Seasonal Seas • 2001 • episode "S1E5" • Blue Planet I

58:28

Sir David Attenborough joins an archaeological dig uncovering Britain’s biggest mammoth discovery in almost 20 years. In 2017, in a gravel quarry near Swindon, two amateur fossil hunters found an extraordinary cache of Ice Age mammoth remains and a stone hand-axe made by a Neanderthal. Professor Ben Garrod joins the team at DigVentures during the excavation as they try to discover why the mammoths were here and how they died. Could the Neanderthals have killed these Ice Age giants?

2021 • Nature

29:15

As almost all animal inhabitants of Antarctica are forced to migrate north, the sea underneath the frozen ice still provides a home to many specially adapted fish whose cells are protected from freezing through an "antifreeze" liquid. Many of them feed on the faeces of other animals. The most notable larger animal that does not migrate north is perhaps the Weddell Seal, which can be found as close as 1300 kilometres to the pole. Groups of seals tear holes into the ice to dive for food and come up to breathe. The females come back to the ice to give birth.

S1E5 • Life in the Freezer • 2003 • Nature

59:01

In episode three, Fortey looks at the Ice Age. 2.8 million years ago - triggered by slight changes in the Earth's orbit around the sun and shifts in its ocean currents - the world began to cool. Within a few thousand years much of the planet was shrouded in a dense cloak of ice that would come and go until only 10,000 years ago. We call this age of ice - the Pleistocene Age - and it transformed the hierarchy of nature. This is the story of how a few specialist species that evolved to live in the biting cold survived into the present day.

S1E3 • Survivors: Nature's Indestructible Creatures • 2012 • Nature

59:09

David Attenborough narrates this astonishing story of a wild cheetah family. Known for being fast, captivating and extremely elusive, a new insight into their remarkable lives is offered by cameraman Kim Wolhuter. For nearly two years, he walked alongside a wild cheetah mother and her young family to unravel in intimate detail what it takes to turn tiny cubs into accomplished predators.

Natural World • 2017 • Nature

56:39

In the heart of the Atlantic, Gordon Buchanan joins a team looking to discover why huge numbers of devil rays, fish with 'wings' nearly four metres across, and gather every summer near the Azores archipelago. In northeast Turkey the on-board cameras are carried by brown bears as part of a study trying to understand why so many bears survive in a small patch of forest. In southern France on-board cameras help scientists trying to prove that guard dogs can help protect sheep flocks from wolf attacks. The night-vision cameras show how the dogs work together as a team to fend off the wolves.

S1E3 • Animals with Cameras • 2018 • Nature

52:04

A thousand years ago, many millions of whales dominated the sea, with their ancient behaviours vital to the well-being of the oceans. These marine mammals are the ambassadors between one world and another, land and sea, their close communities only now being truly researched and understood. They are still a keystone species in our fragile ecosystem today, with crucial impact on our seas and the life contained within them. But whaling decimated their numbers over the last 150 years, in particular the whaling industry run by the KGB during the Cold War. In a basement in Odessa, top-secret Soviet whaling reports record the unimaginable number of whales killed. This film tells how surviving members of the Soviet leadership, and original Soviet whalers, uncover these secret records, allowing us to understand the magnitude of historical whale populations and the shocking impact of commercial whaling. Whale populations are now largely cherished across the world as we begin to understand these amazing animals, their intelligence and their important contribution to the sustainability and health of the oceans.

2023 • Nature