Original subtitles

200 million years ago,

our planet looked very different from what it does today.

It was entirely covered by sea,

which surrounded one single supercontinent we call Pangaea.

And then... Pangaea began to break up.

Life was cast adrift on fragments of land.

And these fragments eventually became our seven continents.

We will see how life developed on each continent,

giving rise to the extraordinary and wonderful diversity that we see today.

In this programme, we celebrate highlights from the series.

From the far north down to Antarctica.

Revealing rarely seen animals...

..newly discovered species... ..and incredible behaviours.

This is Seven Worlds, One Planet.

Over 100 times the size of Great Britain,

North America stretches from just above the equator almost to the North Pole.

But today, on this vast continent, things are changing.

In the far north, summers are now getting longer and hotter.

And Canada is warming faster than any other country on Earth.

Polar bears have always relied on sea ice for their hunting.

For most, these long summer months are a time of starvation.

But on the shores of Hudson Bay,

some bears are finding a new source of food.

They're all looking for the same thing,

and they have their own ways of catching it.

First, they must find the right rock.

Now, they must wait.

The tide comes in, bringing with it other northern giants.

Beluga whales.

Close to the shore,

their calves should be safe from ocean-going predators such as orca.

Over 3,000 whales have gathered here.

The bears need to be patient.

Success will depend on split-second timing.

A bite at the back of the head, and the kill is swift.

This extraordinary behaviour has only been reported here

in this remote corner of North America.

And only in the last few years.

This one small group of bears has found an ingenious way

to survive the lean summer months.

Today, much of the planet's wildlife has to live alongside people.

And nowhere more so than in Europe.

With a population of over 700 million,

it's a crowded world transformed by humanity.

But there are pockets of wilderness even in Europe's cities.

Vienna in Austria has over 2,000 parks, gardens and cemeteries.

And down in the undergrowth, a rather unusual resident.

Wild hamsters are found in grasslands

throughout central Europe.

Here in the city, they're doing extremely well.

This male is on a mission to find food.

And he's set his sights on one thing in particular.

Fresh flowers.

To survive the winter, hamsters must fatten up.

So there's no time to waste.

The only problem - these flowers are in someone else's patch.

Graveside bouquets are worth fighting for.

The winner gets to keep the territory

and all the food within it.

The loser has to beat a hasty retreat.

But the lure of fresh petals is just too much.

Plan B - stealth mode.

The coast looks clear.

But best not take any chances.

The trick is to get in and out before you're caught.

And now...

..dessert.

Candle wax.

It's full of oil, and high in calories.

A hamster's cheeks can hold a quarter of its body weight.

Just one more mouthful...

Oh, dear.

Big cheeks and narrow bottlenecks.

How very embarrassing.

Wherever you live, finding food can be a challenge -

be it in the urban jungles of Europe...

..or the equatorial jungle of Africa.

At its heart lies over a million square miles of wilderness...

..much of it still unexplored even now.

The forests of the Ivory Coast contain over 1,500 species of plant.

But some are very difficult to get at,

even for one of the most intelligent of animals...

..chimpanzees.

The elders in this group know where to find the most nutritious food and how to extract it.

But if they are to survive to adulthood,

the youngsters must learn these skills from their parents.

This young female is five years old.

Old enough to be given an important lesson.

And this is her teacher.

Her mother.

The lesson is how to crack a nut.

Using tools like this is so complex that it has only been mastered

by a handful of chimpanzee communities.

This is a skill that has been practised by chimps

for several thousand years.

Time to try for herself.

She needs to find a better tool.

Small rocks just don't have the clout.

And larger ones are too cumbersome.

Wood is both light and strong...

..but not strong enough.

Back to teacher.

It may take a young chimp up to a decade

to perfect the skills it needs for nutcracking.

She'll share this knowledge with youngsters of her own,

enabling them to harvest the riches of their rainforest home.

The largest of all the continents, Asia, is a land of extremes.

Here lie some of the hottest deserts on Earth.

This is the Lut Desert of Iran.

Here, temperatures can reach 70 Celsius.

The blisteringly hot rocks

and baking sands of Iran's deserts may appear totally lifeless.

But a few trees manage to grow in the shade of the canyon walls.

