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Timelapses Of Microscopic Nature, In All Its Stunning (And Disgusting) Glory

Louie Schwartzberg's recent TED Talk gets really up-close-and-personal with nature (we're talking snail tongues...)
A mite on an eyelash

Louie Schwartzberg has given TED Talks in the past that detailed his amazing macro timelapses of nature and the environment, but his most recent go at TED 2014 in Vancouver unveiled a side of life that's equally stunning, though by no means glamorous.

The talk focused on the filmmaker's recent 3D feature, Mysteries of the Unseen World, a National Geographic-sponsored voyage into glimpses of Earth that the naked eye could never see: microscopic mites on our eyelashes, the tongues of snails, and even the skin of sharks. The hyper-defined images are miraculous, but admittedly a little terrifying—especially the snapshot of nano organisms that crawl on already-microscopic parasites.

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See some screenshots from his up-close-and-personal project below, and watch the whole talk in its macro glory above.

Shark skin

Eye of a fruit fly

A snail's tongue

A nano organism crawling on an already-microscopic creature

For more micro and macro beauty, see:

[Exclusive Video] Creating Sand Castles With A Single Grain Of Sand

Deep Sea Motion: Watch A Timelapse Of A Coral Reef Made From 150,000 Photographs

Visualize Disease On The Microscopic Level With Molecular Flipbook's 3D Animations

@zachsokol