Nature - Season 28 (2009)

The epic story of a wild stallion continues with the third installment of the Cloud series.

Across the animal kingdom, some of the most essential lessons -- and the most extreme challenges -- occur in the first moments of life.

The black mamba is Africa’s deadliest snake. In Swaziland, snake handler Thea Litschka-Koen and her husband, Clifton, endeavor to change attitudes and save lives.

A baby humpback enters the world and joins the 3,000 or more whales that congregate in the waters off Hawaii each winter. This is the story of her first year of life.

These tiny marvels dazzle and delight bird watchers all over the world, and NATURE reveals their stunning abilities as they have never been seen before.

The wilds of Yellowstone National Park are a world of predators, scavengers and opportunists. In this vast and complex kingdom, two dominant predators reign supreme: the grizzly bear and the wolf. Size and power square off against speed and teamwork, as mighty grizzly bears contend with powerful packs of wolves for control of the food supply. Though these two fearsome hunters would normally rule their ranges uncontested, in Yellowstone they must share resources, or face starvation.

The Balkan Peninsula is notorious for being one of the great battlegrounds of history. And yet, it possesses another side unknown to many, where ancient forests and vast wetlands harbor pristine wilderness, and sheer cliff walls and desolate plateaus preserve a seemingly unchanged past. Indeed the Balkan Peninsula is home to a variety of regions that border on mythical. In Croatia’s Kopacki Rit Wetlands, land mines keep people away, but enable native wildlife to thrive. Further south, Montenegro’s Tara River carves through Europe’s longest and deepest canyon, and neighboring forests provide refuge to rare animals such as the Balkan Lynx. To the east, millions of birds flock to the Danube Delta to feast on swarms of mosquitoes. And at the west of the Balkans is Skadar Lake, a remarkable landscape of peaks and water.

The Everglades’ watery oasis has been invaded by giants. Florida’s Everglades National Park has become a dumping ground for a variety of non-native species, including what may be tens of thousands of Burmese pythons. Follow scientists and snake hunters as they study the problem and try to find solutions to the growing crisis.

They are the scenes of some of the largest concentrations of predators and prey on the planet – the vast tracts of grassland and savannah found on every continent but Antarctica. Yet survival in this kind of open, horizontal world is far from easy, with few places to hide, a scarcity of vegetation, drought, fire and the threat of attack by some of the world’s fastest and most powerful hunters. From Africa’s Serengeti to California’s grasslands, some of nature’s most dramatic moments are caught, examined and “fractured” into their unique parts … within creatures great and small … to reveal the amazing abilities that give each animal the instinct, intelligence and brute prowess to survive. From elaborate impact sequences that spin around animals caught in a “frozen moment” to animations that go inside their bodies – a unique view of animals’ amazing biomechanics is revealed.

Teeming with creatures in every shape and form, the jungle is the most diverse habitat on the planet and home to nearly half of the world’s plant and animal species. Rising hundreds of feet from the dark depths of the tropical forest floor, through layers of twisting branch and canopy full of life – this vertical landscape pushes the limits of animal engineering. The jungle’s layers are peeled back to dissect more amazing moments of impact. Stealth and ambush reign in the jungle and survival depends on highly tuned senses and ingenious defenses. From ninja ants to flying snakes, cameras dive underwater, sail through trees and penetrate fur, feathers, skin and bone to reveal the science of some amazing animal engineering hidden deep in the jungle.