Smarter Every Day in the Amazon

The Team

We’ve had the pleasure of working with Destin from the educational (and incredibly entertaining) YouTube channel Smarter Every Day here at Rainforest Expeditions. He spent a week with Jeff Cremer (photo tour guide) and me (Phil Torres) filming all the best animals the Amazon has to offer. His youtube channel has over 25 million views and has short educational videos that are typically physical science based. We were happy to show him the wonders of the plant and animal world that surround the Rainforest Expeditions lodges to see how his experience with engineering science translates into the natural world.

The equipment.

Destin was equipped with a portable, not yet on the market Phantom Miro high speed camera that can film at thousands of frames per second. Thus, we were able to get some incredible footage of birds, butterflies, and bugs in ways that have never been captured before. This includes footage of a ‘flash’ of macaws from the Tambopata Research Center claylick as well as butterfly flight patterns that, with the ultra-slow motion footage captured, were about as incredible as any wildlife footage we’ve ever seen.


Using Jeff’s knack for photography and finding good lighting, our guide Gerson’s incredible ability to find us animals, the sound producer Gordon’s innovative recording techniques, my science input, and Destin’s curiosity and high speed video recording magic; we managed to capture some incredible video and gain detailed insights into some of the Amazon’s most impressive creatures.

Needless to say, we’re looking forward to sharing those videos with you once they are fully edited in the coming weeks. For now, check out Destin’s youtube channel and learn something new: www.youtube.com/SmarterEveryDay

A still from a high-speed video of dragonfly wings flapping.