1 00:01:17,000 --> 00:01:19,935 Water: Hundreds of thousands of tons of it, 2 00:01:20,103 --> 00:01:22,936 lying frozen on the world's mountains. 3 00:01:23,273 --> 00:01:28,267 It covers not only the poles, but caps great peaks on the equator. 4 00:01:38,121 --> 00:01:43,354 Water molecules, distilled from the sea by the sun's heat, condense in the sky. 5 00:01:43,593 --> 00:01:46,619 As they fall through the air, they pack together into shapes 6 00:01:46,796 --> 00:01:52,860 that echo their six-fold symmetry and form infinitely varied crystals of ice. 7 00:01:54,938 --> 00:01:58,999 They settle on the high mountains and compact into snow and ice 8 00:01:59,175 --> 00:02:01,609 that is, chemically, almost pure water, 9 00:02:01,778 --> 00:02:04,804 much purer than the sea from which it came. 10 00:02:05,448 --> 00:02:08,042 On Mount Rainier in the United States, 11 00:02:08,218 --> 00:02:11,619 permanent snow begins at 7,000 feet. 12 00:02:12,322 --> 00:02:18,022 You might think that this was one of the most inhospitable places on earth for life. 13 00:02:18,261 --> 00:02:22,425 After all, no vegetation grows on these snowfields, 14 00:02:22,599 --> 00:02:28,936 so there can be no animals that feed on it, like marmots or mice or rabbits, 15 00:02:29,105 --> 00:02:35,704 and if there are no herbivores, there can't be any predators like hawks or weasels. 16 00:02:35,979 --> 00:02:41,110 But in fact, there is a surprising amount of life here. 17 00:02:41,384 --> 00:02:46,947 There is some life actually within this snowfield itself, 18 00:02:47,123 --> 00:02:52,459 because this snow is not white, but red. 19 00:02:53,863 --> 00:02:57,890 The colour comes from microscopic plants: Algae. 20 00:02:58,401 --> 00:03:01,564 The redness is produced by light reflected from their cell walls, 21 00:03:01,738 --> 00:03:06,141 and is almost invisible when, under the microscope, light shines through them. 22 00:03:06,609 --> 00:03:09,544 Internally, they're green with chlorophyll. 23 00:03:09,746 --> 00:03:14,513 With its aid, they convert carbon dioxide and water into sugars. 24 00:03:14,851 --> 00:03:17,820 These, and the minerals dissolved in the melt water, 25 00:03:18,021 --> 00:03:21,149 are all the algae need to grow and reproduce. 26 00:03:21,891 --> 00:03:24,826 The winter snow will bury them feet deep, 27 00:03:24,995 --> 00:03:30,194 but in spring, when the surface melts, they divide, develop tiny beating hairs 28 00:03:30,367 --> 00:03:32,665 and swim up towards the sunshine. 29 00:03:33,269 --> 00:03:37,205 As they age and the minerals are used up, they change colour, 30 00:03:37,474 --> 00:03:42,002 forming huge smears of red in snowfields all over the world. 31 00:03:48,318 --> 00:03:52,311 Eventually, the snow algae produce spores as fine as dust 32 00:03:52,689 --> 00:03:56,682 and in that form they are blown from one snowfield to another. 33 00:03:56,960 --> 00:04:00,726 But other, bigger animals, also brought up by the wind, 34 00:04:00,897 --> 00:04:03,991 blow across the snows of Mount Rainier. 35 00:04:09,406 --> 00:04:12,068 Ladybirds. Thousands of them. 36 00:04:12,409 --> 00:04:17,676 Nobody knows why they come up in such numbers and assemble like this. 37 00:04:17,881 --> 00:04:23,114 But in late summer they fly up from the valleys up to these high peaks 38 00:04:23,286 --> 00:04:25,720 and here assemble in the rocks. 39 00:04:26,022 --> 00:04:31,255 When the winter snows come, the ladybirds remain underneath the snow in the rocks, 40 00:04:31,494 --> 00:04:36,955 and then in the spring, as now, the snow melts and the sun warms the ladybirds, 41 00:04:37,133 --> 00:04:42,867 and they become active and fly off back to the valley to feed on aphids. 42 00:04:45,575 --> 00:04:50,069 The ladybirds are only temporary residents of the Mount Rainier snowfields. 43 00:04:50,447 --> 00:04:52,813 Other insects manage, almost unbelievably, 44 00:04:52,982 --> 00:04:56,679 to live all their lives in this seemingly inhospitable snow. 45 00:04:57,153 --> 00:04:59,781 The best time to find them is at night. 46 00:05:23,379 --> 00:05:24,937 A whole community lives here, 47 00:05:25,115 --> 00:05:30,348 feeding on pollen grains and the bodies of dead insects blown up on the wind. 48 00:05:31,654 --> 00:05:35,715 Some, like this primitive relation of the cockroach, a grylloblattid, 49 00:05:35,892 --> 00:05:39,487 have a body chemistry so well adjusted to low temperatures 50 00:05:39,662 --> 00:05:43,689 that if you pick them up, your hand's warmth will kill them. 51 00:05:50,106 --> 00:05:53,303 Permanent snow lies directly on bare rock, 52 00:05:53,476 --> 00:05:58,641 but lower down, where it comes and goes, there can be a little vegetation to be grazed. 53 00:06:02,352 --> 00:06:07,312 Mountain sheep. These on Mount McKinley are the kind known as Dall Sheep. 54 00:06:19,402 --> 00:06:21,529 Little ground squirrels live up here too. 55 00:06:21,871 --> 00:06:25,034 Unlike the sheep, which retreat to lower altitudes in winter, 56 00:06:25,208 --> 00:06:27,142 the squirrels are permanent residents, 57 00:06:27,310 --> 00:06:31,713 insulated in their burrows from the frosts by the cover of snow. 58 00:06:41,391 --> 00:06:45,691 There are sheep like these in mountains all through North America, Asia and Europe. 59 00:06:45,962 --> 00:06:49,591 All carry big horns, and the senior males, in autumn, 60 00:06:49,799 --> 00:06:52,632 indulge in the most alarming courtship battles. 61 00:07:35,645 --> 00:07:38,808 It's hard for plants to grow on steep, high slopes 62 00:07:39,048 --> 00:07:44,179 The warming by day and freezing by night makes the gravelly soil slip downwards, 63 00:07:44,354 --> 00:07:46,948 so it's difficult for plants to keep a hold. 64 00:07:47,290 --> 00:07:49,622 With few plants, grazing animals are rare, 65 00:07:49,792 --> 00:07:53,057 though there may be more than there appear to be at first sight. 