River of Life • 2007 • episode "S1E2" • Ganges

58:17

For the animals in the polar regions, autumn means dramatic battles and epic journeys. Time is running out - the Arctic Ocean is freezing over and the sea ice is advancing at 2.5 miles per day around Antarctica. Polar bears gather in large numbers on the Arctic coast as they wait for the return of the ice. Soon, tempers fray and violent sparring contests break out. Meanwhile 2,000 beluga whales head for one special estuary, a gigantic 'whale spa' where they will thrash their snow-white bodies against the gravel and exfoliate. Inland, the tundra undergoes a dramatic transformation from green to fiery red. Here, musk ox males slam head-first into each other with the force of a 30mph car crash as they struggle to defend their harems. Frisky young caribou males play a game of 'grandma's footsteps' as they try to steal the boss's female. Down in Antarctica, Adelie penguin chicks huddle together in creches. When a parent returns from fishing, it leads its twins on a comical steeplechase - sadly there's only enough for one, so the winner gets the meal. Two months later and the chicks are fully feathered apart from downy Mohican hairdos - they're ready to take their first swim - reluctantly though, as it seems penguins are not born with a love of water! And with good reason - a leopard seal explodes from the sea and pulls one from an ice floe, a hunting manoeuvre that has never been filmed before. As winter approaches and everyone has left, the giant emperor penguin arrives and makes an epic trek inland to breed. The mothers soon return to the sea leaving the fathers to hold the eggs and endure the coldest winter on earth.

S1E4 • Frozen Planet • 2011 • Nature

50:51

Giant insects once dominated the earth before the dinosaurs. Thanks to new technologies combining genetics, ethology, geology and even particle physics, paleontologists can now recreate the missing branches of the tree of life. Assumptions have been shattered and all the rules are changing.

S1E1 • Ancient Earth: Series 2 • 2018 • Nature

58:21

Life in some of the many deserts and grasslands around the world, including in the baked Namib desert, where a pair of ostriches raise their family in the searing heat to keep them safe from predators. One troop of desert baboons are on a continual quest to find water and a young mother who is low in the pecking order must battle for her right to drink. Closer to the equator, in the grassland paradise of the Cerrado in Brazil, lives the rare, fruit-eating maned wolf, a bizarre creature about whom little is known.

S1E3 • Planet Earth III • 2023 • Nature

10:56

For most of the Earth's history, life consisted of the simplest organisms; but then something happened that would give rise to staggering diversity, and, ultimately, life as complex as that which we see today. Scientists are still struggling to figure out just what that was.

The Economist • 2015 • Nature

50:17

India is a vast land of seasonal extremes. Monsoon rains flood the land and make it green but once they are gone, heat and drought builds. It is a challenge for the animals but it also fosters an amazing variety of landscapes filled with diverse life. From semi-aquatic rhinos to desert lions, India's dynamic lands are full of surprises. It also attracts spectacular visitors from afar like the huge flocks of demoiselle cranes.

Part 1 • Hidden India • 2016 • Nature

58:59

Fortey travels to the rainforests of Madagascar - an ancient island that has spawned some of the most extraordinary groups of plants and animals anywhere in the world. From beautiful Indri lemurs, toxic frogs, and the cat-like giant mongoose called the fossa, to evolutionary oddities like the giraffe-necked weevil and the otherworldly aye-aye, he uncovers the secrets of the evolutionary niche - examining how, given millions of years, animals and plants can adapt to fill almost any opportunity they find.

Part 2 • Nature's Wonderlands: Islands of Evolution • 2016 • Nature