Mountains create frozen habitats on every continent on Earth, and each of these high-altitude worlds holds unique challenges for its surprising and remarkable life.
We begin our journey close to the equator - the furthest point from the poles - in East Africa. Here on the high slopes of Mount Kenya, during the day the tropical sun keeps the cold at bay, but at night the frost descends. During this cycle of freeze and thaw, a pregnant high-casqued chameleon must choose the right time to give birth if her newborns are to escape the deadly night freeze.
Away from the equator in the European Alps, long cold winters give way to short, bountiful summers. For a pair of golden eagles raising their chick, the demand to provide enough food for it drives them to tackle prey five times their size. To catch a goat-like chamois, they risk it all using one of the most daring and breathtaking hunting techniques ever witnessed.
The mountains of Japan are the snowiest place on Earth, providing hostile conditions for a lone male macaque cast away from his troop. His only chance of survival comes with finding another male whose embrace will provide him with life-saving warmth. But in the frozen peaks, the deadliest force is an avalanche whose full destructive power is captured for the first time using high-speed camera racer drones.
The roof of the world is home to an array of unexpected cold-loving creatures. In the remote Southern Alps of New Zealand, a species of parrot - the kea - uses its famed intelligence to feed on the dead. And in the Andes in South America, flamingos thrive in high-altitude volcanic lakes, but their chicks must race to escape the winter freeze or risk becoming trapped in the ice.
Today, due to climate change, our frozen peaks are undergoing rapid change. Using groundbreaking time-lapse photography, we reveal mountain glaciers vanishing before our very eyes and discover what a warming world may mean for our most famous mountain resident of all, the giant panda.

Chris turns to longevity doctor Peter Attia to find out how changing his eating habits can help his quest for longevity. Ironically, the answer is to eat no food at all for four long days. If he can bear the hunger, fasting will unlock his body’s own anti-aging powers and give Chris the edge he needs when he tries to hunt for his next meal … by spearfishing off the Great Barrier Reef.

Vlad Dracula presses an increasingly desperate guerrilla campaign from the shadows, hoping to demoralize the Ottomans and slow their march north. After chasing Vlad for two weeks, sultan Mehmed II and his invading army find themselves caught in a nightmare come to life deep within the Wallachian forest. Many legends have arisen out of the invasion of Wallachia in 1462. One speaks of Vlad Dracula launching a biological attack against the Ottomans to slow their march to his capital city, Târgovişte. Vlad opened his prisons and released hardened criminals to go amongst the Ottomans with tuberculosis and bubonic plague so that they could infect the enemies.
Vlad Dracula also had carried out a scorched-earth policy against Mehmed II. Along with his hit-and-run campaign from the shadows has left the sultan's troops on edge. As Mehmed's army closes on Târgovişte, tensions flare in the Ottoman camp, where food and water are in increasingly short supply. But Vlad had nowhere to rely on food for himself either and there was nowhere to go anymore. He became a prisoner of his own scorched-earth policy. Radu Dracula closes in to take Princess Anastasia hostage. Anastasia commits suicide when he reach her at Poenari castle.

When animals can tap into remarkable senses and supernatural skills, crossing the globe, even moving between worlds to find a mate, safety and food, they become truly unstoppable.

A female Phosphorosaurus hunts lanternfish under the ocean's moonlit surface. Hesperornis hunt for fish until they themselves are hunted by Xiphactinus. A Mosasaurus hunts a group of Tuarangisaurus. Nostoceras hatchlings are at the mercy of the tides and juvenile Pyroraptor. The young Nostoceras that survived find themselves among Baculites and Diplomoceras in their new seagrass meadow home. A pod of Morturneria sift the muddy seabed in search of food.

Most people hope they'll live a long, healthy, and happy life, but few are able to travel the world in an attempt to reverse-engineer the formula for longevity. That's exactly what Dan Buettner did: Beginning in the early aughts, Buettner collaborated with National Geographic, scouring the globe in pursuit of places where people live much longer than average, and thus, the concept of 'Blue Zones' came to be.
In the first episode, how can people live so long and with such great health? A trip to Okinawa reveals simple secrets about diet, lifestyle and longevity. They maintain a sense of purpose no matter what age and you won't find them laying on the sofa.