66 00:07:58,701 --> 00:08:01,534 These, in the Himalayas, are blue sheep, 67 00:08:01,804 --> 00:08:07,140 so nimble and sure-footed they can reach almost any vegetation on the steep slopes. 68 00:08:14,050 --> 00:08:20,114 But if these are rare, rarer still is the animal that preys on them, the snow leopard. 69 00:08:27,630 --> 00:08:31,760 In summer it stays at between 12,000 and 15,000 feet, 70 00:08:32,035 --> 00:08:35,698 hunting small rodents and birds as well as mountain sheep. 71 00:08:55,091 --> 00:08:58,925 Snow leopards have been seen as high as 18,000 feet in summer. 72 00:08:59,095 --> 00:09:04,431 But with winter's heavy snowfalls, it retreats to the valleys. 73 00:09:13,943 --> 00:09:19,848 Game is now so scarce that there's barely enough to support more than one leopard, 74 00:09:20,016 --> 00:09:22,280 so this animal hunts alone. 75 00:09:29,459 --> 00:09:32,292 Its thick, dense fur is now paler. 76 00:09:32,495 --> 00:09:36,261 It has a thick, woolly undercoat and cushions of hair under its paws 77 00:09:36,432 --> 00:09:39,196 which prevent it from sinking in the snow. 78 00:09:50,313 --> 00:09:56,149 The mountains of Africa, although so near the equator, are permanently snow-capped. 79 00:09:56,319 --> 00:10:00,119 Kilimanjaro, 19,000 feet high, is a volcano. 80 00:10:00,523 --> 00:10:06,758 Mount Kenya, also volcanic, is 2,000 feet lower but still has its own glaciers 81 00:10:07,029 --> 00:10:09,862 Each has its own animals and plants 82 00:10:10,032 --> 00:10:12,933 specially adapted to life at low temperatures. 83 00:10:13,336 --> 00:10:19,275 Here, at about 13,000 feet, grow some most beautiful and dramatic plants: 84 00:10:19,442 --> 00:10:22,002 Giant groundsels and giant lobelias. 85 00:10:22,245 --> 00:10:24,338 At these altitudes, plants like these 86 00:10:24,514 --> 00:10:29,281 have to face two totally conflicting problems every 24 hours. 87 00:10:29,485 --> 00:10:34,752 Every night the temperature falls so low that they're in danger of freezing solid. 88 00:10:34,957 --> 00:10:39,326 And every day the sun beats down so strongly in this very thin air 89 00:10:39,495 --> 00:10:44,228 that it threatens to rob them of their moisture by evaporation. 90 00:10:44,534 --> 00:10:47,628 But look how this lobelia deals with those problems. 91 00:10:48,871 --> 00:10:53,035 This little pond of water in the leaf rosette freezes over every night, 92 00:10:53,342 --> 00:10:57,972 and this shield of ice prevents the water beneath from freezing, 93 00:10:58,147 --> 00:11:04,313 so that it acts as a liquid jacket, preventing the frost from reaching the heart of the plant. 94 00:11:04,854 --> 00:11:11,623 But as the day wears on and it gets warmer, this water is in danger of evaporating 95 00:11:11,794 --> 00:11:15,093 and the plant of losing its night-time insulation. 96 00:11:15,498 --> 00:11:19,798 But it isn'tjust rainwater that's accumulated in this rosette. 97 00:11:20,069 --> 00:11:24,836 It's been secreted by the plant itself and it's slightly slimy. 98 00:11:25,007 --> 00:11:29,637 It contains pectin, a colloidal substance which greatly reduces evaporation. 99 00:11:30,012 --> 00:11:31,980 But there's another kind of lobelia 100 00:11:32,148 --> 00:11:35,276 which deals with these two problems in a quite different way. 101 00:11:41,457 --> 00:11:44,756 This one grows very tall and has extremely long leaves, 102 00:11:44,927 --> 00:11:49,261 each fringed with tiny hairs which act like an animal's fur, 103 00:11:49,432 --> 00:11:53,528 trapping air between them, insulating the stem from chills. 104 00:11:53,736 --> 00:11:56,830 They also prevent the wind from robbing the plants of moisture. 105 00:11:59,308 --> 00:12:02,300 Each group of lobelias is owned by a pair of sunbirds 106 00:12:02,478 --> 00:12:04,878 which collect the insects the plants attract. 107 00:12:05,214 --> 00:12:08,012 They keep themselves warm with fluffed-up feathers. 108 00:12:09,752 --> 00:12:12,243 And among the rocks are hyrax. 109 00:12:19,095 --> 00:12:25,227 The reason these little creatures are so tame and I can get so close to them 110 00:12:25,401 --> 00:12:28,302 is just because they're living so high up. 111 00:12:28,771 --> 00:12:32,002 Up here, there are few creatures to prey on them. 112 00:12:32,208 --> 00:12:37,544 An occasional leopard may come up and hunt them, but apart from that, nothing. 113 00:12:38,047 --> 00:12:42,643 And so they can come out during the few brief hours of sunshine 114 00:12:42,818 --> 00:12:45,912 and bask on the rocks without any fear, 115 00:12:46,122 --> 00:12:47,487 just as they're doing now. 116 00:12:51,394 --> 00:12:54,454 Hyrax also live down on the hot plains below, 117 00:12:54,630 --> 00:12:59,829 but these, in response to the cold, have developed particularly long fur. 118 00:13:00,169 --> 00:13:04,629 Despite their shape, they often climb trees to crop leaves. 119 00:13:04,874 --> 00:13:08,275 But at these altitudes, there's only grass and lobelias, 120 00:13:08,444 --> 00:13:10,935 and they share it with the little furry-eared rat. 121 00:13:20,056 --> 00:13:23,321 Mount Kenya, like its neighbours Kilimanjaro and Ruwenzori, 122 00:13:23,492 --> 00:13:28,930 is an isolated patch of snow and ice surrounded by the baking hot African plains. 123 00:13:30,066 --> 00:13:31,693 But the great mountains of South America, 124 00:13:31,867 --> 00:13:36,702 like Cotopaxi, 19,000 feet high, are very differen 125 00:13:37,006 --> 00:13:41,705 These volcanoes, some active, some dormant, are not isolated peaks 126 00:13:41,877 --> 00:13:45,904 but part of a continuous range that runs the length of the continent 127 00:13:46,082 --> 00:13:50,849 and is surrounded by the high, cold plains of the altiplano, 128 00:13:51,020 --> 00:13:55,184 so their flanks support a large and varied population of animals, 129 00:13:55,358 --> 00:13:59,818 all adapted to life at high altitudes and low temperatures. 