Asia • 2024 • 7 episodes • 6h:45m
David Attenborough presents a documentary exploring the wildlife of the world's largest continent, revealing its most remarkable landscapes and animals.
Focuses on the oceans that surround the continent's coastline, which are home to more than 60 per cent of the world's marine species. Featuring footage of reef fish, manta rays, and a juvenile sperm whale, as well as the whirlpools that form in the Indonesian Throughflow.
S1E1 • 2024 • Nature
David Attenborough introduces the wildlife of Asia's mountains, from elephants living in high altitude tea plantations, to gathering of swifts in Thailand's mountainous caves. In Pakistan, markhor fight for mates atop towering cliffs, and in Nepal, the forested foothills of the Himalayas provide hiding places for one of Asia's shyest mammals, the red panda.
S1E2 • 2024 • Nature
How animals survive when the northern half of Asia is transformed by snow and ice each year. Featuring footage of Himalayan wolves hunting the fast-moving chiru antelope, red-crowned cranes learning to perform intricate mating dances, and Amur tigers in the forests where Russia, China, and North Korea meet - an area that is also home to the world's largest owls.
S1E3 • 2024 • Nature
Asia's jungles are exceptionally diverse, but whilst they provide shelter, food and opportunity, they are also full of dangers and hidden threats. In monsoon forests, tigers tenaciously hunt their prey, and prehistoric-looking rhinos play courtship games akin to kiss chase. In tropical rainforests, female orangutans must search far and wide to find their perfect mates. And in the little-known forests of Iraqi Kurdistan, a new Persian leopard population is growing amid minefields.
S1E4 • 2024 • Nature
Footage of animals that live at extremely close quarters with people, from tigers making a home in town to elephants stopping traffic for food. A small park in central Bangkok supports 300 giant lizards, whilst a flying squirrel in Taipei has made a cosy home in a school. Proboscis monkeys are forced to venture uncomfortably closer to humans, and swifts in Jerusalem face tough competition for nest sites.
S1E5 • 2024 • Nature
Animals that live in Asia's deserts and dry grasslands, including the Gobi bear, one of the rarest animals on Earth who communicate by leaving their scent on ancient trees. The Thar in India is the most densely populated desert in the world, and a place where Demoiselle cranes migrate thousands of miles to reach, being welcomed with grain put out by the local Jain community.
S1E6 • 2024 • Nature
Concludes with a look at the work of people striving to protect Asia's endangered wildlife, and what routes conservation could take in the future. In Japan, scientists take pregnant sharks, killed accidentally in fishing nets, and rescue their unborn young in an incubating system that simulates a womb. The programme also visits a village that used to be a hotbed of poaching and is now a centre for bird tourism.
S1E7 • 2024 • Nature