Feathering the Nest • 2012 • episode "S1E2" • Secret Life of Birds

49:18

Temperatures are about to plummet as our planet heads straight into a period known as 'Snowball Earth'. Throughout its history, Earth has continuously fluctuated between greenhouse and icehouse. But this particular icehouse phase is the most extreme period of cold our planet has ever witnessed, with ice encasing Earth from the poles to the equator. Life, which had only recently developed on the planet, seems doomed to extinction, but somehow manages to survive.

S1E2 • Fateful Planet • 2024 • Nature

58:09

The documentary series reveals the extraordinary riches and wonders of the Polar Regions that have kept people visiting them for thousands of years. Today, their survival relies on a combination of ancient wisdom and cutting-edge science. Most Arctic people live in Siberia, either in cities like Norilsk - the coldest city on earth - or out on the tundra, where tribes like the Dogan survive by herding reindeer, using them to drag their homes behind them. On the coast, traditional people still hunt walrus from open boats - it is dangerous work, but one big walrus will feed a family for weeks. Settlers are drawn to the Arctic by its abundant minerals; the Danish Armed Forces maintain their claim to Greenland's mineral wealth with an epic dog sled patrol, covering 2,000 miles through the winter. Above, the spectacular northern lights can disrupt power supplies so scientists monitor it constantly, firing rockets into it to release a cloud of glowing smoke 100 kilometres high. In contrast, Antarctica is so remote and cold that it was only a century ago that the first people explored the continent. Captain Scott's hut still stands as a memorial to these men. Science is now the only significant human activity allowed; robot submarines are sent deep beneath the ice in search of new life-forms, which may also be found in a labyrinth of ice caves high up on an active volcano. Above, colossal balloons are launched into the purest air on earth to detect cosmic rays. At the South Pole there is a research base designed to withstand the world's most extreme winters. Cut off from the outside world for six months, the base is totally self-sufficient, even boasting a greenhouse.

S1E6 • Frozen Planet • 2011 • Nature

22:00

The single spiral tusk of the narwhal inspiration for tales of unicorns and the myriad variations on the twist of the snail shell have delighted and fascinated naturalists and artists since the dawn of civilization.

S1E4 • Natural Curiosities • Nature

44:18

Their habitat once stretched across the Prairies, but when humans wiped out the one thing they eat, the black-footed ferret disappeared. The only native North American ferret, this mysterious animal became the most endangered species in the world. For many years, they survived only in zoos. Now a fledgling project is attempting to bring the black-footed ferret back to Saskatchewan. This dramatic story of the ferrets’ reintroduction to the wild unfolds in Return of the Prairie Bandit, a new documentary by Kenton Vaughan set in the stunning prairie of southern Saskatchewan.

S50E13 • The Nature of Things • 2011 • Nature

58:53

Even after thousands of years of ice crushing the northern hemisphere and temperatures of 20 degrees lower than those of today, many of the great giants of the ice age still walked the earth. It was only when the world had warmed up again that mammoths, woolly rhinos, sabre-toothed cats, giant ground sloths and glyptodonts finally became extinct. Professor Alice Roberts sets off on her last voyage back to the Ice Age to discover why.

S1E3 • Ice Age Giants • 2013 • Nature

42:52

One of the world’s happiest, yet most vulnerable marsupials, the Quokka thrives only on Rottnest Island. In almost plague proportions over ten thousand of the strange relic wallabies live here. How do they survive here in such inhospitable conditions and nowhere else?

S1E1 • Rottnest Island: Kingdom of the Quokka • 2018 • Nature