130 00:14:00,496 --> 00:14:04,626 Here lives a wild South American camel, the vicuna. 131 00:14:05,001 --> 00:14:08,835 Its coat is fine, silky and protected so well from the cold, 132 00:14:09,005 --> 00:14:12,771 that it has, paradoxically, led to its near-extinction. 133 00:14:13,075 --> 00:14:17,478 Men have recognised that vicuna wool has an unexcelled softness and warmth 134 00:14:17,647 --> 00:14:21,139 and hunted the animal for it until it's close to extinction. 135 00:14:28,324 --> 00:14:32,283 The people of the Andes have domesticated another wild camel, the guanaco, 136 00:14:32,461 --> 00:14:35,953 to produce heavy-fleeced versions which produce excellent wool 137 00:14:36,132 --> 00:14:37,963 and serve as beasts of burden. 138 00:14:38,534 --> 00:14:45,064 Here, in Ecuador and Peru, near the equator, wild camels live at around 14,000 feet. 139 00:14:46,976 --> 00:14:51,970 But as you travel south down the Andes, the snowline gets lower. 140 00:14:52,348 --> 00:14:55,476 Half-way down, 2,000 miles south of Cotopaxi, 141 00:14:55,651 --> 00:15:01,112 the line of permanent snow has dropped from 16,000 feet to 13,000 feet. 142 00:15:03,292 --> 00:15:07,319 A thousand miles farther south still, the mountains are not so high 143 00:15:07,496 --> 00:15:13,662 but are almost completely covered with snow, to within a few hundred feet of the sea. 144 00:15:15,471 --> 00:15:20,773 So, on the southernmost tip of South America, in Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, 145 00:15:20,943 --> 00:15:25,846 the guanaco doesn't live at great altitudes, but almost at sea level. 146 00:15:26,449 --> 00:15:32,445 Yet it needs its warm coatjust as much, for here, even in summer, it's very cold, 147 00:15:32,621 --> 00:15:35,988 and during the winter the whole land is snowbound. 148 00:15:48,704 --> 00:15:53,403 The reason it gets colder nearer the pole is not complicated. 149 00:15:53,676 --> 00:15:57,874 The sun's rays strike the earth at the equator at right angles. 150 00:15:58,114 --> 00:16:00,708 But as you travel round the earth, 151 00:16:00,883 --> 00:16:03,215 the rays become more and more glancing. 152 00:16:04,754 --> 00:16:07,484 So a given amount of heat falling on the equator 153 00:16:07,656 --> 00:16:11,752 is distributed over a much greater area in the polar regions 154 00:16:11,927 --> 00:16:17,058 and has to travel through more of the earth's atmosphere, which weakens it still further. 155 00:16:18,400 --> 00:16:24,202 So down in Patagonia, the sun's rays are very much less intense and carry much less heat, 156 00:16:24,373 --> 00:16:27,831 and the glaciers flow right down to the sea. 157 00:16:40,556 --> 00:16:44,652 Farther south still, across the near-frozen seas off Cape Horn, 158 00:16:44,827 --> 00:16:47,625 you reach chains of small volcanic islands 159 00:16:47,797 --> 00:16:51,563 that run down towards the Antarctic continent itself: 160 00:16:51,801 --> 00:16:53,462 Remote, little-known archipelagos 161 00:16:53,636 --> 00:16:58,039 such as the South Sandwich and, here, the South Orkneys. 162 00:16:59,508 --> 00:17:06,846 There are only two flowering plants that can manage to survive in this bleak, icy country. 163 00:17:07,049 --> 00:17:12,112 One is a kind of thrift and the other is a small, stunted grass. 164 00:17:12,354 --> 00:17:16,848 And apparently, no land-living animals of any kind. 165 00:17:17,760 --> 00:17:22,459 But when the snows melt in summer, they reveal that the rocks and the boulders 166 00:17:22,631 --> 00:17:27,227 are covered with over 100 different kinds of mosses and lichens, 167 00:17:27,469 --> 00:17:31,633 some of them rounded green cushions, others like miniature trees. 168 00:17:33,576 --> 00:17:38,172 The capacity of these simple plants to endure cold is phenomenal. 169 00:17:38,380 --> 00:17:42,817 Some species can even survive being frozen solid for weeks on end. 170 00:17:48,691 --> 00:17:54,186 Within this miniature tangled jungle lives a whole menagerie of tiny animals. 171 00:17:56,398 --> 00:17:58,491 Primitive creatures little bigger than pinheads 172 00:17:58,667 --> 00:18:04,128 manage to survive by slowly chewing away at the lichens and mosses during summer. 173 00:18:04,506 --> 00:18:06,701 In winter they almost grind to a halt, 174 00:18:06,876 --> 00:18:11,939 yet they survive unfrozen because their blood contains a kind of antifreeze 175 00:18:12,114 --> 00:18:16,517 and remains liquid even when the temperature falls well below zero. 176 00:18:21,724 --> 00:18:26,252 The majority are vegetarians, but there are also carnivorous mites among them 177 00:18:26,428 --> 00:18:28,828 which clamber around the grazing herds, 178 00:18:28,998 --> 00:18:31,762 picking off individuals as they fancy. 179 00:18:33,502 --> 00:18:37,495 In this extreme cold, the processes of life are greatly slowed down, 180 00:18:37,673 --> 00:18:42,337 not only those of growth, but those that lead to old age and death. 181 00:18:42,745 --> 00:18:46,647 So such tiny creatures, which elsewhere might live for merely months, 182 00:18:46,815 --> 00:18:50,581 survive for two or three years within the green mossy carpets. 183 00:18:53,522 --> 00:18:57,458 The seas around these Antarctic islands are strewn with ice. 184 00:18:57,927 --> 00:19:01,055 The pack ice that litters the surface is frozen sea water, 185 00:19:01,230 --> 00:19:03,994 and in winter forms a solid cover to the sea. 186 00:19:04,333 --> 00:19:06,062 The icebergs are different. 187 00:19:06,235 --> 00:19:11,070 They're made of fresh water and have broken away from glaciers flowing into the sea. 188 00:19:13,275 --> 00:19:17,371 This is the source of those bergs: The edge of a glacier. 