Earlier this year, francischeefilms brought us some stunning time-lapse footage of a frog embryo that looked like it belonged in a Terrence Malick film, and could’ve easily been mistaken for CGI. But in a new video that picks up where the last one left off (now with a different embryo) the real somehow becomes even more surreal. This time around with less of a Malick-y flavor and more of a Radiohead-music-video vibe.
The new time-lapse footage of a European Common Frog growing from zygote to tadpole comes via Laughing Squid, and is only one of the many entrancing videos that’ve come from Chee and Company recently. As a follow-up to that previous video of the zygote undergoing cleavage (the division of one embryonic cell into many smaller cells that are the same size as the original cell), we now get to see another European Common Frog doing its thing.
This time around, we get to watch the zygote grow into something that has countless cells that eventually become indistinguishable from one another, and also exhibit the “formation of the neural crest and embryonic eyes and gill and tail…” The description also notes that we’re getting to watch gastrulation, which results, in part, in an opening called a blastopore, which will eventually become the frog’s anus. (Ah, the circle of life…)
Aside from the pretty astounding biology, let’s take a few moments to step back, breathe, and really register the fact that time-lapsed tadpoles dance almost identically to Thom Yorke:
What do you think about this new tadpole time-lapse footage? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
Images: francischeefilms/YouTube
GIFs: francischeefilms/YouTube Radiohead/YouTube
