The Future Is Wild — Season 1, Episode 5: Cold Kansas Desert
Documentary • 25 min • 1 season, 13 episodes • ★ 7.6/10
Episode synopsis
The episode is set in North America, 5 million years into the future. The episode focusses on three species: (1) Deathgleaner, a massive carnivorous false vampire bat that spends the day hunting for prey in the desert and spends the night in a communal roost; (2) Spink, a descendant of the quail whose wings have become digging blades. The species lives much like the naked mole-rat of our time; (3) Desert Rattleback, a descendant of the agouti, when lives in the cold regions. The episode explains that the onset of the ice age caused the agricultural belt of the USA to turn into a desert where temperatures at night regularly reach freezing. The episode shows how the animals have evolved to cope with the harsh features of this forbidding landscape.
About The Future Is Wild
The Future Is Wild was a 2002 thirteen-part documentary television miniseries. Based on research and interviews with several scientists, the miniseries shows how life could evolve in the future if Homo sapiens left the earth. The version broadcast on the Discovery Channel modified this premise, supposing instead that the human race had completely abandoned the Earth and had sent back probes to examine the progress of life on the planet. The show took the form of a nature documentary. The miniseries was released with a companion book written by geologist Dougal Dixon, the author of several "anthropologies and zoologies of the future", in conjunction with natural history television producer John Adams. For a time in 2005, a theme park based on this program was opened in Japan. In 2008 a special on the Discovery Channel about the development of the video game Spore was combined with airings of The Future Is Wild. A film version of the series was picked up by Warner Bros.