Meet the Meerkats • 2020

49:37

A look at the extraordinary social lives of primates. From devoted fathers and protective relatives to lifelong friendships and complex hierarchies, the episode explores how family bonds help primates survive and prosper.

S1E2 • Primates • 2020 • Nature

38:12

A documentary on insect life in meadows and ponds.

S1E2 • Microcosmos • 1996 • Nature

50:20

Trying to raise cubs in a cauldron of warring predators tests Saba the leopard's powers of survival to the utmost.

S1E1 • Savage Kingdom • 2016 • Nature

59:01

In this bird's-eye view of two continents, demoiselle cranes negotiate a dangerous Himalayan pass on their way to India while high-flying bar-headed geese take the fast track five miles above. In Rajasthan, vultures watch hunting tigers hoping for a meal and pigeons visit a temple dedicated solely to sacred rats. Pigeons are also our guide to the greatest gatherings of camels on Earth and learn to dodge buzzards around the battlements of Jodhpur Fort. 9,000 cranes overwinter in the most unlikely of spots - a barbed wire compound in the centre of a desert town. In Australia, rainbow lorikeets drop in on Sydney and patrol Australia's Gold Coast. In the outback, white cockatoos swirl in thousands and budgerigars pass Uluru (Ayers Rock) and gather in the biggest flocks ever recorded. In China, swallows and swifts visit the Great Wall and the Forbidden City of Beijing. In Japan, the country's most revered birds - Japanese cranes are fed fish by appreciative locals and are joined in strange, momentary harmony by hungry red foxes, white-tailed eagles and Steller's eagles. As peace descends, Japanese cranes dance beautifully in the snow.

S1E5 • Earthflight • 2012 • Nature

53:21

This instalment examines the earliest land vegetation and insects. The first plants, being devoid of stems, mainly comprised mosses and liverworts. Using both sexual and asexual methods of reproduction, they proliferated. Descended from segmented sea creatures, millipedes were among the first to take advantage of such a habitat and were quickly followed by other species. Without water to carry eggs, bodily contact between the sexes was now necessary. This was problematical for some hunters, such as spiders and scorpions, who developed courtship rituals to ensure that the female didn't eat the male.

3/13 • Life on Earth • 1979 • Nature

59:06

In Madagascar, the travellers encounter the biggest and the smallest lemurs on earth. But they are searching for the aye-aye, a peculiar lemur which, according to local legend, brings death to those who encounter it.

S1E3 • Last Chance to See • 2009 • Nature