1 00:01:17,210 --> 00:01:20,145 Water: Hundreds of thousands of tons of it, 2 00:01:20,313 --> 00:01:23,146 lying frozen on the world's mountains. 3 00:01:23,483 --> 00:01:28,477 It covers not only the poles, but caps great peaks on the equator. 4 00:01:38,331 --> 00:01:43,564 Water molecules, distilled from the sea by the sun's heat, condense in the sky. 5 00:01:43,803 --> 00:01:46,829 As they fall through the air, they pack together into shapes 6 00:01:47,006 --> 00:01:53,070 that echo their six-fold symmetry and form infinitely varied crystals of ice. 7 00:01:55,148 --> 00:01:59,209 They settle on the high mountains and compact into snow and ice 8 00:01:59,385 --> 00:02:01,819 that is, chemically, almost pure water, 9 00:02:01,988 --> 00:02:05,014 much purer than the sea from which it came. 10 00:02:05,658 --> 00:02:08,252 On Mount Rainier in the United States, 11 00:02:08,428 --> 00:02:11,829 permanent snow begins at 7,000 feet. 12 00:02:12,532 --> 00:02:18,232 You might think that this was one of the most inhospitable places on earth for life. 13 00:02:18,471 --> 00:02:22,635 After all, no vegetation grows on these snowfields, 14 00:02:22,809 --> 00:02:29,146 so there can be no animals that feed on it, like marmots or mice or rabbits, 15 00:02:29,315 --> 00:02:35,914 and if there are no herbivores, there can't be any predators like hawks or weasels. 16 00:02:36,189 --> 00:02:41,320 But in fact, there is a surprising amount of life here. 17 00:02:41,594 --> 00:02:47,157 There is some life actually within this snowfield itself, 18 00:02:47,333 --> 00:02:52,669 because this snow is not white, but red. 19 00:02:54,073 --> 00:02:58,100 The colour comes from microscopic plants: Algae. 20 00:02:58,611 --> 00:03:01,774 The redness is produced by light reflected from their cell walls, 21 00:03:01,948 --> 00:03:06,351 and is almost invisible when, under the microscope, light shines through them. 22 00:03:06,819 --> 00:03:09,754 Internally, they're green with chlorophyll. 23 00:03:09,956 --> 00:03:14,723 With its aid, they convert carbon dioxide and water into sugars. 24 00:03:15,061 --> 00:03:18,030 These, and the minerals dissolved in the melt water, 25 00:03:18,231 --> 00:03:21,359 are all the algae need to grow and reproduce. 26 00:03:22,101 --> 00:03:25,036 The winter snow will bury them feet deep, 27 00:03:25,205 --> 00:03:30,404 but in spring, when the surface melts, they divide, develop tiny beating hairs 28 00:03:30,577 --> 00:03:32,875 and swim up towards the sunshine. 29 00:03:33,479 --> 00:03:37,415 As they age and the minerals are used up, they change colour, 30 00:03:37,684 --> 00:03:42,212 forming huge smears of red in snowfields all over the world. 31 00:03:48,528 --> 00:03:52,521 Eventually, the snow algae produce spores as fine as dust 32 00:03:52,899 --> 00:03:56,892 and in that form they are blown from one snowfield to another. 33 00:03:57,170 --> 00:04:00,936 But other, bigger animals, also brought up by the wind, 34 00:04:01,107 --> 00:04:04,201 blow across the snows of Mount Rainier. 35 00:04:09,616 --> 00:04:12,278 Ladybirds. Thousands of them. 36 00:04:12,619 --> 00:04:17,886 Nobody knows why they come up in such numbers and assemble like this. 37 00:04:18,091 --> 00:04:23,324 But in late summer they fly up from the valleys up to these high peaks 38 00:04:23,496 --> 00:04:25,930 and here assemble in the rocks. 39 00:04:26,232 --> 00:04:31,465 When the winter snows come, the ladybirds remain underneath the snow in the rocks, 40 00:04:31,704 --> 00:04:37,165 and then in the spring, as now, the snow melts and the sun warms the ladybirds, 41 00:04:37,343 --> 00:04:43,077 and they become active and fly off back to the valley to feed on aphids. 42 00:04:45,785 --> 00:04:50,279 The ladybirds are only temporary residents of the Mount Rainier snowfields. 43 00:04:50,657 --> 00:04:53,023 Other insects manage, almost unbelievably, 44 00:04:53,192 --> 00:04:56,889 to live all their lives in this seemingly inhospitable snow. 45 00:04:57,363 --> 00:04:59,991 The best time to find them is at night. 46 00:05:23,589 --> 00:05:25,147 A whole community lives here, 47 00:05:25,325 --> 00:05:30,558 feeding on pollen grains and the bodies of dead insects blown up on the wind. 48 00:05:31,864 --> 00:05:35,925 Some, like this primitive relation of the cockroach, a grylloblattid, 49 00:05:36,102 --> 00:05:39,697 have a body chemistry so well adjusted to low temperatures 50 00:05:39,872 --> 00:05:43,899 that if you pick them up, your hand's warmth will kill them. 51 00:05:50,316 --> 00:05:53,513 Permanent snow lies directly on bare rock, 52 00:05:53,686 --> 00:05:58,851 but lower down, where it comes and goes, there can be a little vegetation to be grazed. 53 00:06:02,562 --> 00:06:07,522 Mountain sheep. These on Mount McKinley are the kind known as Dall Sheep. 54 00:06:19,612 --> 00:06:21,739 Little ground squirrels live up here too. 55 00:06:22,081 --> 00:06:25,244 Unlike the sheep, which retreat to lower altitudes in winter, 56 00:06:25,418 --> 00:06:27,352 the squirrels are permanent residents, 57 00:06:27,520 --> 00:06:31,923 insulated in their burrows from the frosts by the cover of snow. 58 00:06:41,601 --> 00:06:45,901 There are sheep like these in mountains all through North America, Asia and Europe. 59 00:06:46,172 --> 00:06:49,801 All carry big horns, and the senior males, in autumn, 60 00:06:50,009 --> 00:06:52,842 indulge in the most alarming courtship battles. 61 00:07:35,855 --> 00:07:39,018 It's hard for plants to grow on steep, high slopes 62 00:07:39,258 --> 00:07:44,389 The warming by day and freezing by night makes the gravelly soil slip downwards, 63 00:07:44,564 --> 00:07:47,158 so it's difficult for plants to keep a hold. 64 00:07:47,500 --> 00:07:49,832 With few plants, grazing animals are rare, 65 00:07:50,002 --> 00:07:53,267 though there may be more than there appear to be at first sight. 