BBC Earth 50 Top Natural History Moments | 20-11

[Music] he needs to sedate the elephant so that the snail can be safely removed guys we are ready we go have the elephant this is good I'm happy now the vets here Fred worked alongside a spotter plane to locate the injured boo [Music] he wants to dart it quickly to stop it from suffering [Music] okay so uh the French managed to buy the dark and elephants taken off through the piece we're just going to try and look into [Music] choppers on the ground [Music] jeez that's really shocking I mean to myself you're black on his side the Bulls breathing is labored we have to move fast to remove the snare poachers have simply used winch cable from a truck [Music] a snare like this is cheap to make it could have caught any of Weaver's farmers and it with Robert to me a possible profit the reason that this animal has endured his unimaginable pain is for this his tusks defies belief how cruel people can be how senseless this whole thing is because so much for an ornament simply for an ornament he's treated with a special play they'll help heal the wound what do you think Fred you think he's you think it'll survive ah yes the guy's body condition is good he was walking and also to getting to another bad level but it's still ok to survive you see the bone is not involved so we hate our bodies intact ok so when the body is in touch the soft tissue can easily really repair recovery and finally the wound is treated with an antibiotic spray all that remains is to wake him up well my word hey fella okay these touch-me-not balsam have sprung up to cover the woodland floor each night the leaves go limp as the balsam exudes any excess moisture in the waterlogged soils of the Lake District this is a handy adaptation [Music] soon their blues unfurl as the petals of these strange shaped flowers drop off seed pots begin to form [Music] these pots are the favorite food of the netted carpet moth caterpillar although it was once thought to be extinct the netted carpet moth survives here in the Lake District its last remaining stronghold touch-me-not balsam is their only source of food [Music] [Music] these plants have a surprise in store their seed heads explode it's how they became known as touch-me-not but nobody told the caterpillars this [Music] the caterpillars have no warning when these little bombs go off it's not just seeds that get hurled across the forest floor [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] kenia famous for its big cats the supreme hunters [Music] cheaters specialize in hunting at speed they're fast they're fragile creatures are built to sprint after small prey they don't have the strength or weight of a lion to bring down larger animals this male is different he doesn't hunt alone he's learned that there is strength in numbers [Music] but here there are not just two but three cheetahs a band of brothers [Music] they have changed their tactics and by doing so have taken their prey by surprise they have learned that working together they can bring down large prey [Music] an ostrich a bird that towers over a cheetah and is more than twice as heavy it can't fly to escape danger but it can lash out with a deadly kick a female unaware as yet of any danger even with three of them this is still highly risky if one gets injured the other two couldn't hope to tackle such large prey [Music] on the other hand if they get it right the rewards are huge the male has spotted one of the brothers but only one it's not too worried [Music] then suddenly there are three the female is slower to realize the danger and the Cheetahs switched hands [Music] it takes the combined effort and weight of all three brothers to bring down this powerful birth even now the ostrich could land a fatal kick [Music] so far the brothers are winning ostriches have yet to find a way to foil such things even the river normally a lifeline for the animals has almost disappeared yet the mud soup that remains could be concealing a free lunch if only the leopards can figure out what it is and how to get it are these weird apparitions something to fear or a harmless and much-needed source of food [Music] the mother has probably never seen a live catfish before [Music] eventually she loses courage perhaps a son will be bolder he has spotted some fish of his own when they stopped moving though he seems not to know where they've gone it's the elephant that finally reveals them you could almost see like a light bulb going on and literally right off to the elephant pull down you went straight in it was like playing with soap in the shower he just sort of thumb balled around didn't know what to do there's mud being splattered on his body and on his face finally he actually bettered which gave him a grip on it I just remember that expression when you stood up he was so proud of his achievement he was quite stoked [Music] even when more salons arrive they can't seem to break down the sardines coordinated defenses [Music] with a shoal this big the sea lions need to isolate a smaller more manageable human fish [Music] but with so few predators the fish still have the advantage [Music] [Applause] all the sea lions can do is keep the sardines at the surface and wait for others to join them [Music] tuna their arrival changes everything [Music] [Applause] [Music] tuner attacked from below cutting off the sardines escape route down to deep water next to appear shearwaters excellent fliers but also surprising the agile underwater with so many predators attacking from all sides the advantage starts to shift away from the sardines [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] as the fish pack ever tighter they're showing strategy now makes it easier for the hunters [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] copper sharks they've scented blood in the water [Music] surprisingly perhaps the Predators never attack one another they work together to corral the ball of fish taking turns to grab a mouse [Applause] [Applause] common dolphins as the show gets ever smaller each sardine scrambles desperately to hide in the middle but now there's no escape [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] a Buddhist whale finishes off the feast tonnes of sardines devoured in less than an hour a mudskipper a fish that spends most of its life out of the sea it can walk on land and breathe air its life is very different from that of most fish a fish out of water maybe but they thrive here in Japan so what's made this upheaval worthwhile the answer lies in the mud as the tide retreats it exposes mud flaps sunlight hits the rich silt and tiny plants and animals flourish there all food for a mudskipper but life on land is not