I started a journey to watch all 40 seasons of Nature

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Current Events » I started a journey to watch all 40 seasons of Nature
[1985] S03E17: Man's Best Friend

It took three seasons, but we finally got to an episode about domesticated animals. Nature shows a bunch of different breeds here, as well as a contrast of attitudes, such as the Western characteristic (babying dogs like family members and dumping all our thoughts on them as if they can understand) and that of Islamic countries (which have some dogma that says dogs are unclean) and Hindu countries. A few things, new at the time apparently, are also shown, such as realizing that how humans view the world (120-degree visual cone from up high, with an entire spectrum) is not how a colorblind dog lower to the ground sees things.

Other things covered: scent marking, nonverbal communication via posture and mannerisms (which gives the great quote: "Let's consult with an expert in dog body language: the local mailman"), and other silly dog-human interactions, like dressing them up and celebrating their birthdays. In a medical sense, the effect pets can have on blood pressure is almost akin to that of hypnosis or meditation, while they're also the "social lubricant" that gets strangers to talk to one another.

Then, the show examines the flipside to our pet fanaticism, wondering why it's so common for people to give their dogs to shelters at a rate of seven million a year -- from which 70% never come out alive. That is (was?) a clip of 600 per hour. The show doesn't focus much on this part, but this one hits hard, man.

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Humans have been breeding dogs for thousands of years the same way we now breed Pokemon -- it was already in place by the time the ancient Egyptians started painting their depictions of the types. So, in a sense, people have been playing dog-only Pokemon for thousands of years. In 1985, there were 128 breeds; today, 201 are recognized. We finally made it to Gen 2!

And don't think I didn't notice those two yorkie breeders left the front door wide open. The shot even lingered for a few seconds, as if the cameraman was thinking, "You're gonna close that...right? Right???" You'd never see a doggie door left open, so clearly human civilization still has a few more lessons to learn.
Take me down from the ridge where the summer ends
And watch the city spread out just like a jet's flame
[1985] S03E18: Namaqualand - Diary of a Desert Garden

Here it is, the final episode of season three. This time, a frostbitten, windblown, heat-blasted, treeless area of Namibia's desert is showcased -- a place where unique flowering plants look like stones and some sleep for eleven months of the year in a sandy tomb. But, sometimes the conditions are just right: the area gets a little extra moisture, fogs and frosts roll in, and then the area explodes into a kaleidoscope of color, sometimes decades in the making.

Dunno how Nature caught the flowering of '83, but there had to be some dedicated boots on the ground to make it happen. If each plant is the musician, and Namaqualand was the stage, then the blooming was their Woodstock -- and similarly short. The cool thing is that many of the plants had adapted to the area over millions of years, so when farmers tried planting cereal crops and it didn't pan out, it land reverted to its normal state. Now that's flower power.

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Speaking of nigh-unlivable hellholes turning into a rainbow-carpeted Avalon, I've definitely seen another Nature episode on this phenomenon. Pretty sure it focused on...Death Valley? Maybe it was that episode about the insects who keep cool in effed-up weather patterns by retreating into the mountains... This ep might be the precursor to that one.

Overall, a thorough episode, but those who aren't flower enthusiasts will fall asleep during, haha. I've made a note of which remaining episodes from this season I've missed and can hopefully watch 'em at a later date.
Take me down from the ridge where the summer ends
And watch the city spread out just like a jet's flame
[1985] S04E01: And Then the Rains Came

In almost a callback to S03E11, season four's opening salvo showcases a drought in Kenya's Tsavo Plains. The vegetation gnawed to stumps and animals barely clinging on thanks to elephants' water holes, the area later floods entirely, which causes a unique problem: land-based creatures must go afield to find food, then return at night to drink. But most of the episode is dedicated to the opposite of what a viewer would think: this showcases the rather long-lasting rains that followed the drought and how the creatures reap the benefits.

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Didn't know that tadpoles eat other tadpoles or that bullfrogs eat giant scorpions. (One was rasslin' with the scorpion in the water, thrashing about, as if it had heard the "scorpion riding the frog" fable and wanted a preemptive strike.) Also didn't know that elephants descend steep places by getting down on their back legs and crawling in an undignified way.

Not sure what the heffalumps and woozles got up to, though.
Take me down from the ridge where the summer ends
And watch the city spread out just like a jet's flame
[1985] S04E02: Battle of the Leaves

A few seasons ago, there was an episode that detailed various fighting tactics of insects, but this time it's plants' defenses against the throngs of invaders. The war metaphors are amusing -- thorns are the useless weapons of yesteryear, poison-filled leaves are chemical weapons, and nesting predators in the trees are much-needed reinforcements. The random leaf shapes of the passion vine are jungle camouflage to stop certain butterfly eggs from being laid there, and by offering special nectar to ants, they can enlist them as mercenaries. Thus, do plants wage their yearly campaign until the ceasefire of winter gives way to spring hostilities.

Sometimes leaves of one plant fight against leaves of another -- a civil war. This is something like the Britain's imported rhododendrons, which create a dense "canopy" for themselves and smother native plants' chances to grow, not to mention poisoning the earth with their decaying leaves as a type of natural weedkiller. The strangler fig -- which grows from the top of a tree downwards, then forms a lattice to give a fatal sleeperhold -- could make Agent 47 blush with its technique.

No "War of the Roses" joke was mentioned, maybe because they, like their hawthorn cousins, are usually lacking defenses. There were callbacks to the "stone leaves" in S03E18 and pitcher plants of S03E10, though, plus the penduline tit nests of...damn, I forget (S02E10: The Masterbuilders?).

This is also the only episode where I've seen ladybugs be described as predators.

