20 Times Planet Earth Blew Our Minds

1. Polar bear vs walrus

Godzilla vs Kong. Alien vs Predator. Ali vs Frazier. Sometimes the biggest of big dogs must go toe-to-toe, and the results are invariably bloody.

And so it goes in the frozen Arctic, as a male polar bear faces off against a herd of angry walruses. Fur versus flipper. Tooth versus tusk. The world’s largest, hungriest land carnivore versus a wall of leathery hide and metre-long tusks.

The result? A reminder that, in nature, for every winner there must be a loser.

2. Leopard leap

The (human) men’s pole vault world record, held by Sweden’s Armand Duplantis, currently stands around 6 metres and 31 centimetres. That’s a long way up, and an even longer way down. (Actually that’s not true, it’s the same distance down as up, but we’re imagining it feels a lot further on the way down.)

But the pole vault world record looks like child’s play against this insane leopard leap, which sees our fearless feline plummet nine metres – higher than a two-storey house! – from treetop to forested floor below. And, unlike those lucky Olympic vaulters, the leopard has no comfy crash mat to land on. Good thing there’s an irresistible impala there to cushion her fall.

3. Pickpocketing macaques

“To be honest, mate, it started small. A pair of glasses here and there. The odd baseball cap. Gimme half a banana and you can have it back. No harm done, everyone’s happy. And I always told myself I could get out the game. Go straight. But I couldn’t. Before I know it, I’m filching the big stuff. Wallets. Mobile phones. No shame. Broad daylight. Straight out their hands.”

Even Sir David Attenborough admitted that, of all the incredible sequences in Planet Earth III, it was the pickpocketing macaques of Bali that left the greatest impression upon him. “They are the bosses,” he recalled. “It’s really quite shocking…”

4. Racer snakes vs iguana

A beach. A clutch of newly-hatched baby marine iguanas. A hit-squad of racer snakes. Dead-eyed, lightning-fast, relentless. The chase sequence that follows is so tautly filmed, so viscerally heart-racing, you’ll find yourself gripping something. Anything. Your chair. A loved one. The cat.

The camerawork is extraordinary. Perhaps, for the long-term health of our dreams, too extraordinary. The preparation, the patience, the precision: all immaculate, all to thrill us and scare us witless in equal measure.

To date, this unforgettable showdown has amassed more than 400 million views across social media, and even been narrated by Snoop Dogg. Now that’s cultural cut-through.

5. The elephant and the bee-eater

As you may have guessed, the carmine bee-eater enjoys eating bees, and indeed other flying insects. The issue for the carmine bee-eater is that these insects spend much of their days lurking low in the grasses of the African savannah, out of the reach of bee-eating clutches.

But while the bee-eater cannot flush the insects out itself, it identifies and maintains a productive working relationship with someone who can. In business parlance, the bee-eater is extremely well connected. It leverages its network. It is, professionally speaking, always in the right place at the right time. And that place is directly in front of an African bull elephant.

What does the elephant get out of this relationship? It gets to the other side of the savannah, which was where it was going anyhow. Win-win.

6. Urban leopard vs urban pig

Who knew Mumbai was teeming with urban leopards? Certainly not Mumbai’s urban pigs, who don’t stand a chance in this harrowing remake of Babe: Pig in the City.

This was the first time a successful urban leopard hunt had ever been captured on film, thanks to the deployment of military-grade thermal cameras. Mumbai’s besieged pigs have reportedly placed an order for two-dozen of these cameras.

7. Shark vs fur seal

See, this is what it's like watching Planet Earth. One moment you’re watching some lovely little fur seal pups frolicking around in the South African surf. And then suddenly your screen is filled with the blood-chilling sight of a great white shark, jaws full of lovely little fur seal pups, barrel-rolling through the air towards you in slow motion. 'Emotional rollercoaster' doesn't even come close. 

8. Shark vs fur seal, the sequel

We all know how this story goes, not least because we saw this powerful predator earlier. Lovely little fur seals. Enormous great white shark. The end is written.

Only this time it isn’t. Because this time, the great white – over four hundred million years of evolution distilled into the ultimate predator – is denied a delicious meal by what can only be described as a planning objection. Our plucky fur seals decide that, on this occasion, they’re not prepared to let the whole ‘devouring of one of their own’ thing go, and instead form that most terrifying of entities: a steering committee.

The ocean’s apex predator? Outvoted. Motion carried. Shark excluded. Meeting adjourned.

9. Karate-kicking frog

We’re not sure what’s more brain-scrambling. The fact that glass frog tadpoles can sense danger – in the shape of a glass-frog-tadpole-eating wasp - while they’re still inside the egg and break free of their own protective surround before plunging into the water below their leafy home.

Or the fact that male glass frogs protect their eggs by karate-kicking wasps in the head. Is amphibian martial arts a thing we never knew about? Can salamanders do ju-jitsu? Are newts secretly training in Kung Fu?

Point is: glass frogs. They’re tiny. They’re virtually transparent. But underestimate them at your peril.

10. Lion vs giraffe

If you’re a lion of the Namib desert – and if you are, thanks for reading – your relationship with giraffes is an inevitably complex one.

From a lion’s perspective, giraffes are (a) very delicious, but also (b) very kicky. Question is, just how much of a hoofing are you prepared to endure for a taste of that sweet, sweet neck-meat?

As Dolly Parton once said: "If you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain." Trouble is, sometimes you get the rain but no rainbow. Or, to put in lion-terms, sometimes you get a total hoofing but no neck-meat. Tough day at the office.

Get a glimpse of that iconic moment from the trailer above. 

