Meadows that only a few weeks ago were buried beneath the snow, are now full of life. But in these mountains the good times will not last long. So the bears will feed as fast as they can. During the summer months, an adult can put on 180 kilos gorging on plants, and if they can catch them a marmot or two. But just now the bears have something else on their minds. It’s becoming warmer and the bears are keen to shed their thick winter coats. Mothers show the cubs what to do about this. They’ll soon catch on. Some trees it seems are particularly suitable for rubbing. Bears have their favourites and will travel long distances to visit them. Some itches just have to be scratched. There are now around thirty bears in this one valley. As they rub, each leaves an individual and recognisable scent. So the tree soon carries a list of who’s around, which might help individuals to avoid a fight. To best spread their scent they really have to put their back into it. But the summer is short. Itches satisfactorily scratched, it’s time to eat. In a couple of months they will have to return to their dens to hibernate. So now they must put on as much weight as they can. One of the ultimate expressions of female choice can be found high above the forest floor of Papua New Guinea. Male Raggiana birds-of-paradise. Everything about these ostentatious birds has been fashioned by countless generations of difficult to please hens. Dawn breaks with their noisy clamour, so the dowdy females can easily locate the groups of displaying males. They visit one site after another, judging each individual by his performance. Their arrival causes a flurry of excitement. At each site, one male occupies a central position which is more attractive to the hens. It takes seven years before the males mature and acquire their ravishing plumage. By contrast the hens are ready to mate much sooner and tend to outnumber the males. Display perches are used year after year, but only the most virile males hold the best positions centre stage. In a forrest so rich in fruit the females can rear their chicks alone, the males are merely a colourful sperm bank. Such independence means that the hens can shop around for the most exciting males. Each generation of females chooses just a few elite males. The majority are doomed never to breed. This male is lucky, but even now at the moment of mating he cannot be absolutely sure that he’ll father the females next brood. There are six different species of flamingo and I’ve come to Slim Bridge Wetland Center in the UK to find out more about the greater flamingo. In their efforts to attract a mate they do something no other flamingo species does. Flirting for these flamboyant birds is all about producing your best moves and looking fabulous while you’re doing them. Paul Rose from Exeter University has spent the last three years studying how these birds pick their partners. Everything about flamingos is about doing stuff with your friends and I’ve often thought it’s a bit like a primary school disco. In that there are some kids that really want to kind of go on the dance floor and, you know, they would want to get their boogie on. And they’re like come on, come on, do it with me. And they’re like ummmm, maybe i’m not sure. And eventually it kind of spreads and everyone’s like, ah, alright we can do this as well and then they’ll go and do their dance together. But you don’t often get flamingos where one is just kind of shuffling in the middle going, Woo, I’m really beautiful. You have to have every single bird doing it at the same time. Of course there’s always that awkward moment when someone has to make the first move. Fortunately, experience steps in to lend a hand. Typically, it’s the oldest, tallest males in the flock who are first to grace the dancefloor. The first display that you’re likely to see something called head flagging. So the bird stand very tall, it extends its head and its neck and kind of moves its head from side to side. OK. And that’s normally started by the tallest males in the flock. OK. Not to say that the females don’t get involved. They’re not like a peacock where you have the boys display and the females go, maybe you, not sure, they all do it at the same time. But putting yourself out there doesn’t always go according to plan. Timing is everything. So I do feel sorry for them sometimes when they want to do their head flagging and and they look really tall and beautiful. And everyone else is on one leg fast asleep. Ah. It’s a bit sad. Overly eager youngsters are the ones who get it wrong most often. Being ignored by the rest of the flock is never a good look. Sticking your neck out is only the start. Scientists have discovered that flamingos have nine signature moves designed to show off their best assets. Another display that normally follows the head flagging which is called wing saluting. It’s to basically give a certain shot of colour against their uniform their pale body colour. Ooh. What are they all doing, what’s going on? This is this whole, let’s all run in that direction. Are we all fit, are we all ready? Let’s go and try and see if we can get everybody together doing the same thing at the same time. Very complicated isn’t it?. Yeah, they don’t do anything by halves. Ultimately, all of Dofar’s riches are sustained by the sea. And the sea itself is undergoing a radical transformation. Warm surface waters are being dragged away, sucked to the north by the mighty Indian monsoon. An oceanic vacuum is created and something must fill the space. Cold water wells up from the depths, bringing nutrients from the seafloor with it. Chilled water also holds more oxygen, and more oxygen means more life. As the temperature drops, these seas are transforming into some of the richest in the world. Microscopic plankton flourish and an explosion of life begins. Fish from every corner of the Indian Ocean have come to feed. Fusiliers. Blue triggerfish. And graceful devil rays. Some have traveled from as far as Australia to enjoy these riches. This is why the humpbacks never leave. They don’t need to migrate to cold waters to feed, cold water comes to them. And this bounty attracts one species that arrives not in thousands, not even millions. The Indian oil sardine arrives in billions. A single shoal can be over three miles long. By moving in unison they confuse predators. Rays are too slow. Saccoccia cormorants struggled to pick a target. But synchronised swimming won’t protect them from the ocean’s most voracious predator, man. The arrival of the sardines means the Jabali mountain men become part time fishermen. Over half a million tonnes of fish will be brought in. Sometimes they can fly more than six kilometres to get enough nectar and pollen back because they need a plentiful and vast supply. It’s a huge problem. And to solve that problem requires massive organisation. But the bees have an almost incredible solution. Adam has set up an observation hive. It’s completely dark inside and so infrared cameras reveal what’s going on. There’s all sorts of behaviours going on, initially it looks very chaotic. It looks like bees are everywhere. But you can see some vibrations going on and some movements that are actually part of a very sophisticated communication system. The bees perform a striking behaviour that’s key to solving the problem of gathering enough food. It’s called the waggle dance. The waggle dance is a very sophisticated way of directing forages towards nectar in the environment. So it’s sat-nav for bees, it’s telling them where to go. The waggle dance isn’t just for show. This bee has found a good source of food, and she’s performing a set of very precise movements to tell the others exactly where to find it. And it tells them the direction and the distance of the nectar. The best way to understand how the waggle dance works is to get up high, because then you can get a view of the landscape in which the bees are operating. This church tower gives Adam a bees eye view of the landscape. From up here it’s easy to see where the sun lies over the landscape, and where it would be if it were on the horizon. So you imagine the sun drops down to the horizon, that’s the line the bees have to follow. And that’s what the waggle does is doing, it’s giving them direction.. One of the dancing bees in the hive was waggling at an angle of five degrees. So if this tower were a massive beehive, the waggle dance would be telling us that the nectar is five degrees from the relative position of the sun, somewhere in that direction. But they can also advertise distance because the duration of that waggle run, that central component tells the bees how far away there are sources. The closer it is, the shorter the waggle run. English (United Kingdom)
