The Pale Pack • 2016 • episode "S1E5" • Savage Kingdom

46:41

Dogs. Man's best friend. But do we really know our faithful companions?

Nature

59:09

Today Earth is a human world, home to eight billion people and counting. Humans now have a greater effect in shaping Earth’s surface than many natural processes. In this episode, Chris Packham explores how dramatic twists in Earth’s story enabled humans to go from being part of nature to controlling it, and what we can learn from this epic tale before it’s too late. The story begins 66 million years ago with the catastrophic impact of the asteroid that wiped out the (Non-avian) dinosaurs. From the ashes of the desolation that followed, a new animal family rose to power. This was adaptable and inventive enough to emerge out of the harsh new world – the mammals. It began with a distant ancestor that shared many traits of the much maligned, but evolutionarily brilliant, rat. Due to a series of extreme geological and climatic events, mammals evolved into early primates feasting in the newly formed tropical rainforests, and then to early humans travelling vast distances between forests in places like East Africa’s Rift Valley. Earth’s story is a saga spanning 4.5 billion years, but it’s only in the last 11,000 years - with the rise of farming - that our species has started to dramatically impact our planet and its ecosystems. The human chapter of Earth’s story might end in disaster, but Chris is keen to argue for a different ending, where all of humanity’s achievements to date “…were just our dress rehearsals, because in the very near future our species will need to reach the zenith of its achievements and… all humanity will have to learn to put our Earth first.”

S1E5 • Earth: One Planet, Many Lives • 2023 • Nature

53:27

Sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs in a fiery global catastrophe. But we know little about how their successors, the mammals, recovered and took over the world. Now, hidden inside ordinary-looking rocks, an astonishing trove of fossils reveals a dramatic new picture of how rat-sized creatures ballooned in size and began to evolve into the vast array of species.

NOVA PBS • 2019 • Nature

48:02

With over 350,000 different varieties, these ancient insects make up nearly one-fourth of all known animal species.

S1E3 • Macro Worlds • 2020 • Nature

89:30

Award-winning wildlife cameraman Vianet Djenguet has been invited by a team of conservationists from the Kahuzi-Biega National Park in Democratic Republic of the Congo to closely document their effort to protect the eastern lowland gorilla, a critically endangered great ape and the largest primate on earth. By living amongst this group of our primate kin for three months, will the habituation of this gorilla family, coupled with Vianet's extraordinary journey, succeed in the effort to save the eastern lowland gorillas from extinction?

2024 • Nature

46:59

He continues his epic 650-mile journey on foot, following the annual migration of Botswana's 130,000 elephants, and faces his toughest challenge yet. Together with his guide Kane, Lev treks along the route taken by the male elephants through the immense salt pans of the Makgadikgadi, via the frontier town of Gweta, to the edge of the Okavango Delta. Along the way, he narrowly escapes being surrounded by nervous bull elephants, before enjoying the incredible experience of being up close to the same group as they drink at a waterhole.

S1E2 • Walking with Elephants with Levison Wood • 2020 • Nature