Animated Life: Seeing the Invisible

This animated short video celebrates 17th-century citizen-scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, whose discoveries of microbes changed our view of the biological world.

In 1674, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek looked at a drop of lake water through his homemade microscope and discovered an invisible world that no one knew existed. He was the first to discover bacteria, protists, sperm cells, blood cells, rotifers, and much more.

This short video tells Leeuwenhoek’s story using animated paper puppets. The narrators include microbiologist Bonnie Bassler, who researches how bacteria communicate through quorum sensing.

An audio descriptive version of the film is available via our media player.