The Life of Mammals – Life in the Trees:
Full video at the bottom.
Opens with David lying on the ground with several meerkats standing right next to him. Lol they’re standing early in the morning to warm up in the sun. They sleep in burrows, find food on the ground, expert runners and climbers. After warming up they start digging for brekkie… since they’re heads in the ground theres always a lookout. And the sentry do this as high up as they can.
Yay Kenya! Hyrax are sunbathing in a lodge, literally! All stretched out on the sun beds. Yo that’s the lodge we stayed at with Blue Sky films to shoot Thai Milk! Back to the hyrax… they have incredibly flexible spines to help them climb with speed. But it’s the feet that keep them up… special muscles at the centre of the feet pull up the sole and the pads are moist to help increase grip. They look like earless rabbits on trees. This is where they get juicy leaves which provide them with their food and drink.
Enter coati in tropical America. Kinda look like badgers with long tails. They climb higher up and not for food but for safety. David climbs up too with the help of a catapult, fishing line tied to stronger rope, clip on handholds and counterweight. Oh the beauty. No I’m not talking about my wrinkled hero!
Over to the tropical rain forest where Davids up on another tree. This forest has much more variety of food than anywhere else in the natural world. Speed shot of different plants, animals, fruits and nuts. Now leaves are obviously the main source of food right… but they don’t have much nutriment. Which takes to an animal that does not solve this by eating more but by doing less. 
The sloth. Hangs around all day with the help of its hook like claws. Ah David found a nest with eggs… and so did a coati. Then you got the attractive fleshy fruits which the animals rather swallow, which is a good thing coz then their booties distribute the seeds. (Was trying not to use the word sh1t… oops). So that’s food, what about drink? David points out some plants which are full of water and sometimes insect larvae and frogs. Hmmm protein drink. Cute shot of wooly monkeys getting their drink on.
Cool double screen shot of David’s pulley down and a sun bear in Indonesia climbing up a tree. It’s a fruit eater and spends more time on trees than any other bear. Paras thought: Didn’t know bears spend any time on trees at all. Now the sun bear does not run along trees like other climbers, they embrace the branches with their immensely strong forearms.
The South American tamandua is next. Basically an anteater! Like the color combo of its fur… makes it look like its wearing a b-ball vest. Apart from anteaters having gangster claws to rip ant hills, this one has a extra muscular prehensile tail that can handle its weigth on trees. Just as well coz this ones going crazy/clumsy. Onces its demolished one ant hill it has to climb down to go up another tree. Not the case for wooly monkeys they just jump from one to another. Another cute shot of an adult ‘hanging’ on to one tree from another so the young’n can cross over.
I think we’re in a burrough near Heathrow looking at squirrels. Strong legs give em the thrust. Long tail acts as a rudder. Shorter front legs as a shockabsorber to cushion the landing. And superb sight to negotiate their 3 dimensional highway. Dudes get most acrobatic during the mating season. One begins the chase… others quickly join in. And what you have is the kind of darting around you’d see in a cartoon. The chase ends when a male claims his prize. PSYCHE!!! Chase may go on again coz the female might mate with nearly 8 males… in a single day.
Now while a grey squirrel can leap 8 feet, flying squirrels can leap up to 50 feet. David sets out some nuts at night to capture this. Ahha they have furry membrane between feet an ankle to act like airfoil. Makes the squirrel look like it smacked against a hairy napkin. They’re not territorial so lots could be foraging in the same woodland area.
Animated shot of David’s hand’s skeleton morphing to a bat’s skeleton. And its over to the flying fox/fruit bats in Austrailia. Their limbs evolved in a different way as the shoulder, elbow and hand structure stayed the same. Too big to sleep in holes so they ‘hang’ on trees in colonies of hundreds of thousands. Lol they may be expert at gliding but not at landing… David does manage to get a shot of the text book landing. Where it lowers its toes on a branch and in one motion it hooks to the branch and follows through till its upside down. Their wings damage and sometimes get holes in their membrane but its one of the fastest healing tissues so its all good. Another use for their wings is fanning as it can get dodgy hanging in the baking sun. Take off instructions: Flap a few times to come to horizonal position… once there and only then do you release legs from branch. They can travel 30 miles/50 km in a night. Interesting bit: To get a drink from a nearby lake they fly down and dip their chests in the water, return to their roost and lick the moisture from their fur. Aw baby crock trying to snap one up. They’re just too fast. Opps one miscalculates and gets in the water… lucky they’re good swimmers too… but once it gets on land its missions flying again. Crock got it! No big deal to the bats coz this particular colony has a staggering 5 million members. Yep I’m asking the same question… who counted them and how? 
Oh there were amazing shots of bat covered skies and all that. Having those many homies has its advantages as different fruits, different places etc. So smelling a certain fruit on their buddy gives them news of a new fruit on the market and news travels fast you know. Each bat knows where they can find the fruits so the next night they go to their favorite patch to collect. The big wings don’t give them great maneuverability which doesn’t help coz someones waiting for them when they come back. Eagles know where the bats blind spots are and attack from below. They take half a dozen a day… still no biggie for the bat numbers. The most successful strategy is to snatch them from their ‘hangs’ anyway.
Now to India and the slender loris. Apparently our earliest ancestors. They look so cute… BIG eyes. I mean big, round, lidless eyes. Small furry bodies. Small hands but gangster grip. David was being smart about finding these nocturnal climbers/tree dwellers. He’s like ‘all you need is a torch’, starts shining it in the greens and what do you know… reflective spotlights. Anyway to properly observe them the lights go off and the infrared camera is put to work. They move so quietly. Have elongated thumbs. Lost their index fingers so their grasp can encircle stout branches too. Their grip is so gangster its impossible to pull it off. They live in small groups of 4-5. One sensed something so it totally froze. See its getaway aint that speedy so the best thing is to freeze hoping no one noticed it. Ew, not only does it leave its urine/scent marking for other to know its there but it washes its hand with the piss too. Hahahaha some say it gives it a better grip too… David says it’s certainly quite sticky. The eyes are set forward to give it stereoscopic view which helps judge distances. Looks like a furry taller crazy frog. Uses stealth as a weapon to catch its prey unawares. Hmmm snatched a grasshopper wit h its pissy palms. Then goes a stick insect. Then a mantis. Now the mantis has two defences… ones camouflage and the other is aggressive display which looks like boxing but the loris just grabbed it, ripped its head and munched away.
