Episode

NOVA: Why Do Birds Sing?

Name: NOVA: Why Do Birds Sing?
Released: 1974-11-03
Duration: 55 min
Cast: Jay O. Sanders, Lance Lewman, Neil Ross, Liev Schreiber, Craig Sechler

NOVASeason 21974-11-03

Overview

NOVA travels to forests and marshes to discover why birds sing and finds surprising parallels with the acquisition of speech in humans.

Details

Series: NOVA
Season: Season 2
Episode: Episode 1
Air date: 1974-11-03
Runtime: 55 min

Episode context

Why Do Birds Sing? is Episode 1 in Season 2 of NOVA. It aired on 1974-11-03. The runtime is 55 min.

Previous / Next

Episode 2: How Much Do You Smell? 1974-11-10 | 55 min Many insects and some mammals use smell as a primary means of communication. NOVA explains how, for example, the entire economy of an ant's nest is organized by smell, and how some moths use smell for population control—an ability we is now beginning to understand.

More episodes from this season

Episode 3: The Hunting Of The Quark 1974-11-17 | 55 min Smashing matter into ever smaller pieces in an attempt to find its fundamental building blocks has produced a confused nightmare of particles. NOVA looks at this on-again, off-again story—one of sciences's most mysterious—and, one of the most expensive, involving some of the biggest machines in the world.

Episode 4: The Secrets Of Sleep 1974-11-24 | 55 min Most of us spend one-third of our lives in a state of which we understand remarkably little—some people sleep for only a few minutes a night, and function perfectly well, while others declare that eight hours isn't enough. NOVA explores traditional notions about how much sleep we need; looks at effects of the sleeping pill, and, perhaps the most baffling of all aspects of sleep—dreaming.

Episode 5: Inside the Golden Gate 1974-12-01 | 55 min NOVA joins a team of U.S. Geological Survey scientists on a mission to find out just how San Francisco Bay works: its physics, its chemistry and its biology.

Episode 6: The Men Who Painted Caves 1974-12-08 | 55 min Just why did Cro-Magnon man living in France's Dordogne Valley some 15,000 years ago take time out from the desperate business of survival to paint pictures in inaccessible corners of his cave dwellings? NOVA joins French and American archeologists as they piece together the lifestyle of these hunters of the last great Ice Age, and try to interpret the meaning of their cave art.

Episode 7: Red Sea Coral 1974-12-15 | 55 min NOVA joins a group of English biologists living literally on a platform in the middle of the Red Sea, who for several years have been studying the crown-of-thorns starfish, notorious for the devastation it has wrought on the coral reefs of Australia and the Pacific.

Episode 8: War From the Air 1975-01-05 | 55 min

Episode 9: What Time is Your Body? 1975-01-12 | 55 min Have you ever sensed that your body reacts differently at different times of the day? NOVA examines the best and worsetimes for work, good times for sex drives and your body's most reactive time of day for alcohol consumption.

Episode 10: The Rise And Fall Of DDT 1975-01-19 | 55 min Has the case against DDT been proven? A strange question, perhaps, to be asking one year after the US has banned the insecticide, but NOVA dares to ask. Tracing the history of DDT from its discovery through its banning in the States, NOVA asks whether America overreacted with its total ban of this once acclaimed "wonder" chemical.

Episode 11: Take the World From Another Point of View 1975-02-02 | 55 min NOVA profiles two very different scientists: Richard Feynman, a theoretical physicist, at the pinnacle of his career—a Nobel prizewinner; and Richard Lewontin, a biologist and highly regarded population geneticist from Harvard University.

Episode 12: The Lysenko Affair 1975-02-09 | 55 min NOVA explores T.D. Lynsenko's rise to power in the Soviet Union in the early 20th century, and how it affected plant genetic research in the USSR.