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Some birds have even learned how to pick out which monarch butterflies are safe to eat (they get their poisons as caterpillars feasting on milkweed) and thus are fairly immune to the ills. In the Eighties, little was known about how they do it, but with the rise of genome mapping in the Nineties and beyond, apparently science figured it out. Quoting the article I found:

The new study reveals how the grosbeak can tolerate the toxins in the monarch: It has evolved single-nucleotide mutations in its sodium pump genes in two of the same three locations where monarchs evolved mutations that help make them the most resistant organism to the milkweeds cardiac glycosides. None of the other 150 or so sparrow-related passerine birds whose genomes are known has these mutations in both of the most widely expressed copies of the sodium pump gene. The orioles genome has yet to be sequenced.

So maybe it's not so much as "picking out specific ones" as "eating all of them and letting their insect god sort them out". If I ever discover a new type of passion vine, I'm naming it the Patton vine. And if it's not really a passion vine, that's okay, 'cause that line isn't really Patton's.
Take me down from the ridge where the summer ends
And watch the city spread out just like a jet's flame
[1985] S04E03: The Ganges Gharial

I think this is the first episode to focus specifically on a keystone (river) predator. It's about the endangered Ganges River gharial, a weird-looking, thin-snouted crocodilian species and the last of its taxonomic family anywhere on Earth. They need to surface to eat and bask, and they're clumsy on land, so it's easy to see why humans kicked their ass. Hell, it's easy to see why even otters troll them by swimming around just out of reach, infuriating 'em. (One even bit the gharial's tail. That is, in fact, metal.)

Coexisting with humans is difficult, due to habitat destruction, waterway traffic, fishing mishaps (net entanglements), and generally just disturbing the hell out of them wherever they go.

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Interestingly, it took five years to make this episode overall, which means its origins predate the first season entirely. Apparently it took three years just to get footage of a female gharial shopping for an egg-laying site -- she dug a burrow during a torrential downpour and it took almost ten hours to dig it, fill it, bury it again, then compact the soil. Gharials have wimpy T-rex arms, so they probably had to dig it with those webbed excavators in back. (Female gharials also have to dig their youngsters OUT again by listening to incessant croaking, oddly 'nough, which -- in the never-before-seen footage -- also took ten hours. Talk about exhausting.)

Even at the time of filming, eggs were raised in captivity for later rewilding efforts. So, how have these bottle-nosed predators been doing since 1985? Sounds like they've been slowly bouncing back, though sometimes the gharials are released into the wild at inopportune times, so apparently captive breeding hasn't been a complete success. I keep seeing that rivers and tributaries that want more gharials keep getting them from Nepal. Guess they know what they're doing.

Overall, good episode. The fact that they spent so long on the birthing stuff was very interesting and when you see the parents working hard to protect their young, both before and after they hatch, you get a newfound respect for these suckers. Not quite so cold-blooded after all, eh?
Take me down from the ridge where the summer ends
And watch the city spread out just like a jet's flame
[1985] S04E04: One Man's Island

This one's about Keith Brockie, a naturalist painter who finds his muse on Scotland's treeless Isle of May. Most of the episode is just about his sketching process while the usual Nature thing goes on, detailing lives of eider ducks, guillemots, and puffins.

For eiders, they're almost tame and rely on camouflage, so attaining sketches isn't that difficult. Guillemots live in cliffside tenements, crowded with constant noise and precipitous drops, so they're sketched from a blind with the aid of a telescope. Puffins live underground, so to get good sketches, he has to get a little luckier -- or for them to get unluckier, as with chicks that drown at sea and wash ashore. Fulmars can spit oil at prospective painters, so Brockie was careful not to get into their four-foot range.

In the autumn and winter months, when many native birds migrate elsewhere, new boarders come in, which can be captured and ringed for scientific purposes. This naturally gives an up-close chance to sketch the rarer creatures as well.

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It's been awhile since we had an anthropocentric episode, maybe even going all the way back to the first season. This feels a little like a minor entry in Nature's canon, it's quite calm and friendly, and has medieval-sounding Scottish music, which just feels right for all the shots of the shores and beaches. At the end, the completed colorized painting of the guillemots is shown, too, which is nice.

Brockie is still around and kicking, too, and has quite a reputation in Scotland. Although this episode was shot in 1985, it was probably in the works for the past year or two, as the artist released his book One Man's Island in '84.

https://www.keithbrockie.co.uk/biography
Take me down from the ridge where the summer ends
And watch the city spread out just like a jet's flame
[1985] S03E16: Through Animal Eyes

Had a bit of a hard time tracking this one down, but it all panned out in the end. Using cutting-edge technology (for 1985) and some groovy computer graphics, the show analyzes how animals literally see things; and, by understanding that, humans can somewhat experience how they view the world around them. This includes things like compound eyes, night vision, ultraviolet schemes, etc.

Obviously excited to show off their tech, the show runs the gamut of eye-havers: kitty cats, crows, frogs, bulls, dogs, chameleons, rabbits, foxes, gazelles, vultures, cheetahs, kestrels, owls, mice, possums, lemurs, rattlesnakes, penguins, fish, and crustaceans. It was quite fun and thorough -- the only thing they didn't show was a vermicious knid.

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Apparently frogs might be able to see moving things in outlines (like the image above) while stationary things "fade away". It's like a weird, bleached, washed-out world where you eat bugs and listen to Boards of Canada all day.
Take me down from the ridge where the summer ends
And watch the city spread out just like a jet's flame
[1985] S04E05: Selva Verde - The Green Jungle

Okay, after the episode in post #57 (which is almost a Nova episode, and I mean that in a good way), it's back to the fourth season. This time, rainforests of Central America are the focus, and although this does retread a bit of ground from other forest-themed topics, special attention is paid to the coexistence and interconnected lifestyles in the ecosystems.