66 00:07:58,911 --> 00:08:01,744 These, in the Himalayas, are blue sheep, 67 00:08:02,014 --> 00:08:07,350 so nimble and sure-footed they can reach almost any vegetation on the steep slopes. 68 00:08:14,260 --> 00:08:20,324 But if these are rare, rarer still is the animal that preys on them, the snow leopard. 69 00:08:27,840 --> 00:08:31,970 In summer it stays at between 12,000 and 15,000 feet, 70 00:08:32,245 --> 00:08:35,908 hunting small rodents and birds as well as mountain sheep. 71 00:08:55,301 --> 00:08:59,135 Snow leopards have been seen as high as 18,000 feet in summer. 72 00:08:59,305 --> 00:09:04,641 But with winter's heavy snowfalls, it retreats to the valleys. 73 00:09:14,153 --> 00:09:20,058 Game is now so scarce that there's barely enough to support more than one leopard, 74 00:09:20,226 --> 00:09:22,490 so this animal hunts alone. 75 00:09:29,669 --> 00:09:32,502 Its thick, dense fur is now paler. 76 00:09:32,705 --> 00:09:36,471 It has a thick, woolly undercoat and cushions of hair under its paws 77 00:09:36,642 --> 00:09:39,406 which prevent it from sinking in the snow. 78 00:09:50,523 --> 00:09:56,359 The mountains of Africa, although so near the equator, are permanently snow-capped. 79 00:09:56,529 --> 00:10:00,329 Kilimanjaro, 19,000 feet high, is a volcano. 80 00:10:00,733 --> 00:10:06,968 Mount Kenya, also volcanic, is 2,000 feet lower but still has its own glaciers 81 00:10:07,239 --> 00:10:10,072 Each has its own animals and plants 82 00:10:10,242 --> 00:10:13,143 specially adapted to life at low temperatures. 83 00:10:13,546 --> 00:10:19,485 Here, at about 13,000 feet, grow some most beautiful and dramatic plants: 84 00:10:19,652 --> 00:10:22,212 Giant groundsels and giant lobelias. 85 00:10:22,455 --> 00:10:24,548 At these altitudes, plants like these 86 00:10:24,724 --> 00:10:29,491 have to face two totally conflicting problems every 24 hours. 87 00:10:29,695 --> 00:10:34,962 Every night the temperature falls so low that they're in danger of freezing solid. 88 00:10:35,167 --> 00:10:39,536 And every day the sun beats down so strongly in this very thin air 89 00:10:39,705 --> 00:10:44,438 that it threatens to rob them of their moisture by evaporation. 90 00:10:44,744 --> 00:10:47,838 But look how this lobelia deals with those problems. 91 00:10:49,081 --> 00:10:53,245 This little pond of water in the leaf rosette freezes over every night, 92 00:10:53,552 --> 00:10:58,182 and this shield of ice prevents the water beneath from freezing, 93 00:10:58,357 --> 00:11:04,523 so that it acts as a liquid jacket, preventing the frost from reaching the heart of the plant. 94 00:11:05,064 --> 00:11:11,833 But as the day wears on and it gets warmer, this water is in danger of evaporating 95 00:11:12,004 --> 00:11:15,303 and the plant of losing its night-time insulation. 96 00:11:15,708 --> 00:11:20,008 But it isn'tjust rainwater that's accumulated in this rosette. 97 00:11:20,279 --> 00:11:25,046 It's been secreted by the plant itself and it's slightly slimy. 98 00:11:25,217 --> 00:11:29,847 It contains pectin, a colloidal substance which greatly reduces evaporation. 99 00:11:30,222 --> 00:11:32,190 But there's another kind of lobelia 100 00:11:32,358 --> 00:11:35,486 which deals with these two problems in a quite different way. 101 00:11:41,667 --> 00:11:44,966 This one grows very tall and has extremely long leaves, 102 00:11:45,137 --> 00:11:49,471 each fringed with tiny hairs which act like an animal's fur, 103 00:11:49,642 --> 00:11:53,738 trapping air between them, insulating the stem from chills. 104 00:11:53,946 --> 00:11:57,040 They also prevent the wind from robbing the plants of moisture. 105 00:11:59,518 --> 00:12:02,510 Each group of lobelias is owned by a pair of sunbirds 106 00:12:02,688 --> 00:12:05,088 which collect the insects the plants attract. 107 00:12:05,424 --> 00:12:08,222 They keep themselves warm with fluffed-up feathers. 108 00:12:09,962 --> 00:12:12,453 And among the rocks are hyrax. 109 00:12:19,305 --> 00:12:25,437 The reason these little creatures are so tame and I can get so close to them 110 00:12:25,611 --> 00:12:28,512 is just because they're living so high up. 111 00:12:28,981 --> 00:12:32,212 Up here, there are few creatures to prey on them. 112 00:12:32,418 --> 00:12:37,754 An occasional leopard may come up and hunt them, but apart from that, nothing. 113 00:12:38,257 --> 00:12:42,853 And so they can come out during the few brief hours of sunshine 114 00:12:43,028 --> 00:12:46,122 and bask on the rocks without any fear, 115 00:12:46,332 --> 00:12:47,697 just as they're doing now. 116 00:12:51,604 --> 00:12:54,664 Hyrax also live down on the hot plains below, 117 00:12:54,840 --> 00:13:00,039 but these, in response to the cold, have developed particularly long fur. 118 00:13:00,379 --> 00:13:04,839 Despite their shape, they often climb trees to crop leaves. 119 00:13:05,084 --> 00:13:08,485 But at these altitudes, there's only grass and lobelias, 120 00:13:08,654 --> 00:13:11,145 and they share it with the little furry-eared rat. 121 00:13:20,266 --> 00:13:23,531 Mount Kenya, like its neighbours Kilimanjaro and Ruwenzori, 122 00:13:23,702 --> 00:13:29,140 is an isolated patch of snow and ice surrounded by the baking hot African plains. 123 00:13:30,276 --> 00:13:31,903 But the great mountains of South America, 124 00:13:32,077 --> 00:13:36,912 like Cotopaxi, 19,000 feet high, are very differen 125 00:13:37,216 --> 00:13:41,915 These volcanoes, some active, some dormant, are not isolated peaks 126 00:13:42,087 --> 00:13:46,114 but part of a continuous range that runs the length of the continent 127 00:13:46,292 --> 00:13:51,059 and is surrounded by the high, cold plains of the altiplano, 128 00:13:51,230 --> 00:13:55,394 so their flanks support a large and varied population of animals, 129 00:13:55,568 --> 00:14:00,028 all adapted to life at high altitudes and low temperatures. 