The Hunt

This is def one of the most amazing series in the realm of nature and animals. The photography, detail, and beauty of the creatures on their home turf is nothing short of stunning. No CGI here, just natural and unforgettable shots(after shots after shots...). My favorite is the underwater episode. To see the sunlight shimmering from above and thru the water while birds, sharks, whales, and tuna all feast on a swirling mass of minnows is nothing short of breathtaking. And the series is FULL of surprises as far as sudden incidents that occur. Talk about timing w/having the cameras where they need to be at one specific moment. And while the title infers a hunt as far as searching out food and whatnot, there is a heavy part of it that also seems to show in some detail about the mating and mating process. This is just fascinating all around, and again--the detail cannot be stressed enough. The shot of the polar bear looking down an ice hole from below(in the water, some ways down....)for food is one of many things that will bring a smile to your face, as well as the inevitable question of 'how did they do that?'. Every creature is shown in it's full detailed beauty(the hair on the penguins, for example...), and I find it even more deplorable that people actually kill these animals after seeing this. It is a whole other world this show has taken us to and shown us. And while nature stuff has been done before(some quite well...), I would have to say that this series takes it to a new level altogether. Well worth it, and well worth the many repeat viewings that are sure to follow. Some stuff is even cool for kids, but I would preview what to show them first. Bloody at times, but the good far outweighs the bad in that sense. Seeing seals rubbing their noses together balances the grimmer stuff out. Quite a find, and even something 'non-nature watchers' would even find very intriguing. Brilliant, colorful stuff!!!!!! Better than a lot of Hollywood movies nowadays too for sure :^)

Very entertaining

Excellent seller, very fast shipping! Great DVD about the Animals & everything by David Attenborough is excellent! Very interesting about life in the wild.

I love the BBC nature studies with David Attenborough, and this is one of the best. There are truly incredible close-up views of all manner of beasts, from killer whales to spiders, trying to get their dinner. Obviously the cameramen have the best equipment, but even so they must have endured an enormous amount of hard work in uncomfortable conditions, patient waiting, and frequent frustration to photograph these scenes. Also, with Blu-ray high definition the scenes of jungles and arctic ice floes are often very beautiful. So why do I give it only four stars? I have one complaint that prospective customers should be aware of. Every DVD and Blu-ray disk has several minutes of garbage that you have to sit through before you can get to what you want to watch. Fast-forward is disabled and you have to just sit through it. These disks are no exception; there is the usual stupid warning about copying, institutional advertising from the BBC, advertisements of other disks they'd like you to buy, and so on. But why do I complain, since all disks have this? Because these Blu-ray disks have disabled the feature that lets the player remember your place when you turn it off. Each disk has four 50-minute episodes. You probably will not watch them all at once. It would be nice if you could leave the disk in the machine and the next time you turn it on, automatically start in the place where you left off. Most disks can do that, but the BBC decided not to permit it here. So you will have to sit through all the same garbage each time. Why? Ask the BBC.

Awesome stuff

I am satisfied with my gift

It's very good. Beautiful quality videos. If you like any of the Planet Earth Series you will line this as well.

Very happy. As is typical with anything done by BBC Earth and narrated by David Attenborough this is excellent. Arrived in good condition. Brand new still wrapped. Discs were in perfect condition. One tiny break at the bottom of the case, but is barely noticable and does not cause any problems with opening and closing. Would highly recommend to any nature fan. Will be purchasing the rest of the BBC Earth Documentaries as I can. No complaints.

Jag tycker om dessa, samt inga problem med den.

La caza de los depredadores y las tácticas de sus objetivos muestran hasta que punto hay una visión muy distorsionada y hasta enfermiza sobre los grandes depredadores. Trata con gran rigor los retos de depredadores y tácticas de sus potenciales presas para escapar de los mismos. Las técnicas de filmación son espectaculares. El vídeo es en inglés pero pienso que será fácil de seguir para gente con no demasiado nivel de inglés ya que Richard Attenborough es una persona con un lenguaje preciso y una delicia para cualquier amante de la naturaleza y de su rico idioma.