Africa’s climber includes the lesser bushbaby. Just picture the cutest owl, replace the wings with hand and give it a long furry tail. Oh and get rid of the beak. Another one that only comes out at night. Great these ones make trees with urine too. They look so sweet taking baby leaps. Related to the loris… grasping hands, stereovision and large ears. Only their was of getting around and hunting is speed instead of stealth. They can jump 30 times their own body length. Before taking the jump it moves its head around looking for the best place to land. Apparently they’ve colonized every ‘spot’ in Africa and millions of years back they spread beyond the continent. So they spread…
… All the way to Madagascar where they had no drama so they became the lemurs. Wow all sorts man. They eyes stayed the same but the looks changed. The most specialized is the golden bamboo lemur. Discovered only recently. Lives on the part of bamboo that would be fatal to most other animals. The pith has cyanide and the lemur eats 12 times as much as would kill a normal animal of its size. Ok so some plants got defences like thorns and stuff right… and the didierea plant got extra thorns. But a kind of lemur find it as home… the sifaka. You think traveling around them looks dangerous, wait till you see them getting to the leaves. Its cray-zee I tell you! So they negotiate they way with skill. But when on normal trees they’re just as fast as bushbabies. Matrix style shots of them jumping around. Twisting, calculating, etcing. Elongated big toes help though. Hahaha coz of that their way on the ground is still jumping around only shorter leaps. Reminds me of Kimevu! Too funny coz they cant to straight on. Kinda like retards doing football practice… no offence. They’re safer and faster on trees. Safer from the fossa… a mongoos mixed with panter
looking thing. Lucky he’s caught the sent of a female ready to mate. Several males means fierce competition but she will decide by driving off the ones that don’t do it for her. Mating itself is noisy and not made easier by having to balance on a branch. But the long tail does come in handy for balance. Boy is it noisy and nasty. I think its over and she’s walking away while he’s in her and he’s well endowed so he’s still stuck and she’s pulling away and he’s trying to break free. Few animals go down trees head first. The fossa can do it coz its got flexible ankles which allow it to point its feet backwards.
Once again David pulleys up in a forest in South East Asia. Home to the fastest of the flightless inhabitants of the canopy in the world. Gibbons! So swift and agile it can catch birds in midair. Not apes but small monkeys. Just watch them go! They’re the only primates with ball and socket joints in their wrist. Breathtaking shots of high speed swinging. These things change direction so fast, it looks so easy. Looks. Coz at that speed you can misjudge, branches can snap and fatal falls are certainly not unknown.
1. A Winning Design | 2. Insect Hunters | 3. Plant Predators
4. Chisellers | 5. Meat Eaters | 6. The Opportunists
7. Return to the Water | 8. Life in the Trees | 9. The Social Climbers
10. Food for Thought
Shot of something called the desman … looks like a shrew but has special underwater gear… long dense fur to keep it warm in the water and a snorkel which also acts as a sensitive probe to search for snacks. Hehehe only problem dude has is buoyancy so he doesn’t stay underwater too long and has to come back to land to eat its catch.
Over to the oceans/seas. Weasel like creatures were the otters ancestors so they were more land lovers than water waders. Which is why otters hooked their feet up with webbing. Funny shot of otter floating around belly up with a stone on its stomach. Why? Because he uses it as an anvil to crack clams and shells. River otters usually mate on land but these ones got the knack for some synchronized swimming. These ones done even go back to land to sleep! Cute shot of one turning around in the water. What it’s doing is wrapping itself around some kelp so that the current doesn’t sweep it away. Amazing fact: Sea otters have more hair on one square centimeter of their body than any human ever has on their head! It’s the densest fur in the whole animal kingdom. Another cute shot of the sea otters blowing into their fur and playing with it… they do this to trap air in their fur to keep it even warmer. Poor things were hunted to near extinction because of that fur till hunting was banned.
Sealions are next. Their legs are more adapted to swimming. Front ones became paddles, back became flippers. Even though their legs evolved… they can still walk on land… in a funny way. Fur is not their only insulation. They got a layer of fat… BLUBBER. What a wicked name… blubber. What differenciates a sea lion from a seal is the sea lion has external ears. They give birth on land… and how tasty do the babies look… hmmm sausages with wings. They cant find safe coves to caves to give birth in so all the babies are gathered on open land that David calls a patch. Each patch is dominated by a big male/beach master who will claim any female who lands on his patch and mate with her as soon as she’s given birth. Hehehe he also keeps a sharp look out for any other male that has the same idea… shot of beach master representing! Now mom’s gotta get back in the water so she feeds the babies at high speed with 30% fat in the milk. So the baby converts that into blubber. After 3 months mom’s takes baby for a swim. Hard work because there’s entangling beds of kelp.
We’re in South of New Zealand now… the Antarctic. It’s so called the sea freezes over. David says seals and sea lions seem to be descended from an early carnivore, something like a mix of weasel and bear. Seals did a better job evolving for water. Another differenciation from seal lions is their legs… seals cant use them to walk. So they gotta hump its whole body or slide around to get by on land. Lucky for moms, here they can give birth without dangers/terrestrial hunters. Crazy shot of pup being born… lets just say it tried to fit its whole body in a huge condom and it bust at the end.
What? Suddenly we’re in the Arctic. Hmmm David wants to show us some land predators. All I see is footprints of an arctic fox. David traces it till foxes den. And with a scary tool starts sawing around the den. Kinda like what you see in cartoons. Ok, so the seal burrowed from the sea and made this little … burrow? And the fox somehow guessed it so dug to it from land. Cant see blood so I guess the pup got away safely. But there’s bigger dangers out there!