189 00:19:18,347 --> 00:19:21,908 Beyond it, the continent of Antarctica. 190 00:19:23,218 --> 00:19:25,686 It's huge, bigger than the whole of Europe, 191 00:19:25,854 --> 00:19:29,722 and, for the most part, it seems totally devoid of life. 192 00:19:32,728 --> 00:19:35,925 But not all of Antarctica is snow-covered. 193 00:19:36,165 --> 00:19:41,626 In parts of the interior there are valleys where almost no snow ever falls. 194 00:19:42,972 --> 00:19:46,499 This is as desolate a part of the earth as exists. 195 00:19:46,909 --> 00:19:51,209 The cold is extreme, it's drier even than the centre of the Sahara, 196 00:19:51,380 --> 00:19:53,905 it's dark for half the year 197 00:19:54,083 --> 00:19:58,315 and it's scoured by a never-ending howling wind. 198 00:19:59,521 --> 00:20:03,048 And the wind is responsible for these carvings in the solid granite. 199 00:20:03,425 --> 00:20:06,917 Crystals of salt form beneath tiny flakes on the surface, 200 00:20:07,096 --> 00:20:11,965 and grow slowly, but so powerfully that particles are broken loose. 201 00:20:12,234 --> 00:20:17,467 The wind then sweeps them up and hurls them at the rock face, eroding it still further. 202 00:20:21,777 --> 00:20:26,714 Desolate though this waste of shattered rocks may seem, there is life even here. 203 00:20:34,957 --> 00:20:38,984 Algae. Beneath the stone, the wind doesn't dry it out, 204 00:20:39,161 --> 00:20:41,425 and it's protected from the cold. 205 00:20:41,930 --> 00:20:46,299 It gets the light it needs to grow through the translucent rock. 206 00:20:52,408 --> 00:20:55,502 There are also green patches actually within the rock. 207 00:20:55,844 --> 00:21:00,247 Algae have penetrated the microscopic spaces between the rock's constituent particles 208 00:21:00,416 --> 00:21:02,509 and there managed to grow. 209 00:21:05,020 --> 00:21:07,181 Glaciers flow down these dry valleys, 210 00:21:07,356 --> 00:21:11,019 fed by the ice cap covering the continent's centre. 211 00:21:11,360 --> 00:21:17,697 They're among the world's fastest moving, advancing as much as 300 feet in a year. 212 00:21:18,067 --> 00:21:23,835 As they surge downwards, their surface is torn into thousands of crevasses. 213 00:21:39,354 --> 00:21:42,323 During the summer, even though the winds are bitterly cold, 214 00:21:42,491 --> 00:21:46,655 the sun is sufficiently strong to melt a little of the glacier's surface. 215 00:21:48,664 --> 00:21:52,691 Where it accumulates in pools, blue-green algae grows vigorously, 216 00:21:52,868 --> 00:21:57,737 its dark colour enabling it to absorb a high proportion of the sun's feeble heat. 217 00:22:01,944 --> 00:22:06,677 These pools and streams are the only places in all of Antarctica's interior 218 00:22:06,849 --> 00:22:09,215 where life flourishes in any abundance. 219 00:22:10,853 --> 00:22:13,981 The earth, at the beginning of the history of life 220 00:22:14,156 --> 00:22:17,216 before any higher plants or any animals had appeared, 221 00:22:17,392 --> 00:22:20,122 must have looked something like this. 222 00:22:25,968 --> 00:22:30,462 Yet here, mysteriously, lie the corpses of large animals. 223 00:22:31,473 --> 00:22:34,874 A crab-eater seal. It looks comparatively fresh, 224 00:22:35,043 --> 00:22:40,345 but examination of its tissues show that it is about 300 years old. 225 00:22:40,849 --> 00:22:43,443 This extreme climate has freeze-dried it. 226 00:22:43,785 --> 00:22:46,583 It must have lost its way, perhaps because of sickness, 227 00:22:46,755 --> 00:22:51,021 and misguidedly crawled up here from the coast, 25 miles away. 228 00:22:53,028 --> 00:22:58,728 Although the land of the Antarctic is almost steri its waters are extremely fertile, 229 00:22:59,101 --> 00:23:04,869 so its margins, particularly the beaches of its off-shore islands, are rich in life. 230 00:23:13,882 --> 00:23:17,682 These fur seals in South Georgia flourish in great numbers 231 00:23:17,853 --> 00:23:19,548 because the surface waters of the seas 232 00:23:19,721 --> 00:23:24,624 are thick with shoals of floating shrimp: Krill, which is their main food. 233 00:23:25,260 --> 00:23:29,424 Every year they come ashore to the beaches to pup and mate. 234 00:23:32,301 --> 00:23:37,830 They're not true seals but eared seals, for they have small external ears. 235 00:23:38,006 --> 00:23:42,807 Their hind flippers can be brought forward, enabling them to move quite fast on land, 236 00:23:42,978 --> 00:23:45,139 something that true seals can't do. 237 00:23:45,514 --> 00:23:50,747 These fur seals retained and thickened the fur of their land-living ancestors, 238 00:23:50,919 --> 00:23:58,485 so that now some of these big males have manes which give them the name sea lion. 239 00:23:58,860 --> 00:24:02,159 This fur lies in two layers. 240 00:24:02,331 --> 00:24:07,064 There's an outer guard hair and then a thick layer close to the skin, 241 00:24:07,236 --> 00:24:14,267 and that traps air in it and keeps the animals warm when they go swimming. 242 00:24:14,443 --> 00:24:16,911 But the trouble with fur as an insulator 243 00:24:17,079 --> 00:24:23,348 is that if you dive too deep, water pressure squeezes out the air. 244 00:24:23,619 --> 00:24:28,454 So fur seals, for the most part, fish in the surface waters. 245 00:24:30,325 --> 00:24:35,388 True seals, like these elephant seal pups, have a different kind of insulation. 246 00:24:35,631 --> 00:24:36,996 Their fur is sparse, 247 00:24:37,165 --> 00:24:41,761 but beneath the skin is a thick layer of oily fat, blubber, 248 00:24:41,937 --> 00:24:44,201 which surrounds their entire body. 249 00:24:44,506 --> 00:24:47,532 Elephant seals dive to great depths to hunt squid, 250 00:24:47,709 --> 00:24:51,668 navigating in the dark with sonar and huge eyes, 251 00:24:51,947 --> 00:24:56,884 but they don't get chilled, for pressure has no effect on blubber's insulating qualities. 