The Serengeti Rules

"The Serengeti Rules" is a great film to take you to parts of the world far beyond your couch.

HHMI Tangled Bank Studios is a rarity in the film world — a nonprofit boutique film studio housed within the internationally recognized Howard Hughes Medical Institute, one of the largest private, nonprofit science philanthropies in the U.S. dedicated to advancing scientific research and science education.

Against the backdrop of climate change, the delicate underwater ecology of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands is hurting from declines in otters.

Jeremy Clarkson recommends watching "The Serengeti Rules" to learn about keystone species.

Over the course of her career, Mary has studied the ecosystems of four different rivers. Her work to understand the food webs in those rivers has involved observation and taking field notes, mapping and quantitative observations to identify patterns, developing questions and hypotheses, and then testing her hypotheses with experiments.

Due to over-fishing and dams, wild salmon have declined by 90% in Washington, Oregon and California. That decline has a much broader effect than what might be expected. Salmon need forests for shade, to keep streams cool, and forests need salmon to provide between 25% and 50% of their nutrients, particularly nitrogen essential for protein production.

NATURE “The Serengeti Rules” Wednesday, October 9, 8 p.m. ET
Explore some of the most remote and spectacular places on Earth with a pioneering group of scientists who make surprising discoveries that transform human understanding of nature and ecology. Based on a book of the same name.

“[The] Serengeti Rules” ultimately succeeds in conveying the hope it promises, bringing to vivid life an important scientific principle along with the scientists who discovered it. At a time when it is easy to feel disheartened about the state of the environment, that hope is refreshing, and desperately needed."

“The Serengeti Rules” sets itself apart by not only acknowledging the dangers afflicting ecosystems around the world but also presenting a hopeful solution to the problem.

In his remarkable new documentary, the veteran filmmaker Nicolas Brown interviews prominent ecologists who study biodiversity — specifically, how one species can affect an entire ecosystem.

...what sticks with you are the beautiful shots of kelp forests and otters, ponds seen from the bottom up, Africa and South America both threatened and, when “corrected,” healed. That’s the upbeat message that Carroll identifies in the opening moments of the film.

This year's festival includes 10 feature films and 44 shorts. The curated selection focuses on a range of critical environmental issues, such as animal extinction and climate change.

The feature-length film attempts to explain how nature works by looking at the importance of the top predator. It follows ecologists and zoologists building off of Paine’s theory that the when a predator is removed, like a starfish in a tide pool, biodiversity collapses.

The top honor of the festival, the Green Fire Award, is granted to The Serengeti Rules by filmmaker Nicholas Brown. This beautifully shot and poignant film shares the story of a band of young scientists and their time in the most remote and spectacular places on Earth. Driven by their insatiable curiosity about how nature works, they discover a single set of “rules” that govern all life.

The festival will close with another double bill: “Serengeti Rules” and “She Is the Ocean.” “ ‘Serengeti’ is one of the most beautiful, visually stunning documentaries I’ve ever seen,” says Rivers. “They shot in the Serengeti but also in the Aleutian Islands, the Pacific Northwest and Peru, and it’s all about our need to preserve the balance of life on Earth. It’s an extremely hopeful film. ‘She Is the Ocean’ is a wonderful documentary about nine women and their relationship to the ocean, and the second part of a trilogy from director Innesse Biohina.”

A heartening work on climate change came in Nicolas Brown’s The Serengeti Rules.

A celebration of scientific excellence and an account of a discovery which has ramifications for natural environments the world over, The Serengeti Rules makes for compelling viewing.

In Nicolas Brown’s documentary The Serengeti Rules, he follows a group of scientists around the world as they studied different ecosystems to see how nature works. They discovered surprising conclusions in what that led to similar conclusions about life on our planet.

The movie tracks the globe-trotting, eye-opening journeys of five scientists profiled in Sean B. Carroll’s book of the same name.