1 00:01:20,497 --> 00:01:23,584 Water: Hundreds of thousands of tons of it, 2 00:01:23,750 --> 00:01:26,712 lying frozen on the world's mountains. 3 00:01:27,087 --> 00:01:32,259 It covers not only the poles, but caps great peaks on the equator. 4 00:01:42,561 --> 00:01:47,983 Water molecules, distilled from the sea by the sun's heat, condense in the sky. 5 00:01:48,233 --> 00:01:51,361 As they fall through the air, they pack together into shapes 6 00:01:51,612 --> 00:01:57,910 that echo their six-fold symmetry and form infinitely varied crystals of ice. 7 00:02:00,078 --> 00:02:04,291 They settle on the high mountains and compact into snow and ice 8 00:02:04,458 --> 00:02:07,044 that is, chemically, almost pure water, 9 00:02:07,211 --> 00:02:10,339 much purer than the sea from which it came. 10 00:02:11,048 --> 00:02:13,717 On Mount Rainier in the United States, 11 00:02:13,884 --> 00:02:17,471 permanent snow begins at 7,000 feet. 12 00:02:18,222 --> 00:02:24,144 You might think that this was one of the most inhospitable places on earth for life. 13 00:02:24,394 --> 00:02:28,732 After all, no vegetation grows on these snowfields, 14 00:02:28,899 --> 00:02:35,531 so there can be no animals that feed on it, like marmots or mice or rabbits, 15 00:02:35,697 --> 00:02:42,579 and if there are no herbivores, there can't be any predators like hawks or weasels. 16 00:02:42,871 --> 00:02:48,210 But in fact, there is a surprising amount of life here. 17 00:02:48,460 --> 00:02:54,299 There is some life actually within this snowfield itself, 18 00:02:54,466 --> 00:03:00,055 because this snow is not white, but red. 19 00:03:01,515 --> 00:03:05,686 The colour comes from microscopic plants: Algae. 20 00:03:06,228 --> 00:03:09,523 The redness is produced by light reflected from their cell walls, 21 00:03:09,690 --> 00:03:14,319 and is almost invisible when, under the microscope, light shines through them. 22 00:03:14,778 --> 00:03:17,865 Internally, they're green with chlorophyll. 23 00:03:18,031 --> 00:03:23,036 With its aid, they convert carbon dioxide and water into sugars. 24 00:03:23,412 --> 00:03:26,498 These, and the minerals dissolved in the melt water, 25 00:03:26,707 --> 00:03:29,960 are all the algae need to grow and reproduce. 26 00:03:30,752 --> 00:03:33,797 The winter snow will bury them feet deep, 27 00:03:33,964 --> 00:03:39,386 but in spring, when the surface melts, they divide, develop tiny beating hairs 28 00:03:39,595 --> 00:03:41,972 and swim up towards the sunshine. 29 00:03:42,598 --> 00:03:46,727 As they age and the minerals are used up, they change colour, 30 00:03:46,977 --> 00:03:51,732 forming huge smears of red in snowfields all over the world. 31 00:03:58,280 --> 00:04:02,451 Eventually, the snow algae produce spores as fine as dust 32 00:04:02,826 --> 00:04:07,039 and in that form they are blown from one snowfield to another. 33 00:04:07,289 --> 00:04:11,251 But other, bigger animals, also brought up by the wind, 34 00:04:11,418 --> 00:04:14,630 blow across the snows of Mount Rainier. 35 00:04:20,302 --> 00:04:23,055 Ladybirds. Thousands of them. 36 00:04:23,430 --> 00:04:28,894 Nobody knows why they come up in such numbers and assemble like this. 37 00:04:29,102 --> 00:04:34,566 But in late summer they fly up from the valleys up to these high peaks 38 00:04:34,775 --> 00:04:37,277 and here assemble in the rocks. 39 00:04:37,611 --> 00:04:43,075 When the winter snows come, the ladybirds remain underneath the snow in the rocks, 40 00:04:43,283 --> 00:04:48,997 and then in the spring, as now, the snow melts and the sun warms the ladybirds, 41 00:04:49,206 --> 00:04:55,170 and they become active and fly off back to the valley to feed on aphids. 42 00:04:58,006 --> 00:05:02,678 The ladybirds are only temporary residents of the Mount Rainier snowfields. 43 00:05:03,095 --> 00:05:05,556 Other insects manage, almost unbelievably, 44 00:05:05,722 --> 00:05:09,560 to live all their lives in this seemingly inhospitable snow. 45 00:05:10,102 --> 00:05:12,813 The best time to find them is at night. 46 00:05:37,379 --> 00:05:39,047 A whole community lives here, 47 00:05:39,214 --> 00:05:44,636 feeding on pollen grains and the bodies of dead insects blown up on the wind. 48 00:05:46,054 --> 00:05:50,267 Some, like this primitive relation of the cockroach, a grylloblattid, 49 00:05:50,434 --> 00:05:54,229 have a body chemistry so well adjusted to low temperatures 50 00:05:54,396 --> 00:05:58,567 that if you pick them up, your hand's warmth will kill them. 51 00:06:05,282 --> 00:06:08,619 Permanent snow lies directly on bare rock, 52 00:06:08,785 --> 00:06:14,166 but lower down, where it comes and goes, there can be a little vegetation to be grazed. 53 00:06:18,045 --> 00:06:23,217 Mountain sheep. These on Mount McKinley are the kind known as Dall Sheep. 54 00:06:35,854 --> 00:06:38,065 Little ground squirrels live up here too. 55 00:06:38,398 --> 00:06:41,735 Unlike the sheep, which retreat to lower altitudes in winter, 56 00:06:41,902 --> 00:06:43,904 the squirrels are permanent residents, 57 00:06:44,071 --> 00:06:48,659 insulated in their burrows from the frosts by the cover of snow. 58 00:06:58,752 --> 00:07:03,257 There are sheep like these in mountains all through North America, Asia and Europe. 59 00:07:03,507 --> 00:07:07,302 All carry big horns, and the senior males, in autumn, 60 00:07:07,511 --> 00:07:10,472 indulge in the most alarming courtship battles. 61 00:07:55,350 --> 00:07:58,604 It's hard for plants to grow on steep, high slopes 62 00:07:58,854 --> 00:08:04,234 The warming by day and freezing by night makes the gravelly soil slip downwards, 63 00:08:04,401 --> 00:08:07,112 so it's difficult for plants to keep a hold. 64 00:08:07,487 --> 00:08:09,907 With few plants, grazing animals are rare, 65 00:08:10,073 --> 00:08:13,493 though there may be more than there appear to be at first sight. 