Intelligence • 2017 • episode "S1E2" Spy in the Wild

Category: Nature

Undercover cameras help to explore the world of animal intelligence, ingenuity and creativity in their hunting, protection and health. Spy Orang-utan meets her real-life counterparts in Borneo to capture how, living close to local people, they have gained unexpected skills in sawing wood and washing with soap, while Spy Termite catches one of the world's cleverest animal tricksters, the drongo, as he tries to outwit a group of meerkats in the battle for food.

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Spy in the Wild • 2017 - 2020 • 9 episodes •

Love

Spy Pup is immersed in wild dog life to explore their maternal love, and Spy Penguin records the turbulent action of the mating season, as a male Adelie penguin falls victim to a pebble thief that ruins his chances of love for the season. Spy Tortoise and Spy Bushbaby keep watch on chimpanzees, while in perhaps the most moving scenes; Spy Monkey becomes the focus of attention for a troop of concerned langurs who believe the motionless camera-creature has died.

2017 • Nature

Intelligence

Undercover cameras help to explore the world of animal intelligence, ingenuity and creativity in their hunting, protection and health. Spy Orang-utan meets her real-life counterparts in Borneo to capture how, living close to local people, they have gained unexpected skills in sawing wood and washing with soap, while Spy Termite catches one of the world's cleverest animal tricksters, the drongo, as he tries to outwit a group of meerkats in the battle for food.

2017 • Nature

Friendship

The undercover cameras reveal how animals rely upon each other for a range of activities. Arctic wolves group together to survive in one of the harshest landscapes on earth, a band of hungry mongoose groom warthogs for tasty morsels - before turning their attention to Spy Warthog - and fish help clean hippos' bodies, as well as providing a unique dental service. Meanwhile, crocodiles and dikkop birds take part in a mutual neighbourhood watch against hungry prowling monitor lizards, and Spy Rattlesnake captures how prairie dogs and burrowing owls use their language skills to tell the rest of their community of approaching danger.

2017 • Nature

Mischief

The undercover cameras reveal how animals often get up to mischief among themselves - and some are downright criminal. A colony of adelie penguins hunker down to avoid a storm, unaware one of them is a thief out to steal the stones that make up their nests, and Spy Tropicbird witnesses an aerial attack by aggressive frigate birds who attempt to steal his fish. A boisterous elephant has a temper tantrum in the mud near the waterhole, chimpanzees have extra-marital affairs and lemurs get high by sniffing toxic millipedes.

2017 • Nature

Meet the Spies

A behind-the-scenes view of the extraordinary idea of deploying the Spy Creatures, showing how the concept evolved and became the inspiration for the animatronic animals of the series. This documentary reveals the painstaking work behind building the lifelike models, from first concept until they become `alive' for the first time.

2017 • Nature

Tropics

Cameras follow a family of gorillas, with Spy Grub and Spy Fruit testing their intelligence. Elsewhere in Brazil, Spy Jaguar Cub explores a beautiful gathering of water birds, capybara and caiman, and joins Spy Caiman to film a feeding frenzy.

2020 • Nature

The North

Cameras follow Japanese macaques in the snow-covered mountains of Japan, as they gather at steaming hot thermal pools to bathe and socialise. Elsewhere in the cool mountains of Mexico, cameras capture a spectacular gathering of billions of monarch butterflies, and in Bavaria, Germany, Spy Beaver gains unique access to the secretive world of the beaver.

2020 • Nature

The Islands

On Christmas Island, the Spy Crab camera walks among red crabs as they march into the sea, and in Madagascar, cameras follow many of the species of chameleon that live there. Meanwhile on Seal island off the tip of South Africa, Spy Seal Pup finds itself in the midst of the 60,000 cape fur seals that have come ashore to raise their young.

2020 • Nature

The Poles

Cameras travel to the Arctic and Antarctic circles, following chicks in a king penguin colony on the island of South Georgia in the Southern Ocean. On the other side of the world, Spy Walrus discovers a walrus family hauled out on an ice floe, before Spy Gyrfalcon follows the family as they head towards dry land. Elsewhere on Norway's Hornoya island, Spy Puffin follows thousands of male puffins as they gather in the snow and search for their life-long partners.

2020 • Nature

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S1E4Mysteries of Evolution • 2017 • Nature

Dinosaur

Attenborough visits several museums of natural history. With the aid of dinosaur skeletons, he demonstrates how they existed in real life, and speculates about the reasons for their sudden demise.

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Rebirth

It's time to close another chapter in the lives of the animals of the Serengeti, the end of an extraordinary year for them all. But first, all around is a blackened smoking wasteland, the aftermath of the huge fire. Which of the families made it out alive and who is still missing? Torrential rain brings hope and the land is reborn into a green paradise as water quenches the scorched earth. Mirroring the changes in the landscape, the cycle of death and rebirth comes to the fore as the Serengeti's elders prepare their young for adulthood and a life on their own. Lioness Kali is alive, but one of her three cubs is missing. Kike the cheetah returns and must train her grown-up cubs to survive on their own. The short, lush grasslands make the perfect training grounds for her lessons of survival. She teaches them to stalk, chase and trip their prey. A giraffe, grieving over the unexplained death of her calf, interrupts the cubs' training regime. Leader of the wild dogs Jasari is also showing his pups how to survive on their own, but when he teaches them to fight off hyenas, they too are interrupted by the grieving giraffe. In the flooded river, elephant matriarch Nalla's baby struggles in the torrents. Bakari returns when a huge fight with a rival baboon troop threatens his family, and he shows his bravery once more. Kali has yet more surprises in store which bring hope for her and her pride's future. Kike has to leave her cubs and hope that they are ready for independence. With the death of an old male elephant, all the families come together and old rivalries end in a remarkable truce. With a new regime in place among the baboons, the harmony of nature is restored and for now, the future is bright for the families of the Serengeti.

S1E6Serengeti • 2019 • Nature

Sweet Fresh Water

Attenborough describes the course the Amazon, starting high up in the Andes of Peru, whose streams flow into the great river. Young rivers are by nature vigorous and dangerous: they flow fast and form rapids, thick with mud and sediment.

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Kalahari

David Attenborough takes a breathtaking journey through the vast and diverse continent of Africa as it has never been seen before. Part 1: Kalahari In Africa's ancient south west corner, two extraordinary deserts sit side by side. Water is in short supply, yet these deserts are somehow full of life because the creatures that live here have turned the rules of survival on their head. This film celebrates nature's ingenuity, no matter how tough it gets. In the Kalahari scrublands, clever meerkats are outsmarted by a wily bird, solitary and belligerent black rhinos get together to party and giant insects stalk huge flocks of birds. Rain almost never falls in the Namib - instead it must make do with vaporous, vanishing fog. The creatures in this, the world's oldest desert, have gone to the extremes, as spiders wheel to escape and a desert giraffe fights to defend his scant resources in the greatest giraffe battle ever filmed.

S1E1Africa • 2013 • Nature

Theme and Variation

This episode continues the study of mammals, and particularly those whose young gestate inside their bodies. Attenborough asks why these have become so varied and tries to discover the common theme that links them. Examples of primitive mammals that are still alive today include the treeshrew, the desman and the star-nosed mole. Insect eaters vary enormously from the aardvark, giant anteater and pangolin to those to which much of this programme is devoted: the bats, of which there are nearly 1,000 different species. These took to flying at night, and its possible that they evolved from treeshrews that jumped from tree to tree, in much the same way as a flying squirrel.

10/13Life on Earth • 1979 • Nature