The Hidden World Moves

Nikon has handed out awards in its second annual Small World In Motion competition–a contest for the best video of the world we can’t see with our naked eye.

Here are a few of my favorites…

A tiny animal called a rotifer lives inside a tube attached to a plant. It beats hairs called cilia to pump food into the tube, where it can be ground up by the rotifer’s jaw-like structures.

Here, kidney cells grow in a dish into the distinctive branched anatomy that lets kidneys filter waste out of blood.

Cells move by tearing down and rebuilding their internal skeleton. This video of a cell shows the filaments that make up the skeleton as glowing sticks. (Here’s an article I wrote about cell skeletons in the New York Times.)

The entire gallery of winners and runners-up is here.