Life on Us • 2014 • 2 episodes • 1h:42m

Your Private Wildlife

Focuses on our skin, our armpits, belly buttons.We are not alone. We are home to a trillion cells that are not our own, but are very much the making of us. Both on us and inside us live bacteria, viruses, protozoans, fungi, worms, lice and mites that we carry throughout our lives. To say that we are in a minority in our own body is an understatement. Our ‘private wildlife’ keeps us healthy, sometimes makes us ill and even changes our behavior.

S1E1 • 2014 • Nature

Superhuman

Takes us into the world of digestion and its amazingly complex environment.Our health, body shape, mood and even our evolution are determined by the unseen life forms that swarm throughout our bodies. There are worms in your bowels, bacteria in your mouth, fungi in your lungs and even viruses in your DNA.The combined genetic information of all these bugs is more than 150 times greater than our own genes. Their cells outnumber our own by 10 to 1. This collective menagerie is called the microbiome, and in a very real sense, it is the making of us all.

S1E2 • 2014 • Nature