Level: late secondary, tertiary
Duration: 19.5 mins

Seeing is believing!

All animals start out in life as a single egg cell. Once it has been fertilised, the egg embarks upon a truly remarkable journey as it transforms itself into an embryo. Using time-lapse to compress events that take hours or even days into a few seconds, this video illustrates in vivid colour some of the major events of embryogenesis in the African toad Xenopus.

To follow what happens during embryogenesis, students and teachers usually have to interpret diagrams and still photographs. This video shows directly the dynamics of these processes, and thus makes them far easier to understand and remember. Includes a new animation of gastrulation.

Our video covers in detail these major events of early embryogenesis:

* the initial cycles of cell divisions
*gastrulation
*neurulation
*elongation of the embryo and its escape from the egg membrane
*the transformation of the simple embryo into a recognisable tadpole