66 00:08:19,333 --> 00:08:22,294 These, in the Himalayas, are blue sheep, 67 00:08:22,628 --> 00:08:28,175 so nimble and sure-footed they can reach almost any vegetation on the steep slopes. 68 00:08:35,349 --> 00:08:41,688 But if these are rare, rarer still is the animal that preys on them, the snow leopard. 69 00:08:49,530 --> 00:08:53,825 In summer it stays at between 12,000 and 15,000 feet, 70 00:08:54,159 --> 00:08:57,913 hunting small rodents and birds as well as mountain sheep. 71 00:09:18,141 --> 00:09:22,145 Snow leopards have been seen as high as 18,000 feet in summer. 72 00:09:22,312 --> 00:09:27,901 But with winter's heavy snowfalls, it retreats to the valleys. 73 00:09:37,786 --> 00:09:44,001 Game is now so scarce that there's barely enough to support more than one leopard, 74 00:09:44,168 --> 00:09:46,503 so this animal hunts alone. 75 00:09:53,969 --> 00:09:56,930 Its thick, dense fur is now paler. 76 00:09:57,139 --> 00:10:01,059 It has a thick, woolly undercoat and cushions of hair under its paws 77 00:10:01,268 --> 00:10:04,146 which prevent it from sinking in the snow. 78 00:10:15,741 --> 00:10:21,830 The mountains of Africa, although so near the equator, are permanently snow-capped. 79 00:10:21,997 --> 00:10:25,959 Kilimanjaro, 19,000 feet high, is a volcano. 80 00:10:26,376 --> 00:10:32,925 Mount Kenya, also volcanic, is 2,000 feet lower but still has its own glaciers 81 00:10:33,175 --> 00:10:36,136 Each has its own animals and plants 82 00:10:36,303 --> 00:10:39,348 specially adapted to life at low temperatures. 83 00:10:39,723 --> 00:10:45,938 Here, at about 13,000 feet, grow some most beautiful and dramatic plants: 84 00:10:46,146 --> 00:10:48,774 Giant groundsels and giant lobelias. 85 00:10:49,024 --> 00:10:51,235 At these altitudes, plants like these 86 00:10:51,401 --> 00:10:56,406 have to face two totally conflicting problems every 24 hours. 87 00:10:56,615 --> 00:11:02,079 Every night the temperature falls so low that they're in danger of freezing solid. 88 00:11:02,287 --> 00:11:06,875 And every day the sun beats down so strongly in this very thin air 89 00:11:07,042 --> 00:11:11,964 that it threatens to rob them of their moisture by evaporation. 90 00:11:12,256 --> 00:11:15,509 But look how this lobelia deals with those problems. 91 00:11:16,802 --> 00:11:21,139 This little pond of water in the leaf rosette freezes over every night, 92 00:11:21,473 --> 00:11:26,311 and this shield of ice prevents the water beneath from freezing, 93 00:11:26,478 --> 00:11:32,943 so that it acts as a liquid jacket, preventing the frost from reaching the heart of the plant. 94 00:11:33,485 --> 00:11:40,534 But as the day wears on and it gets warmer, this water is in danger of evaporating 95 00:11:40,701 --> 00:11:44,121 and the plant of losing its night-time insulation. 96 00:11:44,580 --> 00:11:49,042 But it isn't just rainwater that's accumulated in this rosette. 97 00:11:49,334 --> 00:11:54,298 It's been secreted by the plant itself and it's slightly slimy. 98 00:11:54,506 --> 00:11:59,303 It contains pectin, a colloidal substance which greatly reduces evaporation. 99 00:11:59,720 --> 00:12:01,763 But there's another kind of lobelia 100 00:12:01,930 --> 00:12:05,184 which deals with these two problems in a quite different way. 101 00:12:11,648 --> 00:12:15,068 This one grows very tall and has extremely long leaves, 102 00:12:15,235 --> 00:12:19,740 each fringed with tiny hairs which act like an animal's fur, 103 00:12:19,948 --> 00:12:24,244 trapping air between them, insulating the stem from chills. 104 00:12:24,453 --> 00:12:27,664 They also prevent the wind from robbing the plants of moisture. 105 00:12:30,250 --> 00:12:33,378 Each group of lobelias is owned by a pair of sunbirds 106 00:12:33,545 --> 00:12:36,089 which collect the insects the plants attract. 107 00:12:36,423 --> 00:12:39,343 They keep themselves warm with fluffed-up feathers. 108 00:12:41,178 --> 00:12:43,722 And among the rocks are hyrax. 109 00:12:50,896 --> 00:12:57,277 The reason these little creatures are so tame and I can get so close to them 110 00:12:57,486 --> 00:13:00,447 is just because they're living so high up. 111 00:13:00,989 --> 00:13:04,326 Up here, there are few creatures to prey on them. 112 00:13:04,535 --> 00:13:10,123 An occasional leopard may come up and hunt them, but apart from that, nothing. 113 00:13:10,624 --> 00:13:15,420 And so they can come out during the few brief hours of sunshine 114 00:13:15,587 --> 00:13:18,882 and bask on the rocks without any fear, 115 00:13:19,091 --> 00:13:20,467 just as they're doing now. 116 00:13:24,555 --> 00:13:27,724 Hyrax also live down on the hot plains below, 117 00:13:27,933 --> 00:13:33,355 but these, in response to the cold, have developed particularly long fur. 118 00:13:33,689 --> 00:13:38,360 Despite their shape, they often climb trees to crop leaves. 119 00:13:38,610 --> 00:13:42,155 But at these altitudes, there's only grass and lobelias, 120 00:13:42,364 --> 00:13:44,908 and they share it with the little furry-eared rat. 121 00:13:54,418 --> 00:13:57,838 Mount Kenya, like its neighbours Kilimanjaro and Ruwenzori, 122 00:13:58,046 --> 00:14:03,719 is an isolated patch of snow and ice surrounded by the baking hot African plains. 123 00:14:04,887 --> 00:14:06,555 But the great mountains of South America, 124 00:14:06,763 --> 00:14:11,768 like Cotopaxi, 19,000 feet high, are very different. 125 00:14:12,144 --> 00:14:17,024 These volcanoes, some active, some dormant, are not isolated peaks 126 00:14:17,191 --> 00:14:21,403 but part of a continuous range that runs the length of the continent 127 00:14:21,570 --> 00:14:26,533 and is surrounded by the high, cold plains of the altiplano, 128 00:14:26,742 --> 00:14:31,038 so their flanks support a large and varied population of animals, 129 00:14:31,288 --> 00:14:35,918 all adapted to life at high altitudes and low temperatures. 