Of particular interest was the cowbird, which lays its eggs in other nests in the hopes they'll be raised by oropendolas. Sometimes it works well; sometimes the eggs are simply discarded. But, the delightfully devilish adoptions can help, too, as the cowbird chicks can instinctively kill botflies, which can otherwise parasitize the featherless oropendolas and kill a lot of their young. Some cousins to the oros have their own ways of fending off danger, such as building their communal nests close to beehives and letting their bumbling friends do the no-knock warrants.

Here's a pic of the botfly maggot moving around beneath a chick's skin. You're welcome.

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Weirdly, though this episode was an hour and wasn't completely new information (many junior naturalists know about the sloths' unkempt algae growth in its hair and the moths that feed there, for instance), the episode blew by. By making things flow easily from one connected subject to another, it approximates the grace of a musical album where all the tracks flow into one another. Great episode.

It was also poignant to end the episode by showing mankind foolishly burning the ecosystem so vital to its own survival on the planet. Over shots of smoldering timbers, George says, "For the rainforest, death was a natural and enriching part of life. Now it has a new meaning: an end to birth." I don't need to look up how the rainforest is doing in 2024, though, 'cause I already know it's been banjaxed to a high degree.
Take me down from the ridge where the summer ends
And watch the city spread out just like a jet's flame
[1985] S04E06: The Plant Hunters

An intriguing episode, this. It focuses on how how humans prize plants for various purposes (usually food) and how thousands of plant species are at risk of vanishing. India's national flower, the rhododendron arboreum -- which can grow over sixty feet tall (!!!) -- was one of the species endangered. The Nepalese hillsides that used to have forests were thought to have needed just another ten years to become desert-barren. Naturalists who would go uphill to catalog plants would come downhill with grim prognoses.

It's thought said hills were ruined because of road construction and subsequent deforestation by travellers, though we now know (in general, or just better than '85) that the rhodos face a ton of assailants, like insects, fungi and other diseases. Still, as George says, "we may know these plants in the wild, but our children will never know the experience." We need a Johnny Rhododendronseed or something.

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Other parts of the episode focus on finding seeds of rare plants, such as those in Israel's Negev Desert or the Himalayas. One guy from the Missouri Botanical Gardens talked about a wild relative of maize that could only be found in a small football field-sized area in Mexico, and when cross-bred with the usual corn species, conferred various resistances to yield-reducing disease. And that area was almost destroyed by unintentional vegetation destruction! Damn, it ain't easy getting ahead of some of these issues.

Here's a cool story about that maize plant (I think?) and how it's still being talked about.

https://e360.yale.edu/features/indigenous-maize-who-owns-the-rights-to-mexicos-wonder-plant

Of course, the flipside of some of these issues is that people can pooh-pooh the introduction of new plant species that may supplant the "natural" ones. It's not really touched upon in this episode for some reason, but creatures will handle the seed dispersion if these things start being planted in a large way, so...damn. I guess the whole "we messed everything up" ball was rolling long before oranges were taken from the Middle East or sugar was introduced to the Caribbean.

tl;dr -- Don't destroy all the forests, you idiots!
Take me down from the ridge where the summer ends
And watch the city spread out just like a jet's flame
[1985] S04E07: Kalahari - Wilderness Without Water

If the title didn't give it away, this is about the Botswanan desert -- the "largest unbroken mantle of sand on the planet." Interestingly, for as much as we hear about desertification (the encroachment of sand), the massive desert in southern Africa is actually part of a much bigger stretch that has been somewhat devoured and repurposed by rainforest and grasslands. The layers of survivability make it rather cool-looking and diverse.

The Kalahari has water -- technically -- very deep below the sands where only the acacias, termites and (presumably) human wells can reach. Mostly, the actual desert's surface is just a dry-ass dune haven with ancient watercourses standing as a reminder of what used to be. Peak temperatures (dry season, noontime, etc.) can get up to 115F and cook the landscape, serving scavengers well and everyone else rather poorly. Meanwhile, for part of the year, nighttime temperatures are deathly cold, driving many creatures deep underground.

Now you know why honey badgers are pissed off all the time.

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As George Page reminds us, we say terms like "lifeless desert" but that's never really true unless you're on the moon. Surprisingly, even giant bullfrogs can live here, cocooned belowground (for years) and waiting for the brief wet season to frolic in puddles and mate. They showed a lion that looked it came from that Futurama joke about "we only feed it tofu" -- thin as a rail with all its ribs showing, having gone eight months without water. In lean times, the king of beasts turns scavenger; in really lean times, all the cubs die.

Overall, this ep is another winner. A lot of the best episodes I've noticed are about creatures struggling to survive in effed-up conditions, either natural or manmade, and this continues that trend. It's nice to have an episode with drama that doesn't boil down to "humans are the real monsters," though with climate change, it wouldn't surprise me if the Kalahari's difficulty setting got switched to Dark Souls mode. One of the most striking shots is seeing about 40-50 vultures standing chockablock in an acacia's shade, using every square millimeter. When S02E03 highlighted the trees' importance, they weren't a-kiddin'.

Also a shout out to all the minor-key woodwinds and flutes used in this episode. If you want to showcase lives on the brink, you'd better have those in there somewhere.
Take me down from the ridge where the summer ends
And watch the city spread out just like a jet's flame
[1986] S04E08: Emas - High Plains of Brazil

This time, Emas National Park -- named for the Brazilian term for rheas -- is brought into focus. It features all kinds of weird and wacky creatures that developed over millions of years, back when South America was an island, not held by an umbilical Panamanian isthmus.

