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The Queen of Trees
2005 · Film · documentary · 57 min
Directed by Mark Deeble, Victoria Stone
In Africa, the giant fig tree and the tiny fig wasp differ in size a billion times over, but neither could exist without the other. Their extraordinary relationship is a marvel of co-evolution, a marriage which has lasted for millennia. It forms the basis of a complex web of dependency that supports entire ecosystems, providing food for thousands of creatures, from elephants, giraffes, and fruit bats, to forest hornbills, monkeys, insects, and fish.
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10 comments on Hacker News
The Queen of Trees is an excellent documentary
I learned this fact from watching the documentary "The Queen of trees", quite fascinating! It blew my mind when I first saw it. The documentary is free on YouTube!
There's a free documentary on Youtube called "The Queen of Trees" which goes over the lifecycle of an African Sycamore Fig Tree and follows the crazy amount of life that it supports over a year, including the lifecycle of the sycamore fig wasp. It's unbelievable, and deserves a watch by all who are interested in ecology.
https://youtu.be/xy86ak2fQJM?si=CVL23tMUSEa28aBr
Looks like Apple has it for $12.99: https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/the-queen-of-trees/umc.cmc.2i73snzddt6po4b2d26hw4xht
This is nasty but these wasps and the fig trees that are their home are the subject of one of the best nature documentaries I've ever seen, The Queen of Trees:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy86ak2fQJM
If you can locate a good HD copy it's worth waiting and watching that. Ian Holm narrates the stories of a bunch of different animals, from fig wasps to other bugs and larger creatures like bats, monkeys and even humans that rely on the tree. It has some of the most horrifying but also incredible imagery I've seen in a nature show and some real groaner lines from Holm to boot. My friends and I watch it every year or two and it never fails to amaze me.
> No one, or at least no one I've yet read, knows of any other example in nature of such a close mutualism.
Personally I found the relationship b/w fig trees and fig wasps quite amazing and extra-ordinary when I, for the first time, watched a documentary on this subject.
You can check it out here: The Queen of Trees - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy86ak2fQJM
The Queen of Trees doco is great, I wrote about and linked to it recently here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29792509
Scott Noble makes truly excellent and important political documentaries, all linked to free from his site https://metanoia-films.org/
Satyamev Jayate is an amazing documentary/talk show series with Indian star Aamir Khan, each episode looking at an important and troubling social issue. Almost every episode is now available with english subtitles on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=satyamev+jayate+subtitled
John Berger's Ways of Seeing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utEoRdSL1jo
Sapolsky's Biology of Human Behavior course. 11+ million views! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA&list=PL848F2368C90DDC3D
The last word on figs must be the amazing documentary The Queen of Trees (2005), about a single fig tree in Africa, and the animals that live in, on and around it. Includes incredible footage of wasps inside the figs, and the worms eating them...It gets kind of horrifying at times. Maybe one of the greatest nature documentaries ever made. Enjoy!
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1536480/
Watch on dailymotion https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x68r4b5
This reminded me of The Queen of Trees[1] by Deeble & Stone, a mind blowing documentary about this wonderful tree. Indeed one of the most fascinating documentaries I ever watched. [1](https://youtu.be/xy86ak2fQJM)
Insects don't contain a CNS. Therefore, insects are vegan according to my defintion of vegan. Just like the champignons (mushrooms) and jellyfish and yeast are vegan.
I'm reminded about this beautiful documentary about the fig tree and her symbioses: The Queen Of Trees [1]. This is an official version. It was broadcasted on American TV, and this was ripped on BitTorrent. I can highly recommend watching this documentary. It teaches us how cruel yet intelligent nature (and evolution) can be. There are mutual benefits for different species who suffer or die in the process.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy86ak2fQJM