Force of Nature

As shifting rain patterns transform ecosystems across the planet, survival is no longer about strength alone. Three mothers face nature at its most unpredictable: pygmy elephants battle monsoon floods in Borneo, a female platypus escapes the flash flood that destroys her home river in Australia, and a lone lioness in Africa uses floodwaters to her advantage to catch prey.

Cold-adapted animals are struggling more than most in a warming world, forcing them to change long-established behaviours to survive. From a snow leopard in the peaks of the Indian Himalayas, forced from his home by a rival male, to an Arctic ground squirrel in Alaska undertaking the coldest migration of any mammal, and a young Arctic fox in Svalbard facing her first winter alone, animals adapted to the cold are being pushed to their limits in a rapidly changing world.

New extremes of heat and drought are pushing the extraordinary behavioural and physical adaptations of wombats, leopards and kangaroo rats to their very limits.

In this episode, we turn the camera on the extraordinary people who are dedicating their lives to helping the animals cope with today's extreme weather.