Seven Worlds, One Planet

Around 1,500 brown bears live in Finland's forests. When a mother bear and her two cubs are chanced upon by a large male, the cubs expertly clamber up the trees out of reach while their mother warns and eventually chases off the intruder.

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The Dovrefjell mountains of Norway are one of the last places in Europe that muskox can be found. During the mating season, a bull muskox must defend his right to father all the calves in the herd against challengers. Some challenges can be warded off with warnings, such as raking the ground, but others require a physical clash. This bull is successful in defeating the challenger after an extended battle.

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Italian wolves have adapted to life in proximity to humans settlements. In the mountain villages of Abruzzo, a pack of wolves is seen hunting red deer. The wolves have learned to use roads to travel faster and in relative silence. Initially, the pack are unable to isolate a single member of the herd before the hunt is interrupted by passing cars. On their second attempt, however, the pack positions themselves above the deer and begin a chase downhill. They succeed in bringing down their prey, but are almost immediately chased away by a pack of sheep dogs.

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Red deer are often the target for hunting wolves in Italy's Abruzzo region. The deer are faster on open ground. One night, upon being attacked, the herd is initially able to scatter across the hillside. In the wolves' second attempt however, one deer is separated from the herd and is driven down the mountain where it stumbles on an icy road and is quickly overcome by the predators.

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Sheep dogs have been bred to protect livestock. When wolves in a village in Abruzzo, Italy, successfully hunt down a deer, the commotion alerts a nearby pack of sheep dogs which chase the wolves away.

Gibraltar is home to Europe's only population of wild monkeys. The four troops of Barbary macaques here have a strict hierarchy in which status is inherited. One low-ranking female's infant is stolen by a higher-ranking female who herself is childless. The mother goes to groom other members of the troop in full view of the kidnapper, who is eventually overcome with an urge to join in and lets go of the stolen baby.

Vienna's wild hamster population is thriving in the city's many green spaces. In one cemetery, several hamsters fight to hold the patch richest in fresh flowers and candles, the wax of which is especially high in calories.

One river in Hungary is the location of an extraordinary annual event known as "the blooming of the Tisza". It starts with vast numbers of male Tisza mayflies appearing from out of the riverbed. They have just three hours to live, during which time they search for females. Each emerging female is immediately surrounded by males, vying for a position to fertilise her eggs. After mating, the females fly upstream for up to three miles before collapsing in to the water and releasing their eggs, which drift downstream to the same spot that their parents emerged from.

Vast numbers of great white pelicans migrate to the Danube Delta each summer to feast on the rich wetlands. Rather than hunting for fish themselves, the pelicans take to the skies to search for flocks of cormorants, which are more adept at diving down to reach shoals of fish. The pelicans viciously mob the cormorants as they return to the surface, ultimately staling more fish than they would have caught by themselves.

Great cormorants are among the waterbirds that flock to the waterways of Europe, such as the Romania's Danube Delta. These birds are expert at diving to reach the largest shoals of fish. Other birds, such as pelicans, follow the cormorants closely and gang up to mug them as they return to the surface with a catch.

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Slovenia's caves have remained unchanged for thousands of years; this unique habitat is the home to especially long-lived species such as the olm.. It possesses gills that allow it to breathe in and out of water, as well as sensory pits that detect faint electrical currents emitted by prey.

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The Iberian lynx is one of the most endangered species of wild cat. Over the span of just two decades, the population of these cats declined by almost 90% largely due to the disappearance of wild spaces in Europe. It is now showing a remarkable recovery in protected spaces such as the Sierra de Andujar National Park in southern Spain, where nearly 200 kittens were born in a single year, and the population has risen to over 700 cats.

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