Imagine you are flying above the African savannah, swimming under Antarctic ice, climbing up Amazon trees and diving the Marianna abyss.

Imagine you can suddenly see in the night, hear ultra-sounds, decode radar waves and detect electric fields.

1,2,3… you are a lion or else a dolphin, a bear or a vulture!

Using the latest technologies of image treatment and stock footage from Saint Thomas Productions’ extensive film library, this wildlife series presents an insider’s view of the predators’ life and senses. Both spectacular and entertaining, the series gives a modern outlook on nature and its most spectacular ambassadors: predators.
Each episode depicts a predator and its hunting techniques in its natural habitat. Following the principles of a food chain, the programmes jump from one animal to the next, from hunter to prey.

Oceans

Sharks or Dolphins, two predators, two morphological responses to the same environmental constraints. Which one is the better adapted to survive?
An underwater camera passes swiftly over a coralline sandbank then stops on a black and image of a razor fish lurking in wait. Several bottlenose dolphins forage in this location. The mothers use echolocation to spot razor fish and teach their young how to master this sophisticated sense that we don’t know. Other bottlenose dolphins have developed yet another spectacular application of this sense: they hunt grey mullets in the muddy mangrove waters and strand them on the banks. Other dolphin species use this natural sonar in different ways: some descend in group in the abyss to locate anchovy shoals. They force them up to a lesser depth where they will get stuck by the natural frontier of the water surface. But how is it possible to hunt in the darkness of the abyss without this super-sense? Seals have found an answer to this question, thanks to their vibrissae. These whiskers can detect the movements of prey in total darkness. But what can really be seen with these whiskers and how do they use them? That is what a young sea lioness in Patagonia and a grey seal in Scotland learn… before they suddenly end up in the jaws of a super-predator, a killer whale. How can they resist? To rule over the oceans, this animal an array of senses, a hunting culture transmitted from one generation to the next and an adaptability to changing environmental conditions.

Author(s): Frédéric Bernadicou et Julien Naar
Director(s): Frédéric Bernadicou et Julien Naar
Year: 2006
Producer(s): Saint Thomas Productions
Distributor(s): Saint Thomas Productions — Follow us on social media:
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