Wednesday, May 9 at 8:00 p.m.
The White Lions
This is the story of two remarkable and extremely rare white lion cubs on their journey to adulthood. Both are female, sisters born as white as snow in May 2009 in South Africa’s Kruger Park. Growing up on the savanna, they must overcome not only the same survival challenges that all young lion cubs must face, they must also overcome the threats their high visibility brings.
Wednesday, May 16 at 8:00 p.m.
Cracking the Koala Code
Follow individual koalas from a small social group on an Australian island to learn just how a koala manages to survive and thrive on a diet poisonous to almost all other herbivorous mammals. From the miracle of marsupial birth to tender moments of discovery between mother and newborn joey, encounters with threatening forest creatures, battles between rival males and the complex chorus of bellows and grunts that have become so important to science — join leading scientists as they unravel just what a forest needs to support a healthy population of koalas by listening to these marsupials themselves and cracking the koala code.
Wednesday, May 23 at 8:00 p.m.
Salmon: Running the Gauntlet
Investigate the parallel stories of collapsing Pacific salmon populations and how biologists and engineers have become instruments in audacious experiments to replicate every stage of the fish’s life cycle in NATURE “Salmon: Running the Gauntlet.” Each desperate effort to save salmon has involved replacing their natural cycle of reproduction and death with a radically manipulated life history. Our once great runs of salmon are now conceived in laboratories, raised in tanks, driven in trucks and farmed in pens. NATURE goes beyond the ongoing debate over how to save an endangered species to expose a wildly creative, hopelessly complex and stunningly expensive approach to managing salmon.
Wednesday, May 30 at 8:00 p.m.
Black Mamba
The black mamba is one of Africa’s most dangerous and feared snakes, known for being aggressive when disturbed. Rearing up with its head four feet above the ground, it strikes with deadly precision, delivering venom that is packed with three different kinds of toxins 10 times more deadly than needed to kill an adult human. Without treatment, the mortality rate is 100 percent. Until now, little has been known about the black mamba’s natural behavior in the wild because, in Africa, most people kill a black mamba on sight and feel lucky to have done so. But in the tiny country of Swaziland in southern Africa, a team of herpetologists has an entirely different “take” on these creatures and hopes their six-week study will change public perception of what they feel is the world’s most misunderstood snake.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
