Rare vantage of a new ant queen raising her first batch of brood through the immature life stages. Before it becomes an ant, an egg develops through three immature life stages. The 1st stage is egg, the 2nd is larvae, and the 3d is pupae. The queen constantly cleans her brood which protects them from dangerous bacteria and mold. Her attentions also provide the brood with tactile stimulus, and coat them in nutritious pheromones that ant scientists (myrmecologists) call the "Queen Substance". This episode was made in collaboration with the UCLA Department of Entomology.
Ornithologist Richard Prum shares his knowledge of the natural math of feather patterning. Simple feather patterns can be predicted using mathematical models called Turing reaction-diffusion equations. As a feather grows, each new cell must decide whether it will receive pigment or not, depending...
Harvester ants search a lovely variety of flowers for nectar and water. Ants are attracted to sweet foods (as well as fatty), and these are on the lookout for flower nectar, along with hydration from giant water droplets. This program was made with the assistance of Les Greenberg and the Universi...
Recording the anthill in its splendor of minute sprawling activities. A colony of Harvester ants patrols the ground, on-duty and at rest. An ant colony is optimized for efficiency, but that doesn't mean that all ants are working all the time. In fact, having a surplus of members is an important f...