130 00:14:36,627 --> 00:14:40,923 Here lives a wild South American camel, the vicuna. 131 00:14:41,298 --> 00:14:45,302 Its coat is fine, silky and protected so well from the cold, 132 00:14:45,511 --> 00:14:49,389 that it has, paradoxically, led to its near-extinction. 133 00:14:49,723 --> 00:14:54,311 Men have recognised that vicuna wool has an unexcelled softness and warmth 134 00:14:54,478 --> 00:14:58,148 and hunted the animal for it until it's close to extinction. 135 00:15:05,614 --> 00:15:09,743 The people of the Andes have domesticated another wild camel, the guanaco, 136 00:15:09,952 --> 00:15:13,580 to produce heavy-fleeced versions which produce excellent wool 137 00:15:13,747 --> 00:15:15,666 and serve as beasts of burden. 138 00:15:16,291 --> 00:15:23,090 Here, in Ecuador and Peru, near the equator, wild camels live at around 14,000 feet. 139 00:15:25,050 --> 00:15:30,305 But as you travel south down the Andes, the snowline gets lower. 140 00:15:30,681 --> 00:15:33,934 Half-way down, 2,000 miles south of Cotopaxi, 141 00:15:34,101 --> 00:15:39,815 the line of permanent snow has dropped from 16,000 feet to 13,000 feet. 142 00:15:42,067 --> 00:15:46,280 A thousand miles farther south still, the mountains are not so high 143 00:15:46,446 --> 00:15:52,911 but are almost completely covered with snow, to within a few hundred feet of the sea. 144 00:15:54,788 --> 00:16:00,294 So, on the southernmost tip of South America, in Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, 145 00:16:00,502 --> 00:16:05,591 the guanaco doesn't live at great altitudes, but almost at sea level. 146 00:16:06,258 --> 00:16:12,472 Yet it needs its warm coat just as much, for here, even in summer, it's very cold, 147 00:16:12,681 --> 00:16:16,185 and during the winter the whole land is snowbound. 148 00:16:29,448 --> 00:16:34,328 The reason it gets colder nearer the pole is not complicated. 149 00:16:34,620 --> 00:16:38,999 The sun's rays strike the earth at the equator at right angles. 150 00:16:39,249 --> 00:16:41,960 But as you travel round the earth, 151 00:16:42,127 --> 00:16:44,588 the rays become more and more glancing. 152 00:16:46,173 --> 00:16:49,009 So a given amount of heat falling on the equator 153 00:16:49,218 --> 00:16:53,472 is distributed over a much greater area in the polar regions 154 00:16:53,639 --> 00:16:59,019 and has to travel through more of the earth's atmosphere, which weakens it still further. 155 00:17:00,395 --> 00:17:06,443 So down in Patagonia, the sun's rays are very much less intense and carry much less heat, 156 00:17:06,610 --> 00:17:10,239 and the glaciers flow right down to the sea. 157 00:17:23,502 --> 00:17:27,798 Farther south still, across the near-frozen seas off Cape Horn, 158 00:17:27,965 --> 00:17:30,884 you reach chains of small volcanic islands 159 00:17:31,051 --> 00:17:34,972 that run down towards the Antarctic continent itself: 160 00:17:35,222 --> 00:17:36,974 Remote, little-known archipelagos 161 00:17:37,140 --> 00:17:41,770 such as the South Sandwich and, here, the South Orkneys. 162 00:17:43,272 --> 00:17:50,946 There are only two flowering plants that can manage to survive in this bleak, icy country. 163 00:17:51,154 --> 00:17:56,410 One is a kind of thrift and the other is a small, stunted grass. 164 00:17:56,660 --> 00:18:01,373 And apparently, no land-living animals of any kind. 165 00:18:02,291 --> 00:18:07,212 But when the snows melt in summer, they reveal that the rocks and the boulders 166 00:18:07,379 --> 00:18:12,176 are covered with over 100 different kinds of mosses and lichens, 167 00:18:12,426 --> 00:18:16,763 some of them rounded green cushions, others like miniature trees. 168 00:18:18,807 --> 00:18:23,604 The capacity of these simple plants to endure cold is phenomenal. 169 00:18:23,812 --> 00:18:28,442 Some species can even survive being frozen solid for weeks on end. 170 00:18:34,573 --> 00:18:40,287 Within this miniature tangled jungle lives a whole menagerie of tiny animals. 171 00:18:42,581 --> 00:18:44,791 Primitive creatures little bigger than pinheads 172 00:18:44,958 --> 00:18:50,631 manage to survive by slowly chewing away at the lichens and mosses during summer. 173 00:18:51,048 --> 00:18:53,342 In winter they almost grind to a halt, 174 00:18:53,509 --> 00:18:58,764 yet they survive unfrozen because their blood contains a kind of antifreeze 175 00:18:59,014 --> 00:19:03,560 and remains liquid even when the temperature falls well below zero. 176 00:19:08,982 --> 00:19:13,737 The majority are vegetarians, but there are also carnivorous mites among them 177 00:19:13,904 --> 00:19:16,406 which clamber around the grazing herds, 178 00:19:16,573 --> 00:19:19,493 picking off individuals as they fancy. 179 00:19:21,245 --> 00:19:25,457 In this extreme cold, the processes of life are greatly slowed down, 180 00:19:25,624 --> 00:19:30,462 not only those of growth, but those that lead to old age and death. 181 00:19:30,921 --> 00:19:35,008 So such tiny creatures, which elsewhere might live for merely months, 182 00:19:35,175 --> 00:19:39,096 survive for two or three years within the green mossy carpets. 183 00:19:42,140 --> 00:19:46,270 The seas around these Antarctic islands are strewn with ice. 184 00:19:46,728 --> 00:19:50,023 The pack ice that litters the surface is frozen sea water, 185 00:19:50,190 --> 00:19:53,068 and in winter forms a solid cover to the sea. 186 00:19:53,443 --> 00:19:55,237 The icebergs are different. 