Communication is essential for survival. Animals have developed ways to send messages in habitats from open deserts that stretch for hundreds of miles, to dense forests where it's hard to see as far as your hand. They can sing in frequencies we can't hear, detect colours that our eyes can't see and send messages in worlds of scent, electricity and polarised light that we can only imagine. In this series Charlotte Uhlenbroek enters four different worlds and uses the latest research tools to discover what animals are saying.
Animals who live in vast open spaces face real problems
communicating with each other. In this first programme,
Charlotte investigates how animals manage to broadcast
their message over vast distances. She finds that desert iguanas
'see' scent marks and elephants send messages for miles
through the ground. Charlotte also communicates with stink
bugs by tapping a vine, lures oriental beetles using their
favourite perfume and uses a 'Hen' cam to get a male sage
grouse to display.
Explore animal communication in open worlds in depth, discover some fascinating facts and
test your skills at animal conversation.
The water world presents a unique set of challenges to animals that want to send a message. Charlotte dons reef mask and scuba gear to enter the brightly coloured underwater world. She meets 'transvestite' male cuttlefish who impersonate females to find a mate, and dinoflagellates that give off light as a kind of 'intruder' alarm. She eavesdrops on fish who have an electric courtship and meets the communication kings of the ocean, bottlenose dolphins that use 'names' to keep in contact with each other.
Explore animal communication in water worlds in depth, and test your skills at animal conversation.
In the forest world animals battle to make themselves heard above the din. A male green tree frog must make himself heard and sound sexy too. In this bizarre and claustrophobic world, Charlotte discovers moths sending threatening messages to bats, plants sending cries for help to insects and meets a bowerbird male who falls in love with a robot. She discovers that a forest past has shaped how we humans communicate today.
Explore animal communication in forest worlds in depth, and test your skills at animal conversation.
How do animals communicate in an enormous crowd where every individual looks and sounds the same? Charlotte enters a virtual world to show that only a few simple rules are needed to keep a flock of birds or fish moving in unison. She investigates how fire ants manage to co-ordinate their stings - with surprisingly painful results. She finds locusts change colour when touched on their g-spots, and how a mother seal can find her offspring among 15 million other babies.
Explore animal communication in crowded worlds in depth, and test your skills at animal conversation.