Polar bears on the look out for pups. Something called ringed seals? Ringed seal pups cant swim for several weeks so their survival depends on them remaining undetected under the snow. Adults are safer being able to stay underwater for 20minutes plus. But they have to get back to their breeding holes or they’ll freeze over. Amazing fact: Polar bears sense of smell is so good they can detect the breath of a seal drifting over the snow over half a mile away. Polar bear pounces on a den (which could have killed the pup outright). But this one was already dead, stiff and frozen. David talks about different seals having different mating and breeding styles.
Gaad damn! Hooded seals are crazy man! First of all they wait around females waiting for them to ‘get in the mood’. Second they have some freaky noses/lips which blow up like balloons. So it inflates the hood on the head so much it comes out of one of its nostrils. Now if literally blowing their noses doesn’t chill out a tense situation, they gotta get gangta! I’m glad that’s over.
Male harbor seals have a different courtship ritual. The mechanisms of which are still not fully understood because it was discovered quite recently. Competitive choral singing. One dude begins it, drifting underwater upside down. Others join in, holding their heads together like a barbershop group. Sounds like something you’d hear males doing after a family dinner. Hehehe. Anyway so when a female appears the one who started singing leaves with her while the rest follow obligingly.
Now for some vegetarian swimmers. Davids belly deep at a florida beach with 3 manatee or sea cows (extra large walrus kinda things). Hehehe David jokes about their extra strong halitosis. No one knows their ancestors, some say elephants because of the teeth. Interesting fact: Their teeth are flat grinding molars, which after being worn down are replaced by new ones that erupt at the back of the jaw and slowly move forward. They’re so big they are hardly ever attacked and there’s more than enough vegetation they don’t need to be swift swimmers. Front flippers have nails… just like that and a huge flat powerful tail.
Over to the Ganges in India. There are water living mammals here but difficult to spot especially coz its very cloudy and full of sediment. Ah, a river dolphin. Because you cant see in the waters, the dolphins here have lost the use of sight. They use sound/sonar. David lowers an underwater microphone to hear what sounds they make. Sounds like static or electric belching. By the way the dolphins look like they have some extra long nose.
Suddenly we’re in the US, Carolina and Georgia. Here the dolphins way of feeding is daring and complicated. But the birds know how to predict it. Why the birds? Well see these dolphins first edge around the shore… in a way pushing the little fish close. Then there’s one swift attach where all the dolphins push the fish to the shore. So the dolphins get to snap them up on land, but so do the birds. Dolphins wiggle back to water and look for another place to do it again. Clever birds give David a clue where the next ones going to be. Communication and syncronization is paramount. Also when they do attach together the have to all face the same direction… as in when they’re getting their bite on land if 2 face another direction they either have to fight for the fish if they face each other or have to miss out if they face away from each other.
Out in the ocean dolphins may number several hundred. Amazing shot of common dolphin stitching through the waters while the birds follow them in air. The whole school of dolphins span about a quarter of a mile on either direction of David’s boat. Wow the dolphins chase and herd a huge school of sardines, turning them into one big meatball. The dolphins drive them upward so its trapped against the surface. Which gives the sea birds an opportunity too. And boy do those sea birds dive for it.
David talks about an animal that does not use teeth. Instead it uses something called baleen. This stuff is horny plates with long coarse hairs which collects krill. Krill are shrimp like creatures that are no bigger than your little finger. This mammal finds them in such quantity that its becomes gigantic. Wicked animation of the animals skeleton slowly showing the real baleen and tongue. Now it takes in huge amounts of water with the krill and with its tongue the size of an elephant wipes the krill from the baleen. Aparantly this mammal is twice as heavy as the biggest known dinosaur… who ‘knows’ a dinosaur? More animation revealing the ribcage and stuff. Their lungs carry 2000 litres of air (500 times the capacity of our lungs). The heart is as big as a small family car and beats only 5-6 times a minute but drives 10tons of blood through a million miles of blood vessels. More animation. All that is left of any sign of legs are a couple of bones buried in a mountain of muscle. THE BLUE WHALE. It’s a hundred feet long (30 meters). 
Nothing on land can grow that big because the bone is not that strong. Apparently the blue whales ancestors were land living deer like creatures that lived 55 million years ago. Paras note: You know my rule… find out for yourself! Get this… the whale refreshes 90% of its air while humans void only 15%. Paras note again: Art of living folks refresh the same as whales :oP. Anyway so it can store oxygen not only in its blood but also in the tissues of its vast body. It can stay underwater for half and hour plus. With one gulp it takes in a ton of krill filled water. Some parts of its body is coated with blubber nearly 20 inches thick. A perfect hydrodynamic body uninterrupted by ears limbs or genitals. Communicate through sound. Humpback whales have deep notes almost beyond our hearing range. If you swim beside them, the notes will have an effect on your body like that of an organ inside a cathedral. The more complex notes are directed to females as an invitation to mate. Each area code of whales sing the same kinda choons. Each song lasts half an hour, then the male may repeat it, maybe for several days.
Ardent males try to get it on with a female but ‘she’s not in the mood’. So whales get that too hahahaha. Since she’s not up for it she just turns upside on the surface to keep her bits away from theirs. Uh-oh… doesn’t seem to be working for her this time… a slit opened up in the male, 12 feet long penis is ready and highly mobile. Mobile indeed, its like those tentacle things you see in action movies that creep up and grab your legs and hands. The males barge and jostle and several may succeed one after another. She’s changed her mind and decides she’s ready so goes back underwater ready for a male. Male right whale have gangsta testis, weighing up to a ton which produce gallons of sperm. Paras note: Something to remember when you’re at the beach. One coupling can flush out whatever preceeded it so it may not be the first one that’s the father. It will be the last.