187 00:19:55,404 --> 00:20:00,450 They're made of fresh water and have broken away from glaciers flowing into the sea. 188 00:20:02,744 --> 00:20:06,999 This is the source of those bergs: The edge of a glacier. 189 00:20:08,041 --> 00:20:11,753 Beyond it, the continent of Antarctica. 190 00:20:13,088 --> 00:20:15,716 It's huge, bigger than the whole of Europe, 191 00:20:15,883 --> 00:20:19,887 and, for the most part, it seems totally devoid of life. 192 00:20:23,015 --> 00:20:26,351 But not all of Antarctica is snow-covered. 193 00:20:26,643 --> 00:20:32,316 In parts of the interior there are valleys where almost no snow ever falls. 194 00:20:33,734 --> 00:20:37,404 This is as desolate a part of the earth as exists. 195 00:20:37,821 --> 00:20:42,284 The cold is extreme, it's drier even than the centre of the Sahara, 196 00:20:42,493 --> 00:20:45,120 it's dark for half the year 197 00:20:45,287 --> 00:20:49,708 and it's scoured by a never-ending howling wind. 198 00:20:51,001 --> 00:20:54,630 And the wind is responsible for these carvings in the solid granite. 199 00:20:55,005 --> 00:20:58,675 Crystals of salt form beneath tiny flakes on the surface, 200 00:20:58,842 --> 00:21:03,931 and grow slowly, but so powerfully that particles are broken loose. 201 00:21:04,264 --> 00:21:09,686 The wind then sweeps them up and hurls them at the rock face, eroding it still further. 202 00:21:14,149 --> 00:21:19,321 Desolate though this waste of shattered rocks may seem, there is life even here. 203 00:21:27,913 --> 00:21:32,125 Algae. Beneath the stone, the wind doesn't dry it out, 204 00:21:32,292 --> 00:21:34,628 and it's protected from the cold. 205 00:21:35,212 --> 00:21:39,716 It gets the light it needs to grow through the translucent rock. 206 00:21:46,139 --> 00:21:49,351 There are also green patches actually within the rock. 207 00:21:49,685 --> 00:21:54,314 Algae have penetrated the microscopic spaces between the rock's constituent particles 208 00:21:54,481 --> 00:21:56,650 and there managed to grow. 209 00:21:59,278 --> 00:22:01,530 Glaciers flow down these dry valleys, 210 00:22:01,697 --> 00:22:05,534 fed by the ice cap covering the continent's centre. 211 00:22:05,868 --> 00:22:12,499 They're among the world's fastest moving, advancing as much as 300 feet in a year. 212 00:22:12,875 --> 00:22:18,881 As they surge downwards, their surface is torn into thousands of crevasses. 213 00:22:35,063 --> 00:22:38,192 During the summer, even though the winds are bitterly cold, 214 00:22:38,358 --> 00:22:42,654 the sun is sufficiently strong to melt a little of the glacier's surface. 215 00:22:44,781 --> 00:22:48,952 Where it accumulates in pools, blue-green algae grows vigorously, 216 00:22:49,161 --> 00:22:54,249 its dark colour enabling it to absorb a high proportion of the sun's feeble heat. 217 00:22:58,629 --> 00:23:03,550 These pools and streams are the only places in all of Antarctica's interior 218 00:23:03,759 --> 00:23:06,178 where life flourishes in any abundance. 219 00:23:07,930 --> 00:23:11,183 The earth, at the beginning of the history of life 220 00:23:11,350 --> 00:23:14,561 before any higher plants or any animals had appeared, 221 00:23:14,728 --> 00:23:17,564 must have looked something like this. 222 00:23:23,654 --> 00:23:28,367 Yet here, mysteriously, lie the corpses of large animals. 223 00:23:29,409 --> 00:23:32,955 A crab-eater seal. It looks comparatively fresh, 224 00:23:33,163 --> 00:23:38,669 but examination of its tissues show that it is about 300 years old. 225 00:23:39,211 --> 00:23:41,880 This extreme climate has freeze-dried it. 226 00:23:42,256 --> 00:23:45,175 It must have lost its way, perhaps because of sickness, 227 00:23:45,342 --> 00:23:49,805 and misguidedly crawled up here from the coast, 25 miles away. 228 00:23:51,890 --> 00:23:57,813 Although the land of the Antarctic is almost sterile, its waters are extremely fertile, 229 00:23:58,188 --> 00:24:04,236 so its margins, particularly the beaches of its off-shore islands, are rich in life. 230 00:24:13,662 --> 00:24:17,583 These fur seals in South Georgia flourish in great numbers 231 00:24:17,791 --> 00:24:19,543 because the surface waters of the seas 232 00:24:19,751 --> 00:24:24,840 are thick with shoals of floating shrimp: Krill, which is their main food. 233 00:24:25,507 --> 00:24:29,803 Every year they come ashore to the beaches to pup and mate. 234 00:24:32,806 --> 00:24:38,604 They're not true seals but eared seals, for they have small external ears. 235 00:24:38,770 --> 00:24:43,775 Their hind flippers can be brought forward, enabling them to move quite fast on land, 236 00:24:43,942 --> 00:24:46,236 something that true seals can't do. 237 00:24:46,612 --> 00:24:52,075 These fur seals retained and thickened the fur of their land-living ancestors, 238 00:24:52,242 --> 00:25:00,125 so that now some of these big males have manes which give them the name sea lion. 239 00:25:00,542 --> 00:25:03,962 This fur lies in two layers. 240 00:25:04,129 --> 00:25:09,092 There's an outer guard hair and then a thick layer close to the skin, 241 00:25:09,259 --> 00:25:16,600 and that traps air in it and keeps the animals warm when they go swimming. 242 00:25:16,808 --> 00:25:19,353 But the trouble with fur as an insulator 243 00:25:19,520 --> 00:25:26,068 is that if you dive too deep, water pressure squeezes out the air. 244 00:25:26,360 --> 00:25:31,406 So fur seals, for the most part, fish in the surface waters. 245 00:25:33,367 --> 00:25:38,622 True seals, like these elephant seal pups, have a different kind of insulation. 246 00:25:38,872 --> 00:25:40,290 Their fur is sparse, 247 00:25:40,499 --> 00:25:45,295 but beneath the skin is a thick layer of oily fat, blubber, 248 00:25:45,462 --> 00:25:47,798 which surrounds their entire body. 249 00:25:48,131 --> 00:25:51,260 Elephant seals dive to great depths to hunt squid, 250 00:25:51,468 --> 00:25:55,597 navigating in the dark with sonar and huge eyes, 251 00:25:55,889 --> 00:26:01,019 but they don't get chilled, for pressure has no effect on blubber's insulating qualities. 