"Decay: it happens to everything and everyone..."
In this documentary, a biologist sets up a glass box within Edinburgh Zoo and puts lots of stuff in it to see it decay: cooked rice, chilli, cups of tea, a fish, cheese, a fruit bowl, a vegetable box, a raw chicken, sausages, hamburgers, a whole pig on a spit, a compost heap, a wood pile...even a dead rat!
The process of decomposition is observed over a period of 8 weeks using time-lapse cameras and specialist photography to capture the extraordinary way in which moulds, microbes and insects are able to break down everyday things and allow new life to emerge from old.
Highlights:
- Bacteria decomposing a chicken, including how they sense and communicate with each other, and coordinate. (2 minutes)
- How the US Army stops its food going off - extreme preservation! (6 minutes)
- Why we have coal - plants evolved wood strengthened with lignin well before fungi evolved the ability to digest it and break it down. This meant dead trees ened up lying all over the place, not decaying, and instead vulnerable to burning (especially with all the extra atmospheric oxygen from photosynthesis outpacing respiration). Masses of undecomposed / burnt wood helped to form great deposits of coal. The high oxygen levels also assisted the evolution of large insects, which otherwise have too inefficient gas exchange systems to be able to survive today, and dinosaurs! The end of the age of dinosaurs coincided with a firestorm that probably burned about 25% of the world's forests, leaving less food, less oxygen in the air, and a cooler earth thanks to ash clouds.
Too many highlights! Just watch the whole thing!
