shelters, as well as factory farms, the leather and fur trades, sports and entertainment industries, and finally the medical and scientific profession, EARTHLINGS uses hidden cameras and never before seen footage to chronicle the day-to-day practices of some of the largest industries in the world, all of which rely entirely on animals for profit. Powerful, informative and thought-provoking, EARTHLINGS is by far the most comprehensive documentary ever produced on the correlation between nature, animals, and human economic interests. There are many worthy animal rights films available, but this one transcends the setting. EARTHLINGS cries to be seen. Highly recommended!

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In 1995, the first gray wolves were transported from Alberta, Canada to Yellowstone National Park, to repopulate the sprawling landscape with the species, absent for more than 70 years.

The following year, a second wave of wolves was brought to the park from British Columbia, Canada; five of them were released together, and they were named the Druid Peak pack. Since the arrival of those first immigrants, wolves have thrived in Yellowstone – and none more dramatically than the Druids.

The epic history of the Druids, one of more than a dozen packs now occupying the 2.2 million acres of Yellowstone, is documented in NATURE’s In the Valley of the Wolves, was produced and shot in High Definition by Emmy-award winning filmmaker Bob Landis.

With In the Valley of the Wolves, you’ll learn how the successful reintroduction of Yellowstone’s apex predator has changed the entire ecosystem of the park, and about the threats that these majestic animals continue to face on their road to recovery.

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Predators, a series of six half-hour films, uses miniaturized cameras mounted on the hunters themselves to show the chase from their perspective. The series also uses action replays and computer animations, allowing it to analyze the tactics of predator and prey from every angle. It shows that both are often evenly matched, with no room on either side for the slightest mistake. One of the series producers, David Wallace, explained what his team had set out to do.

Explosive moment. “In a standard natural history series, we take the life cycle of an animal or a place and beam the viewer there. We give them something like binoculars so that they can see it in a very classical, real way. “What we’re trying to do in Predators is to take a tiny moment in time, the moment when a predator detects, identifies, approaches and grabs its prey.

“We try to explode that very short moment and open it up so that the viewer can see what is going on. “These are really important moments for understanding how animals work. Their senses, their bodies, their behaviours are all designed for these moments.” Hunters featured in the first film, The Ultimate Predators, include cheetahs, crocodiles, golden eagles, great white sharks and spiders.

Fatal heart attacks. The team dropped it into water from a height of 15 metres to simulate the real acceleration and impact of a dive. The series also reports on one species of spider (Amaurobius) whose young eat their own mother. It found that polar bears have the best sense of smell in the bear family, and can detect a seal 64 km away.

It takes four days for a dog whelk to eat a mussel, which in the last ten hours undergoes a series of fatal heart attacks. And it takes killer whales more than 30 years to perfect their skill in beaching themselves to catch sea lions. But David Wallace insists that Predators is not gruesome: “There’s very little blood and gore in this. What we’re really trying to do is celebrate the magnificence of the predator – and the prey.”

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The series utilizes time-lapse sequences extensively in order to grant insights that would otherwise be almost impossible. Plants live on a different time scale, and even though their life is highly complex and often surprising, most of it is invisible to humans unless events that happen over months or even years are shown within seconds.

Like many traditional wildlife documentaries, it makes use of almost no computer animation. The series also discusses fungi, although as it is pointed out, these do not belong to the kingdom of plants. The mechanisms of evolution are taught transparently by showing the advantages of various types of plant behavior in action.

The adaptations are often complex, as it becomes clear that the environment to which plants must adapt comprises not just soil, water and weather, but also other plants, fungi, insects and other animals, and even humans. The series shows that co-operative strategies are often much more effective than predatory ones, as these often lead to the prey developing methods of self-defense – from plants growing spikes to insects learning to recognise mimicry.

Yet humans can work around all these rules of nature, so Attenborough concludes with a plea to preserve plants, in the interest of self-preservation. (Excerpt from en.wikipedia.org)

Episode 1 – Traveling

Episode 2 – Growing

Episode 3 – Flowering

Episode 4 – The Social Struggle

Episode 5 – Living Together

Episode 6 – Surviving

Man is the only creature that produces landfills. Natural resources are being depleted on a rapid scale while production and consumption are rising in na­tions like China and India. The waste production world wide is enormous and if we do not do anything we will soon have turned all our resources into one big messy landfill. But there is hope. The German chemist, Michael Braungart, and the American designer-architect William McDonough are fundamentally changing the way we produce and build. If waste would become food for the biosphere or the technosphere (all the technical products we make), produc­tion and consumption could become beneficial for the planet.

A design and production concept that they call Cradle to Cradle. A concept that is seen as the next industrial revolution. Design every product in such a way that at the end of its lifecycle the component materials become a new resource. Design buildings in such a way that they produce energy and become a friend to the environment.