Starts with the giant panda. How they cost millions. I thought there were only thousands of them around coz of humans but fact is they love bamboo and their so fussy about their eating habits that bamboo forests in China started to disappear. With no other food to fall back on… population crashed._1.jpg/220px-Raccoon_(Procyon_lotor)_1.jpg)
Unlike the panda, omnivores are the most adaptable animals in the world. The best example would be the North American raccoon. This raccoon has adapted to more type of habitat than any other mammal. All omnivores have one thing in common… the ability to make the most of any opportunity. Its been a success coz of its inquisitive nature and extremely sensitive hands. See like how we sense things best with our eyes, the raccoon uses its brain to sense things with its hands. In a way, seeing things with its hands the way we do with our eyes. And the temperature doesn’t change its sensitivity one bit.
While raccoons appeared around nearly 2.5 million years, the first opportunists appeared way earlier. Ok goes back through the ages and talks about some dinohyus kinda thing which was meant to be a killer warthog kinda thing the size of a rhino. Back to the present, David breaks down the skull and teeth for us. At the back the teeth are flat which means it can grind up any kind of vegitation. The front does not have the chisel like teeth that an antelope has. Neither does it have specialized meat eater teeth coz they aint sharp dagger like ones. It also had tusks. So it didn’t have a specialized set, more like a generalized toolkit (leathermans) to deal with almost anything. Back to the past, dinohyus thingy makes a kill. Teeth like those are typical for almost all living omnivores today.
A forest in Indonesia has a rare and elusive animal almost as prehistoric looking as dinohyus. The babirusa. Thinner snout than a warthog, funny long tusks growing all round from the top of its nose to between its eyes. And another pair protruding wide from the bottom jaw. The fruit its eating contains a poison, but it knows how to deal with that. It visits a clay lake… yo this sounds like this other animal in an earlier episode. Anyway so the clay has the right stuff to netralise the poison. So this is where you’ll see lots of them, and also where they get to meet and know others. Males test their strength.
Over to a shot of a pigs nose… since that’s the pigs biggest asset. Wild boar are apparently the European cousins of the eccentric babirusa. The least fussy eaters and unrivalled foragers. Their memory has pictures of foods they’ve recently eaten and accessed. Openminded so nothing is overlooked, especially not a decaying pigeon. More interesting info is how they forage in the winter snow. Plowing through the snow and relying on the smell that travels through snow.
Hmmm, the Asiatic raccoon dog. There’s mix, then theres remix. Coz of its short legs it has to hibernate coz moving through snow would be difficult. The mother has to eat lots more as it produces large litters. 15 pups for this mother and the parents gotta plump them up in 8 weeks. Don’t know why he said parents coz the mom does all the feeding, dad just stays back and takes care. Gets harder… unlike many canines… raccoon dogs do not regurgitate food for their pups. Mouths can carry less than stomachs so it’s a whole lotta trips and breastfeeding twice as long as other dogs. Not all the pups will survive the winter.
Up next are seasonal opportunists. Infra red light and camera light up the pitch black cave. Bats all over the place, their dropping all over the floor and I mean a thick later. If I remember correct, the layer or carpet of batty bog is called guano. The guano first of all makes the atmosphere thick with ammonia and fungal spores fatal to anyone who inhales the, second it is home to fungus, flesh eating beetles and larvae which together will make short of anything that comes its way. David says its one of the most hostile environment you’ll find on the planet. Enter skunk. One unfussy opportunist that’s not shaken by any of this. They feel at home, even indulge in some courtship. But they’re not there to get their freak on… they’re there for the baby bats that lose their hold and drop. Ok so the dropped baby bat better have luck coz junior has to tackle the guano covered floor. If junior is slow the beetles get him. Skunk dont need that much luck coz even though he’s totally blink in the dark, too many bats fall all the time. Dude only needs to know how to handle the bat once he gets one. So to subdue the bat and avoid being bitten skunk rolls the bat on the ground. What do you know, those touchy feely raccoons get in on the action too. Easier for them coz they can see with their hands.
So that was seasonal opportunities. Elsewhere they have a whole succession of different food that becomes available. Alaska. No one dish remains very long so you gotta make the most while you can… a grizzly bear’s making the most of salmon. Rewinding 6 months back, the grizzly snores away the winter as he’s conserving energy. Pulse rate drops to 10 beats a minute. Burns up almost a million calories just during hibernation! By the time they wake, they’ve lost about a third of their body weight. Gotta get a snack asap. Their diet is defined by a seasonal cycle. Frist roots, then grass… luckily dude finds a whale carcass which could last him a month. By May fresh meat is on the menu and look at homie run!!! Dumba55 deer kinda thing trips over fallen tree branch. Back to the present. As salmon swim back up the river to spawn in their thousands, the bears make the most of the quantity. Upto a dozen a day in a good salmon year. Looks like they’re playing… come fishy I just wanna swim with you… PSYCHE I wanna bite your head off! Chasing the fish consumes energy but the salmon is rewarding with fat and protein. Lol shot of one bear trying to steal another while third bear seems to console them both… the two still fight and 3rd party takes of with the remaining prize. Ok, if there’s lots of salmon around they’ll only choose to eat the brains and caviar. Better nourishment more calories.
Another kinda bear has started his road towards specialization. The sloth bear in India its not fussy for half the year. Dude breaks into a big clay mound for soldier termites. Armed with the apt long nails he busts through the first line of defence. But he wants the larvae. So his mouth has lost its front set of teeth to help suck and hoover the delicacies. Plus at the end of the snout there’s a flap to prevent dirt and dust going in at the same time. Thing is if its gonna be fussy and head this way, danger maybe round the corner just as it was for brother panda. For now its all good coz dude doesn’t mind eating other stuff and termites are all over the joint. Talks about how the bears live with man so like durning the day bear gotta go somewhere else. The bear may not be too happy about land made to feed cattle as it reduces changes of its termitey habitat. Then talks about how man made habitats have made things better for lots of animals.
Which brings us to the city. The extravagant life makes it hard for an animal to make a living. To make a living? Ok, time to get serious, most of you know how important the following topic is to me. Cities have people, where there’s people there’s food and lots of it. A city like the one they show produces around 10,000 tons of waste a day. All that needs to be clean up continiusly or we’d be swimming in it. Lot of time and money is spent to keep things sanitized and clean.