130 00:14:00,706 --> 00:14:04,836 Here lives a wild South American camel, the vicuna. 131 00:14:05,211 --> 00:14:09,045 Its coat is fine, silky and protected so well from the cold, 132 00:14:09,215 --> 00:14:12,981 that it has, paradoxically, led to its near-extinction. 133 00:14:13,285 --> 00:14:17,688 Men have recognised that vicuna wool has an unexcelled softness and warmth 134 00:14:17,857 --> 00:14:21,349 and hunted the animal for it until it's close to extinction. 135 00:14:28,534 --> 00:14:32,493 The people of the Andes have domesticated another wild camel, the guanaco, 136 00:14:32,671 --> 00:14:36,163 to produce heavy-fleeced versions which produce excellent wool 137 00:14:36,342 --> 00:14:38,173 and serve as beasts of burden. 138 00:14:38,744 --> 00:14:45,274 Here, in Ecuador and Peru, near the equator, wild camels live at around 14,000 feet. 139 00:14:47,186 --> 00:14:52,180 But as you travel south down the Andes, the snowline gets lower. 140 00:14:52,558 --> 00:14:55,686 Half-way down, 2,000 miles south of Cotopaxi, 141 00:14:55,861 --> 00:15:01,322 the line of permanent snow has dropped from 16,000 feet to 13,000 feet. 142 00:15:03,502 --> 00:15:07,529 A thousand miles farther south still, the mountains are not so high 143 00:15:07,706 --> 00:15:13,872 but are almost completely covered with snow, to within a few hundred feet of the sea. 144 00:15:15,681 --> 00:15:20,983 So, on the southernmost tip of South America, in Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, 145 00:15:21,153 --> 00:15:26,056 the guanaco doesn't live at great altitudes, but almost at sea level. 146 00:15:26,659 --> 00:15:32,655 Yet it needs its warm coatjust as much, for here, even in summer, it's very cold, 147 00:15:32,831 --> 00:15:36,198 and during the winter the whole land is snowbound. 148 00:15:48,914 --> 00:15:53,613 The reason it gets colder nearer the pole is not complicated. 149 00:15:53,886 --> 00:15:58,084 The sun's rays strike the earth at the equator at right angles. 150 00:15:58,324 --> 00:16:00,918 But as you travel round the earth, 151 00:16:01,093 --> 00:16:03,425 the rays become more and more glancing. 152 00:16:04,964 --> 00:16:07,694 So a given amount of heat falling on the equator 153 00:16:07,866 --> 00:16:11,962 is distributed over a much greater area in the polar regions 154 00:16:12,137 --> 00:16:17,268 and has to travel through more of the earth's atmosphere, which weakens it still further. 155 00:16:18,610 --> 00:16:24,412 So down in Patagonia, the sun's rays are very much less intense and carry much less heat, 156 00:16:24,583 --> 00:16:28,041 and the glaciers flow right down to the sea. 157 00:16:40,766 --> 00:16:44,862 Farther south still, across the near-frozen seas off Cape Horn, 158 00:16:45,037 --> 00:16:47,835 you reach chains of small volcanic islands 159 00:16:48,007 --> 00:16:51,773 that run down towards the Antarctic continent itself: 160 00:16:52,011 --> 00:16:53,672 Remote, little-known archipelagos 161 00:16:53,846 --> 00:16:58,249 such as the South Sandwich and, here, the South Orkneys. 162 00:16:59,718 --> 00:17:07,056 There are only two flowering plants that can manage to survive in this bleak, icy country. 163 00:17:07,259 --> 00:17:12,322 One is a kind of thrift and the other is a small, stunted grass. 164 00:17:12,564 --> 00:17:17,058 And apparently, no land-living animals of any kind. 165 00:17:17,970 --> 00:17:22,669 But when the snows melt in summer, they reveal that the rocks and the boulders 166 00:17:22,841 --> 00:17:27,437 are covered with over 100 different kinds of mosses and lichens, 167 00:17:27,679 --> 00:17:31,843 some of them rounded green cushions, others like miniature trees. 168 00:17:33,786 --> 00:17:38,382 The capacity of these simple plants to endure cold is phenomenal. 169 00:17:38,590 --> 00:17:43,027 Some species can even survive being frozen solid for weeks on end. 170 00:17:48,901 --> 00:17:54,396 Within this miniature tangled jungle lives a whole menagerie of tiny animals. 171 00:17:56,608 --> 00:17:58,701 Primitive creatures little bigger than pinheads 172 00:17:58,877 --> 00:18:04,338 manage to survive by slowly chewing away at the lichens and mosses during summer. 173 00:18:04,716 --> 00:18:06,911 In winter they almost grind to a halt, 174 00:18:07,086 --> 00:18:12,149 yet they survive unfrozen because their blood contains a kind of antifreeze 175 00:18:12,324 --> 00:18:16,727 and remains liquid even when the temperature falls well below zero. 176 00:18:21,934 --> 00:18:26,462 The majority are vegetarians, but there are also carnivorous mites among them 177 00:18:26,638 --> 00:18:29,038 which clamber around the grazing herds, 178 00:18:29,208 --> 00:18:31,972 picking off individuals as they fancy. 179 00:18:33,712 --> 00:18:37,705 In this extreme cold, the processes of life are greatly slowed down, 180 00:18:37,883 --> 00:18:42,547 not only those of growth, but those that lead to old age and death. 181 00:18:42,955 --> 00:18:46,857 So such tiny creatures, which elsewhere might live for merely months, 182 00:18:47,025 --> 00:18:50,791 survive for two or three years within the green mossy carpets. 183 00:18:53,732 --> 00:18:57,668 The seas around these Antarctic islands are strewn with ice. 184 00:18:58,137 --> 00:19:01,265 The pack ice that litters the surface is frozen sea water, 185 00:19:01,440 --> 00:19:04,204 and in winter forms a solid cover to the sea. 186 00:19:04,543 --> 00:19:06,272 The icebergs are different. 187 00:19:06,445 --> 00:19:11,280 They're made of fresh water and have broken away from glaciers flowing into the sea. 188 00:19:13,485 --> 00:19:17,581 This is the source of those bergs: The edge of a glacier. 