1996 VHS • Amazing Animals: Mini Beasts 60 FPS

About

A children's nature video introducing invertebrates and insects through a combination of close-up wildlife footage and animated character segments featuring a reluctant boy named Henry who is gradually won over by the miniature world around him, running approximately 24 minutes. The program's premise is that mini-beasts are everywhere, simply too small to notice without looking closely.

Creatures covered include the longhorn beetle, jewel beetle, and other members of a family that accounts for the largest share of insect species on Earth; tarantulas and colonial spiders that work together to catch prey; leafcutter ants in colonies of up to half a million that carry leaves weighing more than 20 times their own body weight; aphids that damage plants by sucking sap; caterpillars that can eat their own body weight in food each day before spinning a cocoon; and bees, whose wings vibrate 180 times per second producing the characteristic humming sound. Henry delivers a comedic report on why bees hum, attributing it to a royal choir that forgot the words, before the correct explanation is provided. The program closes at a flea circus with Henry expressing cheerful resignation to a world full of tiny creatures.

Human-made No record of this work says a model made it. What this means.

Archive

Internet Archive, in The VHS Vault

Licence or status

The Internet Archive states none for this item.

Credit

The Vista Group®

Language

English

Subtitles

English

Who can watch

The archive gives no rating. Invisible Network shows it to Tweens profiles and older, judged from its collection and subjects. How films are placed