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Borrowing from the elegant visual style of the German-born Swiss naturalist, entomologist and botanical artist Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717), this animation celebrates her many notable contributions to the natural sciences in an age when such work was widely considered the domain of men. A dedicated observer of plants and insects in particular, two of her many achievements include helping to dispel the once widely held belief that insects spontaneously emerge from dust, mud or rotten meat, and observing metamorphosis in rich detail. And 300 years after her death, her seminal book, The Metamorphosis of the Insects of Suriname (1705), which depicts insects and plants in the jungles of South America, is still considered one of the most beautiful and groundbreaking entomology books ever assembled, with editions of the pioneering work being reprinted as recently as 2010.
Video by The Royal Society and BBC Ideas
Animation: Studio Panda
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Earth science and climate
Images carved into film form a haunting elegy for a disappearing slice of Earth
3 minutes
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Biology
Butterflies become unrecognisable landscapes when viewed under electron microscopes
4 minutes
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War and peace
Two Ukrainian boys’ summer unfolds just miles from the frontlines
22 minutes
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Nature and landscape
California’s landscapes provide endless inspiration for a woodcut printmaker
10 minutes
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Love and friendship
Never marry a man you love too much, and other views on romance in Sierra Leone
5 minutes
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Engineering
Can monumental ‘ice stupas’ help remote Himalayan villages survive?
15 minutes
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History of technology
Curious singles and tech sceptics – what ‘computer dating’ looked like in 1966
6 minutes
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Cognition and intelligence
A father forgets his child’s name for the first time in this poetic reflection on memory
4 minutes
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Animals and humans
Join seabirds as they migrate, encountering human communities along the way
13 minutes