189 00:19:18,557 --> 00:19:22,118 Beyond it, the continent of Antarctica. 190 00:19:23,428 --> 00:19:25,896 It's huge, bigger than the whole of Europe, 191 00:19:26,064 --> 00:19:29,932 and, for the most part, it seems totally devoid of life. 192 00:19:32,938 --> 00:19:36,135 But not all of Antarctica is snow-covered. 193 00:19:36,375 --> 00:19:41,836 In parts of the interior there are valleys where almost no snow ever falls. 194 00:19:43,182 --> 00:19:46,709 This is as desolate a part of the earth as exists. 195 00:19:47,119 --> 00:19:51,419 The cold is extreme, it's drier even than the centre of the Sahara, 196 00:19:51,590 --> 00:19:54,115 it's dark for half the year 197 00:19:54,293 --> 00:19:58,525 and it's scoured by a never-ending howling wind. 198 00:19:59,731 --> 00:20:03,258 And the wind is responsible for these carvings in the solid granite. 199 00:20:03,635 --> 00:20:07,127 Crystals of salt form beneath tiny flakes on the surface, 200 00:20:07,306 --> 00:20:12,175 and grow slowly, but so powerfully that particles are broken loose. 201 00:20:12,444 --> 00:20:17,677 The wind then sweeps them up and hurls them at the rock face, eroding it still further. 202 00:20:21,987 --> 00:20:26,924 Desolate though this waste of shattered rocks may seem, there is life even here. 203 00:20:35,167 --> 00:20:39,194 Algae. Beneath the stone, the wind doesn't dry it out, 204 00:20:39,371 --> 00:20:41,635 and it's protected from the cold. 205 00:20:42,140 --> 00:20:46,509 It gets the light it needs to grow through the translucent rock. 206 00:20:52,618 --> 00:20:55,712 There are also green patches actually within the rock. 207 00:20:56,054 --> 00:21:00,457 Algae have penetrated the microscopic spaces between the rock's constituent particles 208 00:21:00,626 --> 00:21:02,719 and there managed to grow. 209 00:21:05,230 --> 00:21:07,391 Glaciers flow down these dry valleys, 210 00:21:07,566 --> 00:21:11,229 fed by the ice cap covering the continent's centre. 211 00:21:11,570 --> 00:21:17,907 They're among the world's fastest moving, advancing as much as 300 feet in a year. 212 00:21:18,277 --> 00:21:24,045 As they surge downwards, their surface is torn into thousands of crevasses. 213 00:21:39,564 --> 00:21:42,533 During the summer, even though the winds are bitterly cold, 214 00:21:42,701 --> 00:21:46,865 the sun is sufficiently strong to melt a little of the glacier's surface. 215 00:21:48,874 --> 00:21:52,901 Where it accumulates in pools, blue-green algae grows vigorously, 216 00:21:53,078 --> 00:21:57,947 its dark colour enabling it to absorb a high proportion of the sun's feeble heat. 217 00:22:02,154 --> 00:22:06,887 These pools and streams are the only places in all of Antarctica's interior 218 00:22:07,059 --> 00:22:09,425 where life flourishes in any abundance. 219 00:22:11,063 --> 00:22:14,191 The earth, at the beginning of the history of life 220 00:22:14,366 --> 00:22:17,426 before any higher plants or any animals had appeared, 221 00:22:17,602 --> 00:22:20,332 must have looked something like this. 222 00:22:26,178 --> 00:22:30,672 Yet here, mysteriously, lie the corpses of large animals. 223 00:22:31,683 --> 00:22:35,084 A crab-eater seal. It looks comparatively fresh, 224 00:22:35,253 --> 00:22:40,555 but examination of its tissues show that it is about 300 years old. 225 00:22:41,059 --> 00:22:43,653 This extreme climate has freeze-dried it. 226 00:22:43,995 --> 00:22:46,793 It must have lost its way, perhaps because of sickness, 227 00:22:46,965 --> 00:22:51,231 and misguidedly crawled up here from the coast, 25 miles away. 228 00:22:53,238 --> 00:22:58,938 Although the land of the Antarctic is almost steri its waters are extremely fertile, 229 00:22:59,311 --> 00:23:05,079 so its margins, particularly the beaches of its off-shore islands, are rich in life. 230 00:23:14,092 --> 00:23:17,892 These fur seals in South Georgia flourish in great numbers 231 00:23:18,063 --> 00:23:19,758 because the surface waters of the seas 232 00:23:19,931 --> 00:23:24,834 are thick with shoals of floating shrimp: Krill, which is their main food. 233 00:23:25,470 --> 00:23:29,634 Every year they come ashore to the beaches to pup and mate. 234 00:23:32,511 --> 00:23:38,040 They're not true seals but eared seals, for they have small external ears. 235 00:23:38,216 --> 00:23:43,017 Their hind flippers can be brought forward, enabling them to move quite fast on land, 236 00:23:43,188 --> 00:23:45,349 something that true seals can't do. 237 00:23:45,724 --> 00:23:50,957 These fur seals retained and thickened the fur of their land-living ancestors, 238 00:23:51,129 --> 00:23:58,695 so that now some of these big males have manes which give them the name sea lion. 239 00:23:59,070 --> 00:24:02,369 This fur lies in two layers. 240 00:24:02,541 --> 00:24:07,274 There's an outer guard hair and then a thick layer close to the skin, 241 00:24:07,446 --> 00:24:14,477 and that traps air in it and keeps the animals warm when they go swimming. 242 00:24:14,653 --> 00:24:17,121 But the trouble with fur as an insulator 243 00:24:17,289 --> 00:24:23,558 is that if you dive too deep, water pressure squeezes out the air. 244 00:24:23,829 --> 00:24:28,664 So fur seals, for the most part, fish in the surface waters. 245 00:24:30,535 --> 00:24:35,598 True seals, like these elephant seal pups, have a different kind of insulation. 246 00:24:35,841 --> 00:24:37,206 Their fur is sparse, 247 00:24:37,375 --> 00:24:41,971 but beneath the skin is a thick layer of oily fat, blubber, 248 00:24:42,147 --> 00:24:44,411 which surrounds their entire body. 249 00:24:44,716 --> 00:24:47,742 Elephant seals dive to great depths to hunt squid, 250 00:24:47,919 --> 00:24:51,878 navigating in the dark with sonar and huge eyes, 251 00:24:52,157 --> 00:24:57,094 but they don't get chilled, for pressure has no effect on blubber's insulating qualities. 