252 00:26:01,645 --> 00:26:07,109 With every year, the blubber which kept them so warm in the freezing seas 253 00:26:07,276 --> 00:26:08,610 loses its power. 254 00:26:09,069 --> 00:26:12,865 Because every year the sea elephants have to moult, 255 00:26:13,031 --> 00:26:19,705 and in order to grow new skin they have to bring a blood supply close to the surface. 256 00:26:19,997 --> 00:26:22,207 Blood vessels open up through the blubber 257 00:26:22,374 --> 00:26:27,045 and the skin is flushed with blood just below the surface. 258 00:26:27,296 --> 00:26:31,175 If they stayed in the sea like that, they'd chill very quickly. 259 00:26:31,466 --> 00:26:33,886 But they don't. Instead... 260 00:26:36,847 --> 00:26:42,144 ...they haul themselves up onto the beaches or into mud wallows like this one. 261 00:26:42,519 --> 00:26:44,730 And there, the big old bulls like that one 262 00:26:44,897 --> 00:26:49,693 must suppress the feelings of antagonism they felt only a few months ago 263 00:26:49,902 --> 00:26:54,698 and lie close together with their fellows in the interests of keeping warm. 264 00:27:01,788 --> 00:27:04,333 These are the biggest of all seals. 265 00:27:04,541 --> 00:27:10,172 The huge adult males develop a bladder on top of their noses, like a kind of trunk. 266 00:27:15,302 --> 00:27:20,057 But they also justify their name of sea elephant by their immense size. 267 00:27:20,432 --> 00:27:24,770 The bulls may grow to 20 feet long and weigh three tons. 268 00:27:34,321 --> 00:27:39,076 If you wanted to pick a creature to symbolise the frozen Antarctic wastes, 269 00:27:39,243 --> 00:27:42,496 you might well choose a creature like this. 270 00:27:42,663 --> 00:27:46,416 These are macaroni penguins on the island of South Georgia, 271 00:27:46,583 --> 00:27:50,379 halfway between the tip of South America and the Antarctic. 272 00:27:50,838 --> 00:27:57,177 But it seems the original penguins evolved in relatively warm climates. 273 00:27:57,344 --> 00:28:01,515 Even today, there are species of penguins that live on the equator, 274 00:28:01,765 --> 00:28:03,392 in the Galapagos islands. 275 00:28:03,767 --> 00:28:08,188 So this dense coat of feathers with a layer of fat beneath it 276 00:28:08,355 --> 00:28:13,026 was probably developed to keep them warm in the seas anywhere, 277 00:28:13,193 --> 00:28:17,114 but it serves them just as well in the freezing Antarctic winds, 278 00:28:17,281 --> 00:28:20,826 standing on land or on a surging iceberg. 279 00:28:40,429 --> 00:28:43,182 And they are superb swimmers. 280 00:28:45,309 --> 00:28:47,853 Swift and agile through water, 281 00:28:48,020 --> 00:28:51,648 they come in to land through breakers that would smash any boat 282 00:28:51,815 --> 00:28:54,776 with the resilience of rubber balls. 283 00:29:04,912 --> 00:29:08,540 These chinstrap penguins are only a couple of feet high. 284 00:29:08,707 --> 00:29:11,418 King penguins are half as tall again. 285 00:29:11,668 --> 00:29:15,297 Large size can be an advantage in cold climates. 286 00:29:15,547 --> 00:29:20,594 The bigger a body, the smaller the surface area of its skin relative to its volume. 287 00:29:20,844 --> 00:29:24,932 So big penguins retain heat better than small ones. 288 00:29:25,349 --> 00:29:28,852 But their great size causes problems in breeding. 289 00:29:29,061 --> 00:29:32,356 They lay just one egg, which they keep warm 290 00:29:32,523 --> 00:29:37,152 by the rather inconvenient method of holding it on top of their feet, 291 00:29:37,444 --> 00:29:42,658 covered by a fold of feathered skin, for eight long weeks. 292 00:29:42,991 --> 00:29:48,497 When it does hatch, the chick takes so long to mature 293 00:29:48,705 --> 00:29:51,792 that they have to feed it for a further ten months 294 00:29:52,918 --> 00:29:56,171 These king penguins aren't the biggest of all penguins. 295 00:29:56,380 --> 00:30:00,509 They have a cousin, living farther south, which grows even bigger. 296 00:30:00,717 --> 00:30:04,179 It, too, has fearsome problems in raising its chic 297 00:30:04,346 --> 00:30:07,891 and it solves them in the most dramatic way imaginable. 298 00:30:08,517 --> 00:30:13,146 They lay their eggs not in spring, but at the end of summer. 299 00:30:13,522 --> 00:30:17,025 Their breeding grounds are on the permanent sea ice near the coast. 300 00:30:17,276 --> 00:30:24,491 The females return to the sea to feed, leaving the males with the eggs. 301 00:30:24,741 --> 00:30:27,911 They shuffle back and forth, each with an egg on his feet, 302 00:30:28,078 --> 00:30:30,414 held carefully above the ice. 303 00:30:38,088 --> 00:30:41,508 The gales intensify as the winter advances 304 00:30:41,717 --> 00:30:43,594 and the sun sinks lower. 305 00:30:45,429 --> 00:30:48,765 In the skies above, the aurora plays. 306 00:30:49,516 --> 00:30:53,395 The male emperors stoically sit out the months of winter darkness. 307 00:30:53,812 --> 00:30:58,400 The sea ice can offer them no nest. Not even a scree for a few pebbles. 308 00:30:58,567 --> 00:31:03,614 They have nothing to eat, and nothing to do except protect the precious egg 309 00:31:03,780 --> 00:31:07,868 and prevent it from freezing while the chick slowly forms inside it. 310 00:31:08,327 --> 00:31:13,540 As the gales intensify, the males huddle together to give one another shelter. 311 00:31:14,583 --> 00:31:19,671 Then, 65 days after it was laid, the chick begins to hatch. 312 00:31:38,440 --> 00:31:40,734 The newly-emerged chicks are hungry. 313 00:31:40,984 --> 00:31:46,615 All the male can provide is a little secretion from his throat and long-empty stomach. 