[Zaptruder]

I dunno if Amazon UK ship dvds though, they along with Amazon US don't ship most games to AU.

They better, they just took my money.

[Freedom = $1.05]

Dammit, does that mean we have to wait till the stupid Oprah version airs before we have a chance at the Blu Ray release of the non-Oprah version? Because that would fucking BLOW.

[Dizzan]

I dunno if Amazon UK ship dvds though, they along with Amazon US don't ship most games to AU.

I just got it on eBay. If amazon uk delivers here, they have life and planet earth box set. I wish I got that cos I can't find my planet earth anywhere.

[Dizzan]

I dunno if Amazon UK ship dvds though, they along with Amazon US don't ship most games to AU.

I just got it on eBay. If amazon uk delivers here, they have life and planet earth box set. I wish I got that cos I can't find my planet earth anywhere.

[xBerserker]

Just assumptions so far, based on previous precedents. The BBC's high-def nature series always tend to be region free, so there's no reason to think why Life shouldn't be.

I hope it's region free. I refuse to listen to Opera's voice. So Amazon UK doesn't ship to the US? Where else could I get it?

Btw, Oprah's voice is definitely not something i would want to hear when i am watching a relaxing / educational show with beautiful scenes. Her voice is ugly.

Couldn't agree more.

[subzero9285]

I hope it's region free. I refuse to listen to Opera's voice. So Amazon UK doesn't ship to the US? Where else could I get it? Couldn't agree more.

They do as far as I know.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/cust...odeId=11072991

[subzero9285]

Stalk eyed fly



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3kxnKQQJrY

[subzero9285]

Coati



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3XLzt1BA4k

[xBerserker]

They do as far as I know. http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/cust...odeId=11072991

Oh, nice. So do we know for sure if this Blu-ray is region free?

[Edit]

I sent a e-mail to Amazon asking about the region free thing. I'll report back.

[mckmas8808]

Couldn't agree more.

You people are crazy wrong. Oprah has a great voice for this kind of thing.

[Rentahamster]

Fucking Oprah??

It's amazing to me how some companies will spend money to actually make a product worse.

Do they think that Attenborough's godlike commentary isn't appealing to Americans or something? Good lord.

We could have this series broadcast much earlier if we didn't have to wait for the replacement narration.

[cramcakes]

You people are crazy wrong. Oprah has a great voice for this kind of thing.

She'll probably do just fine, it's just not Attenborough.



About importing from UK to USA, should this matter:

Product details * Format: PAL

It should still be 1080i or 1080p right?

[SatelliteOfLove]

March 2010 on the Discovery channel. Here's the press release and the US marketing poster; Link

The fuck is this shit? Waste of goddamn money.

"HEY U GUYZ, WE'RE GOING TO BRAODCAST DODGER GAMES NATIONWIDE BUT NO1 KNOWS VIN SCULLY, WE GET ANDERSON COOPER HUR"

[xBerserker]

It should still be 1080i or 1080p right?

I would assume, can anyone confirm?

[Pakkidis]

just bought life of mammals off amazon.ca for my dads' Christmas gift, thanks for idea!

[Rentahamster]

I would assume, can anyone confirm?

There's no way they are releasing this in 1080i. That would be impossible.

[subzero9285]

just bought life of mammals off amazon.ca for my dads' Christmas gift, thanks for idea!

Life of Mammals has one of my favourite scenes from any nature series; the persistence hunt by the Kalahari bushmen, featured in the the final episode. A wonderful, thought provoking scene.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=826HMLoiE_o

[subzero9285]

She'll probably do just fine, it's just not Attenborough. About importing from UK to USA, should this matter: It should still be 1080i or 1080p right?

You needn't worry, all of the nature series released by the BBC after Planet Earth have been 1080p.

[xBerserker]

Life of Mammals has one of my favourite scenes from any nature series; the persistence hunt by the Kalahari bushmen, featured in the the final episode. A wonderful, thought provoking scene. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=826HMLoiE_o

Very interesting to watch. I'll have to snag that series too.

[subzero9285]

Very interesting to watch. I'll have to snag that series too.

Here's a pretty hilarious clip from the same series; hedgehogs really know how to have a good time it seems.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btY-3ED__Vo

[methos75]

You needn't worry, all of the nature series released by the BBC after Planet Earth have been 1080p.

The BBC release of Planet Earth is also 1080p, its mislabeled on the box but I have it and my TV clearly identifies it as 1080p.