252 00:24:57,662 --> 00:25:02,929 With every year, the blubber which kept them so warm in the freezing seas 253 00:25:03,101 --> 00:25:04,398 loses its power. 254 00:25:04,803 --> 00:25:08,432 Because every year the sea elephants have to moult, 255 00:25:08,607 --> 00:25:15,035 and in order to grow new skin they have to bring a blood supply close to the surface. 256 00:25:15,280 --> 00:25:17,373 Blood vessels open up through the blubber 257 00:25:17,549 --> 00:25:22,009 and the skin is flushed with blood just below the surface. 258 00:25:22,254 --> 00:25:25,985 If they stayed in the sea like that, they'd chill very quickly. 259 00:25:26,258 --> 00:25:28,624 But they don't. Instead... 260 00:25:31,463 --> 00:25:36,526 ...they haul themselves up onto the beaches or into mud wallows like this one. 261 00:25:36,868 --> 00:25:38,995 And there, the big old bulls like that one 262 00:25:39,170 --> 00:25:43,766 must suppress the feelings of antagonism they felt only a few months ago 263 00:25:43,942 --> 00:25:48,538 and lie close together with their fellows in the interests of keeping warm. 264 00:25:55,353 --> 00:25:57,821 These are the biggest of all seals. 265 00:25:58,023 --> 00:26:03,393 The huge adult males develop a bladder on top of their noses, like a kind of trunk. 266 00:26:08,333 --> 00:26:12,861 But they also justify their name of sea elephant by their immense size. 267 00:26:13,238 --> 00:26:17,402 The bulls may grow to 20 feet long and weigh three tons. 268 00:26:26,551 --> 00:26:31,113 If you wanted to pick a creature to symbolise the frozen Antarctic wastes, 269 00:26:31,289 --> 00:26:34,383 you might well choose a creature like this. 270 00:26:34,559 --> 00:26:38,120 These are macaroni penguins on the island of South Georgia, 271 00:26:38,296 --> 00:26:41,993 halfway between the tip of South America and the Antarctic. 272 00:26:42,400 --> 00:26:48,464 But it seems the original penguins evolved in relatively warm climates. 273 00:26:48,640 --> 00:26:52,667 Even today, there are species of penguins that live on the equator, 274 00:26:52,844 --> 00:26:54,436 in the Galapagos islands. 275 00:26:54,779 --> 00:26:59,045 So this dense coat of feathers with a layer of fat beneath it 276 00:26:59,217 --> 00:27:03,654 was probably developed to keep them warm in the seas anywhere, 277 00:27:03,822 --> 00:27:07,588 but it serves them just as well in the freezing Antarctic winds, 278 00:27:07,759 --> 00:27:11,160 standing on land or on a surging iceberg. 279 00:27:29,948 --> 00:27:32,610 And they are superb swimmers. 280 00:27:34,653 --> 00:27:37,087 Swift and agile through water, 281 00:27:37,255 --> 00:27:40,691 they come in to land through breakers that would smash any boat 282 00:27:40,859 --> 00:27:43,692 with the resilience of rubber balls. 283 00:27:53,438 --> 00:27:56,930 These chinstrap penguins are only a couple of feet high. 284 00:27:57,108 --> 00:27:59,668 King penguins are half as tall again. 285 00:27:59,944 --> 00:28:03,380 Large size can be an advantage in cold climates. 286 00:28:03,648 --> 00:28:08,483 The bigger a body, the smaller the surface area of its skin relative to its volum 287 00:28:08,720 --> 00:28:12,656 So big penguins retain heat better than small ones. 288 00:28:13,024 --> 00:28:16,391 But their great size causes problems in breeding. 289 00:28:16,594 --> 00:28:19,722 They lay just one egg, which they keep warm 290 00:28:19,898 --> 00:28:24,358 by the rather inconvenient method of holding it on top of their feet, 291 00:28:24,636 --> 00:28:29,630 covered by a fold of feathered skin, for eight long weeks. 292 00:28:29,974 --> 00:28:35,241 When it does hatch, the chick takes so long to mature 293 00:28:35,413 --> 00:28:38,405 that they have to feed it for a further ten months 294 00:28:39,484 --> 00:28:42,578 These king penguins aren't the biggest of all penguins. 295 00:28:42,821 --> 00:28:46,757 They have a cousin, living farther south, which grows even bigger. 296 00:28:46,991 --> 00:28:50,256 It, too, has fearsome problems in raising its chic 297 00:28:50,428 --> 00:28:53,864 and it solves them in the most dramatic way imaginable. 298 00:28:54,432 --> 00:28:58,869 They lay their eggs not in spring, but at the end of summer. 299 00:28:59,237 --> 00:29:02,604 Their breeding grounds are on the permanent sea ice near the coast. 300 00:29:02,841 --> 00:29:09,747 The females return to the sea to feed, leaving the males with the eggs. 301 00:29:10,014 --> 00:29:13,040 They shuffle back and forth, each with an egg on his feet, 302 00:29:13,218 --> 00:29:15,413 held carefully above the ice. 303 00:29:22,794 --> 00:29:26,093 The gales intensify as the winter advances 304 00:29:26,264 --> 00:29:28,061 and the sun sinks lower. 305 00:29:29,868 --> 00:29:33,031 In the skies above, the aurora plays. 306 00:29:33,772 --> 00:29:37,469 The male emperors stoically sit out the months of winter darkness. 307 00:29:37,876 --> 00:29:42,279 The sea ice can offer them no nest. Not even a scree for a few pebbles. 308 00:29:42,447 --> 00:29:47,282 They have nothing to eat, and nothing to do except protect the precious egg 309 00:29:47,452 --> 00:29:51,388 and prevent it from freezing while the chick slowly forms inside it. 310 00:29:51,790 --> 00:29:56,784 As the gales intensify, the males huddle together to give one another shelter. 311 00:29:57,796 --> 00:30:02,665 Then, 65 days after it was laid, the chick begins to hatch. 312 00:30:20,685 --> 00:30:22,880 The newly-emerged chicks are hungry. 313 00:30:23,121 --> 00:30:28,525 All the male can provide is a little secretion from his throat and long-empty stomach. 