This means anacondas (the largest, heaviest snake in the world), capybaras (world's largest rodent), lesser anteaters (having no den, they're itinerant), termites (housing random guests and species like a South American version of Tenpenny Towers), seriemas (birds of flight that choose to walk), and armadillos, which need little introduction. In some years, half the park burns down due to idiot farmers' unchecked swailing, though this isn't as terrible as it seems -- many species of plant are used to fire and bounce back easily, while some like termites and armadillos can just retreat underground to weather the flames.

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Many of the stories shown happen in the park's 500-square-mile cerrado, a little path of unchecked wilderness amidst rampant farming territory. Since 1985, it looks like its territory has tripled (or however you figure that out mathematically), so that's some good news. Oddly, for a park named after rheas, they didn't show any in the episode. I'm okay with dodging the low-hanging fruit.

This episode had a great soundtrack with lots of South American guitar in it. It feels like something you'd heard in For a Few Dollars More or something, which is my version of two thumbs up. There are times where the narration pulls back and there's just shots of animals doing their thing with the guitar serenading them. Those who want interesting factoids crammed into their noggins at 100 MPH may dislike this approach, but it just fits natural scenery. Even animals know when it's time to just shut up.
Take me down from the ridge where the summer ends
And watch the city spread out just like a jet's flame
[2011] S30E01: Radioactive Wolves

On somewhat of a lark, I checked what was going on in the PBS app, and saw an old episode from the thirtieth season I hadn't seen. So, why not check it out, I say? It's not like the chronological jump is unrelated to 1986, given that this is about wildlife surviving in the exclusion zone around Chernobyl. Over four hundred thousand folks were displaced, but the woodland critters stayed behind to witness nature reclaiming farms and cities in the Soviet Union's old breadbasket.

The invisible threat concentrates in plants and animals' bones, but of particular interest to science is the wolf populations rumored to be thriving in the hot zone's wilderness. Turns out, the food they eat gives dosimeters panic attacks -- and gives the episode its name. They're found in every area of the zone (though best trackable during winter) and thriving -- as many species are -- despite the contamination.

Other creatures that have been ruthlessly hunted, like bears and beavers, also find homes here in relative "safety". Eagles use fire towers for nesting; falcons use abandoned khrushchevkas to escape summer heat; bison and rare Przewalski's horses use the land after being reintroduced by man. One thing that's rarely mentioned when you see Chernobyl-related shows is that the contamination also messed up the Pripyat River, which, without the dikes and levees from the USSR days, just flood every year and mess things up. (Ironically, the wolves slow down the re-marshing efforts because they eat so many beavers, lol.)

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It's been awhile since I got to watch a new(ish) episode of Nature, one where the fidelity is nice and smooth and doesn't look like it was recorded on a Tamagotchi. Still, not having George Page around means they don't have that classy, wry, sometimes matter-of-fact narration.
Take me down from the ridge where the summer ends
And watch the city spread out just like a jet's flame
Shotgunnova posted...
The invisible threat concentrates in plants and animals' bones, but of particular interest to science is the wolf populations rumored to be thriving in the hot zone's wilderness. Turns out, the food they eat gives dosimeters panic attacks -- and gives the episode its name. They're found in every area of the zone (though best trackable during winter) and thriving -- as many species are -- despite the contamination.

What is the conclusion here, that nuclear wasteland is livable for some species or that there are enough of them for the radiative threats to not be a problem at the population level?
While we count these petals to pluck them off a cosmos
The stem is likely to blast but never does the fate
I think the conclusion was that, even though the radiation does affect the population (IIRC, it was about 3-6% born with abnormalities), having a vast stretch of unchecked wilderness where no humans really hunt them stabilizes the population anyway. There were similar studies done on doormice test subjects kept in little tree prisons (looked like a sap-extraction boxes) and they also thrived. So, even though surface animals take in way more radiation than they should, there was still proliferation. This goes doubly for wolves, since sniping them from helicopters was banned in Ukraine.

Naturally, when you're in a radiation zone where your time (as a cameraman, etc.) is strictly maintained and it's hard to really track many species outside of winter, the studies do feel like only the first page in a long, long book. Personally, I'd like to know how ground-dwelling species survive, since they'd probably be irradiated all the time, whereas wolves' wanderings -- through hot zones and cold zones -- can at least give 'em a fighting chance.

Anyway, this episode is free online if anyone wants to watch:

https://www.pbs.org/video/nature-radioactive-wolves/
Take me down from the ridge where the summer ends
And watch the city spread out just like a jet's flame
[1986] S04E09: The Feathered Swarm

Back to birds. This time, it's about the tiny, gregarious quelea, which hit the usual rhythms you'd expect from an episode like this -- mating displays, nest building, feeding, and so on. The interesting part is mostly about the size of the flocks, which congregate in the millions, scouring the earth for insects, plant material, and brooding sites. When they're flying and darting around, causing audible ruckuses, the only comparison in mind is locusts.

Part of the episode focuses on the lifestyles of these pint-sized menaces, showing the massive scale they do their construction on and the massive amount of predators (eagles, storks) that assail their acacia-held nests. After about a month, the entire colony -- their breeding and fledging cycles done -- all leave at once, ready to start anew. When they leave, though, their flock of millions has often doubled, which is almost mind-boggling to imagine.

The long, unbroken shots of the superorganism flocks roiling around is fascinating, and when one takes to the wing, they just keep going and going and going.

