Scientists have long been thought that animals were not able to have emotions. They would be robots, biological machines driven by impulses, instincts and hormones. Since then, the opinion about animals changed. But feelings and emotions have always been so difficult to study that scientists have not even tried it long time. Thanks to recent advances in neuroscience we have the means to understand what is happening in the animal brain. We have found that animals, like us, emotions such as fear, anger, sadness and love can have. Animals need to survive these emotions. This documentary explores the inner life of a whole range of animal species, from primary to more complicated emotions.
An Indonesian legend claims that monkeys can speak but they choose to remain silent. Do animals have languages that we can not understand? Is it just a matter of proper dictionary or language the one difference that distinguishes humans from the rest of the animal kingdom? Singing birds, lions roar and chimpanzees chattering. But these sounds mean anything? This documentary takes the viewer into the wilderness to listen to the noise makers of nature and some of the to meet that day in and day out trying to establish relations with animals. conversation scientists We learn what animal says what to whom, from parrots to orcas. And the film explores whether there is such a thing as an animal language.
Just like humans, animals are exposed to parasites, bacteria and viruses, in short to germs. How they survive these attacks? Recent research and observation show that certain animals remedies made from plants and insects, use to treat themselves. They not only bring certain products on their skin, they also treat themselves by eating food that normally is not part of their diet. Capuchin citrus rub on their fur, caterpillars eat poisonous hemlock and red deer herbivorous became caught chewing on the legs of a living seabird. This film travels around the world to discover how animals use drugs, which they realize their health and how medical knowledge from one generation to another is passed. While enabling this documentary the question of what we each can learn about medicine.
Recent scientific research shows that more than 450 different species are homosexually active. This innovative and compelling documentary combines the findings from this study with previously unseen footage. It explores the different ways in which homosexuality in the animal kingdom reflected: by rut, affection, sex, pairing and mothering. In nature a covert revolution took place, hitherto unnoticed. Using scientific research, international archival footage and new images from all over the world, re-examine and re-watching this film the fundamental paradigms of nature.
Altruism, or act a benefit to the recipient and costs means for the performer, is one of the paradoxes of evolution. In the wild, where the law of the strongest prevails, can not really be reconciled with Darwinian evolution. Adoption of the offspring of other animals And yet, among bees, dolphins, lions and other primate species, altruism can go as far as adoption. The fostering of social insects, made a mistake exposed in Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection: the biologist noted that non-reproductive insects that boy adopt and help a large portion of genetic baggage their parents give to this adopted son. Darwin had to broaden his theory of evolution of the individual to the family group. What is the benefit for adoption in mammals, including humans? Bears the adopted something to the survival of his adoptive parents in the years following an adoption, and vice versa? The controversy lies at the basis of this documentary, remains much debated in today's scientific world. The documentary examines each case individually because each adoptive behavior has evolved independently, with its own pattern, and even own advantages. its own drawbacks.
Recent discoveries show that hundreds of animal species use tools. Crows of New Caledonia, for example, use twigs to remove insect larvae, sea otters use flat stones to break open zeeklitschelpen or ears; weefmieren leaves interwoven with threads that their larvae secrete. Until recently, it was thought that the tools of different people of the tools of animals because the latter are not transmitted or collected. Several long-term studies on animal populations have proved the contrary. Tools of animals can be a part of an animal culture. For example, some chimpanzee populations their own technical tradition: they break open nuts with stones. Based on these observations, this comprehensive documentary built around three central questions: how the tool using animal changes the world? And, by extension, the others? And how the tool changes the behavior of the animal?
"If you give me this, I'll give you that." This universal definition of trade, has in the wilderness are equal in the phenomenon of "reciprocity". This term describes all exchanges between animals in the short and long term aimed at survival. "Reciprocity" changes the traditional host parasite relationship in a great alliance for both partners. To describe the phenomenon travels this fascinating and well-documented film of the cold depths of the ocean to the heat of the summer corn fields, where unexpected couples have formed: the Ray and sucking fish, sea cucumbers and shrimps or butterflies and ants live as couples, in good times and bad.
As children we learn the most about life through play. The ability to play allows us to grow into well-ordered and highly social individuals who can adapt to different situations. But not only we, play animals. For a long time we considered the game of animals as different from the game of people. But now proven that there is no difference. Why animals have fun in game? What is the function of these energy consuming and often dangerous activities? This documentary investigates why play is so important for the development. By describing social and locomotor play and playing with objects in animals, reptiles and birds to mammals, its advantages are obvious. Finally, we get even more shocking evidence for the function of the game, by watching what happens in young animals that can not play. In a surprising parallel with humans, animals that can not take place in the play develop into dysfunctional adults, and even serial killers.
In the fifties rhesus monkeys began on the island Koshima in Japan, the sweet potatoes that researchers gave them to wash. This observation might as well have stayed anecdotal except that Japanese primatologists this renewal appointed as "preculture". Culture had always considered an exclusively human characteristic, and this assumption was questioned by the behavior of these monkeys. Research on the most evolved primates, our cousins the chimpanzees and bonobos, has given us a more precise definition of "animal culture" yielded: the habits that animals acquire a learning process and lead to distinct traditions in different animal communities. Gradually, more and more animals member of the club culture: elephants, dolphins, orcas and even ravens. By precise examples and never-before-seen images, this documentary stirs the debate over "nature versus culture" and throw them a new light on the paradoxical question: "Culture is natural?"
Man is not the only social animal. In early 2001 Frans de Waal published his work on a group of chimpanzees in the zoo of Arnhem, in the Netherlands. He showed that detailed and subtle rites exist which betray a political organization according to him. This fueled the basis of a much loved argument in today's scientific world, that man is the only "political animal" would not be as defined by Aristotle. Schedules, coalitions and negotiation are all part of the behavior of chimpanzees. Long before man the political domain entered, nature had other species already equipped with an arsenal of political tricks, the most cunning of the most democratic: at amazon ant makes all slavery for centuries part of their society; baboons know the veto; and the deer of the island of Rum have a democracy. Biologists discovered that even in other species to find some characteristics of politicians, to ensure that they realize their ambitions and achieve their goals, are back. Dominance, the covenants, seduction and manipulation are forms of intelligence is no longer a monopoly of man alone. Through this ongoing discoveries about animals communities around the world crumble the boundaries between humans and animals.