314 00:30:28,993 --> 00:30:30,290 He's close to starving himself, 315 00:30:30,461 --> 00:30:34,158 having been sustained only by the layer of fat beneath his skin. 316 00:30:34,432 --> 00:30:36,798 He's lost a third of his weight. 317 00:30:39,571 --> 00:30:42,870 But soon after, the female reappears with a full stomach 318 00:30:43,107 --> 00:30:47,544 and takes the chick onto her feet for its first proper feed. 319 00:30:48,546 --> 00:30:53,245 Now the parents will take turns to trek to the sea and back, 320 00:30:53,418 --> 00:30:55,283 bringing food for their youngsters. 321 00:30:55,954 --> 00:31:00,653 But now, at the end of winter, the ice has extended far out to sea, 322 00:31:00,825 --> 00:31:05,194 and the penguins may have to walk 50 miles to reach open water. 323 00:31:06,264 --> 00:31:09,427 The adults have a powerful urge to cherish a chick. 324 00:31:09,801 --> 00:31:12,929 Those that have lost one will try and adopt any that wanders by 325 00:31:13,104 --> 00:31:15,800 or incubate pieces of ice. 326 00:31:27,952 --> 00:31:30,147 Repeatedly, the parent in charge 327 00:31:30,321 --> 00:31:33,222 manages to find something from the pit of its stomach 328 00:31:33,391 --> 00:31:35,552 to feed the ever-hungry chick. 329 00:31:40,565 --> 00:31:43,762 Until the chicks lose their down and get their adult plumage, 330 00:31:43,935 --> 00:31:47,268 they can't swim and so can't feed for themselves. 331 00:31:47,805 --> 00:31:53,243 But being so big, they, like the king penguins, take a long time to grow to full size, 332 00:31:53,411 --> 00:31:59,111 and so their parents must make the long march to the sea to collect food for them. 333 00:32:00,952 --> 00:32:04,888 Though the winter is almost over, there is still bad weather. 334 00:32:05,089 --> 00:32:06,556 Blizzards rage over the ice, 335 00:32:06,724 --> 00:32:12,959 and the young huddle together in groups of their own amongst the parent birds. 336 00:32:17,735 --> 00:32:21,330 Many of the youngsters lack the strength to withstand the cold. 337 00:32:21,639 --> 00:32:22,765 Many die. 338 00:32:24,175 --> 00:32:29,772 As the sun rises higher each day, the adults suffer in a different fashion. 339 00:32:30,148 --> 00:32:34,016 On sunny days they get too hot in their insulating blanket of feathers, 340 00:32:34,185 --> 00:32:37,245 and eat snow in order to cool themselves. 341 00:32:39,557 --> 00:32:42,617 The chicks still have their downy feathers and can't swim. 342 00:32:42,794 --> 00:32:47,128 But ten months on from laying, the chicks fledge, 343 00:32:47,298 --> 00:32:51,792 and over the next few weeks, they all walk down to the sea, 344 00:32:51,970 --> 00:32:56,498 which now, with the spring break-up of the ice, is close at hand. 345 00:32:59,043 --> 00:33:02,843 Now, at last, the adults can feed entirely for themselves. 346 00:33:03,314 --> 00:33:05,874 They've got two months in which to restore their weight 347 00:33:06,050 --> 00:33:09,178 before they start the whole process over again. 348 00:33:14,025 --> 00:33:16,550 These birds, at first sight so penguin-like, 349 00:33:16,728 --> 00:33:19,663 live not near the south pole, but the north. 350 00:33:20,098 --> 00:33:24,000 They're not penguins but guillemots, members of the auk family. 351 00:33:24,602 --> 00:33:28,197 All auks, like penguins, are excellent underwater swimmers. 352 00:33:28,406 --> 00:33:30,966 They use their wings like flippers, 353 00:33:31,275 --> 00:33:34,403 but they have not become such specialised swimmers as the penguins, 354 00:33:34,579 --> 00:33:36,069 for they can still fly. 355 00:33:36,981 --> 00:33:40,212 These are the guillemots' smaller cousins, the little auk. 356 00:33:58,569 --> 00:34:03,131 Auks and penguins, similar though they are, are not closely related. 357 00:34:03,307 --> 00:34:07,141 They've come to resemble one another by adopting a similar lifestyle 358 00:34:07,311 --> 00:34:09,336 at opposite ends of the earth. 359 00:34:12,650 --> 00:34:16,711 Unlike Antarctica, that isolated continent surrounded by sea, 360 00:34:16,888 --> 00:34:21,848 the Arctic is connected by land to more temperate regions. 361 00:34:22,160 --> 00:34:26,995 So the land animals of Europe and North America have been able to colonise it 362 00:34:27,165 --> 00:34:30,293 and adapt to its particular demands. 363 00:34:32,770 --> 00:34:34,738 Foxes have moved up here. 364 00:34:35,073 --> 00:34:40,807 The Arctic fox's coat is lighter than its southern cousin, and in winter turns whit 365 00:34:41,345 --> 00:34:46,305 On land, it feeds on small rodents, and on ice floes, perhaps the odd bird. 366 00:34:46,684 --> 00:34:50,051 It's just as well the little auks have kept their powers of flight. 367 00:35:06,003 --> 00:35:12,340 The ice floes are also the hunting ground of one of the biggest of all carnivores. 368 00:35:19,951 --> 00:35:21,441 The polar bear. 369 00:35:22,386 --> 00:35:25,480 This one has killed a bearded seal. 370 00:35:37,735 --> 00:35:42,638 A young bear is eager to take a share of the kill, but must be cautious. 371 00:35:42,907 --> 00:35:46,001 Adults sometimes kill youngsters in squabbles. 372 00:36:19,110 --> 00:36:24,946 The polar bear is clearly a close relative of the bears that live in Europe and America. 373 00:36:25,416 --> 00:36:31,150 Its whiteness is an obvious adaptation to the snow and ice, but so is its huge size. 374 00:36:31,622 --> 00:36:38,528 The principle of a big body retaining more heat applies to bears as much as penguins, 375 00:36:38,763 --> 00:36:44,201 and polar bears are very much bigger than their cousins in temperate lands farther south. 376 00:37:01,819 --> 00:37:07,519 Polar bears, if forced to, will eat all kinds of t but their preferred food is flesh, 377 00:37:07,692 --> 00:37:09,489 particularly that of seals. 