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Over the years, many teachers have told us that these films seen on NATURAL HEROES offer a valuable resource for the classroom. To help more teachers and students take advantage of the rich content of these timely stories, we have developed a 46-page classroom guide consisting of 6 projects aligned to common core to accompany these films. We also have included interactive links to additional resources and short video selections from the films to use with your students.

The short film opens with two questions: "So what determines how many species live in a given place? Or how many individuals of the species can live somewhere?" The research that provided answers to these questions was set in motion by key experiments by ecologists Robert Paine and James Estes. Robert Paine's starfish exclusion experiments on the coast of Washington state showed that removing starfish from this marine ecosystem has a big impact on the population sizes of other species, establishing the starfish as a keystone species. James Estes and colleague John Palmisano discovered that the kelp forest ecosystems of the North Pacific are regulated by the presence or absence of sea otters, which feed on sea urchins that consume kelp. These direct and indirect effects of sea otters on other species describe a trophic cascade. These early studies were the inspiration for hundreds of investigations on other keystone species and trophic cascades, as well as ongoing studies into the regulation of population sizes and species numbers.

Find out how researchers identify genetic diseases and determine possible treatments. short film, genes as medicine click and learn, central dogma scientists at work, the search for a mutated gene central dogma card activity animation, CF mechanism and treatment click and learn. CRISPR-Cas9

Gene Screen BC 2011 Participant. 18 Things You Should Know About Genetics is an animated film that presents fundamental background information about genetics, as well as offering some quirky but interesting facts about DNA, genes and genetics. It was created to be an upbeat, fun educational short film to initiate and draw interest to this sometimes daunting and seemingly complex subject matter.

In the past, sailors on whaling ships would carve whale teeth into works of art in a process called scrimshaw. These pieces would be brought home to loved ones as mementos of the voyage. Design incubator Studio Swine is attempting to recycle found materials and turn this aged art form into a more sustainable practice. In this short film, travel to remote parts of the ocean, where "the closest people are in a space station," and watch as the process of collecting ocean trash and transforming it into beautiful treasure unfolds.

Amanda Briody describes two BioInteractive resources focused on Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique. She uses the short film "The Guide: A Biologist in Gorongosa" to introduce students to the park and its scientists. The Gorongosa Interactive Timeline allows her to ask data-based questions on the park's history and ecology, and have students make evidence-based claims.

This activity supports the HHMI short film The Origin of Species: The Making of a Theory. Students are presented with a map of the Malay Archipelago and some field notebooks with observations of animals. By plotting which animals are found on which island, the students discover the Wallace Line-a sharp boundary that separates distinct Asian and Australian fauna. 

This activity can be used in conjunction with the short film The Double Helix. It introduces students to the classic experiment by Matthew Meselson and Franklin Stahl, which revealed that DNA replication follows the semiconservative model.

This animated short film tells the engaging tale of the discovery of the coelacanth. In 1938, South African museum curator Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer came across a strange blue fin poking out of a pile of fish. With its fleshy, lobed fins and its tough armored scales, the coelacanth did not look like any other fish that exists today. The coelacanth belongs to a lineage that has remained virtually unchanged for hundreds of millions of years-earning it the description of a "living fossil."

1:30 A short film about DNA microarrays, and how they are used to show dynamic gene expression levels.

In this activity, students build a paper model of DNA and use their model to explore key structural features of the DNA double helix. This activity can be used to complement the short film The Double Helix.

Penn State University anthropologist Dr. Nina Jablonski walks us through the evidence that the different shades of skin color among human populations arose as adaptations to the intensity of ultraviolet radiation in different parts of the world.

A keenly observant young man named Tony Allison, working in East Africa in the 1950s, first noticed the connection and assembled the pieces of the puzzle. His story stands as the first and one of the best understood examples of natural selection, where the selective agent, adaptive mutation, and molecule involved are known-and this is in humans to boot. The protection against malaria by the sickle-cell mutation shows how evolution does not necessarily result in the best solution imaginable but proceeds by whatever means are available.