Planet Earth - Episode 01 (From Pole to Pole) (ATOM Study Guide)

Planet Earth is a BBC production with five episodes in the first series (episodes one through five) and six episodes in the second series (episodes six through eleven). Each episode examines a specific environment, focussing on key species or relationships in each habitat; the challenges they face; the behaviours they exhibit and the adaptations that enable them to survive. Recent advances in photography are used to achieve some spectacular 'first sights' – in particular, stabilised aerial photography gives us remarkable views of migrating animals and the techniques used by their predators to hunt them.

As the series examines pristine environments where possible, they are often extreme. These are the parts of the world where few humans have chosen to live as the climate and landscape is too challenging, too difficult and dangerous. The plants and animals that do survive here have made some spectacular adaptations in forms and behaviour to live in these far reaches of the planet.

The series is suitable for middle secondary students studying Science and SOSE, and for senior secondary students of Biology, Environmental Science and Geography.

The first episode draws us from one extreme to another, through a descending chain of environments that provide unique challenges and opportunities for the animals that inhabit them. Species that have adapted to climatic extremes of cold, aridity and flood that would soon kill even their close relatives.

As the Antarctic winter closes in and the emperor penguins prepare for the ordeal of endless night and cold, the sun finally lights up the Arctic Ocean and a female polar bear leads her cubs out of the den where they have hibernated and on to the icy slopes. They must hunt and kill soon but the sea ice is beginning to fracture and break under the sun's warmth. The cubs are too young to travel far but if they do not, they will die. There are many such dilemmas in nature.

Further south, the caribou begin their great migration across the Tundra, pursued by Arctic wolves also desperate for a kill. As so often, the animals are closely matched in a contest between speed and skill, agility and stamina. We descend into the Taiga, the northern forests which teem with life in summer but are barren in winter. The Amur leopard, rarest cat on earth searches the barren forest for a corpse or a kill to feed her precious cub, both of them thickly furred against the cold and among the last survivors of their species. Meanwhile the birds of paradise in New Guinea know nothing of this annual struggle to survive. For them, food is plentiful all year round and they are free to indulge in bizarre and lengthy courtship rituals instead.

In the coastal waters of Southern Africa, huge sharks pursue young seals and 'breach', hurling themselves clear of the water in an astonishing display of speed and power. Above the sun-warmed ocean, the storm clouds rise and move inland, bringing torrential rains to the dry lands and filling the swamps again. Herds of elephant migrate across the desert in search of water and the Okavango swamp while packs of hunting dogs chase down impala in the Kalahari.

At last we return to the penguins huddled on the Antarctic mainland, eggs and chicks on their feet and out of reach of predators at last – but at what cost?