Will explore the strategy, deception and feats of engineering plants use to thrive in the changing weather of different seasons. In the face of conditions ranging from ice and snow to raging fires, survival is often a question of perfect timing - particularly when contending with intense competition and surprising predators. In this episode, David Attenborough travels to Finland to show one of the most extreme examples of seasonal plant life in the Arctic Circle. He also travels to California to see how climate change is affecting giant sequoias. These ancient trees like all other seasonal plants depend on the predictability of the seasons and our current changing climate threatens their survival.
A team of intrepid palaeontologists recently discovered a lost world of dinosaurs in the unlikeliest of places — deep in the dark, snowy wilds of northern Alaska. Surprisingly, new findings indicates that dinosaurs thrived year-round and raised their young in frigid and dark conditions in the far north of the Arctic Circle. Rappelling down giant ice cliffs bordering the Colville River, the team wields chainsaws to extract fossils frozen into the permafrost. Newly found dinosaur tracks indicates that a wide variety of species once flourished there, including herds of duck-bills, horned herbivores, pterosaurs, a new type of velociraptor, and northern relatives of T-rex.
The film documents the historic journey of a team of adventurers as they strive to complete the world's first completely human powered ocean row from Cape Horn to the Antarctic Peninsula across The Drake Passage, the most dangerous 600 miles of open ocean on Earth. The expedition was captained by Icelandic explorer Fiann Paul, who was joined by a team of six record-holding explorers and athletes from four nations and three continents, including Colin O'Brady. The row pushes the entire crew to their limits, testing their physical and mental strength as they work to accomplish something many think was impossible.
A look at the life, passions, achievements and tragedies surrounding the famous Jacques Cousteau, featuring an archive of his newly restored footage. Its focus will be on the inventor-explorer-environmentalist-filmmaker revolution, i.e., giving mankind the resources to explore the ocean with the Aqua Lung, calling attention to ocean pollution, and his long-time collaboration.
Grasslands cover one quarter of all land and support the vast gatherings of wildlife, but to survive here animals must endure the most hostile seasonal changes on the planet. From Asia's bizarre-looking Saiga antelope to the giant anteaters of Brazil, grassland animals have adapted in extraordinary ways to cope with these extremes. In the flooded Okavango, lions take on formidable buffalo in epic battles, on the savannah bee-eaters take advantage of elephants to help catch insects and, on the freezing northern tundra, caribou embark on great migrations shadowed by hungry Arctic wolves.
Experience the world from the viewpoint of animals themselves. From spellbinding wildlife spectacle to intimate encounters, Planet Earth II takes you closer than ever before. Remote islands offer sanctuary for some of the planet's strangest and rarest creatures. The rare pygmy three-toed sloth enjoys a peaceful existence on an idyllic Caribbean island, while nesting albatross thrive in predator-free isolation. But island life always comes at a cost. On the Galapagos Islands, young marine iguana must escape an onslaught of deadly racer snakes the moment they hatch from the sand. On the sub-Antarctic island of Zavodovski, life gets more extreme still. Every day, one and a half million penguins risk being battered against the rocks by fierce waves as they try to get on and off the island.
In this episode, David Attenborough travels to Finland to show one of the most extreme examples of seasonal plant life in the Arctic Circle. He also travels to California to see how climate change is affecting giant sequoias. These ancient trees like all other seasonal plants depend on the predictability of the seasons and our current changing climate threatens their survival.