Back to David in the city. To an animal with good sense of smell food stands out. In a city everything else would seem grey but not food. We may not notice it, but it can become an opportunity for others. Once again raccoons come in the picture. CCTV cameras capture them all over. Bold enough to roam the streets like pedestrians. City raccoons can judge speeds of cars easier than their country cousins, making them less likely to be hit by one. To thwart the raccoons garbage collection has become a 24 hour thing. Remember their inquisitiveness? Well that’s the main factor for loving the city life… especially finding bins, cans, jars, etc. David calls them the American success story. Their population has increased nearly 20 times since 1930’s and their range by 30%. Bears on the other hand have a less subtle approach. Shot of bear breaking into car and jumping through the window. Dude pulls out some loom kinda thing of some kinda meat.
Meanwhile in Britain it’s the red fox that holds the turf. Just 2 hours in the city would show more foxes than a year in the country side. But that’s coz the city can support fox life 10 times more than the country. Their factor is popularity… apparently Britain’s fav and foxy exploited and made the most of it. Lot of folks give the fox hands out. About 60% of its food is free handout. You know how to leave milk for the cat… here its foxes.
Now for the one opportunist that is on the opposite spectrum of popularity. Apparantly you’re within 5 meters of one at all times. There’s probably one beneath you right now. That would rule out the pigeon. Our washing machines drain off and make a suitable environment for it in the sewers. The crocodile. :o) I mean the brown rat. Temperature is good, sometimes food is flushed down. They only have to worry about rise in water level. Lol there’s a shot of rat sensing rise so runs of to its hole grabs baby by the teeth and splits. Has a higher hole to take her babies. Guided by smell, follow routes they’ve tried and tested. Talks about how we set traps and poison for them. But what if we allow them to live unchecked… like the temple in northern India where rats are sacred. The belief is that people died and came back as rats. Normally nocturnal… here they don’t need to be. Normally they become 600 strong and then split up, here they’ve stabilized to 6000.
Finally, over to us. The ultimate mammal that is ready to eat anything. Hehehe. Footage of the Kumbha Mehla. Hindu festival attended by millions of people. Largest gathering for a common cause. Now its mostly vegetarian there but across the world its from veg to hamburgers. Able to control our food, we do not rely on the quantity that occurs naturally anymore. All of which helped us first to dominate the world, then overrun it. What we have in common with the rats, raccoons, bears and foxes… ability to seize an opportunity when we see it.
Yum yum! David starts by calling meat the muscles of mammals. The most energy packed food you can get. How humans have set aside great areas of the country side to produce it. So starts with sheep, moves on to rabbits and how rabbits are more in danger from another hunter. The stoat. Looks like an innocent mongoose… till it spots a rabbit. It’s smaller than the rabbit, the chase begins. Stoat does the job by stabbing its fangs on the neck thus crushing the back rabbits skull. Note: Orchestra’s background music is so in sync with the action. The rabbit weights 10 times the stoat but the stoat likes to eat in privacy so manages to carry it. What meat eaters have in common are their front big teeth and side triangular small teeth.
Next are the two great tribes of meat eaters. The cats and the dogs. Both skilled in stalking and lethal pounces. Amazing action footage. The serval (mini leopard or big pointy eared cat) is so athletic, it can sometimes bring down birds. What a jump! It’s one of the smallest of the cats, while the Siberian tiger is the biggest. 10 feet long from nose to tail. Earliest fossils of meat eating mammals were found in North America. Seems they lived in the trees hunting birds. The marten, one of their descendants, still does. Retractable claws give it better grip.
Apparently the dogs are the decendants of the tree dwellers, they just adjusted their bodies to suit their new area codes. The fennec is smallest of all the foxes. Huge ears though. Which help it avoid overheating in the Sahara and also help it detect itty bitty sounds. Dude takes on a desert viper… not too impressive coz its pretty small.
In colder areas the dogs have smaller ears to avoid frostbite… like the arctic fox. Now in winter its got a dense white fur coat for warmth and camouflage. But in summer it changes the coat to a thinner darker one. In summer there’s lots more food especially the seabirds nesting on the cliffs in thousands. Fox cant reach there but the young ones gotta make that first flight and that’s when the fox follows. That’s not fair. They got far more food that they can eat. Shot of fox having difficulties to even carry all that food. At least it doesn’t waste it, buries it for winter.
Over to the south western shores or Africa. Fur seals, David inches towards the pups and gets to stroke one. He retreats before someone raises the alarm. Oh and coz its so hot the moms have gone to cool off. Film crew finds a spot where you can see the whole colony plus parts of land where potential predators might come from. Sit and wait and here come the gangsters. Brown hyenas, they don’t even look like hyenas. Anyway so they feed on carrion mostly but they aint gonna refuse a defenceless seal pup. Aw man, dude takes meat back to share but fellow mates gotta identify each other by scent. These guys carry their scent in a pouch under their tail. When I say pouch I mean they lift their tail, something opens and this red balloon thing comes out. They also use their sent to ‘post notices’… usually every quarter of a mile or so. David shows us one of their post-its. Gets some on his and and casually states that the dark bits come from the anal gland. Now this first half of the message is for its fellow hyenas, the scent disappears quick so its like telling the others ‘I was there 30 minutes back so don’t bother didn’t find anything’. The other half of the message is for other animals to keep out. This other secretion was milky when first sprayed and its scent stays longer.
The Amazon is up next with its South American Bush dog. One of the least known dogs. Face of a skinny bear, body of a enlarged mongoose. They have a strict order where the females head the group headed by the most senior and the males obediently follow. While females spread their sent on stems as high as they can, the males do no more than cock a leg. Coz they like wet areas they’re the only dogs with webbed feet. The paths they use to move around are of rodents which are also their prey. Now water living animals hardly have a scent so these guys gotta use their eyes just as much as their nose. They may have a strict running order but when its chow time its more like a free-for-all.