[OuterWorldVoice]

Can we find out if Attenborough is a selectable alt?

[BorkBork]

Just saw the Reptiles and Amphibians episode on TV. Man, that is a messed up hunting strategy for the Komodos. Follow and wait your prey out for three weeks.

[Zombie James]

Just saw the Reptiles and Amphibians episode on TV. Man, that is a messed up hunting strategy for the Komodos. Follow and wait your prey out for three weeks.

Just finished watching the same episode (Discovery?), very awesome stuff.

[BorkBork]

Yeah, I also loved the pebble toad.

[subzero9285]

Episode 6 - Insects

There are more kinds of insects than all other animals put together. There are thought to be 200 million individual insects for every one of us. Insects are successful because of their flexibility, their ability to develop new ways of living and changing their body shapes. Darwin's stag beetle of Chile is the insect world's perfect demonstration of a flexible body form. The female is shaped like a normal beetle. But the male's jaws are vast – longer than his body. They are serrated and strangely curved. Over millions of years they have grown to become fighting weapons. Males battle with them high in the trees and getting the right grip is crucial. The first male to grab under his opponent's wing case tries to lever his rival off the branch, before hurling him away to the ground, 100 feet below. Insects' flexible bodies enable them to become walking chemical weapons. The bombardier beetle has two chambers within its body, each a store for a different, inert chemical. When threatened, the beetle mixes the chemicals in a third chamber where they react explosively and burst towards its enemy from its rear end in a boiling, caustic jet. The jet pulses 500 times per second, allowing the beetle's rear to cool just enough between each burst to prevent it from cooking itself! The Japanese red bug displays amazing care for its young. The youngsters eat a rare fruit but, as they are too small to scout the forest floor for it, their mother collects it. It can take her hours to find a suitable fruit, and when she does another mother may fight her for it. But if she doesn't win and get the fruit back to her young quickly enough, they will grow impatient and abandon their nest to search for a better mother. Insects' greatest societies are the closest thing in the natural world to the complexity of a human city. Grass-cutter ants harvest the grass of northern Argentina. Some of the ants are huge-jawed, perfect for cutting, others are smaller and do the carrying. They march in their thousands along well-worn roadways, carrying cut grass above their heads. And yet they can't digest it. Instead they act like farmers, cultivating a fungus in their nest which is able to break down the grass and grow on it. The ants then eat the fungus. They grow so much fungus a colony may contain five million ants – as many inhabitants as a good-sized human city.

[subzero9285]

Halfway point of the series, and I think it's safe to say that the BBC have a hit on their hands.

Monday 9th November 

BBC1

20:30- Panorama: 2.8m (11.1%)
21:00- Life: 4.3m (17.6%)
22:00- BBC News at Ten: 4.5m (22.3%)

BBC2

20:00- University Challenge: 3.1m (13.0%)
20:30- Miranda: 2.5m (10.0%)
21:00- Starter for 10: 1.2m (5.4%)

ITV1

20:30- Coronation Street: 9.1m (36.9%)
21:00- Collision: 7.5m (30.4%)
22:00- News at Ten and Weather: 3.3m (16.9%)

C4

19:55- 3 Minute Wonder: Young Carers: 0.5m (2.3%)
20:00- Not Forgotten: 1.0m (4.0%)
21:00- The Execution of Gary Glitter: 1.2m (5.4%)

Five

19:30- How Do They Do It?: 0.6m (2.7%)
20:00- The Gadget Show: 1.5m (6.3%)
21:00- FlashForward: 2.3m (9.4%) 

[CurlySaysX]

Is there any global warming propaganda on this documentary like there was on planet earth?
I was enjoying
PE until the polar bear segment and the ice melting. I cringed and turned the thing off. True story

[Mr. Wonderful]

Placeholders are now up on Amazon.com (US) if it hasn't been noticed yet. Put on my Christmas list.

[Peru]

Is there any global warming propaganda on this documentary like there was on planet earth? I was enjoying PE until the polar bear segment and the ice melting. I cringed and turned the thing off. True story

wow

[MrHicks]

Is there any global warming propaganda on this documentary like there was on planet earth? I was enjoying PE until the polar bear segment and the ice melting. I cringed and turned the thing off. True story

WOW

[Mango Positive]

Is there any global warming propaganda on this documentary like there was on planet earth? I was enjoying PE until the polar bear segment and the ice melting. I cringed and turned the thing off. True story

So you missed the part with the ostriches?

