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Sit back, relax and grab a cold one, because you're about to take an aerial tour of the Serengeti, courtesy of that flying drone you're staring at. Developed by Microdrones, this MD4-100 quadrotor was recently sent off to Kenya, where it gathered footage for a TV nature documentary produced by TBS Japan. By hovering over the terrain, the craft was able to get relatively up close and personal with zebras, elephants and other wildlife, without creating the same kind of disturbance that heavy duty, camera-laden trucks can wreak. Presumably, that's because the animals have no idea what to make of a flying robot, though part of us wants to believe there's some sort of full-circle, techno-evolutionary dynamic at work here, momentously bringing bot and beast together in some sort of pre-apocalyptic symbiosis. But that's just us. Hover past the break to see the video for yourself. IEEE Spectrum microdronesGMBH (YouTube)

It's been exactly 50 years to the day -- in some places, anyway -- that cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's maiden voyage set off an international space race that defined an era, and while only Gagarin knew exactly what it was like to be the first man in space, documentarian Christopher Riley is giving us a glimpse of what the world might have looked like from the porthole of Vostok 1. As we reported before, First Orbit is a mashup of sorts that features original audio recordings from Gagarin's flight, coupled with footage taken by Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli from aboard the International Space Station. The result is nothing short of stunning, but you don't have to take our word for it -- in fact, go ahead and grab yourself some popcorn, hit the play button, and prepare to be amazed. First Orbit