252 00:24:57,452 --> 00:25:02,719 With every year, the blubber which kept them so warm in the freezing seas 253 00:25:02,891 --> 00:25:04,188 loses its power. 254 00:25:04,593 --> 00:25:08,222 Because every year the sea elephants have to moult, 255 00:25:08,397 --> 00:25:14,825 and in order to grow new skin they have to bring a blood supply close to the surface. 256 00:25:15,070 --> 00:25:17,163 Blood vessels open up through the blubber 257 00:25:17,339 --> 00:25:21,799 and the skin is flushed with blood just below the surface. 258 00:25:22,044 --> 00:25:25,775 If they stayed in the sea like that, they'd chill very quickly. 259 00:25:26,048 --> 00:25:28,414 But they don't. Instead... 260 00:25:31,253 --> 00:25:36,316 ...they haul themselves up onto the beaches or into mud wallows like this one. 261 00:25:36,658 --> 00:25:38,785 And there, the big old bulls like that one 262 00:25:38,960 --> 00:25:43,556 must suppress the feelings of antagonism they felt only a few months ago 263 00:25:43,732 --> 00:25:48,328 and lie close together with their fellows in the interests of keeping warm. 264 00:25:55,143 --> 00:25:57,611 These are the biggest of all seals. 265 00:25:57,813 --> 00:26:03,183 The huge adult males develop a bladder on top of their noses, like a kind of trunk. 266 00:26:08,123 --> 00:26:12,651 But they also justify their name of sea elephant by their immense size. 267 00:26:13,028 --> 00:26:17,192 The bulls may grow to 20 feet long and weigh three tons. 268 00:26:26,341 --> 00:26:30,903 If you wanted to pick a creature to symbolise the frozen Antarctic wastes, 269 00:26:31,079 --> 00:26:34,173 you might well choose a creature like this. 270 00:26:34,349 --> 00:26:37,910 These are macaroni penguins on the island of South Georgia, 271 00:26:38,086 --> 00:26:41,783 halfway between the tip of South America and the Antarctic. 272 00:26:42,190 --> 00:26:48,254 But it seems the original penguins evolved in relatively warm climates. 273 00:26:48,430 --> 00:26:52,457 Even today, there are species of penguins that live on the equator, 274 00:26:52,634 --> 00:26:54,226 in the Galapagos islands. 275 00:26:54,569 --> 00:26:58,835 So this dense coat of feathers with a layer of fat beneath it 276 00:26:59,007 --> 00:27:03,444 was probably developed to keep them warm in the seas anywhere, 277 00:27:03,612 --> 00:27:07,378 but it serves them just as well in the freezing Antarctic winds, 278 00:27:07,549 --> 00:27:10,950 standing on land or on a surging iceberg. 279 00:27:29,738 --> 00:27:32,400 And they are superb swimmers. 280 00:27:34,443 --> 00:27:36,877 Swift and agile through water, 281 00:27:37,045 --> 00:27:40,481 they come in to land through breakers that would smash any boat 282 00:27:40,649 --> 00:27:43,482 with the resilience of rubber balls. 283 00:27:53,228 --> 00:27:56,720 These chinstrap penguins are only a couple of feet high. 284 00:27:56,898 --> 00:27:59,458 King penguins are half as tall again. 285 00:27:59,734 --> 00:28:03,170 Large size can be an advantage in cold climates. 286 00:28:03,438 --> 00:28:08,273 The bigger a body, the smaller the surface area of its skin relative to its volum 287 00:28:08,510 --> 00:28:12,446 So big penguins retain heat better than small ones. 288 00:28:12,814 --> 00:28:16,181 But their great size causes problems in breeding. 289 00:28:16,384 --> 00:28:19,512 They lay just one egg, which they keep warm 290 00:28:19,688 --> 00:28:24,148 by the rather inconvenient method of holding it on top of their feet, 291 00:28:24,426 --> 00:28:29,420 covered by a fold of feathered skin, for eight long weeks. 292 00:28:29,764 --> 00:28:35,031 When it does hatch, the chick takes so long to mature 293 00:28:35,203 --> 00:28:38,195 that they have to feed it for a further ten months 294 00:28:39,274 --> 00:28:42,368 These king penguins aren't the biggest of all penguins. 295 00:28:42,611 --> 00:28:46,547 They have a cousin, living farther south, which grows even bigger. 296 00:28:46,781 --> 00:28:50,046 It, too, has fearsome problems in raising its chic 297 00:28:50,218 --> 00:28:53,654 and it solves them in the most dramatic way imaginable. 298 00:28:54,222 --> 00:28:58,659 They lay their eggs not in spring, but at the end of summer. 299 00:28:59,027 --> 00:29:02,394 Their breeding grounds are on the permanent sea ice near the coast. 300 00:29:02,631 --> 00:29:09,537 The females return to the sea to feed, leaving the males with the eggs. 301 00:29:09,804 --> 00:29:12,830 They shuffle back and forth, each with an egg on his feet, 302 00:29:13,008 --> 00:29:15,203 held carefully above the ice. 303 00:29:22,584 --> 00:29:25,883 The gales intensify as the winter advances 304 00:29:26,054 --> 00:29:27,851 and the sun sinks lower. 305 00:29:29,658 --> 00:29:32,821 In the skies above, the aurora plays. 306 00:29:33,562 --> 00:29:37,259 The male emperors stoically sit out the months of winter darkness. 307 00:29:37,666 --> 00:29:42,069 The sea ice can offer them no nest. Not even a scree for a few pebbles. 308 00:29:42,237 --> 00:29:47,072 They have nothing to eat, and nothing to do except protect the precious egg 309 00:29:47,242 --> 00:29:51,178 and prevent it from freezing while the chick slowly forms inside it. 310 00:29:51,580 --> 00:29:56,574 As the gales intensify, the males huddle together to give one another shelter. 311 00:29:57,586 --> 00:30:02,455 Then, 65 days after it was laid, the chick begins to hatch. 312 00:30:20,475 --> 00:30:22,670 The newly-emerged chicks are hungry. 313 00:30:22,911 --> 00:30:28,315 All the male can provide is a little secretion from his throat and long-empty stomach. 