378 00:37:09,860 --> 00:37:13,728 They especially like the blubber just below the seal's skin, 379 00:37:13,931 --> 00:37:17,389 and often leave the meat for the scavenging gulls and foxes. 380 00:37:44,996 --> 00:37:49,729 Among the glaucous gulls is the much rarer and pure-white ivory gull. 381 00:37:59,277 --> 00:38:04,943 The polar bear's white coat and great size are not its only adaptations to Arctic life. 382 00:38:05,182 --> 00:38:08,709 It grips the ice with long, sharp claws 383 00:38:08,886 --> 00:38:14,483 and thick hair on the soles, which also makes them excellent paddles, 384 00:38:14,792 --> 00:38:18,888 for the polar bear spends a lot of time swimming during the summer. 385 00:39:01,505 --> 00:39:03,939 Ringed seals are much hunted by polar bears, 386 00:39:04,108 --> 00:39:08,511 and when on the ice, must be constantly on the alert. 387 00:39:12,583 --> 00:39:16,212 They need ice holes through which to leave the water, 388 00:39:16,387 --> 00:39:19,288 or at least stick up their heads to breathe. 389 00:39:25,062 --> 00:39:30,090 A polar bear will wait for many hours, motionless, beside such a hole. 390 00:39:34,672 --> 00:39:39,200 They also stalk seals that are rash enough to lie out on the ice. 391 00:39:54,925 --> 00:40:00,488 The polar bear has lost, but about once in every five hunting days, it does kill, 392 00:40:00,698 --> 00:40:02,188 and that is enough. 393 00:40:10,241 --> 00:40:15,873 The most powerful effective hunter of all, however, on the northern ice, is man. 394 00:40:19,650 --> 00:40:22,847 Eskimo, or Inuit, as they prefer to call themselves, 395 00:40:23,020 --> 00:40:26,046 came up to the Arctic in very early times. 396 00:40:26,357 --> 00:40:29,986 Superb hunters, they could live for many months in winter 397 00:40:30,161 --> 00:40:32,925 on nothing whatever but raw meat. 398 00:40:45,676 --> 00:40:51,114 They were so skilled at living on the ice that with only a knife of bone 399 00:40:51,282 --> 00:40:55,309 they could make a waterproof house from snow in an hour or so. 400 00:41:08,232 --> 00:41:10,757 A slab of sea ice made a window. 401 00:41:31,021 --> 00:41:34,980 Inside, the igloo was lit with lamps fed by seal blubber. 402 00:41:35,292 --> 00:41:37,192 Heat from the flame and from their bodies 403 00:41:37,361 --> 00:41:42,765 could raise the temperature enough for them to remove their heavy clothing and relax. 404 00:41:56,947 --> 00:42:00,542 It was a life of extraordinary rigour and privatio 405 00:42:00,985 --> 00:42:03,579 These pictures were taken 20 years ago. 406 00:42:03,854 --> 00:42:06,550 No Eskimo lives in this way today. 407 00:42:08,492 --> 00:42:10,687 The poles have not always been so cold. 408 00:42:10,928 --> 00:42:15,627 One explanation of why they've become so is the warming effect of ocean currents. 409 00:42:15,866 --> 00:42:19,825 If they can circulate the waters of the polar seas down towards the equator, 410 00:42:20,004 --> 00:42:22,097 they would keep them relatively warm. 411 00:42:22,339 --> 00:42:27,709 And maybe they did so 100 million years ago, when the continents were arranged like this. 412 00:42:28,412 --> 00:42:32,610 But the continents have shifted, the polar seas become more enclosed 413 00:42:32,783 --> 00:42:35,217 and any such currents interrupted. 414 00:42:37,821 --> 00:42:40,381 Meanwhile, during the same period, 415 00:42:40,558 --> 00:42:45,586 the Antarctic continent drifted south until it came to rest over the south pole. 416 00:42:45,863 --> 00:42:50,664 Now ocean currents could not keep that part of the world warm either, 417 00:42:50,834 --> 00:42:52,734 and so an ice cap formed. 418 00:42:53,437 --> 00:42:59,000 The whiteness reflected 90% of the heat in the already feeble rays of the sun. 419 00:42:59,243 --> 00:43:03,737 So ice now covers all of Antarctica and the seas of the north pole. 420 00:43:04,281 --> 00:43:07,444 Over the past million years there have been other variations, 421 00:43:07,618 --> 00:43:10,416 due to the sun's varying strength, 422 00:43:10,588 --> 00:43:13,182 and the ice cover has waxed and waned. 423 00:43:13,524 --> 00:43:16,925 Now we're in one of the warmer phases, 424 00:43:17,094 --> 00:43:20,894 but even so, Antarctica is still buried beneath ice a mile thick, 425 00:43:21,065 --> 00:43:27,493 and in the north, ice and snow extend for 1,000 miles away from the pole. 426 00:43:49,293 --> 00:43:52,751 As you come down the mountain or away from the pole, 427 00:43:52,930 --> 00:43:58,459 the land becomes warm enough to prevent it being covered by ice and snow all year. 428 00:43:58,769 --> 00:44:02,967 Beyond, the country is bleak enough: Boulders and gravel, 429 00:44:03,140 --> 00:44:08,168 rocks that have been ground to fragments by the glaciers and pushed in front of them. 430 00:44:09,346 --> 00:44:14,545 This is the tundra, a land full of strange shapes and patterns. 431 00:44:14,985 --> 00:44:18,751 Fine muds and sands retain more moisture than coarse gravel, 432 00:44:18,922 --> 00:44:21,652 so when they freeze, they expand more 433 00:44:21,825 --> 00:44:26,819 and push the gravel outwards to produce these geometric shapes. 434 00:44:27,231 --> 00:44:30,723 A foot down, the soil is still frozen, permafrost, 435 00:44:30,901 --> 00:44:33,699 so the summer melt water can't soak away 436 00:44:33,871 --> 00:44:39,207 and the land is covered with bogs and ponds that lie within the polygonal ridges, 437 00:44:39,376 --> 00:44:43,335 so that the land looks almost as though it's been cultivated by man. 438 00:44:47,051 --> 00:44:51,852 In places, the underground ice pushes upwards into a mountain called a pingo. 