The latest archaeology and genetics answer the biggest questions about dogs. Where did they come from? How can they all look so different? Why do they make such perfect companions?
The latest archaeology and genetics answer the biggest questions about dogs. Where did they come from? How can they all look so different? Why do they make such perfect companions?
2020 • Nature
The latest archaeology and genetics answer the biggest questions about our cats. Where do they come from? Why do we love them? What’s going on inside their heads?
2020 • Nature
The Cretaceous was the golden age on ancient Earth. Magnificent and terrifying dinosaurs like Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus ruled the land. But they were all wiped out in an instant by one of the most powerful impacts our Earth has ever endured -- a collision with an asteroid!
3/3 • Ancient Earth • 2017 • Nature
This instalment looks at the ways in which plants procreate. Examining how plants use brightly coloured flowers and sweet scents to lure animals to them so they can spread their seeds to other flowers.
3/6 • Private Life of Plants • 1995 • Nature
The story of animals surviving one of the harshest seasonal changes on the planet continues. As winter turns to spring, temperatures rise and Yellowstone bursts into life. Beavers feast on new green shoots, baby bison take their first faltering steps and grizzly bear cubs emerge from dens to explore this new green world. But spring is also a perilous time. Wolves are hungrier than usual after slim winter pickings. And rising temperatures melt the vast mountain snow pack, sending a million tons of water flooding into the rivers. Only the toughest will survive.
2/3 • Yellowstone: Wildest Winter to Blazing Summer • 2016 • Nature
If you have ever wondered what would happen in your own home if you were taken away and everything inside was left to rot, the answer is revealed in this programme which explores the strange and surprising science of decay. For two months, a glass box containing a typical kitchen and garden was left to rot in full public view within Edinburgh Zoo. In this resulting documentary, Dr George McGavin and his team use time-lapse cameras and specialist photography to capture the extraordinary way in which moulds, microbes and insects are able to break down our everyday things and allow new life to emerge from old. Decay is something that many of us are repulsed by, but as the programme shows, it's a process that's vital in nature. And seen in close up, it has an unexpected and sometimes mesmerising beauty.
2011 • Nature
Everyone hates mosquitos. So shouldn't we just get rid of them?
In the third episode, Iain discovers the remarkable impact of just one plant: grass. On the savannah of South Africa he sees how grass unleashed a firestorm to fight its greatest enemy, the forests. He shows how cutting your finger on a blade of grass shows us how it transformed life in the oceans. In Senegal, he meets the cleverest chimps in the world. And, in the ruins of the oldest temple on Earth, he tells the extraordinary story of how grass triggered human civilisation.
3/3 • How to Grow a Planet • 2012 • Nature