314 00:30:28,783 --> 00:30:30,080 He's close to starving himself, 315 00:30:30,251 --> 00:30:33,948 having been sustained only by the layer of fat beneath his skin. 316 00:30:34,222 --> 00:30:36,588 He's lost a third of his weight. 317 00:30:39,361 --> 00:30:42,660 But soon after, the female reappears with a full stomach 318 00:30:42,897 --> 00:30:47,334 and takes the chick onto her feet for its first proper feed. 319 00:30:48,336 --> 00:30:53,035 Now the parents will take turns to trek to the sea and back, 320 00:30:53,208 --> 00:30:55,073 bringing food for their youngsters. 321 00:30:55,744 --> 00:31:00,443 But now, at the end of winter, the ice has extended far out to sea, 322 00:31:00,615 --> 00:31:04,984 and the penguins may have to walk 50 miles to reach open water. 323 00:31:06,054 --> 00:31:09,217 The adults have a powerful urge to cherish a chick. 324 00:31:09,591 --> 00:31:12,719 Those that have lost one will try and adopt any that wanders by 325 00:31:12,894 --> 00:31:15,590 or incubate pieces of ice. 326 00:31:27,742 --> 00:31:29,937 Repeatedly, the parent in charge 327 00:31:30,111 --> 00:31:33,012 manages to find something from the pit of its stomach 328 00:31:33,181 --> 00:31:35,342 to feed the ever-hungry chick. 329 00:31:40,355 --> 00:31:43,552 Until the chicks lose their down and get their adult plumage, 330 00:31:43,725 --> 00:31:47,058 they can't swim and so can't feed for themselves. 331 00:31:47,595 --> 00:31:53,033 But being so big, they, like the king penguins, take a long time to grow to full size, 332 00:31:53,201 --> 00:31:58,901 and so their parents must make the long march to the sea to collect food for them. 333 00:32:00,742 --> 00:32:04,678 Though the winter is almost over, there is still bad weather. 334 00:32:04,879 --> 00:32:06,346 Blizzards rage over the ice, 335 00:32:06,514 --> 00:32:12,749 and the young huddle together in groups of their own amongst the parent birds. 336 00:32:17,525 --> 00:32:21,120 Many of the youngsters lack the strength to withstand the cold. 337 00:32:21,429 --> 00:32:22,555 Many die. 338 00:32:23,965 --> 00:32:29,562 As the sun rises higher each day, the adults suffer in a different fashion. 339 00:32:29,938 --> 00:32:33,806 On sunny days they get too hot in their insulating blanket of feathers, 340 00:32:33,975 --> 00:32:37,035 and eat snow in order to cool themselves. 341 00:32:39,347 --> 00:32:42,407 The chicks still have their downy feathers and can't swim. 342 00:32:42,584 --> 00:32:46,918 But ten months on from laying, the chicks fledge, 343 00:32:47,088 --> 00:32:51,582 and over the next few weeks, they all walk down to the sea, 344 00:32:51,760 --> 00:32:56,288 which now, with the spring break-up of the ice, is close at hand. 345 00:32:58,833 --> 00:33:02,633 Now, at last, the adults can feed entirely for themselves. 346 00:33:03,104 --> 00:33:05,664 They've got two months in which to restore their weight 347 00:33:05,840 --> 00:33:08,968 before they start the whole process over again. 348 00:33:13,815 --> 00:33:16,340 These birds, at first sight so penguin-like, 349 00:33:16,518 --> 00:33:19,453 live not near the south pole, but the north. 350 00:33:19,888 --> 00:33:23,790 They're not penguins but guillemots, members of the auk family. 351 00:33:24,392 --> 00:33:27,987 All auks, like penguins, are excellent underwater swimmers. 352 00:33:28,196 --> 00:33:30,756 They use their wings like flippers, 353 00:33:31,065 --> 00:33:34,193 but they have not become such specialised swimmers as the penguins, 354 00:33:34,369 --> 00:33:35,859 for they can still fly. 355 00:33:36,771 --> 00:33:40,002 These are the guillemots' smaller cousins, the little auk. 356 00:33:58,359 --> 00:34:02,921 Auks and penguins, similar though they are, are not closely related. 357 00:34:03,097 --> 00:34:06,931 They've come to resemble one another by adopting a similar lifestyle 358 00:34:07,101 --> 00:34:09,126 at opposite ends of the earth. 359 00:34:12,440 --> 00:34:16,501 Unlike Antarctica, that isolated continent surrounded by sea, 360 00:34:16,678 --> 00:34:21,638 the Arctic is connected by land to more temperate regions. 361 00:34:21,950 --> 00:34:26,785 So the land animals of Europe and North America have been able to colonise it 362 00:34:26,955 --> 00:34:30,083 and adapt to its particular demands. 363 00:34:32,560 --> 00:34:34,528 Foxes have moved up here. 364 00:34:34,863 --> 00:34:40,597 The Arctic fox's coat is lighter than its southern cousin, and in winter turns whit 365 00:34:41,135 --> 00:34:46,095 On land, it feeds on small rodents, and on ice floes, perhaps the odd bird. 366 00:34:46,474 --> 00:34:49,841 It's just as well the little auks have kept their powers of flight. 367 00:35:05,793 --> 00:35:12,130 The ice floes are also the hunting ground of one of the biggest of all carnivores. 368 00:35:19,741 --> 00:35:21,231 The polar bear. 369 00:35:22,176 --> 00:35:25,270 This one has killed a bearded seal. 370 00:35:37,525 --> 00:35:42,428 A young bear is eager to take a share of the kill, but must be cautious. 371 00:35:42,697 --> 00:35:45,791 Adults sometimes kill youngsters in squabbles. 372 00:36:18,900 --> 00:36:24,736 The polar bear is clearly a close relative of the bears that live in Europe and America. 373 00:36:25,206 --> 00:36:30,940 Its whiteness is an obvious adaptation to the snow and ice, but so is its huge size. 374 00:36:31,412 --> 00:36:38,318 The principle of a big body retaining more heat applies to bears as much as penguins, 375 00:36:38,553 --> 00:36:43,991 and polar bears are very much bigger than their cousins in temperate lands farther south. 376 00:37:01,609 --> 00:37:07,309 Polar bears, if forced to, will eat all kinds of t but their preferred food is flesh, 377 00:37:07,482 --> 00:37:09,279 particularly that of seals. 