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Although they're unrelated, the episode with the radioactive wolves does have a parallel -- whatever the world is throwing at them, the bird flock's numbers barely diminish...that is, until they start eying humans' cereal crops. I thought they'd use pesticides or noise pollution to get them to leave, but the episode showed "control units" killing 100,000 queleas (or flocks mistaken for them) in one go by firebombing their nightly roosts. I sincerely hope that and the scattershot poisonings were outlawed since 1986, 'cause it's almost unconscionable to kill that many just to save a fraction of 1% of yearly yields.
Take me down from the ridge where the summer ends
And watch the city spread out just like a jet's flame
[1986] S04E10: Kingdom of the Ice Bear - The Frozen Ocean

Ahh, the Arctic -- where the water flows like ice and the ice flows like...well, ice floes. Much of the miniseries' first episode is dedicated to, expectedly, the habits of polar bears -- the males spending the winter on the sea ice, laughing and growing fat, while the pregnant females cocoon themselves in dens on slopes the males avoid. When the brief spring comes, mama leads the cubs to hunt various blubber-rich creatures.

In a cruel twist of fate, the polar bears' plight is a little passe by now (2025) because budding naturalists and PBS enjoyers probably already know a lot of this stuff. The episode is always competent and shot well, though. When the show focuses on seals, walruses, narwhals, and various seabirds, things are a little more adventurous and enlightening. It's probably easy to take some of these scenes for granted, though, given that it requires cameramen to get nice shots in below-zero temperatures, almost certainly near dangerous drifting ice, waves, etc.

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Still, even if I've seen enough polar bear programming to make me an honorary ranger, it doesn't make their circumstances any less sad. There's a segment where a mother bear stalks a seal (already dead, but she doesn't know that) by swimming stealthfully and then creeping closer on her furry, nigh-silent paws. In a hypothetical world where most of this ice is gone, I wonder how that approach would work when hunting future seals. They've still gotta rest and bask somewhere, but could P-bears really Solid Snake their way over on loose gravel? If only life were like a commercial and drinking a Coke would solve all those problems.

Just going off memory, I've seen other documentary-style stuff about the P-bears and how, with thinning sea ice and worse pickings, they've started going nearer to fishing communities and causing problems. I think there was a coastal Alaskan town that would leave whale carcasses around and the smell probably attracted every bird and mammal for miles and miles. Hope the towns have some of those bearproof garbage lids.

Overall, a fine episode with plenty of scenic stills from the Land of the Midnight Sun. Kinda curious where they'll go with the second episode in the miniseries, given that they've basically exhausted all human knowledge about polar bears in the first.
Take me down from the ridge where the summer ends
And watch the city spread out just like a jet's flame
[1986] S04E11: Kingdom of the Ice Bear - The Land of Beyond

As expected, polar bears are in the backseat this time to some of the other Arctic wildlife struggling in temperatures that would make equatorial peoples hyperventilate with fright. Caribou and their wolven stalkers, lemmings, migratory seabirds, snowy owls and others get their share of the spotlight.

Kinda cool to see some of the interactions we'd usually near think about, like birds using muskoxen's molted fur to line their nests or jaegers showing off live lemmings as part of a courtship ritual. Most interesting of all was the barnacle geese, though. They nest on sheer cliffs to safely hatch their young...which subsequently need to descend those cliffs on their own, then scramble over scree out in the open, to go get their own food. (An old wives' tale suggested the parents put the goslings in their beaks for a safe descent, but reality is stranger than fiction.) It's a little worrying as a viewer seeing the flight-capable geese glide straight down and land on a ledge half the size of a pizza box, then look back up at their kids with the "you coming?" look. It's even more miraculous to know that some goslings take the plunge and survive, thanks to their natural downy cushion and decelerating webbed feet. I'm still rather shocked that the cameraman captured (on film) a full nest of youngsters surviving, including with the foxes prowling below. How they survived without breaking their neck when they "flew" like a Plinko token, I'll never know.

But, maybe this explains why they're often such irascible bastards -- they went through military training right after they hatched. Still, I wonder why they go 300 feet up the cliffs instead of finding a shorter ledge out of fox and gull range. I'm sure there's a reason besides "this is what my goose-mama and goose-pappy have been doing for hundreds of years".

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This was a good episode, even if certain aspects had already been highlighted in previous seasons. Situations like birds relying on clockwork timing to feed themselves -- which, when interrupted or fouled up due to climate issues, lead to mass die-offs -- were noted in S3E7, while the caribou migrations in Canada/Greenland/Scandinavia/Russia have definitely been focused on in latter-day episodes.
Take me down from the ridge where the summer ends
And watch the city spread out just like a jet's flame
[1986] S04E12: Kingdom of the Ice Bear - The Final Challenge

The titular challenge here is whether the unmolested Arctic landscape, much of it untouched by oil conglomerates and fleets of fishing trawlers, would be allowed to inspire future generations with its beauty and hypothermia-inducing weather. Part of the episode is about Inuits, some of whom gave up their traditional lifestyles of hunting and fishing to integrate into Canadian society; others chose to live as their forefathers did, building igloos and living their best nomadic lives.

They talk about how the Arctic Ocean is comparitively clean compared to other oceans, and while that's sorta little true today, humanity's offal has definitely started seeping in since. There are the expected things like microplastics and maybe other ocean garbage, but then there's also oil spills and radioactive stuff, thanks to Russia's nuclear-powered icebreakers. I don't want to just blame Russia, since I'm sure many countries' trash could break down and end up here, but, man. It's a little depressing, especially in light of how semi-optimistic the tone of this episode is.

At least when they talk about the self-governing of native peoples, they got their wish. Nunavut's been around over twenty-five years and seems to be doing alright. It kinda sucks "inheriting" an area that's going to be ravaged by climate change, though, I guess.