314 00:31:47,115 --> 00:31:48,450 He's close to starving himself, 315 00:31:48,617 --> 00:31:52,496 having been sustained only by the layer of fat beneath his skin. 316 00:31:52,746 --> 00:31:55,249 He's lost a third of his weight. 317 00:31:58,168 --> 00:32:01,588 But soon after, the female reappears with a full stomach 318 00:32:01,797 --> 00:32:06,468 and takes the chick onto her feet for its first proper feed. 319 00:32:07,511 --> 00:32:12,391 Now the parents will take turns to trek to the sea and back, 320 00:32:12,599 --> 00:32:14,518 bringing food for their youngsters. 321 00:32:15,185 --> 00:32:20,107 But now, at the end of winter, the ice has extended far out to sea, 322 00:32:20,274 --> 00:32:24,862 and the penguins may have to walk 50 miles to reach open water. 323 00:32:25,988 --> 00:32:29,241 The adults have a powerful urge to cherish a chick. 324 00:32:29,658 --> 00:32:32,911 Those that have lost one will try and adopt any that wanders by 325 00:32:33,120 --> 00:32:35,914 or incubate pieces of ice. 326 00:32:48,594 --> 00:32:50,888 Repeatedly, the parent in charge 327 00:32:51,054 --> 00:32:54,099 manages to find something from the pit of its stomach 328 00:32:54,266 --> 00:32:56,518 to feed the ever-hungry chick. 329 00:33:01,732 --> 00:33:05,068 Until the chicks lose their down and get their adult plumage, 330 00:33:05,277 --> 00:33:08,739 they can't swim and so can't feed for themselves. 331 00:33:09,323 --> 00:33:14,953 But being so big, they, like the king penguins, take a long time to grow to full size, 332 00:33:15,120 --> 00:33:21,084 and so their parents must make the long march to the sea to collect food for them. 333 00:33:23,003 --> 00:33:27,090 Though the winter is almost over, there is still bad weather. 334 00:33:27,299 --> 00:33:28,842 Blizzards rage over the ice, 335 00:33:29,009 --> 00:33:35,516 and the young huddle together in groups of their own amongst the parent birds. 336 00:33:40,479 --> 00:33:44,233 Many of the youngsters lack the strength to withstand the cold. 337 00:33:44,566 --> 00:33:45,734 Many die. 338 00:33:47,236 --> 00:33:53,075 As the sun rises higher each day, the adults suffer in a different fashion. 339 00:33:53,450 --> 00:33:57,454 On sunny days they get too hot in their insulating blanket of feathers, 340 00:33:57,663 --> 00:34:00,833 and eat snow in order to cool themselves. 341 00:34:03,252 --> 00:34:06,463 The chicks still have their downy feathers and can't swim. 342 00:34:06,630 --> 00:34:11,134 But ten months on from laying, the chicks fledge, 343 00:34:11,343 --> 00:34:16,014 and over the next few weeks, they all walk down to the sea, 344 00:34:16,181 --> 00:34:20,936 which now, with the spring break-up of the ice, is close at hand. 345 00:34:23,605 --> 00:34:27,526 Now, at last, the adults can feed entirely for themselves. 346 00:34:28,026 --> 00:34:30,696 They've got two months in which to restore their weight 347 00:34:30,904 --> 00:34:34,158 before they start the whole process over again. 348 00:34:39,204 --> 00:34:41,790 These birds, at first sight so penguin-like, 349 00:34:42,040 --> 00:34:45,085 live not near the south pole, but the north. 350 00:34:45,502 --> 00:34:49,590 They're not penguins but guillemots, members of the auk family. 351 00:34:50,215 --> 00:34:53,969 All auks, like penguins, are excellent underwater swimmers. 352 00:34:54,219 --> 00:34:56,847 They use their wings like flippers, 353 00:34:57,181 --> 00:35:00,434 but they have not become such specialised swimmers as the penguins, 354 00:35:00,642 --> 00:35:02,144 for they can still fly. 355 00:35:03,103 --> 00:35:06,523 These are the guillemots' smaller cousins, the little auk. 356 00:35:25,626 --> 00:35:30,380 Auks and penguins, similar though they are, are not closely related. 357 00:35:30,547 --> 00:35:34,551 They've come to resemble one another by adopting a similar lifestyle 358 00:35:34,718 --> 00:35:36,887 at opposite ends of the earth. 359 00:35:40,307 --> 00:35:44,561 Unlike Antarctica, that isolated continent surrounded by sea, 360 00:35:44,728 --> 00:35:49,900 the Arctic is connected by land to more temperate regions. 361 00:35:50,234 --> 00:35:55,280 So the land animals of Europe and North America have been able to colonise it 362 00:35:55,447 --> 00:35:58,700 and adapt to its particular demands. 363 00:36:01,328 --> 00:36:03,372 Foxes have moved up here. 364 00:36:03,705 --> 00:36:09,670 The Arctic fox's coat is lighter than its southern cousin, and in winter turns whit 365 00:36:10,212 --> 00:36:15,384 On land, it feeds on small rodents, and on ice floes, perhaps the odd bird. 366 00:36:15,801 --> 00:36:19,304 It's just as well the little auks have kept their powers of flight. 367 00:36:35,988 --> 00:36:42,536 The ice floes are also the hunting ground of one of the biggest of all carnivores. 368 00:36:50,502 --> 00:36:52,045 The polar bear. 369 00:36:53,005 --> 00:36:56,300 This one has killed a bearded seal. 370 00:37:09,021 --> 00:37:14,151 A young bear is eager to take a share of the kill, but must be cautious. 371 00:37:14,401 --> 00:37:17,696 Adults sometimes kill youngsters in squabbles. 372 00:37:52,147 --> 00:37:58,237 The polar bear is clearly a close relative of the bears that live in Europe and America. 373 00:37:58,779 --> 00:38:04,743 Its whiteness is an obvious adaptation to the snow and ice, but so is its huge size. 374 00:38:05,202 --> 00:38:12,417 The principle of a big body retaining more heat applies to bears as much as penguins, 375 00:38:12,709 --> 00:38:18,340 and polar bears are very much bigger than their cousins in temperate lands farther south. 376 00:38:36,692 --> 00:38:42,656 Polar bears, if forced to, will eat all kinds of t but their preferred food is flesh, 377 00:38:42,823 --> 00:38:44,700 particularly that of seals. 