LIFE IN THE UNDERGROWTH - Part5: Supersocieties (2005)

Successfully completed the wonderful wonderful series Life in the Undergrowth. Although my favourite episode of the series is the 3rd one named The Silk Spinners (mostly because of my love towards spiders), this episode Supersocieties is a very very special one because of the similarity to our society and these societies of superorganisms.

After watching this episode, you really feel that at some point of time there was some connection to us. I mean, apart from intelligence there are a lot of similarities between us and these superorganisms. (It is another matter altogether that by seeing some of the actions of our species, I some times feel that we are less intelligent than some of these invertebrates.)

At the start of this episode Attenborough states that "The superorganisms such as ants, bees or termites are not the blindly mechanical robotic slaves that we once thought they were, indeed we now know every insect society is full of conflict, power struggles & mutinies".

Power struggles & mutinies! I never thought that could happen in other species apart from ours.

So in this episode we go into these super societies to see how they work. There is one superb footage showing the rise (from scratch) of a bumblebee society, its functioning and finally its end when the worker bees revolt and kill the queen bumblebee.

The wood ants squirting Formic acid when threatened is another good shot. After a flood, the mud ants quickly saving their eggs and moving them to a higher ground is another thrilling sequence in this episode.

The specialty of this particular episode is that most of the sequences in this episode are like from a thriller movie. Check this clip and see whether this reminds you of an old James Cameroon movie.

LIFE IN THE UNDERGROWTH - Part4: Intimate Relations (2005)

In this 4th episode of the wonderful series Life in the Undergrowth, we are dealing with the relationships developed by the invertebrates not only towards their own kind but also towards plants. Most of us know that generally plants and insects depend on each other. But the kind of footage that they have shot for this episode is unbelievable.

This clip shows how a Gall wasp uses an Oak tree for the development of its egg.

LIFE IN THE UNDERGROWTH - Part3: The Silk Spinners (2005)

As the title says, in this episode of the Life in the Undergrowth series, we are dealing exclusively with the invertebrates which produce silk.

If you are thinking that spiders are the only invertebrates which produce silk then you are wrong because there are a whole lot of other beings which produce silk, of course apart from silk worms.

Check this clip to see the amazing fungus gnats, from the Waitomo Caves of New Zealand, building beautiful chandeliers to trap prey. This is a truly truly beautiful clip.

LIFE IN THE UNDERGROWTH - Part2: Taking to the Air (2005)

Since I've given a minute introduction to this series in my previous post, I will straight away give a few snaps from this episode.

As the title shows, here we deal with the invertebrates in air such as butterflies, dragonflies, wasps and a lot lot more.

There are a lot of metamorphosis videos shown in this episode but the best of the lot is the following one of a dragonfly. You wouldn't believe that the initial monster looking creature has changed into such a beautiful one.

LIFE IN THE UNDERGROWTH - Part1: Invasion of the Land (2005)

I've seen many programs about various wonderful forms & variety of lives on our beautiful planet. But until Life in the Undergrowth there hasn't been a program that dealt about invertebrates in such a great depth.

Narrated by the one and only incomparable Mr. Who Else, this is a series par excellence.

More than 95% of all animal species on Earth consists of Invertebrates. For every one of us there are more than 200 million of those. As David says in the following intro clip, if we backbone creatures disappear suddenly, everything goes on normally for them but if they disappear, we are going to disappear with them.

The following clip consists of the first 200 seconds of the program. Observe that at some level we do have some similarities. 

Most of our Universe is Missing (2006)

From here onwards, to encourage my readers to watch the science videos, I've decided to include a few screenshots in my posts. Hope this encourages you to give some of your time for knowing about some interesting things that are happening around you.

Most of our Universe is Missing is another episode in the long lasting series BBC Horizon. This episode is narrated by Academy Award nominated actor Sir Ian Holm.

I will give a brief intro about what this episode deals with.

Do you know that around 96% of our universe is missing? And I'm not talking about the vast emptiness that we see. All the galaxies with stars, planets & other debris that you see has a total mass of only 4% of our universe.

Prior to 1970, everything in our universe is accounted for. Or that is what most people thought. But in the 1970s Prof. James Peebles & Prof. Jeremiah Ostriker, who were working on the stability of the galaxies & universe, found that with the notions of total mass existed at that time, the stability of the galaxies is difficult to achieve. They were thinking of some missing matter that is unknown to us & they came to know that forty years earlier Prof. Fritz Zwicky had the same ideas about missing matter. Thus our Dark Matter was discovered in theory. But the problem for others to accept this is that neither dark matter could be seen nor it was discovered practically. So, many of the others dismissed it as speculative.

The Sky at Night - "Life"

This post is for the astronomy lovers who are in Britain.

The Sky at Night is a monthly programme produced by BBC. It is telecasted in Britain on BBC One & BBC Four. The first episode was aired in 1957 & hosted by Sir Patrick Moore. It is still running with the same ever enthusiastic host. If you have internet, you can watch most of the previous episodes at the above link.

The programme covers a very wide range of astronomy & space related topics. This is a must watch for every one in Britain since it has only one episode per month (no time wastage) & it gives enormous knowledge.

The last episode was titled "Life". A very interesting topic. Half a century ago, scientists didn't know anything about planets outside our solar system & there was only speculation about them. But know more than 400 such extra-solar planets were discovered. The reason for the discovery of so few planets is that detecting a planet is one of the toughest jobs for astronomers because planets are one of the tiniest objects in the universe & they have a very little footprint. So detecting them is a very tidious & painful process. If detecting an extra-solar planet is so tough a process, you can imagine what it is going to be to find what is on such a planet. So is there anything living on them and if so, is it intelligent?

Do You Know What Time It Is? (2008)

"What Time Is It?" asks Prof Brian Cox at the end of the BBC Horizon program Do you know what time it is?

Some of the answers given by physicists are 

Prof Irwin Shapiro:      That depends. Are you talking about Universal time? Are you talking about Eastern time?

Prof Steven Beckwith: It's 13.7 billion years. That's what time it is.

Dr Dennis McCarthy:   It's not an easy question to answer.

Dr Fay Dowker:           A great time to be a physicist.

Prof Saul Perlmutter:  Just about time to go home & have dinner.

Prof Max Tegmark:     It's a great question although some great questions actually turn out to be trick ones. 

Prof Neil Turok:          The time today is something we have no idea about.

Prof Brian Cox:           We might not be in a position at this moment in time with our current understanding of nature to even understand what it is that we are asking.

& the greatest answer of all