As promised and as expected, excellent DVD, a pleasure to watch for whole family

In nature there’s no room for sentimentality. Predators must kill to survive, so they do, and this magnificent series, beautifully filmed with the latest hi-tech cameras and equipment, goes with them on the hunt. Prey, it follows, exist to be devoured. Naturally, they don’t see it this way, but they’re part of a system that keeps predators fed and prey populations in check, the twin dynamic of killing and reproduction never stopping. In baseball good hitters fail seven times out of ten. A .300 batting average is well above the mean. It’s worse for most predators. Cheetahs fail nine times out of ten, an average of .100 that would get them kicked off the team if they were human. The strike rate for lions and tigers is even worse, so bad they can’t even make the team. How do they survive? By having short memories and never giving up. They are relentless because they have to be, because nature has designed them this way. Plus in some cases (with lions, for instance) a kill can last a week or more. It’s why lions are such great sleepers. They digest slowly while dozing. We do the same after a big meal, or some homo sapiens do. It’s why the siesta was invented and why some lunch breaks last half a day. Nature’s balance requires that prey outnumber predators. Those to be eaten breed faster and have more offspring than those who do the killing. What might seem cruel to us, cute bunnies or pups eaten before they’ve had a chance to taste much of life, is just a numbers game and luck (or a lack of luck for those eaten). Wrong place, wrong time, and all that. Cruel it may look, but it has to be this way. Nature can’t afford to dabble in morality. It just reacts to shortages and imbalances, constantly seeking equilibrium and balance. Which is why parents in the wild don’t cry when predators devour their offspring. Their response to loss is redoubled breeding, not tears. An arms race, then, a numbers game, nature heartless because it has to be. The series is wonderful and there are many memorable vignettes from around the world, both on land and at sea, and even at their interface (Orca whales ambushing baby seals along the shoreline or groups of dolphins pushing fish out of the water and onto the beach where they can devour them). But perhaps my favourite sequence of all (among so many segments) is that of the wild dogs of Zambia. This surprised me and made me try to think why. First, the dogs aren’t beautiful. They are scraggly, mangy, dirty, ungainly. Their necks and heads look too long and they lope when they walk, reminding one of hyenas. Second, because of the foregoing: they’re not in that sexy class of African predators (lions, cheetahs, leopards). Dogs will never have the elegance and nimble grace of cats. But they are endearing in their way. When you watch wild dogs at play you see how social, bonding, even loving, they are. They frolic, romp and roll together. They tussle in the mud and streams. They group together when they eat and sleep. There’s a hierarchy and the elder dogs will lead, but in spirit theirs is a true democracy, all for one and one for all. Their geeky ungainliness disappears on the hunt. The smell of prey transforms them into a graceful hunting unit. They’re amazingly strong, their stamina tremendous. They can run vast distances at 40 mph and keep up the pace far longer than their prey. They run their dinner to ground. Their favourite meal is wildebeest, an animal 10 times bigger than the biggest wild dog. The dogs only win through cooperation and coordination of the attack. Eight, nine or up to a dozen dogs may take part in the kill. They run relentlessly at the legs of the wildebeest, yapping and lunging at them. Some dogs jump and bound through the air to bite the rump. The wildebeest bleeds. He slows and weakens. When he’s no longer running, only trotting, the pack pounces in full, bringing him down. The skill needed to do all this at 40 mph is remarkable. The dogs know how to bite in such a way that they do not injure themselves, because one badly aimed bite can ruin a dog, his jaw broken by a powerful wildebeest kick. The filming is breathtaking. A team of cameramen on the ground begin with the dogs at a watering hole. We see the dogs mill about and start to group. We watch as they lope off in the direction indicated by the lead dog. At first they move slowly, getting their bearings and positioning themselves properly in the pack. Seen from the air they resemble an arrowhead, their V-formation resembling a flock of geese in flight. The main dog leads, the others follow, both sides fanning out from tip to base. It’s all quite beautiful, almost balletic, until you remember the speeds at which the pack is moving. For as long as it possibly can, a truck speeds along with the pack from a distance, bouncing over rough terrain on the open plain, its gyro steadi-cams miraculously keeping the focus clean. But the humans can only follow them so far on the ground. Next we’re in the air above them — in helicopters, ultralights or light aircraft. From the air we see the collective intelligence of the pack at work, how it adapts to changing circumstances (for example, two or three wildebeest peel away from the chase, dividing and disrupting the pack and its flow). Some dogs follow these wildebeest, sapping the collective strength of the pack, but the dogs soon realise this and regroup, catching up with the main hunt ahead. This is led by a tiring lead dog, in most cases the mother of the pack dogs. Other dogs, younger than the mother, pass her, one taking the lead. The pack thus reunites and takes proper shape again. Its target, the winded wildebeest ahead, slows. Before the wildebeest can rejoin its own collective herd the dog pack pounces. The beast is down, the struggle and chase over. All feast. They do not fight for the best cuts. They eat in harmony as equals, every individual having played his or her part in the kill. So this is their way of life, hundreds of thousands or millions of years in the making. They need each other and the vast open spaces to perform the hunt. They also need prey such as wildebeest to run at and bring down. Is all this a luxury in the 21st century? We can’t know yet. Zambia is remote, underpopulated, untouched in some ways by man. But there is encroachment. There are pressures. Wild dog populations aren’t now what they once were. Prey also need open spaces. They wander and migrate long distances in search of the best grazing areas. They need space to roam. The big game of Africa are big because their environments have allowed them to grow, evolution doing what it does best, filling niches with species that can thrive in them. We don’t know what will happen to the wild dogs of Zambia. In the past, being ignorant, I wasn’t in a position to care. But seeing them here in intimate close-up and watching them in the hunt has altered my perception of them. It also plays with notions of ugliness and beauty, making one see the truth: namely, that beauty has many faces. The wild dogs of Zambia are thus a world treasure in their way. Protecting them and their hunting grounds may say a lot about us and our priorities as a species. Finally, is it too far fetched to say that the wild dogs of Zambia may teach us something? They don’t war with one another. The group, the pack, protects itself by working together in harmony and equality. They have leaders but do not follow them blindly. If a leader tires and lags during the hunt, another dog temporarily replaces it. To survive they protect the health of the group. Do we do the same? Do we behave like this? Even knowing, for instance, that there’s no such thing as race, that the idea is nothing more than a cultural construct and prejudice now discredited by science, is our conduct altered by the knowledge of this truth? Yes in some cases, happily, but not enough. The work of education is never finished. Among the wild dogs of Zambia there are no divisive ideas to fight over. Thus they inspire us, or they can if we let them. My thanks to the BBC, David Attenborough, and all the patient and heroic members of the camera crews and their support teams, including local guides in the places where the BBC Earth team travelled. By opening a window on how predators and prey interact they’ve also given us a lesson in conservation, showing us what we stand to lose if we don’t become more sensible, generous, conscientious and wise. Pardon me, lastly, for not writing more about the many other predators and their prey in the series, but of course it’s much better to see them for yourself rather than read about them here. You will not be disappointed. The programme reminds us, yet again, how magnificent and beautiful our natural heritage is. As far as we know, the only life in our galaxy is right here on Earth. Pause for a moment to let that sink in.

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