378 00:38:45,075 --> 00:38:49,121 They especially like the blubber just below the seal's skin, 379 00:38:49,371 --> 00:38:52,958 and often leave the meat for the scavenging gulls and foxes. 380 00:39:21,737 --> 00:39:26,658 Among the glaucous gulls is the much rarer and pure-white ivory gull. 381 00:39:36,627 --> 00:39:42,549 The polar bear's white coat and great size are not its only adaptations to Arctic life. 382 00:39:42,799 --> 00:39:46,470 It grips the ice with long, sharp claws 383 00:39:46,637 --> 00:39:52,518 and thick hair on the soles, which also makes them excellent paddles, 384 00:39:52,809 --> 00:39:57,064 for the polar bear spends a lot of time swimming during the summer. 385 00:40:41,525 --> 00:40:44,027 Ringed seals are much hunted by polar bears, 386 00:40:44,194 --> 00:40:48,824 and when on the ice, must be constantly on the alert. 387 00:40:53,078 --> 00:40:56,874 They need ice holes through which to leave the water, 388 00:40:57,040 --> 00:41:00,043 or at least stick up their heads to breathe. 389 00:41:06,091 --> 00:41:11,305 A polar bear will wait for many hours, motionless, beside such a hole. 390 00:41:16,101 --> 00:41:20,814 They also stalk seals that are rash enough to lie out on the ice. 391 00:41:37,206 --> 00:41:43,003 The polar bear has lost, but about once in every five hunting days, it does kill, 392 00:41:43,212 --> 00:41:44,796 and that is enough. 393 00:41:53,180 --> 00:41:59,061 The most powerful effective hunter of all, however, on the northern ice, is man. 394 00:42:03,023 --> 00:42:06,318 Eskimo, or Inuit, as they prefer to call themselves, 395 00:42:06,485 --> 00:42:09,655 came up to the Arctic in very early times. 396 00:42:09,988 --> 00:42:13,742 Superb hunters, they could live for many months in winter 397 00:42:13,951 --> 00:42:16,829 on nothing whatever but raw meat. 398 00:42:30,133 --> 00:42:35,806 They were so skilled at living on the ice that with only a knife of bone 399 00:42:35,973 --> 00:42:40,143 they could make a waterproof house from snow in an hour or so. 400 00:42:53,615 --> 00:42:56,285 A slab of sea ice made a window. 401 00:43:17,431 --> 00:43:21,560 Inside, the igloo was lit with lamps fed by seal blubber. 402 00:43:21,852 --> 00:43:23,854 Heat from the flame and from their bodies 403 00:43:24,021 --> 00:43:29,651 could raise the temperature enough for them to remove their heavy clothing and relax. 404 00:43:44,416 --> 00:43:48,212 It was a life of extraordinary rigour and privation. 405 00:43:48,629 --> 00:43:51,340 These pictures were taken 20 years ago. 406 00:43:51,632 --> 00:43:54,468 No Eskimo lives in this way today. 407 00:43:56,470 --> 00:43:58,764 The poles have not always been so cold. 408 00:43:59,056 --> 00:44:03,894 One explanation of why they've become so is the warming effect of ocean currents. 409 00:44:04,186 --> 00:44:08,315 If they can circulate the waters of the polar seas down towards the equator, 410 00:44:08,482 --> 00:44:10,651 they would keep them relatively warm. 411 00:44:10,901 --> 00:44:16,532 And maybe they did so 100 million years ago, when the continents were arranged like this. 412 00:44:17,282 --> 00:44:21,620 But the continents have shifted, the polar seas become more enclosed 413 00:44:21,829 --> 00:44:24,373 and any such currents interrupted. 414 00:44:27,042 --> 00:44:29,753 Meanwhile, during the same period, 415 00:44:29,920 --> 00:44:35,133 the Antarctic continent drifted south until it came to rest over the south pole. 416 00:44:35,425 --> 00:44:40,430 Now ocean currents could not keep that part of the world warm either, 417 00:44:40,639 --> 00:44:42,599 and so an ice cap formed. 418 00:44:43,350 --> 00:44:49,147 The whiteness reflected 90% of the heat in the already feeble rays of the sun. 419 00:44:49,398 --> 00:44:54,111 So ice now covers all of Antarctica and the seas of the north pole. 420 00:44:54,653 --> 00:44:57,990 Over the past million years there have been other variations, 421 00:44:58,157 --> 00:45:01,076 due to the sun's varying strength, 422 00:45:01,243 --> 00:45:03,912 and the ice cover has waxed and waned. 423 00:45:04,288 --> 00:45:07,833 Now we're in one of the warmer phases, 424 00:45:08,000 --> 00:45:11,962 but even so, Antarctica is still buried beneath ice a mile thick, 425 00:45:12,129 --> 00:45:18,844 and in the north, ice and snow extend for 1,000 miles away from the pole. 426 00:45:41,575 --> 00:45:45,204 As you come down the mountain or away from the pole, 427 00:45:45,370 --> 00:45:51,168 the land becomes warm enough to prevent it being covered by ice and snow all year. 428 00:45:51,460 --> 00:45:55,839 Beyond, the country is bleak enough: Boulders and gravel, 429 00:45:56,048 --> 00:46:01,261 rocks that have been ground to fragments by the glaciers and pushed in front of them. 430 00:46:02,513 --> 00:46:07,893 This is the tundra, a land full of strange shapes and patterns. 431 00:46:08,393 --> 00:46:12,314 Fine muds and sands retain more moisture than coarse gravel, 432 00:46:12,481 --> 00:46:15,359 so when they freeze, they expand more 433 00:46:15,526 --> 00:46:20,739 and push the gravel outwards to produce these geometric shapes. 434 00:46:21,156 --> 00:46:24,785 A foot down, the soil is still frozen, permafrost, 435 00:46:24,993 --> 00:46:27,913 so the summer melt water can't soak away 436 00:46:28,080 --> 00:46:33,669 and the land is covered with bogs and ponds that lie within the polygonal ridges, 437 00:46:33,836 --> 00:46:37,965 so that the land looks almost as though it's been cultivated by man. 438 00:46:41,844 --> 00:46:46,807 In places, the underground ice pushes upwards into a mountain called a pingo. 