The Future Is Wild — Season 1, Episode 9: The Great Plateau
Documentary • 25 min • 1 season, 13 episodes • ★ 7.6/10
Episode synopsis
The episode is set in a lofty plateau created by the collision of Australia (who moved northward) against Japan and Kamchatka (the Asian tectonic plate), 100 million years into the future. The episode focuses on four species: (1) Silver Spider, a descendant of our spiders, the silver spiders live in huge colonies and have a caste system based on the size of the animal. They build massive webs across canyons; (2) Poggle, a descendant of the hamster and the last species of mammal on Earth at this time, prey to silver spiders; (3) Great Blue Windrunner, a brilliant blue bird with wings on its legs which sees in ultraviolet and lives at the highest points on the plateau; (4) Grass Trees, Tree-like plants descended from bamboo. This episode shows how this bizarre food chain works
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.