Moving on to the hunting dogs of Africa. They hunt together and sometimes up to 50 together. Think its is also in another Attenborough episode… they’re the most successful of all hunters. Stats: 80% or chases will end up in a kill. Pretty impressive for hunters that only got their teeth to do everthing. No claws or swiveling wrists. They gotta do it all on the low low and eat really quick coz if the lion hears it, he’s gonna chase em away. The other footage was more informative and action packed. While the alpha male and female are the only ones that will reproduce, the fellow uncles and brothers are the ones that come back to the cubs with grub. Sharing the food is normal for them to do through out their lives. Normal females help the alpha female look after the pups.
David’s on a hill in North America trying to communicate with the biggest of all the dog family which also live in packs. What do you know, quite a few wolves reply. The howls are for two reasons, to warn other packs to keep away and to reunite a scattered pack after a long hunt. You can see them delight and playfight in their company. Just like the hunting dogs they got a alpha pair that do the breeding. There’s a bonding sessions right before they go on a hunt… in a way to remind each other of their position in the team. Footage of the pack hunting elk. Coz its in snow and elk have longer feet to tackle the snow, their chase is on earlier and longer. Only 1 out of 10 attempts will be successful. The wolves have not choice but to follow the herd coz they aint had a munch in over a week. Finally a couple of wolves get a weakened female but still find it difficult till the backup arrives.
Time for the cats in Africa. Lions hunt at night coz during the day its too hot so that’s their nap time. Wow, David is so close to these lions. Its pitch black so the camera crew set up cameras and infrared lights which neither the peeps or the animals can see. Even their roars of communication are pretty passive they seem pretty chilling in that kinda darkness. They can see 8 times better than we can at night. The hunt begins… Lioness crouches and inches. Littlest sound freaks zebra out. The chase begins, lioness takes a hoof in the face, lioness catches hoof second time and its over. I’d seen or read somewhere that the lioness does the killing and waits for the lion to do the opening ceremony. As a family they take care of others kids even allowing other cubs to take their milk.
Not the same for the cheetah though. Sisters don’t help, no sign of the father so finding food for her and her baby aint all that easy. Especially coz the cubs are more of a hindrance during a kill. Impalas in the area codes. As long as the cheetah is more than 30 yards away from impala they can out run her. The cubs sense somethings about to kick up so they settle to watch. Wicked side profile shot of cheetah concentrating on what she’s seeing. Even better shot of the kill… gotta give props to the background beats. As cheetah gets speed her feet are hardly on the ground for half the time. Attention: Spotted bullet has just taken an impala down! Its so gracious that it can rival a gazelles swerves and turns. Second time round gets unusual as a second cheetah joins in the kill. Mama cheetah only tolerates that as its one of her cubs. Cheetahs gotta eat quick coz its got a slimmer body and bigger ones like lions can chase her off her kill.
There’s a cat that is found in lots of regions. It does its hunting at night and its one of the least seen. The leopard. David set up infrared light and remote control cameras to observe in his ‘operations control center’. A moving shadow is spotted. On the monitor he can see that this car is just outside his door when everyone was expecting it to go for the cattle. Stops for a sec, then passes by and leaves. Flocks are safe for the night. Ok I’ve already done the review on Davids leopards special. On a hunt it’s extra careful with stepping.
Straight on to the biggest of the cats. The tiger. And to the biggest of the tigers… the Siberian tiger. The most formidable hunter. The toppest killer until humans devised weapons. Nothing could threaten it, few could kill it. They were all over Asia at one time. Now most are in captivity… sort of.
Starts off in the Central American forests with a nut dropping of a high tree through leaves and etc. Capuchin monkeys having a rather wasteful brekkie. See the nuts real prize is the kernel, which is really hard to get to. The monkeys just scrape off the think fleshy coating and chuck it. Now there is an animal that has the right tools to deal with any nut and that’s the Agouti (rodent). So the Agouti wait for that sound and head for the nut. The front of their teeth got strong enamel while the back has softer dentine which gets worn away, which in turn makes them sharp. Plus they’re rodents so their teeth grow continuously replacing what gets worn away. Rodents are the most successful and numerous of all mammals. 1300 species of rats and mice.
Over to albert squirrels… they use their teeth to also nip of the ends of ponderosa pines coz of the nutritious bark. The only squirrels that can survive where there’s a lot of ponderosa pines. Other squirrels aint all that fussy but acorns are their fav. Dude goes into Oak trees. There’s red oak and white oak. White oak start germinating straight away but red chill till next spring. Their acorn look too similar… only diff is a lil red tint in the … RED oak acorns. Coz the squirrels know this, they immediate eat the white oak ones, and as for the red oak ones they’re stored for winter. Only they are colorblind so they tell the diff by the smell. Thing is some years the red oaks don’t produce so these tasty looking squirrels bury some of the white oaks but only after making a hole in the oak so that way the oak cannot germinate and dude gets some winter food that way.
In the desert it’s a different story coz the seeds are way smaller. David tries to tempt a kangaroo rat out of its burrow… comes out till later. Ahha, so it’s able to transport so many seeds coz it has cheek pouches. Oh and why its called a kangaroo rat is coz the paws you see in the front are really its long back feet. The front ones are hidden away shoveling the seeds into its mouth. Question: How the hell do they manage the shots of inside the burrows, with the animal in there… can’t they see or sense the camera??? Itty-bitty sounds can even wake the kangaroo rat, which sleep during the day and most of the night. This time is woken by a gopher snake. Rat tries stamping its foot to scare the snake. Dunt work. Tries kicking sand in snakes face. VICTORY!!!
