Advanced search

It is a love story. When the twelve-breasted boar's sow farrows thirteen piglets, not having enough "sucking space" for the thirteenth, she rejects it and for the most part such piglets die. This drama from the world of animals paints the harshness of nature to the unwanted "thirteenth piglet", which we named Gile Baksuz (Gile Bad Luck). The rejected piglet is taken and given shelter by another species - a roe and her fawn. But there comes a calamity, a great flood strikes. Animals attempt to save themselves swimming towards a large sandbar. Among them are the roe, the fawn and poor piglet. Surrounded by water, the sandbar becomes an island of refugees. All sort of beasts are there, but the peril brings them together and no one attacks! The buck, having reached the security of the shore, leaves the shelter and sets out to find his female and fawn. Within reach of them he'll drown, entangled in branches. Waiting on the sandbar, gazing in the direction from which her "husband" may appear, the roe dies of sorrow or maybe something else, leaving her fawn and the little pig. When the water withdraws and the animals leave the isle, our couple: the fawn and the pig also reach the safety of the shore. Gile's mother is saved too, but she has lost all twelve of her favorites and mournfully she cries for them.

Echo of the Elephants: The Story of an Elephant Family. Cynthia Moss has been studying the elephant population in Kenya's Ambesoli National Park for more than 20 years. Her work here documents an intense 18-month observation, from January 1990 to June 1991, of a single family unit. Moss escorted cinematographer Colbeck as he filmed a documentary, airing on PBS's "Nature". Her film is like a novel yet is scientifically accurate, non-exaggerated, and highly informative. Readers will become involved with matriarch Echo and her family, kin, and clan. Other work by Cynthia Moss is Elephant Memories: Thirteen Years in the Life of an Elephant Family (2/15/88). But this movie, on a more abstract level, is really about The Vanishing World. While human is propagating at exponential rate (unreasonable, unbound, alarming) this most aggressive predator (human) eats everything into extinction and destroys habitats and echo-systems into extinction.

The show presents potential solutions to global warming, followed by a panel discussion about the road ahead. Acknowledging the scientific consensus on the issue, the debate will steer clear of the pointless "skeptics vs. alarmist" angle and focus on what we can do as individuals, a nation and a species to avert the impacts of climate change. Attenborough's film lays out seven components of a sane response to global warming - strategies and targets from the household to big industries and government. But each one has implications, and many - like a growing reliance on nuclear power - are highly contentious. Our goal is to debate these strategies in a positive and constructive spirit: combating the paralysis of swirling fears with concrete ideas for informed action." But in retrospective, in 2006, Attenborough did not have enough scientific evidence to be more blunt. So, the author of this review simply summarizes the situation of year 2011 as following: Pollution, eating species into extinction and massacre of environment happens on global scale: sacred and very needed by life on Earth trees are being massacred by human predator. Gold mining, illegal tree cutting, illegal ranching in Amazon already destroyed a lot of sacred trees. Films: "AMAZON with Bruce Perry", "The End of the Line (2009)". Most vicious predator (human) must learn to stop destroying its own environment. Most vicious predator must stop unbounded (exponential) reproduction: it leaves no space for healthy environment for most vicious predator and leaves no space for animals. CONSUMPTION is not "cool" anymore. Hint: coexistence of human and environment (nature and animals).

Wildlife documentary following the search for grizzly bears in the beautiful Cascade Mountains of Canada. Wildlife filmmaker Jeff Turner has spent a lifetime tracking grizzly bears around the world, and now he has come home to spend a year in the mountains of his youth to discover if the grizzly is still surviving in this beautiful area of British Columbia. Tracking the wildlife through the four seasons of one year, he encounters many animals from his childhood, including black bears, ospreys, coyotes and mule deer. But with all the changes to his old stomping ground, do the wild grizzly still survive?

A solitary loggerhead turtle in the middle of a vast ocean may not sound like an adventure film, but stick with her. Along her 9,000-mile voyage to nest, our loggerhead tour guide in Voyage of the Lonely Turtle encounters hammerhead sharks, deep ocean tempests, and man-made death traps in the form of fishing nets and hooks. Her body of well-suited armor and specialized adaptations for deep-ocean dwelling will help the sea turtle evade many of the ocean's menaces. But this is just one set of challenges to overcome. Here is another: she must find her way across the Pacific, from Mexico to a small stretch of beach in Japan, a precise location that she has been to just once before, as a two-inch hatchling, decades ago. Researchers have learned a great deal about how this curious creature could make such a phenomenal voyage. Some of the most valuable information was gained from a single voyage. Scientist Wallace J. Nichols released the captive loggerhead turtle, Adelita, into the Pacific a decade ago. Over the course of a year, Adelita did what no sea turtle had ever done before, she took researchers and turtle enthusiasts along on her journey, to her beach, to nest. Since then, researchers have shed much light on how sea turtles like loggerheads navigate the astounding trip. One of the more fascinating aspects of this navigation is the turtle's use of magnetic mapping to chart its course.

Join Hardy Jones in his crusade to protect dolphins.

NATURE chronicles African elephants' families through stunning film and still photos.

Revel in the resurgence of the bald eagle, the American emblem that's come roaring back from the brink of extinction.

Scientists attempt to breed new generations of nearly extinct species.

Echo, the remarkable matriarch of a family of elephants in Kenya's Amboseli National Park, was most studied elephant in the world, the subject of several books and documentaries, including two NATURE films. For nearly four decades, elephant expert Cynthia Moss, and award-winning filmmaker Martyn Colbeck were on hand to record the trials and triumphs of Echo and her family, documenting the intense loyalties and deep caring that are so fundamental to all elephants, creating a moving record of a life we all can share. Echo died of natural causes at the age of 65 in May of 2009, leaving the family she had cared for and guided for so long to face the worst drought ever recorded in Amboseli on their own. It was a final test of the years of Echo's leadership. Had she taught them all they would need to survive without her? Could her wisdom continue to provide for them even after her death? With rich archival footage and warm recollections, Moss and Colbeck share their memories of Echo and her family as they follow the fortunes of Echo's family during the drought. Echo is shown caring for her newborn son, Ely, who overcame the crippling condition he was born with thanks to her patience and extraordinary perseverance. Echo is also shown making a heartbreaking decision to abandon her mortally-wounded daughter, Erin, in order to save Erin's young calf, Email. Moss and Colbeck have especially fond memories of Echo's mischievous baby daughter, Ebony, whose playful nature was so endearing to them both. And they marvel as they recall Echo's rescue of Ebony when she was kidnapped by a rival clan, remembering it as one of the defining moments of her leadership. Happily, Echo's legacy lives on. Though other elephant families suffer devastating losses, her family is able to survive the drought, retaining her wisdom for future generations, keeping her memory alive.