Large companies like Ford and Nike are working with McDonough and Braun­gart to change their production facilities and their products. They realize that economically seen waste is destruction of capital. You make something with no value. Based on their ideas the Chinese government is working towards a circular economy where Waste = Food. An amazing story that will definitely change your way of thinking about production and consumption. (Excerpt from vpro.nl)

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Wildlife film maker Rebecca Hosking investigates how to transform her family’s farm in Devon into a low energy farm for the future, and discovers that nature holds the key.

With her father close to retirement, Rebecca returns to her family’s wildlife-friendly farm in Devon, to become the next generation to farm the land. But last year’s high fuel prices were a wake-up call for Rebecca. Realising that all food production in the UK is completely dependent on abundant cheap fossil fuel, particularly oil, she sets out to discover just how secure this oil supply is.

Alarmed by the answers, she explores ways of farming without using fossil fuel. With the help of pioneering farmers and growers, Rebecca learns that it is actually nature that holds the key to farming in a low-energy future. (Excerpt from bbc.co.uk)

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The discovery that everything is made from atoms has been referred to as the greatest scientific breakthrough in history. As scientists delved deep into the atom, they unravelled nature’s most shocking secrets and abandoned traditional beliefs, leading to a whole new science which still underpins modern physics, chemistry and biology, and maybe even life itself. Nuclear physicist Professor Jim Al-Khalili tells the story of this discovery and the brilliant minds behind the breakthrough.

The second part of Professor Jim Al-Khalili’s three-part documentary about the basic building block of our universe, the atom. He shows how, in our quest to understand the tiny atom, we unravelled the mystery of how the universe was created – a story with dramatic twists and turns, taking in world-changing discoveries like radioactivity, the atom bomb and the Big Bang, as the greatest brains of the 20th century competed to answer the biggest questions of all.

The final part of Professor Jim Al-Khalili’s documentary series about the basic building block of our universe, the atom. He explores how studying the atom forced us to rethink the nature of reality itself, discovers how there might be parallel universes in which different versions of us exist and finds out that ‘empty’ space isn’t empty at all. Al-Khalili shows how the world we think we know turns out to be a tiny sliver of an infinitely weirder universe than which we could have conceived. (Excerpt from bbc.co.uk)

The Clash of the Titans

The Key to the Cosmos

The Illusion of Reality

You are starting a journey into a world of senses different from your own…

We experience life through five main senses, but even these are better developed in some familiar animals.

Smell your way across an ocean as a salmon does.

See, through the multi-aspected eye of a fly, what a human hand looks like when it is about to strike. Amazing effects reveal the secrets of animal perception.

Episode 1: Sixth Sense

Animals use senses of which humans are unaware. Sensitivity to the earth’s electromagnetic fields, or to weather pressure, can be used to aid navigation. Some animals can predict earthquakes. Predators put these senses to lethal use: a shark homes in on the body electricity of its prey, vampire bats detect the infra-red radiation of blood, and a rattlesnake sees a ‘heat picture’ of its victim.

Episode 2: Seeing Sense

A vulture can spot a carcass from a great distance, the four-eyed fish can see above and below water simultaneously, a fly’s multi-faceted eye sees a very different world than a human eye, while other insects can see into ultra-violet light. And lions have an area on the retina which actually empathises with their prey.

Episode 3: Sound Sense

Human ears have a limited range and are deaf to a low-register elephant conversation or the high-pitched squeaking of mice. Whales use sonar to communicate across hundreds of miles of sea, while spiders listen out for the wingbeats of prey and the kangaroo rat has hearing so sensitive that it can hear the rattlesnake’s strike – and avoid it. Birds, meanwhile, use sounds to detect changes in the weather and as an aid to navigation.

Episode 4: Super Scents

Smell is invaluable in hunting, protecting a species, mating… and navigation. Petrels use it to find fish in the open sea, springboks emit an ‘alarm’ odour to warn the herd of a predator, salamanders inject their females with aphrodisiac, and a salmon’s epic journey across the ocean to spawn and die is achieved through its sense of smell.

Episode 5: Sense of Timing

Courting, egg-laying, hibernation… The cycles of the earth, moon and sun are the rhythms which govern all life. Every animal’s perception of time varies, according to its heart rate.A shrew lives 30 times faster than an elephant, so time appears to pass more slowly. Also shown is the rare 17-year eruption of the US cicada.

Episode 6: Making Sense

The final film shows how each animal has a unique view of the world derived from a combination of different senses.The mind creates mental maps for navigational skills, which can also be affected by genetic programming. Other super-senses have resulted from the need to hunt or avoid becoming a meal. The mind decides what skills it needs to survive.