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When you picture the lowest levels of the food chain, you might imagine herbivores happily munching on lush, living green plants. But this idyllic image leaves out a huge (and slightly less appetizing) source of nourishment: dead stuff. John C. Moore details the "brown food chain," explaining how such unlikely delicacies as pond scum and animal poop contribute enormous amounts of energy to our ecosystems.
In the Land of the Cave Bear, Alice ventures to the parts of the northern hemisphere, hit hardest by the cold - Europe and Siberia. High in the mountains of Transylvania, a cave sealed for thousands of years reveals grisly evidence for a fight to the death between two staving giants, a cave bear and a cave lion. Yet Alice discovers that for woolly rhinos and woolly mammoths, the Ice Age created a bounty. The Mammoth Steppe, a vast tract of land which went half way round the world, provided food all year round, for those that liked the cold. It was these mammoths that Europe's most dangerous predators hunted for their survival.
S1E2 • Ice Age Giants • 2013 • Nature
Archimedes once said “Give me a place to stand, and I shall move the Earth.”
David Attenborough introduces conservation heroes fighting to save the world's wildlife, from exploring remote jungles to going undercover to catch criminals in the illegal ivory trade. In South Africa, new breeding populations of black rhino are set up in safe havens where they will be protected from poachers, while a conservationist in Ecuador works to protect endangered frogs.
S1E8 • Planet Earth III • 2023 • Nature
Today, Iolo discovers the difficulties birds face in order to stay alive, and the programme includes a dramatic scene in which a sparrow hawk seizes the moment to attack a woodpigeon nest.
S1E3 • Secret Life of Birds • 2012 • Nature
What makes plants grow is a simple enough question, but the answer turns out to be one of the most complicated and fascinating stories in science and took over 300 years to unravel. Timothy Walker, director of the Oxford University Botanic Garden, reveals how the breakthroughs of Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, Chelsea gardener Phillip Miller and English naturalist John Ray created the science of botany. Between them these quirky, temperamental characters unlocked the mysteries of the plant kingdom and they began to glimpse a world where bigger, better and stronger plants could be created. Nurseryman Thomas Fairchild created the world's first artificial hybrid flower - an entirely new plant that didn't exist in nature. Today, botanists continue the search for new flowers, better crops and improved medicines to treat life-threatening diseases.
S1E1 • Botany: A Blooming History • 2011 • Nature