Alpine marmots are next… after winter they have to reestablish their grounds. Before the battle starts there’s a lot of tail flagging and calling. If they do battle, it’s the senior male that gets gangsta while wifey looks on and guards the fam burrow. Once the dude wins he marks the area with scent from a gland on his cheeks. They look cute… like miniature bears. Now marmots more into the life partner thing so they stick together for life. David goes on about them chasing away their last years male off spring and this year is all females. HAHAHA daughters are allowed to stay but the mothers constantly beat them up… particularly in spring. So if the daughters are pregnant they have not choice but to abort. It will be explained soon. There’s peace by mid-summer and more little ones emerge from the maternity burrow. Usually 4-6 in a litter. Summer doesn’t last long so they feed as much as they can while they can. The fattened up babies look so fit!!! In autumn they start collecting hay to line their burrow for decent sleep in winter. In winter their body temp is about 2 degrees C and their heart beats only 2-3 times a minute. Hibernation… they all snuggle to save heat, kiddos in the middle. See now they can’t keep more than one litter warm enough to survive winter, which is why mama unleashed drama on her daughters.
Over to the beaver in North America. David calls them engineers… then shows an amazing shot of a dam the family of beavers built. Then the shot moves up to the lake. What’s amazing is that the beavers created the lake by making the dam. It’s so important to them that they start repairs pronto when their hearing alerts them. You see them fetching mud and logs and twigs etc. What I’m impressed about is their accuracy of the height of the damn horizontally. There’s never more than a 5inch difference in height. Flooding the area helps them swim around coz they’re more at home in water… it also leads them to their main source of food. So like they make channels to swim to places. There’s a shot of a beaver finding a fallen tree, peeling bark with its teeth. It’s still in the shallow bits of water but that’s safety incase a bear or mountain lion etc come around. The network of channels also enables them to ferry back branches etc. Wicked shot where the beaver dives down with the branch and you see it stuffing the branch into the mud of the damn. This is meant to be the beavers fridge. Beavers are extra busy in autumn with the stocking of their fridge. Oh I get it, the mud is the fridge and the branches are the food. Beaver have a lodge/fortress that even bears cant break into. The only entrance is a tunnel, which open underwater. So when they’re alarmed you know where they’re gonna take refuge. David rows by to scare them and reveal their alarm signal. Basically before it dives in it slaps its flat tail on the water surface. Coz they can stay underwater 5-15 minutes they can go straight to their lodge without having to come up again. Most lodges have at least 2 different entrances. Winter comes and unlike marmots, beavers will be active through out the winter. The film crew installed a couple of infrared cameras in the lodge when the beavers were away. Beaver brings a branch from the fridge to feed the fam. So cool man, the lodge has a kinda chimney. You can see the hot air coming out in steam from the vent. New discovery: There are muskrats in the lodge too. Do the beavers know? Can they make it out in pitch black? They leave the lodge and come back with a few reeds. David thinks perhaps they’re renting. The beavers even share their food with the muskrats. That’s all about the lodge coz beaver covered the camera.
Wow, apparently the camera is called a starlight camera… and boy do you see them stars loud and proud. Anyway moving on to the African crested porcupine… most of the time its spines are flat, guess they’re half erect coz its not too happy with David being so close. Porcupines like eating roots and tubers but have to travel long distance to get their grub. So they have to be ready for all kinda gangsters. Lol Young leopard spots it, David says its never experienced a porcupine before. Never seen a big cat act like a playful curious cat before. Porcupine’s so confident its not moved or anything… goes on doing its thang. Guess that’s why young leopard didn’t try anything.
Ground squirrels look so cute. They build their burrows close to each other coz they’re hardly trees around or water. Kinda like a neighborhood watch thing. Paras note: Sounds like my fellow vanias in ORC. A couple of adults keep watch while the lil ones feed. Only the females care for the young and nearly all related to one another. So the mothers take care of nephews and nieces as they would their own. When the guards see some danger they have special warnings. Quick repeated trills means possible danger but evasive action not required. While longer, slower, lower calls means… run for it! Even running for it they look cute but they confused bobcat classic.
Its home time baby! Naked mole rats in Kenya! Mostly you’ll only get a chance to see mud out of their holes. They do all their stuff underground. Whoa… they’re ugly. Lips behind their long curvy incisors to stop mud getting in. Pale and wrinkly! Reminds one of pigs. Anyway so they have a central chamber where colonies gather and babies are kept… and this chamber stretches out to networks of tunnels. Hmm all these babies are produced by one big female. The founder of the colony. Paras: She must be hot. So no others can breed again so long as the mothers alive. Their job is to tunnel and search for tubers and roots. Hehehe while moving along the tunnels if they meet head to head with another… they sniff each other… see who’s older… then older ones steps over to pass. Ugh… seriously nasty looking. Picture testicle skin in albino shades. LMAO… shot of one reversing and bumping into another. Then David mentions that they’re blind so they’re as happy to move around backwards as they are forwards. Now coz they’re blind they have to guess and dig and hope to bump into a tuber… which is why there’s dozens of workers on the job. If they do find a decent tuber it will last them about 12 weeks. So these are the only mammals that have adopted the bees and ants setup of having one main queen mother.
Harvest mice have nests in reeds or tall grasses. Give birth to litters of up to 8 babies, which mature in just a few weeks. And they produce about 3 litters so about 30 young in a single season. Youngsters leave the nest in only 2 weeks and start searching for food by themselves. But not nearly as agile as the parents and sometimes not sure where they can tread. They were called harvest mice coz you’d only see them when crops were being gathered.
After the harvest another type of mouse enjoys the leftovers. The common house mice. The most prolific mice. Wow, the female is capable of giving birth at 5 weeks old and if/when possible… give birth every month. If the grain supply is finished they head for the houses and that’s when you see how many there are. All jumping around and stuff. Oh man, now can I describe this one… remember the end of The Mummy? Where all these scarabs just overflow the joint? Just replace the scarabs with mice. Now just as they rose, as soon as the grain is over their numbers will fall just as fast.
Moving on to the patagonian cavies or maras. (Spelling). Look like horse faced rabbits or something. In their case they have only one guard keeping watch. The young feed in the communal crèche, which in this case is a hole, which was dug initially by burrowing owls. Dig that! The maras have just enlarged it. Now the guard takes care of others babies too but the mother will only give her milk to her own. The adults are not related so changing the guard sometimes gets tense. First a few shots of adults chasing each other. Then a shot of an owl chilling in its dip right in the middle of the action, looking on. First owl I’ve seen not having proper round eyes. This ones got eyes of the serious blue dude in… um… the moppets. It does okay! Now coz they have longer legs they’re not good at digging which is why they prefer stealing holes from the owls. A plother (bird thing/spelling) warns them of approaching danger. The babies luckily have a hole to go to. But its not big enough for the adults. All they can do is run.