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There's a bit about polar bear laws, too, like a ban on killing mothers with cubs, since the latter almost always die if orphaned. I've got mucho respect for the massive cajones this Norwegian scientist who wanted to do a census of sorts and climbed down into a bear's maternity den when it was away. You thought Jason vs. Freddy was scary? Try getting stuck down there when an angry mama smells your Brut in her pad, lmao.

On a lighter note, the polar bears must've welcomed the digital area quite a bit. The shots of these Norwegian dudes tranqing a mother bear and fitting her with radio equipment was like duct taping two OG Xboxes onto her back.
Take me down from the ridge where the summer ends
And watch the city spread out just like a jet's flame
[1986] S04E13: Saguaro - Sentinel of the Desert

Nature shines a flashlight on the Sonoran Desert, and its subjects include the great horned owl, elf owl, woodpeckers, hawks living communally, rattlesnakes, and -- naturally -- the titular cactus. As an American, I've seen a lot about these species before so the bloom's off the rose a little, but as a fan of westerns, how can you not like those backdrops where the sun sets over cliffs of red clay and darkened saguaros? All it needs is a few war whoops, coyote howls and a repeater rifle's echo to make you think the stagecoach is approachin'. (And as a true sentinel, some saguaros are old enough to have seen both the birth of the Old West and its obituary.)

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That said, the episode is a bit dry due to the by-the-book narration by some dude who ain't fit to shine George Page's shoes. It really does waste some of the nice Wolfgang Bayer camera work -- it probably wasn't easy to smush a lens into the cacti to show fledglings, capture nocturnal critters feeding on one-day-only blossoms, or show freshly hatched black widows "ballooning" out of the area on the breeze. This is the 1989 rebroadcast as part of a Nature best-of, though, so maybe the original had the superior narration and they couldn't use it for some reason.

So, at long last, the channel made something of a clunker, though it's more of a B compared to the A-minus grades most get. Still enjoyable for the uninitiated, but there's a reason George does the narrations (though a few of the special guest-star ones, like about those otters and the sketch artist, did fine). So, to commemorate the event, here's a bonus pic of the grandma making saguaro syrup. The stirring pot's reflection made for a good-natured laugh.

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Take me down from the ridge where the summer ends
And watch the city spread out just like a jet's flame
[1986] S04E14: Death Trap

A famous philosopher once said: "You merely adopted the earth. I was born into it, molded by it. I didn't see the sun until I was already a man, and by then the sun was nothing but blinding!" And the name of that philosopher? Albert Flytrapstein, plant biologist and insect digester. This episode focuses on the plants that, sick of playing victims to the world's vegetarian species, become little killers to get nutrients in pint-sized packages. To be fair, some of the things in this episode were talked about in previous ones, like venus flytraps and the acacia-ant teamwork (from the first season, IIRC), but there's also the lesser-mentioned attackers like the waterwheel plant, an underwater fiend that catches small insects with leaves on a tension trigger.

Toxins, insect bodyguards, defensive postures, grip-weakening waxes, nectar laced with narcotics... Still, it's the ones that have glues, gums and resins -- like the famous sundews that exist all over the world -- that are the coolest. Even ants renowned for their strength struggle, getting themselves stuck more and more. Runner-up in the coolness contest might go to the bladderwort, which have an inward-facing "trapdoor". Something underwater touches it, the trapdoor opens, and whoever was knocking is sucked in (within one-thousandth of a second) to be digested.

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It was extra funny to see a newly hatched mosquito climb up the first stalk of its life, only to get stuck in the sundew six centimeters away. Same for an ant that wriggled free of a sundew, just to toddle off and get caught by a flytrap. Keep fighting the good fight, my brethrens.

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The frog escaped, though.
Take me down from the ridge where the summer ends
And watch the city spread out just like a jet's flame
[1986] S04E16: Secrets of an African Jungle

Another one of those episodes that took years of shooting, Nature shows the strange world of Korup, the rainforest of Cameroon and the most diverse of such forests in Africa. The crowded canopies mean the forest floor is quite dark, which gives root (no pun intended) to fungi and parasitic plants that don't need to jockey for position in the sun. In fact, most trees here have natural defenses -- like being indigestible or filled with tannins and poisons like cyanide -- so that most creatures can't eat the leaves. Instead, the hungry must prey on fallen fruits...or each other.

There are some cool things I've never seen here. For one, we usually think of caterpillars as ravenous leaf goblins, eating everything in their path. But this one butterfly lays a single egg on a leaf that has qualities that prevent its digestion, so the caterpillar actually eats only the older parts. So, it grows as the leaf grows, and by the time it pupates, the leaf is still there. Now THIS is podgrazing.

Also interesting to know that most of the nutrients in the rainforest are contained within the first inch of topsoil. Some trees, maybe hundreds of years old, just kinda...sit on the soil, buttressed by deep trunks to offset shallow roots. If memory serves, this may be a situation where having poisonous leaves backfires, as those leaves eventually die and the chemicals are absorbed into the earth, possibly impeding neighbors' (or its own) growth. We saw that in other episodes, such as the one with imported South American plants for British gardens.

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There's also lots of stuff about monkeys in the treetops, but I'll be honest: I've never been a simian guy. Closest I came was that song "Tweeter and the Monkey Man," and that one time I used Primeape in gen one. Still, you see some of the weird, thriving conditions of the forest and think, "you know, Sigourney, we really are gorillas in the mist".
Take me down from the ridge where the summer ends
And watch the city spread out just like a jet's flame
[1986] S04E18: The Gooneys of Midway

Most in the know about Midway as an atoll from WWII's Pacific Theater; those not in the know probably have heard of the Battle of Midway games. Those who know nothing probably think, "do they sell sandwiches like Subway?" In any case, this episode belongs to the gooneys, a.k.a. albatrosses, large, harmless seabirds immortalized in the Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner .

