The savannah is home to some of the greatest herds on Earth, and in this episode, Wild Africa brings you close encounters with these animals. The savannah is Africa's youngest landscape, shaped by the weather and the animals themselves as the continent dried. It is now home to baboons, wildebeest, lions, cheetah, and aardvarks who must struggle through the eight-month dry season to survive.
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The savannah is home to some of the greatest herds on Earth, and in this episode, Wild Africa brings you close encounters with these animals. The savannah is Africa's youngest landscape, shaped by the weather and the animals themselves as the continent dried. It is now home to baboons, wildebeest, lions, cheetah, and aardvarks who must struggle through the eight-month dry season to survive.
2001 • Nature
As a whole, Africa is a dry continent with deserts dominating the landscape. Wild Africa explores how these deserts were created, and the amazing ways in which animals and plants have evolved to cope with the meagre and unpredictable rainfall, intense solar radiation, shortages of food and lack of shelter. By traveling through the African deserts, Wild Africa reveals that given enough time, a diverse variety of animals and plants can make a living in even the harshest conditions.
2001 • Nature
Africa's coasts were formed by the break-up of Gondwanaland 100 million years ago. They define the familiar shape of this special continent, and touch on a variety of environments including deserts, mountains, forests, wetlands and savannahs. Wild Africa takes us back in time to witness the birth of Africa and also carries us on a spectacular journey around the edge of the continent.
2001 • Nature
Plants amazingly dominate this green world by employing poisons, recruiting defensive armies, feeding off the dead and using animals for pollination and seed dispersal. For predators this world presents exceptional challenges, not only in finding prey in such a tangled place, but in how to deal with the toxins that so many animals and plants are laced with.
2001 • Nature
Just as Africa constantly throws-up mountains which intercept moisture-laden clouds from the oceans, so the changing landscape also creates grooves and basins which channel and gather the precious moisture that falls on the high ground.
2001 • Nature
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.
S1E4 • Spy in the Wild • 2017 • Nature
Life and Death explores the impact of Darwin’s ideas on our understanding of the meaning of extinction and the interconnections between all life on earth and the environment. Darwin learned many lessons from the giant fossils of extinct animals he found in Argentina and Chile. He eventually revealed to us the unpalatable truth that the logical conclusion to evolution is not perfection but extinction. The extinction of one species creates an environmental niche for new species to fill. Darwin’s theory also gives us vital knowledge we can use to help prolong the existence of our species by respecting the interconnections between all elements of the natural world and the environment. It’s a story in which Darwin’s ideas are taken up with great enthusiasm by his followers throughout the 20th century. But humanity misses one opportunity after another to acknowledge and reduce its destructive impact on the planet. As a result we have set in motion the sixth mass extinction of life on earth. And we are running out of time to do something about it by preserving ecological "hotspots" like certain rainforests which are some of the most productive cradles of evolution. This programme is a warning, but also a celebration, of the knowledge Charles Darwin gave us in his theory of evolution. It confirms that Darwin’s theory continues to inform our understanding of ourselves, our planet and the intricate interconnections between all life on earth.
S1E3 • Darwin's Dangerous Idea • 2009 • Nature
The wildlife that inhabit the snow-covered forest and open tundra of the far north, including Arctic foxes that dig face first in the snow to hunt for lemmings and turtle hatchlings that stay frozen during winter, emerging from suspended animation in the first thaws of spring. Snowy owls take advantage of 24 hours of continuous daylight to hunt as much as possible. Plus, a look at how climate change is harming this environment by melting the permafrost deep within the soil.
S1E5 • Frozen Planet II narrated by Sir David Attenborough • 2022 • Nature
Jungles are home to 80% of all species but they cover just 2% of the planet. When animals in these crowded forests want to mate, the challenge is how to stand out from the crowd.
S1E3 • The Mating Game • 2021 • Nature
The human eye is an amazing mechanism, able to detect anywhere from a few photons to a few quadrillion, or switch focus from the screen in front of you to the distant horizon in a third of a second. How did these complex structures evolve? Joshua Harvey details the 500 million year story of the human eye.
In this first episode, he investigates how and why birds communicate, looking at the reasons snipe use their tail feathers to make a very distinctive noise and what's happening when thousands of starlings participate in stunning aerial displays in Aberystwyth.
S1E1 • Secret Life of Birds • 2012 • Nature