Welcome to the unexpectedly absorbing world of live webcams. It's one of the Internet's more wholesome corners, and somehow also one of its most overlooked.

It starts unexpectedly. You see a link somewhere, "Live Eagle Cam", and you click it. An hour later, you're watching a bald eagle feed its chick in real time and you have fourteen other tabs open to webcams pointed at a coral reef, a sleeping panda, and a beach in Hawaii you've never visited.

Where are the best live webcams to watch online?

Explore.org is the gold standard. It's a nonprofit that hosts hundreds of live cameras trained on wildlife, including bald eagle nests in Iowa, bears fishing in Brooks Falls, Alaska, and oceans full of marine life. During the right season, the Brooks Falls bear cam is genuinely appointment viewing, hundreds of bears converging on a single stretch of falls to catch salmon, and you're watching from a few feet away.

Other standouts:

• African watering holes: Several game reserves in South Africa and Namibia run 24-hour cameras on watering holes.
• The International Space Station: NASA runs a live feed of Earth from space, with audio from mission control in the background.
• Aquariums and marine cams: The Monterey Bay Aquarium and the Georgia Aquarium run excellent live feeds.
• Times Square, Piccadilly Circus, the Eiffel Tower.

What's the best webcam to start with?

Go to explore.org, find the Brooks Falls bear cam, and check if it's active (it runs June through October, peaking in July and August). Watch for ten minutes. If bears fishing for salmon in Alaska doesn't hook you, nothing will.

If it's not bear season: try the African watering hole cams at night. The footage is in infrared, which makes the animals look otherworldly, and you never know what's going to walk into frame. The Internet is full of things built to exploit your attention.