Each year more than one million wildebeest and zebra invade the Serengeti grasslands, making it a paradise for the predators that live there. But what happens when the herds move off again? We follow the moving story of one lion family's struggle to survive until the return of the great migration. Nature's Great Events tells the story of the epic trek of herds that follow the rains to fresh pastures, and the tale of the predators they leave behind. The crew captures the desperate plight of a single pride of lions, revealing a different side to the Serengeti. Rather than being a predators' paradise, it is a land in constant change, with wildebeest following the rains and leaving the lions to tough it out. The Ntudu pride has seven cubs, and is already suffering as the wildebeest leave to find fresh pastures. The four pride females struggle to find enough food for their hungry offspring. As weeks turn to months, the pride members become more emaciated and frailer, and the number of cubs dwindles to just two. As the herds begin to return, the plains reveal one final secret. For the first time since 1967 the Serengeti's only active volcano, Ol Doinyo Lengai, begins to billow ash and smoke. Filmed from the air, the team captures the exciting action. Fertilised by the volcanic ash over millions of years, these short grass plains are among the most productive grasslands in the world. After months of hardship, the pride's tragic story, through sickness, drought and fire, is over as the herds return, providing plentiful food.
Every year grizzly bear families in North America depend for their survival on a spectacular natural event: the return of hundreds of millions of salmon from the Pacific Ocean to the mountain streams where they were born. The salmon travel thousands of miles to spawn and then die. The great run not only provides food for bears, but for killer whales, wolves, bald eagles, and even the forest itself. The question is: will the salmon return in time to keep hungry bears alive? A mother grizzly and her cubs emerge from their den high in snowy Alaskan mountains. Filming from the air the team capture a TV first, following the bears as they negotiate a near vertical slope on their journey to the coast where they await the return of the salmon. Meanwhile, the salmon are making their way to the to river mouths where they must swim upstream and against the current. The programme reveals how they tackle the torrents and leap over waterfalls, a feat equivalent to a human jumping over a house. Dozens of hungry bears eagerly await the salmon that make it up river. In another TV first, underwater cameras record the ingenuity and fancy footwork they use to collect dead salmon from the bottom of deep pools.
Each year an unbelievable feeding frenzy takes place in the oceans of South Africa as billions of sardines migrate up the KwaZulu-Natal Coast. Wild Ocean captures spectacular breaching whales, feeding sharks, diving gannets, and massive bait balls inside and up close on the screen. The migration has provided an annual food source for both life in the sea and the people living along the African shores for countless generations. The film demonstrates how business, government, and the local people have joined forces to protect this invaluable ecological resource. The film will delve audiences into an epic underwater struggle for survival and reveal the economic and cultural impact the migration has on the coastal communities. Wild Ocean is an explosive, symphonic documentary film about man and nature which captures one of natures greatest migration spectacles through the magic of IMAX.
About 340 million years ago a brand new family of animals was evolving in the primeval swamps. They were to go one step further than the amphibians who had emerged onto dry and before them. For they would eventually completely cut their ties with water. They were the ancestors of todays lizards. They evolved scaly impermeable skins and moved up into the forests. They diversified into a multitude of different shapes and sizes. They developed signalling systems to communicate with one another. And they squabbled as animals do. For food they hunted insects that were already well established on the land in great numbers. And here without returning to water they produced their families. They powered their bodies not only with food but with the heat that they drew directly from the sun.
As they diversified so they spread into the harshest of the lands habitats. The baking waterless deserts which eventually they would come to dominate. Discover jacky lizards that wave, wrestling beaded lizards and the the world's smallest chameleon, which is no bigger than his thumbnail, and the biggest lizard in Australia.
We call them 'man’s best friend', but their story is almost as old as man himself. Our very first friend in the world, they have walked by our side for over 20,000 years, helping us to hunt for food and offering us companionship and protection. Man’s First Friend is an epic new primetime documentary event that combines natural history, science and anthropology to explore the enduring relationship between humankind and dogs, how the two species have co-evolved together, where did they come from to take such a prominent position in our lives, and how did we learn to harness their unique talents. The film takes viewers on an extraordinary journey through some of the most remote locations in the world to answers these questions and more. It highlights what dogs are capable of: from the Pariah dog in India who protects her owner’s banana plantations from daily attacks by Black-headed Monkeys; to Kenyan Bloodhounds trained to track ivory poachers. Dogs comfort us, relieving loneliness and helping us cope with old age.
The film looks at one of the most critical questions facing the world today-that of food security-and demonstrates the desperate need for common sense, solid information, and calm logical deliberation. Using the often angry and emotional controversy over genetically-modified foods as its entry point, Food Evolution shows how easily fear and misinformation can overwhelm objective, evidence-based analysis. Food Evolution takes the position that science and scientists hold the key to solving the food crisis. But whose science? In the GMO debate, both sides claim science is on their side. Who's right? How do we figure this out? What does this mean for the larger issues of food security, sustainability, and environmental well-being? Food Evolution seeks to answer these critically important questions.
The crew captures the desperate plight of a single pride of lions, revealing a different side to the Serengeti. Rather than being a predators' paradise, it is a land in constant change, with wildebeest following the rains and leaving the lions to tough it out. The Ntudu pride has seven cubs, and is already suffering as the wildebeest leave to find fresh pastures. The four pride females struggle to find enough food for their hungry offspring. As weeks turn to months, the pride members become more emaciated and frailer, and the number of cubs dwindles to just two. As the herds begin to return, the plains reveal one final secret. For the first time since 1967 the Serengeti's only active volcano, Ol Doinyo Lengai, begins to billow ash and smoke. Filmed from the air, the team captures the exciting action. Fertilised by the volcanic ash over millions of years, these short grass plains are among the most productive grasslands in the world. After months of hardship, the pride's tragic story, through sickness, drought and fire, is over as the herds return, providing plentiful food.