About this season
Extraordinary show that reveals how forces of nature through sheer power of evolution shaped life in all it's unexpected and glorious forms, and filled our planet with amazing diversity of animals and plants.
Episodes (6)
1. New Zealand
Aired 4 December 2010 • 51 min
New Zealand is a fairytale archipelago with a turbulent geological past. A land with astonishing creatures: flightless birds, night dwellers and even living fossils. Evolution has run wild on this isolated land, producing some of the world's most unusual animals.
2. Australia
Aired 4 January 2011 • 51 min
Australia is a floating laboratory whose ancient geological past and changing climate have triggered mutations in the animals here, culminating in over 200 species of bizarre pouched marsupials, which are all equipped with astounding survival features.
3. Brazil's Cerrado
Aired 11 January 2011 • 51 min
On Brazil's ancient Cerrado grassland a community of eccentric creatures are all inter-dependent, and all life revolves around the landscape of mysterious mud-caked monoliths.
4. Africa's Rift Valley Lakes
Aired 18 January 2011 • 51 min
Africa's freshwater Great Lakes are the birthplace of the biggest, fastest, and perhaps the strangest mutation of any vertebrate on Earth. Could these fish actually be as intelligent as chimps?
5. Madagascar
Aired 25 January 2011 • 51 min
The land of lemurs, an ancient primate family that evolved from only one small group which arrived on the island more than 60 million years ago. For them Madagascar became the land of evolutionary opportunity and today there are almost 100 living species.
6. Japan
Aired 8 February 2011 • 51 min
Isolated from the Asian mainland, Japan's animals have been forced to endure the most violently active islands on earth in a climate of extremes. Animals cast away on these outcrops must find innovative ways to overcome periods of starvation.