439 00:44:52,756 --> 00:44:57,193 It looks like a small volcano, but instead of hot lava in its heart, 440 00:44:57,361 --> 00:44:59,795 it has cold, blue ice. 441 00:45:11,241 --> 00:45:15,940 Although the ice relaxes its grip for only a few weeks in summer, 442 00:45:16,113 --> 00:45:21,073 a surprising number of plants and animals manage to find a permanent home here. 443 00:45:25,355 --> 00:45:27,823 Small flowering plants keep low, 444 00:45:27,991 --> 00:45:33,293 for close to the ground there is little wind and the sun's rays can be quite warm. 445 00:45:40,871 --> 00:45:44,830 One kind of tree manages to live up here in large numbers 446 00:45:45,008 --> 00:45:47,670 by adopting exactly the same policy. 447 00:45:48,912 --> 00:45:51,642 This is the Arctic willow and it lies flat. 448 00:45:51,815 --> 00:45:54,511 It grows extremely slowly in these cold temperatures, 449 00:45:54,685 --> 00:46:00,021 and this one may be a century or so old. 450 00:46:01,158 --> 00:46:03,285 In shallow burrows in the topsoil 451 00:46:03,460 --> 00:46:08,557 live the harvesters of this meagre crop of leaves and grass: Lemmings. 452 00:46:12,102 --> 00:46:15,970 In summer, when there's food about, they breed with great speed. 453 00:46:16,206 --> 00:46:22,406 One female produces five or six babies in a litter, four or five times in a single season 454 00:46:22,679 --> 00:46:26,046 So in a few months she may produce 30 young. 455 00:46:26,316 --> 00:46:30,685 The babies grow so quickly that the first to be born in the spring 456 00:46:30,854 --> 00:46:33,982 can themselves produce young before the winter returns. 457 00:46:40,731 --> 00:46:44,462 In summer, all the tundra plants put out their leaves 458 00:46:44,635 --> 00:46:46,125 and there's lots to eat. 459 00:46:53,744 --> 00:46:56,907 The swarming hordes of lemmings attract hunters: 460 00:46:59,483 --> 00:47:00,916 Snowy owls. 461 00:47:13,931 --> 00:47:17,298 During the summer, lemmings are the owl's main food. 462 00:47:36,486 --> 00:47:41,355 Abundant though the lemmings are, the hunting has been poor for this owl. 463 00:47:41,558 --> 00:47:46,325 She may have laid as many as eight eggs, but only one chick has survived. 464 00:48:01,912 --> 00:48:06,042 As the days lengthen, herds of caribou migrate up from the south. 465 00:48:06,683 --> 00:48:12,280 Their calves were born early in the season and the herd moves up to 15 miles a day 466 00:48:12,656 --> 00:48:17,389 They have to keep traveling in order to find enough food to sustain them all. 467 00:48:46,390 --> 00:48:48,620 They follow the same route each year. 468 00:48:48,792 --> 00:48:51,625 In places, paths are worn 18 inches deep 469 00:48:51,795 --> 00:48:55,253 where the animals have passed, century after century. 470 00:49:01,371 --> 00:49:03,236 Snow geese fly up, too. 471 00:49:03,540 --> 00:49:07,567 They've come from as far away as Mexico, 3,000 miles distant, 472 00:49:07,744 --> 00:49:12,113 to claim a share in summer's brief crop and to breed. 473 00:49:21,224 --> 00:49:23,089 They exist in two forms: 474 00:49:23,260 --> 00:49:27,321 Ones with dark feathers on the body, as well as pure-white ones. 475 00:49:27,698 --> 00:49:31,225 But they're all the same species, and mixed couples are common. 476 00:49:35,305 --> 00:49:38,433 Soon the tundra is thick with their nests. 477 00:49:41,378 --> 00:49:45,644 Ptarmigan, now in their dark summer plumage, feed on the willow scrub. 478 00:49:52,956 --> 00:49:56,585 The caribou take not only willow, but grasses and lichen. 479 00:50:08,839 --> 00:50:13,071 The first snow geese to arrive already have goslings, 480 00:50:13,243 --> 00:50:15,006 and are foraging as a family. 481 00:50:23,787 --> 00:50:25,846 Later arrivals are still on the nest, 482 00:50:26,023 --> 00:50:29,550 and can't leave until the last egg has hatched. 483 00:50:30,027 --> 00:50:33,053 While there, the first goslings to emerge and their parents 484 00:50:33,230 --> 00:50:37,997 are plagued by hordes of voracious blood-hungry mosquitoes. 485 00:50:52,783 --> 00:50:56,651 From the warming pools, more and more mosquitoes hatch. 486 00:51:03,160 --> 00:51:07,620 They provide food for the red-necked phalarope, and there are plenty to gather. 487 00:51:07,798 --> 00:51:13,031 A square yard of fresh water here can produce 100,000 insects in a season. 488 00:51:14,104 --> 00:51:15,696 Now the blackfly larvae, 489 00:51:15,872 --> 00:51:19,433 which as eggs were attached to stones in the shallow pools, 490 00:51:19,609 --> 00:51:21,873 are also beginning to emerge. 491 00:51:43,266 --> 00:51:49,865 Activity now is intense, for it is light for almost the whole 24 hours of the day. 492 00:51:52,476 --> 00:51:56,310 But by late August, the snow geese sense the imminence of winter 493 00:51:56,480 --> 00:51:58,675 and start to head southwards again. 494 00:52:08,558 --> 00:52:11,083 The caribou, too, end their grazing, 495 00:52:11,261 --> 00:52:14,253 and start to plod back across the tundra. 496 00:52:14,865 --> 00:52:16,730 As they go, they continue to feed, 497 00:52:16,900 --> 00:52:21,462 building up the reserves of fat they will need to sustain themselves through the winter. 498 00:52:41,391 --> 00:52:46,260 As the weather gets colder and colder, the need for shelter becomes more urgent 499 00:52:46,530 --> 00:52:49,431 and the herds may cover 25 miles in a day. 500 00:53:10,287 --> 00:53:15,691 And then, at last, the returning travellers reach the first tall tree 501 00:53:16,059 --> 00:53:18,459 It's the start of the great coniferous forest 502 00:53:18,628 --> 00:53:22,155 that lies south of the tundra right round the globe. 503 00:53:22,866 --> 00:53:26,063 The snow geese will fly on for thousands of miles, 504 00:53:26,236 --> 00:53:29,637 but the caribou have reached their wintering grounds. 505 00:53:30,140 --> 00:53:32,108 The forest is a sanctuary 506 00:53:32,275 --> 00:53:35,574 which will protect them from the bitter winter col 507 00:53:35,946 --> 00:53:39,882 and it's here that we shall be coming in the next programme.