And here, at least, migrating birds passing through can stop for a little rest.

The flycatcher.

With luck, there might be a meal of some kind here.

There are spiders in the crevices.

Not much, but worth having.

And there's something moving up there.

The bird was mistaken.

It was a viper with a lethal bite.

This species has only recently been discovered,

and so far, it has been found nowhere else but here.

Its camouflage is so effective

that it's almost impossible to see it on these rocks.

And on its tail, movable scales have been modified to look like a spider's legs...

..and its tip like an abdomen.

Migrating birds only appear in this barren desert

during a few weeks of the year.

This is the snake's only chance to eat for months.

A shrike.

It has flown here from Africa and hasn't fed for days.

Better luck next time.

Asia also contains the highest mountains on Earth.

The Himalayas.

They stand over five miles high.

Asia's mountains stretch all the way from Afghanistan

across northern India to here in central China.

These are the mountains of Shennongjia...

..among China's highest.

The forests here were, until comparatively recently,

the least known in the world.

Few outsiders had any idea of what animals might be living in them.

There were stories of humanlike monsters, yetis,

abominable snowmen, who left strange footprints in the snow...

..but little else.

And indeed, there are monkeys living in the snowy forest.

And they're very strange.

Meet the two-faced, golden-coated, snub-nosed snow monkey.

They are among the heftiest of monkeys.

Big animals keep warm more easily than small ones,

and they survive in colder conditions

than any other monkey on Earth.

They all have snub noses.

Perhaps prominent ones would only too easily get frostbitten.

The whole group huddles together at the slightest opportunity to keep warm.

And who wouldn't?

Even adults, if they get separated from the group, can freeze to death.

Now, in the depths of winter, food is desperately hard to find.

The head of the family leads them to the edge of their territory

in search of something to eat.

The only food here is wretchedly un-nourishing.

Bark, moss, and lichen.

There's hardly enough to sustain one monkey, let alone a family.

But they share it peaceably.

Survival depends on the group keeping together.

In these mountains, any food is precious.

A rival group.

They too are searching for food.

The two males go head-to-head.

And now, the females join the fray.

Outnumbered, the intruders retreat.

Their leader is the last to go.

The fight was over the smallest of meals,

but it was ferocious nonetheless, and the family is now scattered.

But they must stay together.

The youngest are already badly chilled.

She can see her father, but has she the strength to reach him?

Back to safety and warmth.

The huddle is the only source of warmth in these bleak, frozen forests.

Asia may have the highest mountain range,

but the world's longest can be found in South America.

Stretching for over 4,000 miles,

from Venezuela in the north,

to Patagonia in the south - the Andes.

At the southern tip, mountains rise almost vertically.

The barren slopes look inhospitable.

But like all parts of South America,

they're actually rich with wildlife.

A family of puma.

They live further south than any other kind of cat on Earth.

These cubs are only six months old,

entirely dependent on their mother for food.

She knows how to exploit this rugged landscape to her advantage.

And she has to do so if she is to catch the continent's most challenging prey.

Guanaco, a relative of the camel.

Two metres tall and over three times the weight of a puma.

The mother's only hope is to go for the throat

and try to suffocate her prey.

Her cubs try to help...

..but they themselves don't yet have the skills

or the weight to bring down such large prey.

And the mother is now badly injured.

Her wounds are severe and will take weeks to heal properly.

But without food, her cubs won't survive for long.

As the days pass, she's becoming more desperate...

..and leaves her cubs, to hunt alone.

Staying low, she's nearly within pouncing distance.

Now she MUST hold on.

She's exhausted.

But her hungry cubs are almost a mile away.

This one meal will barely last the whole family for more than a few days.

Then their mother, somehow,

will have to summon the strength to hunt again.

Life for a hunter in this land is as hard as it gets.

In the heart of South America is one of the continent's hidden jewels.

Here, at Bonito, freshwater springs bubble up from deep underground.

Filtered through limestone, they create crystal-clear pools.

And in them live some remarkable fish.

Piraputanga.

The water is so clear that they're able to see

what is going on above its surface.

Brown capuchins are up there.

The monkeys are on their daily search for ripe fruit.