Another kinda rodent that gathers in vast numbers to graze are the biggest rodents in the world… the capybara in South America. Like the mara they’re related to guinea pigs. But these ones use their teeth to crop grass. When they want they can gallop as fast as a small horse. Land or water… don’t matter, they’re equally at home. In the herds each fam sticks together. From grandparents to grandchildren. And one large dominant males that marks his territory with a gland on top of his nose. Dude chases away a male that comes close to his fam especially if they come too close to his females. BOUT! Plus a wicked shot of 3 others watching and cheering. What makes them at home in water is the oily fur, partially webbed feet, and the eyes and nostrils are on top of their heads. A reason why the scent glands, which is usually under the cheeks, has migrated to the top of the nose.
Starts with another lazy fur ball… the sloth. Half blind, half deaf and even eats half-hearted. Note: My 15 minute reminder went off… went down to check on pizza… oven wont on! Talk about half-hearted. So yeah, the sloth cant digest the leaves proper so David calls him a mobile compost heap. This one is in a hurry (HURRY? The things so damn slow!) to get to the ground coz it wants to take a dump, which they do once a week in the same place. It’s so lazy the muscles have been reduced to thin ribbons and sleeps on the treetops half the time. David compares his busy schedule to the sloth just grooming, having a few nibbles and sleeping. Something called a tapir, meant to be the largest animals in the South American rainforests, looks like a pony sized retard elephant (no offence). Now these animals eat little bits of different kinds of leaves so as not to get a lethal dose of any one kind of poison. It eats some earth/special kind of clay that binds to poisons and neutralizes them.
Hamsterish Pikas are up next. They have a noisy warning letter others know which patches are taken. They eat leaves and flowers and stack them up several feet thick for winter too. Pretty clever… they collect various poisonous plants since it acts as a preservative. The ones with less poison become edible quicker. And they make several hundred trips A DAY. Beautiful shot of cave and waterfall in Mt. Elgon. David set up infrared cameras to figure out grooves on the cave walls. Note: Another kinda monitor I used to use during VTR. Lol bush buck, buffalo and elephants in pitch black carefully taking each step… the ele bumped its head on one of the boulders. Oh, they’re doing all this for the salt.
Next are the grazers of Africa… David explains how the grass has microscopic spines/thorns on the edges of its leaves and needles of silica inside its tissue so the grazers have teeth that grow continuously as fast as they’re worn down and they digest everything twice. Lol then there’s a revealing/funny shot of food going down this long thin neck and shoots back up to be masticated a second time then goes to the second chamber of the tummy. Shots of the annual migration. High speed shot of the migration reveals the animals following the same trails in the grass. So the wildebeests will only eat the grass with phosphorus and arrive at the Serenghetti just when the phosphorus’ie grass begins to sprout. Dikdiks, impalas and gerenuks vs. the acacia trees. The gerenuks are compared to ballet’s standing on their points coz they’re the ones that can get the leaves higher up by standing with a similar grace.
The giraffes get the highest leaves… one guess why. Wow these stretched grazers got tongues 18 inches long that got a grasp too (and from personal experience they’re sticky and slimy). They ‘hang’ in groups of 30 deep and the acacia aint a thing when it comes to their leathery lips. The acacia don’t mind through coz dry season summons seed dispersal. Since their seeds aint digestible they come out fine in the droppings. The acacia does mind the elephant though coz they be felling the trees for some greens. So they get the top most leaves with the least spines, then using the tusk they get the bark. Sometimes eat the branch too and let it stew in the stomach for 3 days. Hey the grazers got elongated pupils… I mean horizontally!!! To watch out for predators, plus when their heads go down to graze the eyes swivel in their sockets to ensure the pupil stays horizontal. That’s something new. Yooooo I always wondered why the grazers never get together and charge at the predators instead of running away… well here we have a scene where they’re stalking/taunting the predators. But in one shot the predator loses it and U-turns. You know what happens next don’t you.
The North American pronghorn is the world second fastest but world champion when it comes to long distance. Amazing shots of herbivores running and jumping and then even better shots of escapes and fighting back by herbivores. Wow lion and lioness pick a buffalo that strayed from the heard, buffalo was still standing… the others notices so they turned and come to the rescue. Now lioness was like funk it I aint that hungry but the lion was still holding on… till they came even closer and then he was like I’m still the King… BIATCH! Hahaha just messing.
Bull bison are next… man they look… big, dumb and dangerous (and for some reason I keep thinking Genghis Khan). So the bull bison prepare for the annual rut of sniffing out the best female (then letting out a ugh sound and expression), they walk in parallel to other males to size them up, scrape the grounds to show strength and pee on the ground and roll in it to reek of their hormones. The rolling and roaring ends up in a battle that lasts a few seconds. Oh great all that machismo for a few seconds? Now I’m thinking WWF/WWE.
American bighorn sheep got the biggest roundest horns though. If the male opponent is small time he just gets a kick on the a55. Really! While the closely matched males will have to head bang for sure. They have lil hairline cracks in their skulls to act as shock absorbers but still the rules are strictly head on coz any other way and they’d both break their necks. Interesting, they size each other up by horn size and once heads lock the ridges come into play by preventing them from slipping to test each others strength. The V shape has something to do with not being able to strike the skull directly. Once opportunity comes up, they’ll use the same horns to stab the enemy in the flank or belly.
The male topis even put on war paint, by plastering their horns with mud they look more intimidating to males and more attractive to females. Males either pursue females or chase males to establish a stamping ground. They also have to continuously fight to maintain ownership but mating carries on for days (not constantly). They fight so much that finally they just fall which don’t help much coz of the increasingly bold hyenas looking for a bite.