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Nature · Animaux
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Nature · Animals

7 whys told, 3 on video

  • animals
  • plants
  • forest
  • behaviors
  • living world
Start with the most surprising

The whys of this universe

An old habit borrowed from wolves: flatten the grass, scare off whatever might bite, sniff the wind, and the gesture survives even on a parquet floor where none of it makes sense anymore.
  • Oddity
  • Video 43 s
  • 4 min

Why do dogs circle before lying down?

A wolf trampled the grass flat and turned its nose into the wind before sleeping. The dog repeats the same circle on a parquet floor where none of it applies.
A tall glass of creamy-white milk with a navy outline, centered on a mint-green background; a cream halo and a few cream dots surround it like light bouncing, and two blades of green grass stand at the foot of the glass.
  • Video 33 s
  • 4 min

Why is milk white?

Not a dye, not a story of purity. Milk is made of billions of tiny beads, and what they do to light changes everything.
A stylised cat's head emerges from the gloom of a forest; its two big round eyes glow green and bounce the beam of light striking them back toward us.
  • Video 32 s
  • 4 min

Why do cats' eyes glow in the dark?
Nature · Animaux
  • 4 min

Why do cats purr?

For ages, people hunted for the source of that rumble: they suspected the blood, a hidden organ. The real source sits in a throat smaller than a walnut.
When the tree shuts down its chlorophyll, the yellows it had been hiding finally show, and a few species build a brand-new red before the leaf falls.
  • 3 min

Why do leaves turn red in autumn?

European autumns lean yellow while Vermont and Quebec catch fire in red, and the difference is not the weather but which species build the pigment.
They don't photosynthesise, they have no digestive tract, and their DNA places them in a kingdom of their own, closer to us than to any tree.
  • Oddity
  • 4 min

Why aren't fungi plants or animals?
Past a certain height, a tree can no longer pull water all the way up to its leaves: the liquid breaks inside its channels before it reaches the crown.
  • 4 min

Why don't trees grow infinitely tall?

The tallest tree known, a Californian redwood named Hyperion, stands at 115.9 metres, and its exact location is kept secret by park rangers.

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Sylvora on video

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Sylvora is the wide clearing where animals and leaves keep their secrets. Here you learn why dogs circle before lying down, why cats purr, or why fungi are neither plant nor animal. And when a shiver runs across your skin, that's still an animal speaking inside you.

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