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Life: Insects

   2009    Nature
There are 200 million insects for each of us. They are the most successful animal group ever. Their key is an armoured covering that takes on almost any shape. Darwin's stag beetle fights in the tree tops with huge curved jaws. The camera flies with millions of monarch butterflies which migrate 2000 miles, navigating by the sun. Super slow motion shows a bombardier beetle firing boiling liquid at enemies through a rotating nozzle. A honey bee army stings a raiding bear into submission. Grass cutter ants march like a Roman army, harvesting grass they cannot actually eat. They cultivate a fungus that breaks the grass down for them. Their giant colony is the closest thing in nature to the complexity of a human city.
Series: Life

The Incredible Human Journey: Australia

   2009    History
Dr Alice Roberts looks at our ancestors' seemingly impossible journey to Australia. Miraculously preserved footprints and very old human fossils buried in the outback suggest a mystery: that humans reached Australia almost before anywhere else. How could they have travelled so far from Africa, crossing the open sea on the way, and do it thousands of years before they made it to Europe? The evidence trail is faint and difficult to pick up, but Alice takes on the challenge. In India, new discoveries among the debris of a super volcano hint that our species started the journey much earlier than previously thought, while in Malaysia, genetics points to an ancient trail still detectable in the DNA of tribes today. Alice travels deep into the Asian rainforests in search of the first cavemen of Borneo and tests out a Stone Age raft to see whether sea travel would have been possible thousands of years ago, before coming to a powerful conclusion.
Series: The Incredible Human Journey

Why are Thin People not Fat

   2009    Medicine
The world is affected by an obesity epidemic, but why is it that not everyone is succumbing? Medical science has been obsessed with this subject and is coming up with some unexpected answers. As it turns out, it is not all about exercise and diet. At the centre of this programme is a controversial overeating experiment that aims to identify exactly what it is about some people that makes it hard for them to bulk up.

Clash of the Gods: Zeus

   2009    History
Ancient Greece's most powerful god wages an epic struggle against his father for control of the universe. It's the ultimate Clash of the Gods as the Olympians challenge the Titans in mythology's greatest showdown. This is a pivotal battle that experts believe may have been ancient code for a real world event - one of the greatest natural disasters the Earth ever experienced.
Series: Clash of the Gods

Clash of the Gods Hercules

   2009    History
The tale of the strongest superhero in Greek mythology and his quest for redemption. To atone for committing a heinous crime, Hercules embarks on a series of impossible challenges known as the 12 Labors. Hercules endures as one of history's most influential demi-Gods, but recent archaeological discoveries suggest that mythology's strongest man may have been inspired by a real person.
Series: Clash of the Gods

Clash of the Gods: The Minotaur

   2009    Historia
A half-bull half-man freak of nature, the Minotaur is one of mythology's most terrifying monsters. A bizarre tale of bestiality, human sacrifice and war, the myth of the Minotaur endures as a symbol of the beast inside all men. But archeological research has uncovered clues suggesting the Minotaur and its terrifying labyrinth were just as much fact as they were fiction. Could they have been inspired by a real place that still exists to this day?
Series: Clash of the Gods