Weird Nature
Weird Nature is a 2002 documentary television series produced by John Downer Productions for the BBC and Discovery Channel. The series features strange behavior in nature—specifically, the animal world. The series now airs on the Science Channel. The series took three years to make and a new filming technique was used to show animal movements in 3D. Each episode, however, tended to end with a piece about how humans are probably the oddest species of all. For example, in the end of the episode about locomotion, the narrator states how unusual it is for a mammal to be bipedal. In the episode about defences, the narrator explains that humans have no real natural defences, save for their big brains.
Overview
Weird Nature is a 2002 documentary television series produced by John Downer Productions for the BBC and Discovery Channel. The series features strange behavior in nature—specifically, the animal world. The series now airs on the Science Channel. The series took three years to make and a new filming technique was used to show animal movements in 3D. Each episode, however, tended to end with a piece about how humans are probably the oddest species of all. For example, in the end of the episode about locomotion, the narrator states how unusual it is for a mammal to be bipedal. In the episode about defences, the narrator explains that humans have no real natural defences, save for their big brains.
John Downer
Producer
Episodes
1. Marvelous Motions
Series looking at strange animal behaviour reveals nature's quirkiest movers and shakers. From dancing seaslugs to cartwheeling caterpillars this is nature at its most weird and wonderful. In a series of magical sequences, crocodiles gallop, salamanders transform into wheels and bushbabies bounce like rubber balls. Lizards and frogs stage an extraordinary air show, the Mexican jumping bean reveals its fidgety secrets, lemurs pogo and two-legged lizards hunt like dinosaurs. Using new filming techniques and some extraordinary special FX, this is nature as never seen before.
2. Bizarre Breeding
Discover dancing scorpions, courting birds that give trinkets as gifts, mice that mate themselves to death and a mantis that eats its partner in an exploration of strange behaviour in nature's bizarre breeding rituals. Meet frogs that rear their young under their skin, fish that leap from the water to lay eggs on leaves and a bullfrog father that becomes lifeguard to his offspring. There are fish that change sex, others that bubble-wrap their young, male hamsters that act as midwives and even a male that becomes pregnant. And, in this weird world, discover a shrew that creates a living daisy chain of its own young.
3. Fantastic Feeding
Series exploring strange animal behaviour which reveals the many inventive ways animals catch prey. Discover a creature that employs glue-guns as weapons, a fish that slashes with a chainsaw and a spider that lassos its prey with a swinging blob of glue. Meet a fish that targets its prey using its mouth as a water pistol, a shrimp that stuns its prey with sound and a lemur with an ET-like finger that taps for a meal. Plus a frogfish whose mouth moves faster than its prey can see, a snake with a tail that acts as a maggot-like lure and an eagle that has found a novel way to break into prey. There is even a mantis shrimp with a knockout punch that reaches the speed of a racing bullet and a stoat that uses hypnosis.
