Force of Nature

Extreme weather is reshaping the lives of wildlife around the world. An owl on the American prairies uses its extraordinary hearing and underground burrows to save its chicks, two cheetahs in Kenya battle record-breaking floods, a polar bear loses the summer sea ice it relies on, and chimpanzees adapt as storms, floods, fire and drought grow more intense.

As shifting rain patterns transform ecosystems across the planet, survival is no longer about strength alone. Three mothers face nature at its most unpredictable: pygmy elephants battle monsoon floods in Borneo, a female platypus escapes the flash flood that destroys her home river in Australia, and a lone lioness in Africa uses floodwaters to her advantage to catch prey.

The world’s coastal regions have always been an extreme environment in which to raise a family, but warming seas are exacerbating the challenges of parenthood. From hurricanes hitting flamingo colonies and little anole lizards to winter storms threatening sea otters and bleaching destroying clownfish homes, coastal wildlife faces growing challenges. As these events become more frequent and intense, raising the next generation is becoming ever more difficult.

Cold-adapted animals are struggling more than most in a warming world, forcing them to change long-established behaviours to survive. From a snow leopard in the peaks of the Indian Himalayas, forced from his home by a rival male, to an Arctic ground squirrel in Alaska undertaking the coldest migration of any mammal, and a young Arctic fox in Svalbard facing her first winter alone, animals adapted to the cold are being pushed to their limits in a rapidly changing world.

New extremes of heat and drought are pushing the extraordinary behavioural and physical adaptations of wombats, leopards and kangaroo rats to their very limits.

In this episode, we turn the camera on the extraordinary people who are dedicating their lives to helping the animals cope with today's extreme weather.