[Schattenjagger]

So do we have a definite answer on importing it to us ??? Is pal compatible with us players ???

[Sir Fragula]

Is there any global warming propaganda on this documentary like there was on planet earth? I was enjoying PE until the polar bear segment and the ice melting. I cringed and turned the thing off. True story

If the science is good enough for David the-fucking-boss Attenborough, it's good enough for you, fool.

[subzero9285]

From the 'Birds' episode.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1XAFo_uVgk

[subzero9285]

A sneak preview of today's episode.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDDBBRRq67M

[Wes]

Haha this is awesome.

Having to complete fights on different levels to win

Edit: Oh wow he chucked her off

[Orgun]

Haha this is awesome. Having to complete fights on different levels to win Edit: Oh wow he chucked her off

That part cracked me up, the music was perfect

[big black woman]

what the hell, all these years i was thinking these shows were narrated by that old man from jurassic park

[subzero9285]

what the hell, all these years i was thinking these shows were narrated by that old man from jurassic park

That's his older brother, Richard Attenborough.

[subzero9285]

The 'insects' episode was visually stunning, especially the Damselfly segment. Best episode of the series for me.

Edit: Bombardier beetles are awesome.

[OgTheClever]

That's his older brother, Richard Attenborough.

ffffuuuuuuuuu I never realised they were brothers!

[subzero9285]

ffffuuuuuuuuu I never realised they were brothers!

Yep.



A short clip on David's vanity(lack thereof), his brother chimes in at the 1:26 mark.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fjPEN4a9zs

[MickeyKnox]

Haha this is awesome. Having to complete fights on different levels to win Edit: Oh wow he chucked her off

That shit was totally:

[subzero9285]

There isn't a nature thread on gaf, so I'll post this hear.

Insects could be as intelligent as larger animals

Tiny insects could be as intelligent as much bigger animals, despite only having a brain the size of a pinhead, say scientists at Queen Mary, University of London. "Animals with bigger brains are not necessarily more intelligent," according to Lars Chittka, Professor of Sensory and Behavioural Ecology at Queen Mary's Research Centre for Psychology and University of Cambridge colleague, Jeremy Niven. This begs the important question: what are they for? Research repeatedly shows how insects are capable of some intelligent behaviours scientists previously thought was unique to larger animals. Honeybees, for example, can count, categorise similar objects like dogs or human faces, understand 'same' and 'different', and differentiate between shapes that are symmetrical and asymmetrical. "We know that body size is the single best way to predict an animal's brain size," explains Chittka, writing in the journal Current Biology. "However, contrary to popular belief, we can't say that brain size predicts their capacity for intelligent behaviour." Differences in brain size between animals is extreme: a whale's brain can weigh up to 9 kg (with over 200 billion nerve cells), and human brains vary between 1.25 kg and 1.45 kg (with an estimated 85 billion nerve cells). A honeybee's brain weighs only 1 milligram and contains fewer than a million nerve cells. While some increases in brain size do affect an animal's capability for intelligent behaviour, many size differences only exist in a specific brain region. This is often seen in animals with highly developed senses (like sight or hearing) or an ability to make very precise movements. The size increase allows the brain to function in greater detail, finer resolution, higher sensitivity or greater precision: in other words, more of the same. Research suggests that bigger animals may need bigger brains simply because there is more to control -- for example they need to move bigger muscles and therefore need more and bigger nerves to move them. Chittka says: "In bigger brains we often don't find more complexity, just an endless repetition of the same neural circuits over and over. This might add detail to remembered images or sounds, but not add any degree of complexity. To use a computer analogy, bigger brains might in many cases be bigger hard drives, not necessarily better processors." This must mean that much 'advanced' thinking can actually be done with very limited neuron numbers. Computer modelling shows that even consciousness can be generated with very small neural circuits, which could in theory easily fit into an insect brain. In fact, the models suggest that counting could be achieved with only a few hundred nerve cells and only a few thousand could be enough to generate consciousness. Engineers hope that this kind of research will lead to smarter computing with the ability to recognise human facial expressions and emotions.

Source



Incidentally, there's only 11 days left until Life's Blu-ray release.

