Oceans • 2019 • episode "S1E2" • Hostile Planet

58:22

Spring arrives in the polar regions, and the sun appears after an absence of five months; warmth and life return to these magical ice worlds - the greatest seasonal transformation on our planet is underway. Male Adelie penguins arrive in Antarctica to build their nests - it takes a good property to attract the best mates and the males will stop at nothing to better their rivals! But these early birds face the fiercest storms on the planet. In the Arctic, a polar bear mother is hunting with her cubs. Inland, the frozen rivers start to break up and billions of tons of ice are swept downstream in the greatest of polar spectacles. This melt-water fertilizes the Arctic Ocean, feeding vast shoals of Arctic cod and narwhal. The influx of freshwater accelerates the breakup of the sea-ice - an area of ice the size of Australia will soon vanish from the Arctic. On land, a woolly bear caterpillar emerges from the snow having spent the winter frozen solid. Caterpillars normally become moths within months of hatching, but life is so harsh here that the woolly bear takes 14 years to reach adulthood. Once mature it has only days to find a mate before it dies! Alongside the caterpillars white Arctic wolves race to raise their adorable cubs before the cold returns.

S1E2 • Frozen Planet • 2011 • Nature

28:03

The team has come to the very deepest part of the jungle, where streams contain the richest life, as well as danger, from four-metre caiman and the electric eel - a fish with a 600 volt shock.

S1E4 • Amazon Abyss • 2005 • Nature

53:43

In Part One of the miniseries "The Alps", enjoy the Alps in spring and summertime as newborn animals grow up to face the coming brutal winter. (PBS Nature Season 39 Episode 7)

S1E1 • The Alps • 2021 • Nature

58:30

Africa's largest herd of elephants and a fearless pride of young lions come face to face in an epic fight for survival. Rarely do their worlds collide, until now. This is no chance conflict; nature has played its part. Drought has weakened the elephants, and the lions are desperately hungry. The dawn of the giant killers has arrived.

Natural World • 2014 • Nature

59:09

Today Earth is a human world, home to eight billion people and counting. Humans now have a greater effect in shaping Earth’s surface than many natural processes. In this episode, Chris Packham explores how dramatic twists in Earth’s story enabled humans to go from being part of nature to controlling it, and what we can learn from this epic tale before it’s too late. The story begins 66 million years ago with the catastrophic impact of the asteroid that wiped out the (Non-avian) dinosaurs. From the ashes of the desolation that followed, a new animal family rose to power. This was adaptable and inventive enough to emerge out of the harsh new world – the mammals. It began with a distant ancestor that shared many traits of the much maligned, but evolutionarily brilliant, rat. Due to a series of extreme geological and climatic events, mammals evolved into early primates feasting in the newly formed tropical rainforests, and then to early humans travelling vast distances between forests in places like East Africa’s Rift Valley. Earth’s story is a saga spanning 4.5 billion years, but it’s only in the last 11,000 years - with the rise of farming - that our species has started to dramatically impact our planet and its ecosystems. The human chapter of Earth’s story might end in disaster, but Chris is keen to argue for a different ending, where all of humanity’s achievements to date “…were just our dress rehearsals, because in the very near future our species will need to reach the zenith of its achievements and… all humanity will have to learn to put our Earth first.”

S1E5 • Earth: One Planet, Many Lives • 2023 • Nature

46:23

Garden Route National Park is a patchwork of protected areas that safeguard a range of land and marine habitats in southern Africa. Take a tour of this conservationist paradise offering hope for creatures as varied as the humpback whale, the blue duiker antelope, and the Knysna seahorse--the only endangered seahorse in the world.

S1E7 • Great Parks of Africa • 2017 • Nature