After the dinosaurs dominated Earth for millions of years, their enormous size became a disadvantage when a catastrophic extinction changed the planet. This clip from BBC’s Evolution episode "The Elephant" follows the small, adaptable ancestors of elephants as they survive in the aftermath, when being tiny, flexible, and able to eat a wide range of foods becomes a major evolutionary advantage.
The video also explores one of the challenges these early mammals faced as plant eaters: digesting tough cellulose. Their solution was a partnership with microbes living in their guts, which can break down plant material that the animals cannot digest on their own. This symbiotic relationship helped early afrotherians thrive and spread into the habitats left open after the dinosaurs disappeared.
In The Disappearing Mammals of Australia, narrator Sir David Attenborough discusses animal images carved on stone by prehistoric humans. Then Europeans arrived and decimated the unique wildlife of Australia. The future of wildlife now depends on human intervention. This video is excerpted from BBC’s Seven Worlds, One Planet, a series featuring remarkable animal behavior from all seven continents.
The end of the Cretaceous reshaped life on Earth, with the asteroid impact that wiped out more than 70% of species leaving a world where mammals could rapidly diversify. This clip from BBC’s Evolution episode "The Bat" follows that turning point to the emergence of early bats, including Icaronycteris, whose elongated fingers formed wings and whose specialized ear structures suggest that echolocation was already developing.
The combination of flight and echolocation allowed bats to exploit an entirely new environment, hunting for food in the night sky and eventually spreading across almost every continent. The video also connects the bat’s remarkable adaptations to features shared by all mammals, including jaws, complex teeth, a through gut, and specialized middle-ear bones, highlighting the deep evolutionary connections between bats, humans, and other mammals.
After the dinosaurs dominated Earth for millions of years, their enormous size became a disadvantage when a catastrophic extinction changed the planet. This clip from BBC’s Evolution episode "The Elephant" follows the small, adaptable ancestors of elephants as they survive in the aftermath, when being tiny, flexible, and able to eat a wide range of foods becomes a major evolutionary advantage.
The video also explores one of the challenges these early mammals faced as plant eaters: digesting tough cellulose. Their solution was a partnership with microbes living in their guts, which can break down plant material that the animals cannot digest on their own. This symbiotic relationship helped early afrotherians thrive and spread into the habitats left open after the dinosaurs disappeared.
In The Disappearing Mammals of Australia, narrator Sir David Attenborough discusses animal images carved on stone by prehistoric humans. Then Europeans arrived and decimated the unique wildlife of Australia. The future of wildlife now depends on human intervention. This video is excerpted from BBC’s Seven Worlds, One Planet, a series featuring remarkable animal behavior from all seven continents.
The end of the Cretaceous reshaped life on Earth, with the asteroid impact that wiped out more than 70% of species leaving a world where mammals could rapidly diversify. This clip from BBC’s Evolution episode "The Bat" follows that turning point to the emergence of early bats, including Icaronycteris, whose elongated fingers formed wings and whose specialized ear structures suggest that echolocation was already developing.
The combination of flight and echolocation allowed bats to exploit an entirely new environment, hunting for food in the night sky and eventually spreading across almost every continent. The video also connects the bat’s remarkable adaptations to features shared by all mammals, including jaws, complex teeth, a through gut, and specialized middle-ear bones, highlighting the deep evolutionary connections between bats, humans, and other mammals.