Prehistoric Planet (2022) s03e01 Episode Script

1
[rumbling]
[Tom Hiddleston] It's minus 50 degrees…
with one hundred mile an hour winds.
This woolly mammoth is lost in
the first blizzard of winter.
And it's brutal.
Alone in these conditions,
she won't last long.
[trumpets]
And it's not just the cold she's battling.
[rumbling]
She's in labor.
This is the worst possible time
to give birth.
Her calf isn't moving.
She tries to nudge him into life.
[rumbles]
But it's not working.
They're both freezing to death.
[distant trumpeting]
It's the herd.
[trumpets]
They huddle around mother and baby,
forming a shield
to protect them from the storm.
But for the tiny calf, it may be too late.
Morning.
[mammoth trumpets]
[rumbles]
The blizzard has passed.
And echoing off the walls of ice…
[rumbling]
…are the sounds of celebration.
The shield held, and the calf is alive.
[squeals]
Covered in thick fur
and with a family to protect her,
she's ready to face the coldest
temperatures the planet has seen
for more than 50 million years.
This is the Ice Age.
A quarter of our world is frozen…
covered by sheets of ice two miles thick.
Home to strange creatures
never seen before.
Surviving the cold is a struggle.
But the Ice Age makes life challenging
in other ways too.
Parched deserts,
vanishing forests…
and windswept plains.
This is Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age.
[fox howling]
An arctic fox.
It knows a hidden world
where the cold doesn't reach.
A cave system so deep,
it stays as warm as a spring afternoon,
no matter what.
It's an underground animal metropolis…
[lowing]
…unique to the Ice Age.
And in the very deepest corners,
living in total darkness,
cave bears.
The climate is so harsh, they spend
most of their lives underground.
And this mother bear has brought her cubs,
just six months old.
These giants are very well-adapted
to the Ice Age.
They can hibernate for up to nine months,
the length of a winter
here in the far north.
The cave keeps the family safe
from the cold.
But that's not the only danger.
Cave lions.
Giant six-hundred-pound predators.
They're not here to keep warm.
They're here to hunt.
This pair come here year after year.
They have a special strategy.
They're not interested in an arctic fox.
They hunt…
cave bear cubs.
As the lions close in, outside,
there's a change in the weather.
And that's a chance
for one of the strangest
Ice Age creatures to venture out.
It might look like a bear…
but this is a huge sloth.
Adapted for life in the far north.
Her shaggy fur is at its thickest
at this time of year,
superb at fending off the cold.
But her real Ice Age superpower
is taking life slowly.
Because saving energy is vital
when it's this cold.
In the Ice Age, families stick together
for longer to help each other out.
[bellows]
[bellows]
Her son. A three-year-old male.
And bringing up the rear…
her daughter.
Just a few months old.
It's her first experience of winter.
A roll around the snow is the perfect way
to give their thick, shaggy coats a clean.
But for first-timers,
all this snow can be a bit
strange.
That's the idea.
[whimsical music playing]
With cleaning out of the way,
it's time for lunch.
Getting to the bottom of the valley
looks like hard work.
But it doesn't have to be.
Baby sloths hitch a ride on their
mothers' backs until they're a year old.
Big brothers use their own backs.
Made it,
with minimum effort, in true sloth style.
The only things on the lunch menu
are pine needles.
Not very tasty,
but at least there are lots of them.
The trick is to find a spot
where you can reach maximum leaves
with minimum effort.
Six-inch claws and powerful arms
help them reach the best branches.
For the youngster,
this is her first time eating solid food.
Her mother's milk was
much easier than this.
Climbing is something only the baby
is light enough to try.
Almost there…
Oh, dear.
Trees might be slippery,
but big brothers aren't.
Finally, a mouthful in reach.
In a few more years,
her older brother will leave the family
to set off on his own.
For now, thanks to her family,
this young slothling is safe and well.
But for the bear cubs,
trouble is heading their way.
[sniffing]
To reach their target,
the cave lions must pass the gatekeepers
of this underworld.
[grunting]
Cave hyenas.
- [lion growls]
- [hyenas barking]
Each is wary of the other.
Today, neither side is
looking for a fight.
Almost a mile deep into the cave,
the lions finally reach their target.
They must snatch the cubs
in total darkness…
and complete silence.
The bear cubs have picked up a scent.
But so has another bear.
- [bear roars]
- [growling]
[roars]
[roars]
Only one cave lion makes it out.
Mother bear has learnt her lesson.
Now she puts herself in the front line.
In this frozen world, everyone needs
a trick to keep safe and warm.
Even the smallest creatures.
This tiny vole works round the clock
to create a labyrinth of tunnels
under the snow.
Protection from freezing winds…
[thud]
…and predators.
[thud]
Woolly rhinos.
Not hunting voles
but feeding on plants under the snow.
They can scratch a living through the
winter thanks to their four-foot horns.
And the humps on their backs are
a fat reserve
that help them survive in hard times.
An elderly female.
At 40 years old, she's losing her vision
and is almost blind.
She sticks to safer ground
in the middle of the herd…
alongside its newest arrival.
He may not be able to
plow the snow quite yet…
but he can learn from Grandma.
Just one of the advantages of
living in a herd.
The oldest and the youngest stay together.
The blind leading the defenseless.
[trumpets]
In the low light of winter,
the herd can't tell they're being watched.
Powerful, scimitar-toothed cats.
Working as a team to target the weak.
[growls]
Rhinos are fast.
Even Grandma can run at 20 miles an hour.
But the cats are faster still.
In a tight formation,
the rhinos become
a wall of formidable horns.
