Documentary AreaSimply the best Documentaries

Survival of the fittest: Raw competition? Intense cooperation? Both are essential. Interactions between and within species are among the most powerful evolutionary forces on Earth, and understanding them may be a key to our own survival.

Dr Michael Mosley and Professor Alice Roberts investigate if male and female brains really are wired differently. New research suggests that the connections in men and women's brains follow different patterns, patterns which may explain typical forms of male and female behaviour. But are these patterns innate, or are they shaped by the world around us?" Using a team of human lab rats and a troop of barbary monkeys, Michael and Alice test the science and challenge old stereotypes. They ask whether this new scientific research will benefit both men and women - or whether it could drive the sexes even further apart.

Are the wealthy just born in the right place at the right time? Are the poor victims of a system designed to keep them down? Or do physics and biology determine who is rich and who is poor? Throughout history, distribution of wealth is governed by hidden forces: DNA, environmental stress, patterns of human migration and even the laws of thermodynamics! Nature seems to demand winners and losers in life. But does this mean greed is king, and the rich can take what they want? Or is cooperation – between microorganisms, monkeys, and humans – more essential to survival of a species?

SETTING: 80 million years ago in the South American forests of Patagonia. The world is a very dangerous place for tiny hatchlings like Alpha, a female saltasaur. Follow Alpha along the road of her growth years, from before her birth through asolescence and on to adulthood, as she learns how to survive and beat the odds.

SETTING: 72 million years ago, near present-day Montana. As a young male daspletosaurus, it's Das' job to herd unsuspecting prey towards the rest of the pack. But he's easily distracted and ruins several hunts getting him in deep trouble with his mother, the pack leader. When a volcano threatens, the dinosaurs are unprepared.

Take a dino's-eye view of life in the prehistoric past as cutting-edge filming techniques and hard science. When White Tip, a female velociraptor, loses the rest of her pack, she must struggle to survive on her own. In time, she locates a new pack, as well as a mate, only to find that her hardships are just beginning in the harsh desert environment.