Evolution Earth

Travel to the hottest and driest extremes to see animals go to extraordinary lengths to survive. From the Sahara Desert to Australia, animals provide new clues about our changing planet and what it will mean for the future of our heating world.

Zanzibar red colobus monkeys are facing deforestation of their native home range and as a result are turning to raiding crops to get enough food. These foreign crops however have an unfortunate side effect of making the monkeys ill. So, they seek an unexpected solution: venturing further into the human world to find charcoal. Eating this aids in detoxifying and ensuring the monkeys' survival.

In a remote cove on the Galápagos islands sea lions have recently started to hunt yellowfin tuna in response to dwindling fish stocks. The tuna are faster than the sea lion so they rely on teamwork. They corral the tuna into the cove with different sea lions, having different roles in the hunt. Working together they block the tunas escape until it tires and becomes stranded in shallow water.

Islands are like miniature simplified Earths, where evolution is playing out at super speed right before our eyes. Journey from the Galapagos to the edge of Antarctica to seek out animals responding to our changing planet in extraordinary ways.

Early morning on the Galápagos Islands and Jaime Chaves is catching Darwin’s finches, endemic to these islands, in order to continue decades of work studying the size of these birds' beaks. The beaks are changing shape and size, not over millions of years but from one generation to the next, and now scientists like Jaime are studying the role humans are playing on the lives of these birds.

On the Turks and Caicos Islands, animals have a far greater ability to adapt to a changing world than we thought. Anthony Herrel studies how Silver Key anoles have evolved to keep up with destructive weather in the tropics. With changes in legs, feet, and aerodynamics, evolution is taking place at incredible speeds.

Camille Parmesan gives us an insight into the lives of the climate sensitive Edith's Checkerspot. She tells us the story of how this climatic connection led her to discover a survival pattern across The Rockies. The butterflies were moving up the mountains and away from the equator, seeking environments with cooler climes. This was a key cog in helping reveal the secrets of our changing climate.

At Earth’s extremes, animals are reacting in surprising ways. Animal homes are changing around them at superspeed. Follow remarkable stories of resilience and hope. From humpback whales to tiny butterflies to ingenious savanna chimpanzees.

We follow Jill Pruetz through the dry Senegalese landscape of Fongoli. Tracking alongside the local troop of critically endangered western chimpanzees, as they walk for miles to find water. Once at the dried riverbed, the chimps dig to find fresher water, this is one of the only groups in the world that does this.

On the Galápagos Islands, Greg Lewbart and his team are trying to catch a marine iguana. Their goal is to study the iguana’s unusual adaptation. They have evolved the ability to shrink and regrow their vertebrae in response to changes in food availability. These conditions arises when the Pacific Ocean that is home to the algae they feed on warms, a result of the weather system known as El Niño.