11. Formation flamingos

If you’ve ever experienced the dubious joy of the London tube network during Monday-morning rush hour, the sensation will be familiar. The relentless shuffle. The seemingly unending clump of bodies, swept inexorably along by some apparently unconscious force.

As for the commuters of London, so too for the flamingos of the high Andes, who, in the scorching heat of the day, perform another such formation shuffle. Where are we going? How do I get off? Why is it so weirdly hot? Who’s in charge of this whole thing? These are questions we all ask ourselves. 

OK, so the flamingos’ formation shuffle is in the name of courtship rather than commuting, but the parallels remain uncanny. “The rules,” intones Sir David. “are something of a mystery.” They always are, Sir David. They always are.

12. Snow leopard hunt

Yes, we know snow leopards are one of the Himalayas’ most powerful hunters, capable of taking down prey many times their size. But still. Look at that cute face! Are we wrong to feel, on a deep and overly-optimistic level, that if we gave that snow leopard a nice tickle on its belly, it would absolutely not rip our arm clean from its socket, and would instead become our lifelong and trusted friend? Most definitely, but it's nice to dream.

The Planet Earth team were the first to film snow leopards in the wild, giving vital insight into how they interact with their offspring, how they hunt their prey, and how they prefer not to risk getting their lovely floofy fur wet even if the prize is a tasty meal.

13. Show-off dolphins

This sequence taught us that botos – Amazon river dolphins – work together to ‘herd’ fish from deeper river waters into the shallows, thus raising the tantalising possibility of an aquatic remake of One Man and His Dog.

It also taught us that male botos attract female botos by picking up rocks in their jaws and flaunting them lasciviously.

Why do the male botos parade around with stones in order to attract a mate? We cannot say. But then why, to attract a mate, do male humans douse themselves in cologne before ordering the hottest thing on the menu? The world is indeed a mysterious place.

14. Bird dance!

To understand what makes the male Wilson’s bird of paradise so utterly irresistible to the female Wilson’s bird of paradise, you’ve got to get her perspective on things. Literally.

Viewed from the forest floor, the mating dance of this sparrow-sized lad might (with all due respect to sparrow-sized lads) look a little insignificant. But viewed from above – in other words, from the angle of a female bird, lounging in the trees above – a glorious iridescent display is revealed, a blazing mosaic of colour and movement. Moral of the story? Don’t judge a dude until you’ve seen him from his best angle.

15. Mugger croc vs deer

There’s an old maxim about thriller films. Watching a scene in which a bomb goes off, yes that’s scary. But far, far more terrifying is watching two people enjoying a pleasant drink together… with a ticking bomb under the table. We know the bomb’s there. They don’t. The wait is the terror.

Here, it’s a bunch of chital deer having the pleasant drink. And the bomb is a vast, camouflaged mugger crocodile that hasn’t moved in what feels like an age. The clock is ticking. The result feels almost inevitable.

16. Wolf vs caribou

In nature, there are no good guys and bad guys. A black mamba has as much right to exist as a bush baby. A blobfish is as beautiful, in its own way, as a red panda.

Still. In a showdown between a caribou calf (defining characteristics: knock-kneed, doe-eyed, adorably snorty) and a full-size wolf (defining characteristics: teeth), I'm personally always going to root for the caribou, right?

Cue the first ever complete hunt filmed from the air with a heli-gimbal, a drag race far tenser and more gripping than any showdown from any of the four-dozen Fast & Furious films. Not least because the loser of an F&F drag race tends not to get devoured limb from limb by an apex canine.

17. Hornbill home delivery

Whether you’re a human or oriental pied hornbill, sometimes everything can be a bit much. Sometimes, you just can’t face the noisy, busy outside world. Sometimes, you just want to wall yourself up in a nice hole in a tree trunk, strip off all your flight feathers, relax with the kids and let someone else deliver your dinner to the door. And by ‘door’, of course we mean ‘tiny hole in a carefully constructed mud wall’.

Question is, what to order in? Some juicy berries? A still-wriggling creepy-crawly? Or how about a freshly caught bat, straight from the cave?

18. Fast birds in the Big Apple

We’ll admit it wasn’t on our original New York City tourist checklist. But hey, if you ever find yourself in the Big Apple – once you’ve taken in Times Square, the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty and been honked at by a cab driver for no obvious reason – why not enjoy a spot of wildlife?

Turns out that, if you turn your gaze upwards – or, if you’re atop the Empire State Building, perhaps slightly downwards – you might be lucky enough to spot a peregrine falcon vectoring in at over 200mph onto an unsuspecting pigeon. Luckier, at least, than the pigeon.

19. Orcas vs rays

It’s nice to have a day out with the family. Faced with a free weekend, some parents might opt to take their kids for, say, a bracing walk in the country. Others might plump for an educational trip to a local museum.

And some parents, such as these orcas from Planet Earth III, choose to take their kids hunting mobula rays in the Sea of Cortez. As day-trips, it’s got plenty to recommend it. Promoting teamwork? Tick. Constructive parent-child communication? Tick. Working up a healthy appetite? Tick. Healthy seafood dinner at the end? That’s the intention, yes…

20. Lights off, lions

“These cormorants are sitting ducks,” intones Sir David as three Namibian lions stalk their way towards a flock of seabirds under cover of nightfall, eyeing a juicy late-night snack. “In theory.”

As the three sisters initially try and fail to snare a seabird, Sir David’s disappointment is palpable. “These sisters,” he tuts, “need to get their eye in.”

But, perhaps spurred on by Sir David’s gentle chiding, the lions eventually get the hang of it, plucking cormorants from the air like Mr Miyagi catching flies with chopsticks. Impressive stuff. Unless you’re a cormorant.

Find out where you can watch Planet Earth, Planet Earth II and Planet Earth III and relive these extraordinary moments.