New York Times science writer James Gorman has combined real research and some awesome photography (and cinematography) to produce a series of video clips that give Halloween a whole new and scientific meaning.
The New York Times collects a series of science videos in time for Halloween
The videos can’t be embedded, so you’ll have to head on over to the Times website to see the real thing. The videos include:
- Discovery of a glow-in-the-dark millipede in California — bioluminescence
- Snakes that don’t need a plane to “fly” — aerodynamics
- Boa constrictors kill prey with amazing efficiency — natural selection
- Male nursery web spiders tie up females when mating to avoid being eaten — natural selection
And more, including zombie spiders. There’s also a complete series of videos that aren’t quite so spooky.
Real-life zombie dogs have been documented in other experiments, of course: A group of scientists kept severed dog heads alive once for several minutes in Russia. They noticed that the dog heads still reacted to stimuli as a normal dog would, assuming the dog had no body attached to its head.