Like sailors themselves, gooneys stay at sea for long periods of time, up to seven years in adolescence, and return to Midway thereafter to mate. There can be a million nesting there, and because they've never really been threatened by anything in terms of natural predators, they didn't really care about the US Navy building a base there or making an airstrip.

It's amusing to see "Operation Bedsheet" in action, as enlisted men take their titular "weapon" and try shooing the birds away, only to have them do little of anything. They just don't have those fleeing instincts. When the Navy brings out their blank-firing guns and smoke bombs, the birds just sit around, bemused. Eventually, to limit potential gooney-aircraft collisions, they used bulldozers and buried the birds alive -- that's messed up. A gentler ceasefire was reached when the Navy paved half the island; the gooneys tended to prefer the grass.

Part of the episode is about habits albatrosses have, and some are rather funny. The birds' gentle gliding and landing is sometimes upset with wind changes, causing them to do pratfalls and silly-looking crashes. (And, yes, the show did play some quasi-Benny Hill music here.) Golfers at the island's course sometimes have their balls sat on by goonies during nesting season, as the birds react to their natural instincts.

Of course, there are also sad times, like when part of the nesting grounds flood in torrential rains; adult albatrosses won't leave their nests, so the chicks have to weather literal storms or, as may happen, die from drowning or exposure. Chicks also pick off paint peelings from derelict buildings and go into convulsions as lead poisoning begins. When gooneys die of heat stroke, disease, or hunger, humans are the ones who play janitor.

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Still, the gooneys did prove victorious with greater numbers, and now, their former bedsheet-wielding enemies protect and improve their habitats. This has led to some other species, like (the appropriately named) frigate bird and red-footed booby, nesting on Midway, too. It's interesting to see that the fairy tern -- remember those? -- also show up here, just laying their eggs anywhere. There's a shot of one laying an egg near an old well, on a barracks roof, on a propped-up window screen, etc.

So, you have albatrosses that nest on grass, black albatrosses nesting on the sand, petrols under the sand, frigates in the bushes, and fairy terns everywhere else. Every bit of real estate seems to be used, and once evolution creates the pavement albatross, even the runway'll be in danger. All in all, great episode -- possibly the best one in the fourth season -- and a cool place if you're a bird. Of course, it's like the tenth circle of hell if you're an insect or sardine.
Take me down from the ridge where the summer ends
And watch the city spread out just like a jet's flame
[1986] S04E15: Aspen - Dancer on the Wind

Took me a little time to find this episode, but it finally happened. This show is a look at the aspen, North America's most widely distributed poplar. Though they may have a lifespan similar to a human's, their roots are almost immortal, and with enough time and a little luck, their groves encroach on fields and plains. In the winter, when snow reflects more UV radiation, aspens can develop a whitish, powdery bloom on their trunk to act as a natural sunscreen.

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There's some stuff about animals, like rabbits eating twigs because photosynthesis is a year-round affair, or deer eating the same to avoid starvation in deep snow, but overall it ends up a rather sedate effort. It's not terrible , but compared to some of the great Nature episodes -- some about trees themselves -- it's a little disappointing. Maybe part of the reason I find it boring is because I'm from Montana and all-too-familiar sights give me some eye-glazing disillusionment. Sometimes it's like On Golden Pond , but 0% Henry Fonda and 100% pond.

Still, it's good to cross this off my list. Finding some of these lost episodes has been...vexing. Anyway, this has continued into February, so that bodes well for my interest. I've had to stagger most of my mini-reviews thus far to avoid boredom, and the strategy is panning out somewhat.
Take me down from the ridge where the summer ends
And watch the city spread out just like a jet's flame
[1986] S04E19: Where Eagles Fly

Not to be confused with Where Eagles Dare , starring Clint Eastwood as a Nazi-murdering soldier, this is about golden eagles inhabiting the Scottish Highlands. It doesn't feel like it's been that long since the last Scotland episode (S04E04) -- to the point I said "hey, that's a ptarmigan!" in an opening sequence -- so this doesn't feel completely fresh, but let's be honest: eagles are always cool.

Instead of a long-winded synopsis, I'll just list some cool things they showed:

  • An eagle hunting and killing a rabbit, then ripping off the fur like wrapping paper. The camera even catches the balls of cottony fluff as the wind carries them into the brush.
  • Eagle chicks often kill their siblings, perhaps instinctively or just because they're little bastards. There's a shot of one dead chick with some of its down pecked out and the other chick just crouching nearby with a "I didn't do it" look on its face, lmao. And in an editing snafu (???), there's a shot where the voiceover talks about two siblings, but the nest only has one.
  • Eagles prey on almost everything, so other birds have found effective hit-and-run tactics in harrying them until they amscray. Some birds even harass them after they land, reminding them how much they're not wanted. However, eagles (and likely others) do benefit from the ancestral tradition of deer stalking, which is done to curb the highlands' deer populations that no longer have natural predators.


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This is another episode that was a half decade in the making, and it's made up of impressive shots (for that time period) that captures eagles in their natural beauty. Given how sensitive the birds are to change, cameraman Mike Richards had to remain completely immobile and stay in a blind for up to fifty hours at a time. I don't feel like making another Kramer joke, but to pull off some of these shots in an era without drones...nice job.

