Watch Beneath Our Feet

"Literal forests" of life in the grass beneath us are explored via a microscopic camera in this instructive short. We see how an ant drinks from a dewdrop without bursting it and how crickets court (hint: it's noisy). It is an eat-or-be-eaten world as we watch aphids consumed by ladybug larvae and a vegetarian sand cricket becoming a meal for a hungry centipede. Director Stacy Woodard was a biologist who, with his brother Horace, created Educational Pictures' "Battle for Life" series of short nature documentaries. Sadly, Stacy Woodard died less than a decade later at age thirty-nine of an apparent heart attack. - Dennis Harvey