378 00:37:09,650 --> 00:37:13,518 They especially like the blubber just below the seal's skin, 379 00:37:13,721 --> 00:37:17,179 and often leave the meat for the scavenging gulls and foxes. 380 00:37:44,786 --> 00:37:49,519 Among the glaucous gulls is the much rarer and pure-white ivory gull. 381 00:37:59,067 --> 00:38:04,733 The polar bear's white coat and great size are not its only adaptations to Arctic life. 382 00:38:04,972 --> 00:38:08,499 It grips the ice with long, sharp claws 383 00:38:08,676 --> 00:38:14,273 and thick hair on the soles, which also makes them excellent paddles, 384 00:38:14,582 --> 00:38:18,678 for the polar bear spends a lot of time swimming during the summer. 385 00:39:01,295 --> 00:39:03,729 Ringed seals are much hunted by polar bears, 386 00:39:03,898 --> 00:39:08,301 and when on the ice, must be constantly on the alert. 387 00:39:12,373 --> 00:39:16,002 They need ice holes through which to leave the water, 388 00:39:16,177 --> 00:39:19,078 or at least stick up their heads to breathe. 389 00:39:24,852 --> 00:39:29,880 A polar bear will wait for many hours, motionless, beside such a hole. 390 00:39:34,462 --> 00:39:38,990 They also stalk seals that are rash enough to lie out on the ice. 391 00:39:54,715 --> 00:40:00,278 The polar bear has lost, but about once in every five hunting days, it does kill, 392 00:40:00,488 --> 00:40:01,978 and that is enough. 393 00:40:10,031 --> 00:40:15,663 The most powerful effective hunter of all, however, on the northern ice, is man. 394 00:40:19,440 --> 00:40:22,637 Eskimo, or Inuit, as they prefer to call themselves, 395 00:40:22,810 --> 00:40:25,836 came up to the Arctic in very early times. 396 00:40:26,147 --> 00:40:29,776 Superb hunters, they could live for many months in winter 397 00:40:29,951 --> 00:40:32,715 on nothing whatever but raw meat. 398 00:40:45,466 --> 00:40:50,904 They were so skilled at living on the ice that with only a knife of bone 399 00:40:51,072 --> 00:40:55,099 they could make a waterproof house from snow in an hour or so. 400 00:41:08,022 --> 00:41:10,547 A slab of sea ice made a window. 401 00:41:30,811 --> 00:41:34,770 Inside, the igloo was lit with lamps fed by seal blubber. 402 00:41:35,082 --> 00:41:36,982 Heat from the flame and from their bodies 403 00:41:37,151 --> 00:41:42,555 could raise the temperature enough for them to remove their heavy clothing and relax. 404 00:41:56,737 --> 00:42:00,332 It was a life of extraordinary rigour and privatio 405 00:42:00,775 --> 00:42:03,369 These pictures were taken 20 years ago. 406 00:42:03,644 --> 00:42:06,340 No Eskimo lives in this way today. 407 00:42:08,282 --> 00:42:10,477 The poles have not always been so cold. 408 00:42:10,718 --> 00:42:15,417 One explanation of why they've become so is the warming effect of ocean currents. 409 00:42:15,656 --> 00:42:19,615 If they can circulate the waters of the polar seas down towards the equator, 410 00:42:19,794 --> 00:42:21,887 they would keep them relatively warm. 411 00:42:22,129 --> 00:42:27,499 And maybe they did so 100 million years ago, when the continents were arranged like this. 412 00:42:28,202 --> 00:42:32,400 But the continents have shifted, the polar seas become more enclosed 413 00:42:32,573 --> 00:42:35,007 and any such currents interrupted. 414 00:42:37,611 --> 00:42:40,171 Meanwhile, during the same period, 415 00:42:40,348 --> 00:42:45,376 the Antarctic continent drifted south until it came to rest over the south pole. 416 00:42:45,653 --> 00:42:50,454 Now ocean currents could not keep that part of the world warm either, 417 00:42:50,624 --> 00:42:52,524 and so an ice cap formed. 418 00:42:53,227 --> 00:42:58,790 The whiteness reflected 90% of the heat in the already feeble rays of the sun. 419 00:42:59,033 --> 00:43:03,527 So ice now covers all of Antarctica and the seas of the north pole. 420 00:43:04,071 --> 00:43:07,234 Over the past million years there have been other variations, 421 00:43:07,408 --> 00:43:10,206 due to the sun's varying strength, 422 00:43:10,378 --> 00:43:12,972 and the ice cover has waxed and waned. 423 00:43:13,314 --> 00:43:16,715 Now we're in one of the warmer phases, 424 00:43:16,884 --> 00:43:20,684 but even so, Antarctica is still buried beneath ice a mile thick, 425 00:43:20,855 --> 00:43:27,283 and in the north, ice and snow extend for 1,000 miles away from the pole. 426 00:43:49,083 --> 00:43:52,541 As you come down the mountain or away from the pole, 427 00:43:52,720 --> 00:43:58,249 the land becomes warm enough to prevent it being covered by ice and snow all year. 428 00:43:58,559 --> 00:44:02,757 Beyond, the country is bleak enough: Boulders and gravel, 429 00:44:02,930 --> 00:44:07,958 rocks that have been ground to fragments by the glaciers and pushed in front of them. 430 00:44:09,136 --> 00:44:14,335 This is the tundra, a land full of strange shapes and patterns. 431 00:44:14,775 --> 00:44:18,541 Fine muds and sands retain more moisture than coarse gravel, 432 00:44:18,712 --> 00:44:21,442 so when they freeze, they expand more 433 00:44:21,615 --> 00:44:26,609 and push the gravel outwards to produce these geometric shapes. 434 00:44:27,021 --> 00:44:30,513 A foot down, the soil is still frozen, permafrost, 435 00:44:30,691 --> 00:44:33,489 so the summer melt water can't soak away 436 00:44:33,661 --> 00:44:38,997 and the land is covered with bogs and ponds that lie within the polygonal ridges, 437 00:44:39,166 --> 00:44:43,125 so that the land looks almost as though it's been cultivated by man. 438 00:44:46,841 --> 00:44:51,642 In places, the underground ice pushes upwards into a mountain called a pingo. 