By April MacIntyre Nov 22, 2009, 19:19 GMT
Oprah Winfrey will narrate the Discovery channel's anticipated series, "Life," coming in March 2010.
Oprah Winfrey will narrate the Discovery channel's anticipated series, "Life," coming in March 2010.. EPA/WARREN TODA
Planet Earth producers bring the story of the earth, home to more than 30 million different animals and plants – all fighting to survive.
"Life" is described by the network as "the definitive exploration of our planet’s living things and their spectacular, bizarre and fascinating behaviors."
The 11-part series is a collaborative effort between the BBC and Discovery Channel and begins March 2010 on Discovery Channel.
Epic in scope, yet intimate in its storytelling, the series took more than four years in the making, with over 3,000 days of filming in the field, and spans every continent and every habitat.
Every episode focuses on a different animal or plant group, revealing never-before-seen behaviors using the latest in state-of-the-art high-definition filming techniques. From strange creatures, such as the star-nosed mole that hunts underwater using bubbles to smell its prey, to grand spectacles, like millions of fruit bats darkening the Zambian sky, each episode tells mind-blowing stories of survival with drama, humor and suspense.
“Planet Earth set the stage, and now Life brings you the cast of characters,” said John Ford, president and general manager of Discovery Channel. “Once again we've partnered with the BBC to create a visual masterpiece that is jam-packed with enthralling stories about the creatures on our planet. This is the kind of series Discovery was meant to do. Anyone who's ever been curious about animal behavior will fall in love with Life.”
Narrator Oprah Winfrey will introduce the first filming of a male humpback whale mating battle (called the “heat run”) from beginning to end; Komodo dragons bringing down an animal 10 times their size in a real-life drama that lasted more than two weeks; a pebble toad rolling down a mountain, bouncing like a rubber ball, to escape a tarantula; the bizarre mating ritual of the elusive Vogelkop bowerbird, found in the deep forests of New Guinea; and an astonishing night scene showing massive numbers of Humboldt squid hunting cooperatively for sardines.
A special Making Of episode will cap the end of the series and tell the incredible stories of the dozens of men and women who spent days, weeks and months patiently waiting for a perfect shot.
In addition, the following episodes (in alphabetical order) comprise the series:
Birds
Birds have one feature that no other animal possesses: feathers. The male spatule-tail hummingbird performs extraordinary aerial displays, using fast-beating wings and super-long iridescent tail feathers. Red knots migrate 10,000 miles every spring from wintering grounds in Argentina to nesting sites in Canada; and Antarctica’s chinstrap penguins make an exhausting climb up the steep flanks of a volcano to get food to their chicks.
Birds also use color, song and ingenuity to win the hearts of their mates: Clarke’s grebes perform a courtship dance that climaxes with the pair running on water in perfect synchrony; the male Vogelkop bowerbird employs bizarre rituals to impress a female; and in Kenya, 1,000 flamingos promenade side by side with neck feathers ruffled and heads held high.
Creatures of the Deep
Deep-sea marine invertebrates are extraordinarily diverse. In this episode, carnivorous Humboldt squid are filmed hunting cooperatively as they attack a school of fish, while vast numbers of giant spider crabs emerge from the deep and congregate in the shallows to molt.
The female Pacific giant octopus barricades herself and her eggs in a cave with rocks. For the next six months she does not leave her den, but guards her eggs, keeping them oxygenated, free from disease and safe from predators. Gradually she starves, and in her last act of devotion blows water over her eggs to help them hatch. Then, she dies.
Fish
Fish are the most varied and diverse backboned creatures on the planet. They range from pregnant males to fish that fly, to those that have a top speed faster than a cheetah.
In this episode, the brightly colored weedy sea dragon’s unusual birthing methods are witnessed, as is the peculiar convict fish, which shares its network of tunnels with thousands of offspring. In Hawaii, gobies climb waterfalls – some more than 400 feet high – using a specialized disc that enables them to stick to vertical rocks.
Hunters and Hunted
The ability to learn from past experiences and develop novel solutions to problems has allowed mammals to flourish in the harshest of environments. Females look after their young for extended periods of time, allowing youngsters to learn skills that give them an edge in the fight for survival.
In this episode, three cheetah brothers work as a team to hunt an ostrich twice their size, while an orca whale steals elephant seal calves from a nursery pool, with her calf learning the technique alongside her. Star-nosed moles hunt underwater by using bubbles to smell their prey; greater bulldog bats hunt fish by using echolocation to detect ripples in the water; and dolphins have learned to corral fish by creating rings of mud around them.
Insects
Masters of adaptation, insects outnumber all other animals put together. While the female Darwin stag beetle is shaped like a normal beetle, the male’s jaw is longer than his body and used as a weapon -- serrated and strangely curved. Japanese red bug juveniles eat a rare fruit, which their mother collects from the forest floor. It can take her hours to find a suitable fruit -- but if she doesn’t get the fruit back quickly enough, her young will abandon their nest to search for a better mother. The bombardier beetle has two chambers within its body to store different, inert chemicals. When threatened, the beetle mixes the chemicals in a third chamber where they react explosively and burst from its rear at its enemy in a boiling, caustic jet.
Kingdom of Plants
Plants are dependent on three main elements for survival: sunlight, water and nutrients. They’re fiercely competitive and cunningly opportunistic. Sunlight is a rare commodity on the forest floor, so climbers such as Boston ivy and cats-claw creeper use other plants as a ladder to get to the light.
More than 20,000 different kinds of plants spend their entire life in the forest canopy, getting their nutrients by trapping dead leaves in their roots. Where there is little rain, plants find clever ways of capturing and retaining water. The dragon’s blood tree survives in a rocky desert solely on moisture from mist, while others, such as the desert rose, lose their leaves to stop evaporation and carefully store water in their trunks.
Mammals
Mammals are found in every habitat except the deep ocean. Besides their signature physical traits of fat, fur and warm blood, they are unique among animals in the care they lavish on their young. In an astonishing sequence, an elephant grandmother shoves her inexperienced daughter aside to pull her newborn granddaughter out of the mud and save her life.
Unlike reptiles, warm-blooded mammals can cope with extreme cold -- the Weddell seal is able to survive the punishing winter temperatures on the Antarctic ice. Numbering more than ten million, giant fruit bats in Zambia migrate to a mega-roost. In a television first filmed off Tonga, this episode captures humpback whales gathering to breed and the phenomenon of their “heat run.”
Primates
Intelligence, adaptability and resourcefulness have enabled primates to thrive in an incredible diversity of habitats. Hamadryas baboons live in groups on the open plains of Ethiopia, while Japanese macaques, the most northerly dwelling primates, survive in extreme cold.
Phayre's leaf monkeys have bright orange babies; and ring-tailed lemurs of Madagascar use their sense of smell for seduction. Primates have found extraordinary ways to improvise, especially when faced with challenges beyond their physical means. Clams are closed too tightly for Costa Rica’s white-faced capuchins to open with their hands and teeth, so these intelligent monkeys repeatedly hammer them to weaken the clam's muscle.
Reptiles & Amphibians
Amphibians and reptiles are masters of survival because they’ve devised extraordinary tricks and strategies. A pebble toad escapes a tarantula by rolling into a ball and bouncing down a rock face; the basilisk lizard literally runs on water; and a poisonous sea snake lays its eggs in a safe air-filled cavern underwater. Extreme slow-motion photography reveals an astonishing image of a chameleon snatching insect prey with its extendible, muscle-propelled tongue. In a television first, the episode reveals the savage hunting techniques of the largest lizard on earth, the nine-foot Komodo dragon.
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