439 00:46:47,766 --> 00:46:52,396 It looks like a small volcano, but instead of hot lava in its heart, 440 00:46:52,563 --> 00:46:55,107 it has cold, blue ice. 441 00:47:07,035 --> 00:47:11,915 Although the ice relaxes its grip for only a few weeks in summer, 442 00:47:12,124 --> 00:47:17,254 a surprising number of plants and animals manage to find a permanent home here. 443 00:47:21,758 --> 00:47:24,303 Small flowering plants keep low, 444 00:47:24,469 --> 00:47:30,017 for close to the ground there is little wind and the sun's rays can be quite warm. 445 00:47:37,941 --> 00:47:42,070 One kind of tree manages to live up here in large numbers 446 00:47:42,237 --> 00:47:45,032 by adopting exactly the same policy. 447 00:47:46,325 --> 00:47:49,161 This is the Arctic willow and it lies flat. 448 00:47:49,369 --> 00:47:52,164 It grows extremely slowly in these cold temperatures, 449 00:47:52,331 --> 00:47:57,878 and this one may be a century or so old. 450 00:47:59,087 --> 00:48:01,340 In shallow burrows in the topsoil 451 00:48:01,507 --> 00:48:06,803 live the harvesters of this meagre crop of leaves and grass: Lemmings. 452 00:48:10,516 --> 00:48:14,561 In summer, when there's food about, they breed with great speed. 453 00:48:14,770 --> 00:48:21,235 One female produces five or six babies in a litter, four or five times in a single season 454 00:48:21,527 --> 00:48:25,030 So in a few months she may produce 30 young. 455 00:48:25,322 --> 00:48:29,868 The babies grow so quickly that the first to be born in the spring 456 00:48:30,077 --> 00:48:33,330 can themselves produce young before the winter returns. 457 00:48:40,337 --> 00:48:44,258 In summer, all the tundra plants put out their leaves 458 00:48:44,424 --> 00:48:45,968 and there's lots to eat. 459 00:48:53,892 --> 00:48:57,187 The swarming hordes of lemmings attract hunters: 460 00:48:59,898 --> 00:49:01,400 Snowy owls. 461 00:49:14,955 --> 00:49:18,458 During the summer, lemmings are the owl's main food. 462 00:49:38,478 --> 00:49:43,567 Abundant though the lemmings are, the hunting has been poor for this owl. 463 00:49:43,775 --> 00:49:48,739 She may have laid as many as eight eggs, but only one chick has survived. 464 00:50:05,005 --> 00:50:09,301 As the days lengthen, herds of caribou migrate up from the south. 465 00:50:09,968 --> 00:50:15,807 Their calves were born early in the season and the herd moves up to 15 miles a day 466 00:50:16,183 --> 00:50:21,146 They have to keep traveling in order to find enough food to sustain them all. 467 00:50:51,385 --> 00:50:53,720 They follow the same route each year. 468 00:50:53,887 --> 00:50:56,849 In places, paths are worn 18 inches deep 469 00:50:57,015 --> 00:51:00,644 where the animals have passed, century after century. 470 00:51:06,984 --> 00:51:08,944 Snow geese fly up, too. 471 00:51:09,236 --> 00:51:13,448 They've come from as far away as Mexico, 3,000 miles distant, 472 00:51:13,615 --> 00:51:18,203 to claim a share in summer's brief crop and to breed. 473 00:51:27,671 --> 00:51:29,631 They exist in two forms: 474 00:51:29,798 --> 00:51:34,052 Ones with dark feathers on the body, as well as pure-white ones. 475 00:51:34,469 --> 00:51:38,140 But they're all the same species, and mixed couples are common. 476 00:51:42,394 --> 00:51:45,647 Soon the tundra is thick with their nests. 477 00:51:48,734 --> 00:51:53,155 Ptarmigan, now in their dark summer plumage, feed on the willow scrub. 478 00:52:00,787 --> 00:52:04,541 The caribou take not only willow, but grasses and lichen. 479 00:52:17,346 --> 00:52:21,725 The first snow geese to arrive already have goslings, 480 00:52:21,975 --> 00:52:23,769 and are foraging as a family. 481 00:52:32,903 --> 00:52:35,072 Later arrivals are still on the nest, 482 00:52:35,280 --> 00:52:38,909 and can't leave until the last egg has hatched. 483 00:52:39,451 --> 00:52:42,579 While there, the first goslings to emerge and their parents 484 00:52:42,788 --> 00:52:47,751 are plagued by hordes of voracious blood-hungry mosquitoes. 485 00:53:03,183 --> 00:53:07,187 From the warming pools, more and more mosquitoes hatch. 486 00:53:13,986 --> 00:53:18,615 They provide food for the red-necked phalarope, and there are plenty to gather. 487 00:53:18,824 --> 00:53:24,288 A square yard of fresh water here can produce 100,000 insects in a season. 488 00:53:25,414 --> 00:53:27,082 Now the blackfly larvae, 489 00:53:27,249 --> 00:53:30,919 which as eggs were attached to stones in the shallow pools, 490 00:53:31,170 --> 00:53:33,505 are also beginning to emerge. 491 00:53:55,819 --> 00:54:02,659 Activity now is intense, for it is light for almost the whole 24 hours of the day. 492 00:54:05,412 --> 00:54:09,416 But by late August, the snow geese sense the imminence of winter 493 00:54:09,583 --> 00:54:11,835 and start to head southwards again. 494 00:54:22,179 --> 00:54:24,806 The caribou, too, end their grazing, 495 00:54:24,973 --> 00:54:28,101 and start to plod back across the tundra. 496 00:54:28,769 --> 00:54:30,687 As they go, they continue to feed, 497 00:54:30,854 --> 00:54:35,651 building up the reserves of fat they will need to sustain themselves through the winter. 498 00:54:56,421 --> 00:55:01,468 As the weather gets colder and colder, the need for shelter becomes more urgent 499 00:55:01,802 --> 00:55:04,763 and the herds may cover 25 miles in a day. 500 00:55:26,535 --> 00:55:32,166 And then, at last, the returning travellers reach the first tall tree 501 00:55:32,583 --> 00:55:35,043 It's the start of the great coniferous forest 502 00:55:35,210 --> 00:55:38,922 that lies south of the tundra right round the globe. 503 00:55:39,673 --> 00:55:43,010 The snow geese will fly on for thousands of miles, 504 00:55:43,177 --> 00:55:46,722 but the caribou have reached their wintering grounds. 505 00:55:47,222 --> 00:55:49,308 The forest is a sanctuary 506 00:55:49,474 --> 00:55:52,936 which will protect them from the bitter winter cold.