439 00:44:52,546 --> 00:44:56,983 It looks like a small volcano, but instead of hot lava in its heart, 440 00:44:57,151 --> 00:44:59,585 it has cold, blue ice. 441 00:45:11,031 --> 00:45:15,730 Although the ice relaxes its grip for only a few weeks in summer, 442 00:45:15,903 --> 00:45:20,863 a surprising number of plants and animals manage to find a permanent home here. 443 00:45:25,145 --> 00:45:27,613 Small flowering plants keep low, 444 00:45:27,781 --> 00:45:33,083 for close to the ground there is little wind and the sun's rays can be quite warm. 445 00:45:40,661 --> 00:45:44,620 One kind of tree manages to live up here in large numbers 446 00:45:44,798 --> 00:45:47,460 by adopting exactly the same policy. 447 00:45:48,702 --> 00:45:51,432 This is the Arctic willow and it lies flat. 448 00:45:51,605 --> 00:45:54,301 It grows extremely slowly in these cold temperatures, 449 00:45:54,475 --> 00:45:59,811 and this one may be a century or so old. 450 00:46:00,948 --> 00:46:03,075 In shallow burrows in the topsoil 451 00:46:03,250 --> 00:46:08,347 live the harvesters of this meagre crop of leaves and grass: Lemmings. 452 00:46:11,892 --> 00:46:15,760 In summer, when there's food about, they breed with great speed. 453 00:46:15,996 --> 00:46:22,196 One female produces five or six babies in a litter, four or five times in a single season 454 00:46:22,469 --> 00:46:25,836 So in a few months she may produce 30 young. 455 00:46:26,106 --> 00:46:30,475 The babies grow so quickly that the first to be born in the spring 456 00:46:30,644 --> 00:46:33,772 can themselves produce young before the winter returns. 457 00:46:40,521 --> 00:46:44,252 In summer, all the tundra plants put out their leaves 458 00:46:44,425 --> 00:46:45,915 and there's lots to eat. 459 00:46:53,534 --> 00:46:56,697 The swarming hordes of lemmings attract hunters: 460 00:46:59,273 --> 00:47:00,706 Snowy owls. 461 00:47:13,721 --> 00:47:17,088 During the summer, lemmings are the owl's main food. 462 00:47:36,276 --> 00:47:41,145 Abundant though the lemmings are, the hunting has been poor for this owl. 463 00:47:41,348 --> 00:47:46,115 She may have laid as many as eight eggs, but only one chick has survived. 464 00:48:01,702 --> 00:48:05,832 As the days lengthen, herds of caribou migrate up from the south. 465 00:48:06,473 --> 00:48:12,070 Their calves were born early in the season and the herd moves up to 15 miles a day 466 00:48:12,446 --> 00:48:17,179 They have to keep traveling in order to find enough food to sustain them all. 467 00:48:46,180 --> 00:48:48,410 They follow the same route each year. 468 00:48:48,582 --> 00:48:51,415 In places, paths are worn 18 inches deep 469 00:48:51,585 --> 00:48:55,043 where the animals have passed, century after century. 470 00:49:01,161 --> 00:49:03,026 Snow geese fly up, too. 471 00:49:03,330 --> 00:49:07,357 They've come from as far away as Mexico, 3,000 miles distant, 472 00:49:07,534 --> 00:49:11,903 to claim a share in summer's brief crop and to breed. 473 00:49:21,014 --> 00:49:22,879 They exist in two forms: 474 00:49:23,050 --> 00:49:27,111 Ones with dark feathers on the body, as well as pure-white ones. 475 00:49:27,488 --> 00:49:31,015 But they're all the same species, and mixed couples are common. 476 00:49:35,095 --> 00:49:38,223 Soon the tundra is thick with their nests. 477 00:49:41,168 --> 00:49:45,434 Ptarmigan, now in their dark summer plumage, feed on the willow scrub. 478 00:49:52,746 --> 00:49:56,375 The caribou take not only willow, but grasses and lichen. 479 00:50:08,629 --> 00:50:12,861 The first snow geese to arrive already have goslings, 480 00:50:13,033 --> 00:50:14,796 and are foraging as a family. 481 00:50:23,577 --> 00:50:25,636 Later arrivals are still on the nest, 482 00:50:25,813 --> 00:50:29,340 and can't leave until the last egg has hatched. 483 00:50:29,817 --> 00:50:32,843 While there, the first goslings to emerge and their parents 484 00:50:33,020 --> 00:50:37,787 are plagued by hordes of voracious blood-hungry mosquitoes. 485 00:50:52,573 --> 00:50:56,441 From the warming pools, more and more mosquitoes hatch. 486 00:51:02,950 --> 00:51:07,410 They provide food for the red-necked phalarope, and there are plenty to gather. 487 00:51:07,588 --> 00:51:12,821 A square yard of fresh water here can produce 100,000 insects in a season. 488 00:51:13,894 --> 00:51:15,486 Now the blackfly larvae, 489 00:51:15,662 --> 00:51:19,223 which as eggs were attached to stones in the shallow pools, 490 00:51:19,399 --> 00:51:21,663 are also beginning to emerge. 491 00:51:43,056 --> 00:51:49,655 Activity now is intense, for it is light for almost the whole 24 hours of the day. 492 00:51:52,266 --> 00:51:56,100 But by late August, the snow geese sense the imminence of winter 493 00:51:56,270 --> 00:51:58,465 and start to head southwards again. 494 00:52:08,348 --> 00:52:10,873 The caribou, too, end their grazing, 495 00:52:11,051 --> 00:52:14,043 and start to plod back across the tundra. 496 00:52:14,655 --> 00:52:16,520 As they go, they continue to feed, 497 00:52:16,690 --> 00:52:21,252 building up the reserves of fat they will need to sustain themselves through the winter. 498 00:52:41,181 --> 00:52:46,050 As the weather gets colder and colder, the need for shelter becomes more urgent 499 00:52:46,320 --> 00:52:49,221 and the herds may cover 25 miles in a day. 500 00:53:10,077 --> 00:53:15,481 And then, at last, the returning travellers reach the first tall tree 501 00:53:15,849 --> 00:53:18,249 It's the start of the great coniferous forest 502 00:53:18,418 --> 00:53:21,945 that lies south of the tundra right round the globe. 503 00:53:22,656 --> 00:53:25,853 The snow geese will fly on for thousands of miles, 504 00:53:26,026 --> 00:53:29,427 but the caribou have reached their wintering grounds. 505 00:53:29,930 --> 00:53:31,898 The forest is a sanctuary 506 00:53:32,065 --> 00:53:35,364 which will protect them from the bitter winter col 507 00:53:35,736 --> 00:53:39,672 and it's here that we shall be coming in the next programme.