without problems it's hard work to find a mate jumping high above the mud will get you noticed [Music] with eyes perched on the top of their heads the mudskippers keep a lookout for both friend and foe and males fight those who intrude on their territory [Applause] they must also take care not to dry out in the Sun rolling in the Oilers keeps the skin cool and moist for this smaller species a better option is to retreat underground so he digs himself a tunnel down into the mud [Music] [Music] his heap of spoil is an indication of the extent of his excavations with the tide flooding the tunnel twice a day maintenance is a real burden her eyes and ears that were closed for the first two weeks of her life are now opening and with this comes a whole new world of sensory stimulation [Music] she uses her vision to move around but does she see the world the same way we do well dogs are colorblind but that doesn't mean that everything is black and white she does see color but mostly just blues and yellows it's because she only has two types of color receptors compared to humans who have three and it's also why your dog will often ignore an orange toy in the green grass as those colors look the same to them better to give them something blue but it's when things are moving that her vision comes into its own dog's eyes process what they see more quickly than we do it's almost like they see in slow motion that's why they're always in the right place to catch the frisbee adults hearing is also superhuman they can hear things four times further away and twice as high-pitched as we can it's why we can't hear dog whistles but it also means they can hear the hum of Lights and even the pulsing sound of a quartz crystal in a digital clock but there's one sense she'll use more than any other her sense of smell a dog's brain is one-tenth the size of ours but the part that controls smell is 40 times larger they have up to 300 million scent glands in their nose compared to our five million in this tree there is one of the most extraordinary plant predators it's one animal that I don't need to sneak up on oh this extraordinary creature is half blind half deaf and this is just about as fast as it can move that's what's gonna happen to you if you live on nothing but leaves it's a slice it's not exactly an enthusiastic leaf eater a couple of half-hearted chews and the leaves go straight down to its stomach leaves however are not easily digested the sleds technique is to give them time then eventually this mobile compost heap pulls itself together and starts on a long and dangerous journey this is a very unusual sight a sloth in a hurry it wants to defecate and the only place it's happy doing that oddly enough is down on the ground it only does it about once a week but why does it come down to the ground to do it and why does it nearly always choose to do so in exactly the same place whatever the reason it must be very important for a sloth on the ground is almost helpless any predator could attack it and it doesn't have the speed to escape why it comes down in this way is a mystery nobody knows now it's finished and the leaves are not very nutritious the slows way of compensating for that is not to eat more but to do less it's claws hook over the branches so that the sloth can hang without any effort of its muscles which have been reduced to thin ribbons and to save energy it spends most of its time hanging around half asleep in the treetops so with very little muscle and a reaction time only a quarter as fast as ours how does a sloth today compared with our day in the time it takes me to write a few letters the studies just about manages to groom itself while we have our lunch the stove's nibbles a few leaves and then as we film the sequence for the series which time [Music] food is so hard to find this far north that a wolf pack must search hundreds of square kilometers if it's to be successful and success means raising the next generation to do that here the wolves must work together so the young are raised not only by their parents but by their aunts and uncles as well [Music] together they try to ensure that each puck reaches near adult size before the snow returns the growing pup needs more than just a few leverets the Wolves need bigger prey and to catch that they must hunt as a pack [Music] [Music] adult Harris may be easy to spot but they're far from easy to catch they run at 60 kilometres an hour [Music] to catch one the Wolves work as a team [Music] one of them gets close enough to fight the hares tail but a hair can change direction in an instant [Music] if it can continue to sidestep and gingka it may ultimately outlast them [Music] finally it gets away [Music] for the next hair the whole pack gives chase [Music] now numbers count the need moves keep up the pace others run on either side so the hare can't change direction a tiny meal for the whole pack for kangaroos the greatest challenges come from within their own society for a male there's only really one key lesson to learn in his life they get to the top he must become a fighter the battles are so brutal that males need years of training to prepare the effort is worth it because a champion fighter wins privileged access to the females this meadow is a boot camp for aspiring boxers training starts as soon as a youngster is out of the pouch its mother is a handy opponent for a young Joey learning the basics but he soon off in search of more sparring partners the other grown-ups are not so tolerant of this lightweight [Music] [Music] this male alone rules the meadow [Music] he stands eight feet tall his muscles hardened by years of sparring today a challenger for his title has come forward full-blown fights are so dangerous they're not entered into lightly but when two males square up it's time to clear the arena anything goes in these power struggles I doubting is entirely within the rules so is kicking below the belt the dominant male skill is already telling [Music] the stakes are high they risk broken bones and internal injuries certainly it's all over the champion has beaten off the Challenger at least for now [Music]

Channel: BBC Earth

Views: 3,348,588

Rating: 4.8641624 out of 5

Keywords: bbc documentary, bbc, bbcearth, bbc earth, top 50, bbc earth best videos, best natural history videos, BBC Earth's Top Natural History Moments, best of bbc earth, earth day, best animal videos, best wildlife videos, animal compilation, The hunt, puppy videos, puppy opens its eyes for first time, David attenborough meets a sloth, kangaroo fight, Cheetah hunt ostrich, elephant caught in snare

Id: 0aKIeVr0n_E

Length: 35min 42sec (2142 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 21 2020