[subzero9285]

Baby ibex's struggle to live

Amazing footage of a baby ibex's perilous escape from a fox has been captured on film by a BBC natural history cameraman. The ibex, just a week old, is hunted by the fox along the sheer face of a cliff in the desert of Israel. The ibex attempts to escape by running up the cliff face, before eventually reaching a section so steep that the fleet-footed fox cannot follow. The sequence will be broadcast as part of the BBC natural history series Life. Cameraman Jamie Macpherson filmed the remarkable behaviour taking place in a gorge in the Israeli desert. There lives a population of Nubian Ibex (Capra ibex nubiana), a species of antelope that survives in rough, dry, mountainous terrain. While the antelope live upon the jagged mountain slopes, they are highly dependent on plants for their food and waterholes. That means the ibex often have to move down to lower slopes to eat and drink, placing them within reach of opportunistic predators. The animals have cloven hooves that spread their load. But apart for those, they rely on nothing more than fearlessness, agility and an exceptional sense of balance. Adults are so agile that they can stand in the branches of trees to feed on the browse. But young ibex are particularly vulnerable, as they begin climbing slopes within days of their birth. They have to keep up with their parents, learning to negotiate the steep slopes as they go. And for one kid, the lessons it learnt one morning descending the rock face were put to immediate use as it was ambushed by a predatory fox. Despite having never seen a fox before, the kid quickly reacts to the peril it is in. In the sequence, it dashes up the cliff face in a bid to escape, the fox giving chase. Eventually though the baby ibex finds sanctuary within a tiny patch of cliff that is so steep, only an ibex could stand there. It is unclear whether the Nubian ibex are a distinct species, or a sub species of the Alpine ibex (Capra ibex). Fewer than 10,000 are thought to remain, of which no more than 2,500 are adults, and the size of the overall population is thought to be decreasing. The antelope live in dry areas of Egypt, east of the Nile, north-east Sudan, northern Ethiopia, west Jordan, and scattered locations in western and central Saudi Arabia. A few also live in scattered locations in Yemen, and in southern Oman. In Israel, they naturally occur in three major mountainous areas in eastern and southern Israel: the Judean desert, Negev, and Elat mountains.Other predators of the ibex include leopards and raptors such as large eagles. "Escape of the ibex" is broadcast within the Hunters and Hunted episode of the BBC series Life at 2100GMT on BBC One on Monday 23 November.

Link

[subzero9285]

Stoat kills Rabbit ten times its size

From the upcoming "Hunters and Hunted" episode.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNbqvqf3-14

Edit: General Woundwort would never have accepted such behaviour from a rabbit in his Owsla.



Stoats aren't dangerous!!!

[KimiSan]

Just watched the Birds and the Insects shows. Absolutely brilliant.
I can't wait for the next episodes, especially primates.

The next episode too with the Nubian ibex, which I've seen quite a few times in the Negev desert.
I've actually had a breathtaking experience where once we were walking on a not-too-narrow cliff and across from us was another group of people. Suddenly, an apparently frightened Ibex ran towards them trying to get away, and a person who didn't see it got startled and moved towards the edge of the cliff so the ibex was forced literally out of the edge of the cliff but it somehow managed to run on the almost-vertical cliff and ran through. It was quite cool.

I also worked for about six months in a wildlife reserve where we had two of them that were totally used to humans, I could only see their incredible agility and manoeuvrability in their afternoon jogs which you didn't want to be in the path of. I also happened to witness the almost frightening strength of a male after being accidentally trapped in a fenced area and trying to get out, only to eventually jump onto a nearby rock and out of the fence.
Another thing highlighting their relative majesticness was the domestic goats we had roaming around, the slow dimwits.

[subzero9285]

A recommendation to any Attenborough fans.



This is great compilation of his musings on various subjects, it come as an audio CD, as well as a book. These are the subjects examined by him;

• Adam's Face
• Amber
• Archaeopteryx
• Bird's-nest Soup
• Birds of Paradise
• Bower Birds
• Coelacanth
• Collecting
• Dragons
• Dodo
• Faking Fossils
• Giant Birds
• Large Blue
• Monstrous Flowers
• Platypus
• Salamander
• Serpent's Star
• Sloth
• Songsters
• Tracks

Here's a few uploaded to Youtube.

• Archaeopteryx
• Birds
• Dragons
• Platypus
• Songsters

A nice little bonus to buy along with the Life box set.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/David-Attenb.../dp/1408427443

[subzero9285]

Here's the cover for the Planet Earth/Life box set.