Seven Worlds, One Planet

The Canada lynx lives farther north than any other cat, even during the harsh winter months in the Yukon Territory. It can travel hundreds of miles in search of food and relies on the element of surprise to catch its prey, such as snowshoe hare, but is often unsuccessful.

A fleet-footed snowshoe hare deftly evades an ambush by a Canada lynx.

A male river chub in Tennessee builds a great mound of stones carefuly collected from the riverbed. The bigger the mound, the more attractive it will be to females. However, he has to be wary of rivals who try to wrest control of his patch or steal pebbles for their own mounds. When a female approaches, the male forms a trench in the middle of the mound in which she can lay her eggs, which he then fertilises.

Footnotes ▾

The calliope hummingbirds is one of the many migrants that travels great distances from the south to feed on the nectar of wildflowers in North America.

Footnotes ▾

Black bears on Vancouver Island supplement their diet with seafood - during springtime, up to 75% of a bears' food is found along the coast. A mother bear and her cubs search under rocks on the beach to find crabs. When the family is approached by a large male bear, the cubs scamper up a nearby tree for safety upon their mother's signal.

Footnotes ▾

When the tide retreats, crabs on the shorelines of Vancouver Island are exposed to predators such as black bears. While larger crabs are too challenging for the cubs, they are no bother at all to a hungry mother bear.

Footnotes ▾

Fireflies produces the most-energy efficient light on the planet. Across the eastern United States, male Photuris fireflies take to the air to attract females with their lights. They synchronise their flashes to make the signal more visible, but each species of firefly has its own "flash code". In Ohio, some fireflies are seen caught in the webs of orb-weaver spiders, but the vast majority are able to avoid the traps.

Footnotes ▾

Orb-weaver spiders have "booby-trapped" the forests of Mississippi with webs that trap Photuris fireflies as they emerge to find a mate. The spider quickly cocoons the fireflies that are caught. Its prey continues to glow, which helps to draw more fireflies into the spider's web.

Footnotes ▾

Black-tailed prairie dogs station sentries to watch for predators, such as badgers, while their vulnerable pups are exposed on South Dakota's prairies. The pups are signalled to return to the burrow by their mother, but one pup is not fast enough and falls prey to a hunting badger. Half of prairie dog pups don't make it to adulthood.

Footnotes ▾

American badgers prey on inexperienced prairie dog pups on South Dakota's grasslands. A prowling badger is initially seen off by a burrowing owl, protecting its own young in the area. The badger tries again, this time finding grass tall enough to mask its approach, and is able to nab a prairie dog pup before it's able to run into its burrow along with its siblings.

Footnotes ▾

A female burrowing owl fiercely protects its young from a prowling American badger. She swoops down repeatedly to harass the badger with her talons, eventually seeing it off.

Footnotes ▾

A greater roadrunner is up against the clock as it races around searching for food in Arizona's deserts. By mid-morning the temperatures will be so high that most of the prey in the area will have disappeared underground. It needs to select a suitably-sized target and passes up a sunbathing gila monster and other larger reptiles it comes across. By the end of its hunt, it's only managed to catch a meagre centipede.

A gila monster basks in the morning sun in an Arizona desert. It's too large to be threatened by a hungry roadrunner searching for a meal.

A centipede is all that a hungry roadrunner manages to catch at the end of its morning hunt.

Footnotes ▾

Millions of flathead grey mullet migrate to the south each summer to spawn. Shoals of these fish travel close to the shore to avoid predators in deeper water, but they are still vulnerable to attack from hunters that are willing to enter the shallows such as tarpons, sharks and pelicans.

Footnotes ▾

Atlantic tarpon hunt great shoals of flathead grey mullet migrating south along the beaches of Singer Island, Florida. The tarpon have learned to orient themselves on their sides, hiding their highly reflective flanks from their prey and allowing them to reach further into the shallows.

Blacktip sharks join into feed on migrating grey mullet on Florida's East coast. As the shoal is more tightly squeezed into the shallows, the sharks have an easier time hunting.

Among the predators joining in on the feast of grey mullet migrating along Florida's East coast are brown pelican, which dives into the water to snap up fish.

American alligators are able to slow their heart rate to barely a beat per minute, entering a dormant phase that allows them to survive cold spells brought about by air sweeping down from the Arctic to the southern US states.

Manatees migrate hundreds of miles to warmer waters each autumn, so that their calves can survive the chill. In Florida's springs, these manatees can socialise, get their backs scrubbed by fish, and even play with alligators, which are much more docile in the cold. Sadly, many manatees die each year after sustaining injuries from boat propellers, a problem that is becoming more common as human activity increases along Florida's waterways.

Footnotes ▾

During the winter months, American alligators are often too chilled to react to playful bumps and nudges by migrating manatees that have come to Florida's springs in search of warmer waters.

A warming climate has led to polar bears relying on new sources of food and developing new techniques to hunt. In Canada's Hudson Bay, polar bears wait for migrating beluga whales to come close to the shore. Experienced bears know not to hunt the whales directly in the water. Instead, they find rocks above the waterline, from which one well-timed leap and a bite at their prey's head is enough to make a swift kill. Back on the beach, the catch is more than enough to feed many bears.

Pods of beluga whale come close to the shore in Canada's Hudson Bay where their calfs will be safer from oceanic predators such as killer whales. But here they face fresh dangers from polar bears. A bear in the water is easy enough for the whales to keep an eye on, but the hunters have learned to ambush their prey by leaping from rocks dotting the shore.