The piraputanga watch them attentively.

And with good reason.

Monkeys aren't the neatest of feeders.

Every scrap is fought over.

Before long, the monkeys have had their fill.

That might have to be the end of mealtime for the piraputanga today.

But now they know where the fruit is.

And there's still plenty left on the tree.

In the monkeys' absence, they go for it themselves.

Success or failure is just a matter of millimetres.

With a split-second adjustment,

the fish bends in midair and collect the prize.

Where there is water, there is life...

..even on the world's driest inhabited continent... ..Australia.

The grasslands support vast mobs of kangaroos.

In its woodlands are echidnas -

mammals that lay eggs like reptiles.

And there is an assassin here

that has only recently been discovered.

A jotus - jumping spider.

She's only five millimetres long but, nonetheless,

she is a stealthy and ferocious hunter.

She searches for prey among the grass stems.

She's single-minded and focused on hunting.

But today might be different.

This is something new.

Something fast.

And a little trickier.

But what is it?

Is it food?

It's a male jotus, looking for a mate.

He needs to catch her attention.

But female jotus only mate once -

if she's mated before, she might kill him.

He will need to seduce her with care.

Waving his arms makes his intentions clear -

he's a friend, not food.

No sign of an attack, yet.

But she doesn't seem particularly impressed.

Time to try his best move...

..the double paddle.

That surely will do the trick.

One final wave...

..and he's tamed her.

She stays still for just long enough.

And then he retreats quickly, before she has second thoughts.

At the far south of our planet lies Antarctica...

..the most remote and least-known of all the continents.

It was first sighted by humans just 200 years ago.

It's the coldest, driest, windiest and most hostile of all.

Nowhere in Antarctica is survival easy.

Gentoo penguins travel up to 50 miles every day to find food.

And they're now returning to their chicks.

They are the fastest penguin in the sea and can swim at 22mph.

An express delivery for hungry chicks

who've been waiting patiently back at the colony.

Today, it's been a good hunt for krill.

Perhaps too good.

The chicks grow and it seems that the Mohawk style is back in fashion.

It's just a phase.

He'll grow out of it.

He'll soon lose these remaining down feathers

and be ready to leave the colony

and collect food for himself.

But doing so is becoming harder because of climate change.

Glaciers in the region are now calving faster

than they have done since records began.

And this brash ice now fills the bays.

It's autumn.

The chicks have lost their down feathers and they're hungry.

They must go to sea for the first time.

But now there's a risk of being crushed between blocks of ice.

They have to get to the distant icebergs...

..and so reach the open ocean that lies beyond.

And that is easier said than done.

A leopard seal...

..their main predator.

It's a giant - three metres long.

These icy conditions help it to hunt.

The penguins can neither walk nor swim.

These are easy pickings.

But there is no alternative.

The penguins must run the gauntlet.

The seal seems to be toying with this penguin.

But safety is in sight.

The ice floe is near the open ocean.

But this penguin is exhausted.

Perhaps it's not worth it, after all.

90% of the world's ice lies in Antarctica

and, in some parts, the rate at which it's melting

is doubling every decade.

Climate change is affecting weather patterns around the world.

Rainfall is increasingly unpredictable.

Average temperatures are soaring.

Today, scientists tell us that we are at the start of a mass extinction,

and one that is being caused by human activity.

Over a million species could be wiped out,

many within the next few decades.

In Africa, the northern white rhinoceros is now facing extinction.

Killed by poachers for its horn

for use in traditional medicine.

These two females are the last of their kind.

When they die,

an entire subspecies that inhabited the Earth for millions of years will have disappeared forever.

But, with help, even the most vulnerable wildlife populations can still recover.

In Africa, an intensive conservation programme for the mountain gorilla

has raised their numbers above 1,000 for the first time since records began.

In Europe, thanks to conservation efforts,

the numbers of Iberian lynx are on the rise.

And it's no longer critically endangered.

And in Antarctica, the international ban on whaling has meant that the great whales

have returned to the Southern Ocean in numbers not seen for a century.

So we can improve things...

..if we determine to do so.

This is a crucial moment in time.

The decisions we take now

will influence the future of animals, humanity,

and indeed all life on Earth.