[growling]
[scimitar-toothed cat grunts]
[growls]
But one of the herd is missing.
Grandma.
She's lost her way in the chaos.
[trumpets]
She can hear him,
but, alone, she's in trouble.
[scimitar-toothed cats growling]
[bleats]
But the herd looks after its own.
Young and old are reunited.
In this harsh Ice Age world,
looking after each other
makes the difference.
It's much harder if you have to
go it alone.
A saber-toothed cat,
native to South America.
At just two years old,
this female has been forced
to leave her family.
Now, she must fend for herself.
[yowls]
And it's not going well.
Two of her milk teeth are still in place,
which means she has double sabers.
Useless for hunting large prey.
She hasn't had a decent meal in weeks.
Hunger forces her
further down the mountain,
into unknown territory.
The valleys harbor
strange and ancient forests.
Trees from the time of the dinosaurs
and hunters more dangerous than her.
[sniffing]
Smells like another cat.
She could take it as a warning.
Instead she adds a perfumed message
of her own.
Her double sabers are still troubling her.
She continues to leave a trail of
calling cards.
[grazer bleats]
The sound of a potential meal.
Macrauchenia.
Two-thousand-pound grazers.
Their huge noses warm the air they breathe
in these icy conditions.
They also give them a keen sense of smell.
With her double sabers,
her chances are slim.
But she's desperate.
- [leaves rustle]
- [grunts]
[grunts]
[grunts]
[grunts]
Another sabertooth.
He makes the killing bite.
With the hunt over, the question is…
whose kill is this?
[snarls]
[hisses]
She'll never overpower this larger male.
But she has another tactic.
Flirting.
He's got other things on his mind.
But her scent is familiar.
Her messages have done their job.
Her first meal in weeks.
This Macrauchenia will keep her alive
until her second sabers fall out
and she becomes a deadly hunter.
She's survived the most dangerous time
in a young sabertooth's life.
Feeding together is forming a bond
between the two youngsters.
Perhaps the beginnings
of a new saber-toothed family.
In the far north,
the mammoth family is facing
a long and dangerous march
to the spring feeding grounds.
[trumpets]
They must migrate
thousands of miles every year.
The newborn calf needs to keep up.
Although tiny, this one is strong.
For this herd,
and the rest of life on Earth,
the challenge of surviving the Big Freeze
has only just begun.
As the Ice Age continues,
it brings changes to the whole world.
Falling sea levels
join continents together,
bringing animals face to face
for the first time.
Creating conflict
and forming new partnerships.
This is a world full of surprises,
where birds can eat elephants…
[squeals]
…and monstrous creatures invade new lands.
Long before the Ice Age, planet Earth was
a much warmer, wetter place.
Antarctica was covered
with temperate forests,
and the Arctic was home to
heat-loving creatures like alligators.
But then, everything changed.
Global temperatures plunged.
It's just incredible, the impact that
the Ice Age has had on the entire planet.
[Hiddleston] But why did it change?
It turns out, the secret to what caused
the Ice Age is in the ice itself.
[geologist] The Ice Core Facility
is absolutely amazing.
It's an archive of ice
from around the world
from the poles and from
high mountain locations.
Inside each of these tubes is
one meter of ice
that has been drilled from
the surface of the glacier
3,000 meters down to the bedrock.
[Hiddleston]
Ice sheets are built up in layers.
They are so thick that these cores contain
clues that can take us back in time
800,000 years.
These layers are kind of like precise
time periods in the history of the planet.
[Kehrwald]
When you take a slice of a core,
you'll see a multitude of bubbles
that are trapped in the ice.
These bubbles directly sample
what the atmosphere was like
during the last ice age.
The more carbon dioxide you have
in the atmosphere,
the warmer the temperature.
[Hiddleston] Analyzing the bubbles
shows something surprising.
The Ice Age wasn't one long cold spell.
[Kehrwald]
We're able to see that temperatures go up
during a nice warm period
like we're in now,
and then they dive down deeply
like a roller coaster into the Ice Age.
[Hiddleston] The ice cores show that
across the last 800,000 years,
there wasn't one single ice age but eight.
[biologist] We talk about the Ice Age
as though it's one thing,
but actually there were many ice ages
within that period.
[Hiddleston]
These mini ice ages happen regularly,
every 100,000 years.
What could cause such regular changes?
The answer lies in space.
[Kehrwald]
The Earth isn't a perfect sphere.
It's a little more egg-shaped and
because of that it wobbles on its axis.
Also the Earth orbits the sun,
but the shape of that orbit can change.
So it goes from being pretty circular,
to being more of a stretched-out oval.
[Hiddleston]
These changes in the Earth's orbit
also happen every 100,000 years,
matching the timing of Earth's ice ages.
But it's not the whole answer.
These wobbles, these predictable changes
in the Earth's orbit have always happened,
and so we need to look for other evidence
to really understand
what kicked off the ice ages.
Long before the Ice Age, North and
South America were not connected
and there was an ocean current
that flowed right through the middle.
As one plate forced underneath the others,
it caused all these volcanoes to erupt.
North and South America joined together
and the oceans, which previously
flowed straight through, were deflected.
This totally disconnected
the ocean circulation
between the Pacific Ocean
and the Atlantic Ocean.
And this actually ramped up
ocean currents towards the Arctic.
[Hiddleston]
These changes in ocean currents amplified
the effects of the wobbling orbit,
making the poles even colder.
Then, once snow and ice
started to build up,
it started a runaway cooling effect.
[Sevestre] And this is really
what eventually tipped the Earth
into an ice age.
[Hiddleston] It was a perfect storm
that changed Earth forever.
The Big Freeze had arrived.