Also a shoutout to the electronica and piano/keyboard effects that really heighten the tension in these snow-capped, temperature-dropping camera pans of eagles circling and diving. It sounds like something raided from Rick Wakeman's digital library circa 1980, though by the end, they start dipping into hopeful-sounding Chariots of Fire 's stuff.
Take me down from the ridge where the summer ends
And watch the city spread out just like a jet's flame
[1986] S04E20: The Skyhunters

Yet another bird episode! They must've ordered quite a few and they just managed to all come to a head in season four, I guess. Vultures are the stars this time and Nature looks into the various stereotypes surrounding these oft-maligned flyers. For instance, despite being (as Darwin said; I'm paraphrasing here) "disgusting birds" accustomed to "acts of putridity," they're actually rather clean, taking every opportunity to freshen up. More than that, among all birds of prey, they're the most successful and numerous.

The episode focuses on the Serengeti variety which thrive as scavengers, just like their fellow coworkers, the hyenas. (I say that because there are shots of hyenas feeding and the vultures and storks just walk over, pretty as they please, observing and eating scraps.) Vultures' survival is interesting enough that ornithologists do "vulture-spotting" expeditions, which I assume is like Trainspotting with less drugs. Different vultures have different beaks, which ensure they all have a food prep role at the beggars' banquet.

Interestingly, turkey vultures in rainforests have such a huge, thriving ecosystem to scan, they can actually end up with more carcass num-nums than in Serengeti. This is because there's more mammals living per square mile here, that, on average, some will die of natural causes each day. And, unusually for vultures, they have acute olfactory senses and can reliably sniff out fresh kills within twenty-four hours.

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Overall, a fairly enjoyable episode. There's a little burnout on bird-themed eps, but vultures' habits are fairly interesting and the program does a good job of giving them a second look. Hell, just their day-long, energy-efficient gliding piques the curiosity.

And with that, the season ended. When I first started, I thought this would be a little easier, but somewhere along the line, seasons expanded to twenty-episode behemoths, so that naivete's on me. Dunno who's still following along, so I'll tear a page from Ebert's playbook and list my favorite picks for anyone jonesing to play catch-up:

  • Season 01 : I'm leaning toward "Amate: The Great Fig Tree" or "Kopje: A Rock for all Seasons," though people who dislike episodes with creepy-crawly insects would probably prefer the latter. Half the season was kinda bogged down by a naturalist-themed miniseries, so finding a good episode in the first half isn't too hard.
  • Season 02 : "On the Tracks of the Wild Otter" was fantastic and I hope future aquatic-themed episodes -- at least ones focusing on singular family units -- can live up to its standards. Runner-up might be "Big Business in Bees," though a close third-place would be "Resurrection at Truk Lagoon".
  • Season 03 : "Sexual Encounters of the Floral Kind" wins handily, just for the back of its narration, but "Lost World of the Medusa" was pretty good, too. Honestly, this season kinda shrugged off most of Nature 's growing pains and most eps were recommendable.
  • Season 04 : "The Gooneys of Midway" was a close, and funny, look at the albatross and it's the one I hold in the highest esteem. "The Ganges Gharial" was also fun, though, and is a look at exotic wildlife we usually don't think about in the States.
Some of the eps were still in VHS-quality archival recordings, but as we move on, I'm expecting some good things! I should also list for my own purposes episodes I'm still missing:

  • 3x14: Kitum - The Elephant Cave
  • 4x17: Birdwatch from Florida
Take me down from the ridge where the summer ends
And watch the city spread out just like a jet's flame
[1986] S05E01: Alyeska - The Great Land

Kickstarting the fifth season is a year's journey through Alaska, America's last great frontier. It encompasses caribou migrations, migratory birds' nesting cycles, and, of course, grizzly bear habits. I came into the episode with a notion of "great, more Arctic episodes" but there's a bespoke calmness to this one that's both fun and intriguing. You feel for the caribou that crossed a mountain range to graze, only to arrive in mosquito-hatching season. Hell, the insects interrupt them so often, they actually lose weight and need to dive into the sea for relief.

If the permafrost keeps thawing, I expect they'll need to do that a lot.

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I'm gonna try to do shorter write-ups from now on, since that was my original intent, and season five is a good place to start. I'll try to avoid taking notes and stretching the length, or at least save my naturalist brain dribble for standout episodes -- every season tends to have a handful of greats and a spate of goods.
Take me down from the ridge where the summer ends
And watch the city spread out just like a jet's flame
[1986] S05E03: Galapagos - How They Got There

Another three-parter that tackles naturalist history and the Galapagos Islands, which have weird, specialized creatures that inspired Darwin to change science forever. Sure, they may be "antediluvian beasts" as he called them, but aren't they precious? The only marine iguana in the world, the only nocturnal gull in the world, the most northerly penguin in the world, and don't forget the huge-ass tortoises.

Still, it's quite impressive for any species to actually reach the islands and survive long enough to become endemic. Think of a hypothetical land iguana, clinging to a log or raft being blown out to sea. It would have to survive a 1000-mile voyage, then survive harsh landfall with few beaches and battering waves, then actually find food and a mate. Maybe reproduction could take care of itself a little if it floated over while pregnant, but still, the chances be slim. Perhaps the next decade's genome discoveries put an end to the "who's your ancestor?" guessing games.

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In 1986, there were approximately 200-300K marine iguanas across all the islands, and it was estimated the same in 2017. Still, the species is considered endangered due to several factors, including harsh El Nino cycles and morons introducing non-native species. The former could be a natural form of population control, though -- not like humans invented that one.

And if you confused Easter Island with the Galapagos Islands at some point, well, so did I. Feel kinda foolish, since most know Darwin studied finch types on various islands and Easter isn't archipelagic. Derp.
Take me down from the ridge where the summer ends
And watch the city spread out just like a jet's flame
Current Events » I started a journey to watch all 40 seasons of Nature
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