See the Microscopic World in Motion Through These Winning Videos

For 12 years, digital camera and microscope producer Nikon has hosted an annual contest of the perfect movies displaying life and nature on a microscopic scale. On Tuesday, it introduced the most recent winners of the Nikon Small World in Motion Video Competition, together with many extra dazzling entries.

The contest is an offshoot of Nikon’s Small World Competition, with an emphasis on films or digital time-lapsed images taken by a microscope. A panel of scientists and journalists specializing in picture and video judged the entries, and the highest prize went to a time-lapsed video of a zebrafish embryo going by the phases of growth over an eight-hour interval, with fluorescent markers used to show the winding journey that various kinds of cells take to ultimately grow to be totally functioning organs and tissues. Other movies this yr present how a sea anemone’s cells permit it to sting animals that will get too shut, a most cancers cell with extra DNA than it bargained for, and a hydra in the course of its meal.

Here are the highest 5 winners together with some honorable mentions, with movies courtesy of Nikon Small World. A full record of the highest 30 movies could be seen here.