Trapdoor Spider

ORIGINAL: YouTube

Trapdoor Spider

This is a video of the trapdoor spider taken from the BBC's Life in the Undergrowth documentary series.

Jewel Of The Earth (NOVA Documentary)

ORIGINAL: Nova

Broadcast (2007) Forty million years ago a diverse community of insects living at the bottom of a tree in a temperate forest chanced into a sticky pool of pine resin. Then a mere 67 years ago a young boy named David Attenborough was given the amber stone containing the entombed bugs. "Jewel of the Earth" explores the remarkable time capsule of ancient life preserved in this and countless other samples of fossilized tree resin, or amber.

Sir David Attenborough, now grown up and a celebrated naturalist and TV personality, hosts the program. As he makes abundantly clear in the show, he is still entranced with the amber specimen from his youth and the seemingly magical quality of the material to serve as a crystal-clear window to an age before humans walked the Earth. Coincidentally, David's brother Richard starred in the movie that made amber famous: Jurassic Park, in which Richard plays a billionaire entrepreneur who extracts DNA from amber-entombed mosquitoes in order to clone living replicas of their prey—dinosaurs. While such a scenario is probably unlikely, amber can resurrect prehistoric life in a quite different way, as NOVA demonstrates by probing the amber-encased clues that paint a fascinating picture of ancient biomes.

For example, most of the world's amber comes from the Baltic region of northern Europe, where, on the ample evidence of insects, plant fragments, and other trapped material, a vast temperate forest flourished about 40 million years ago. Sir Attenborough's boyhood keepsake is a piece of Baltic amber, which he investigates through a microscope with the help of biologist Elzbieta Sontag of the University of Gdansk, finding a long-legged fly, a fungus gnat, an aphid, an ant, and a mite—all denizens of the lower forest floor. By contrast, much of the amber found in the Dominican Republic—the second most significant source studied so far—is about 20 million years old and hails from an ancient rain forest. George and Roberta Poinar of Oregon State University have reconstructed this vanished ecosystem in spectacular detail, based on such clues as a tadpole that probably resided in a water-filled tropical bromeliad before being upended, along with a marsh beetle, into a patch of tree resin that eventually turned into amber.

An even more ancient Dominican sample, from 150 million years ago, contains a honeypot ant. Since this ant is now found only in Australia, the specimen is evidence for a conjectured super-continent that once comprised most of Earth's landmasses. High-tech medical scanners have shed light on many other amber inclusions, diagnosing a broken back on a gecko, for instance, which suggests the lizard was a bird's prey before being accidentally dropped into resin. The most controversial research on amber, however, is the effort to extract DNA from trapped creatures, just like in Jurassic Park. So far, two teams, including the Poinars, have announced success. However, follow-up studies indicate the DNA found by both groups was a contaminant, not the real, ancient stuff. Setbacks aside, scientists have only just begun to reveal the secrets to be discovered in the warm, glowing, glassy world of amber.

La lenta belleza de las plantas

ORIGINAL: Nuestro Viaje

"Hoy en Facebook un usuario (aquí su fan page 
http://www.facebook.com/pages/TECNICOS-JARDINEROS/156258408399)  
publicó este video acompañado de la cita que le sigue abajo.


Me dieron ganas de compartirlo con ustedes, se que les va a encantar. Tenemos tanto por aprender mientras andamos de acá para allá tan apurados, tan preocupados, tan importantes.....

 

"Fuente: Las imágenes de este video pertenecen a la serie documental LIFE (capítulo 9 dedicado a las plantas) de la BBC, narrado por David Attenborough. La edición del video no ha sufrido cambios del original. Únicamente la música que suena en este fragmento es una elección que he hecho yo, conforme a mis gustos. La canción se llama 'Find our way home', del músico Message to Bears. Este video está dedicado a los jardineros. Y a todas aquellas personas sensibles y amantes de las plantas." (Mariano Voltan)

"Las pruebas de inteligencia que dan las plantas son innumerables, continuas, sobre todo entre las flores, en las que se concentra el esfuerzo de la vida vegetal hacia la luz y hacia el espíritu.  

Si se encuentran plantas y flores torpes o desgraciadas, no las hay que se hallen desprovistas de sabiduría y de ingeniosidad por completo. Todas se aplican al cumplimiento de su obra; todas poseen la ambición magnífica de invadir y conquistar la superficie del globo multiplicando en él hasta el infinito la forma de existencia que representan.

Para lograr ese objetivo, deben vencer, a causa de la ley que las encadena al suelo, dificultades mucho mayores que las que se oponen a la multiplicación de los animales. Es por eso que la mayor parte de ellas recurre a astucias y combinaciones, a asechanzas que, por ejemplo, en punto a balística, aviación y observación de los insectos, con frecuencia precedieron a las invenciones y a los conocimientos del hombre. 

Trazar el cuadro de los grandes sistemas de la fecundación floral sería superfluo: el juego de los estambres y del pistilo, la seducción de los perfumes, la atracción de los colores armoniosos y brillantes, la elaboración del néctar, totalmente inútil para la flor y que ésta sólo fabrica para atraer y retener al libertador extraño, al mensajero de amor, abejorro, abeja, mosca, mariposa o falena, que le trae el beso del amante lejano, invisible, inmóvil…

Aquel mundo vegetal que notamos tan tranquilo, tan resignado, en donde todo parece aceptación, silencio, obediencia, recogimiento, es, por el contrario, aquel donde la rebelión contra el destino es la más vehemente y la más obstinada. El órgano esencial, el órgano nutricio de la planta, su raíz, indisolublemente la sujeta al suelo.