Open ocean, a vast biotope covering two thirds of the planet, some shallow, some as deep as the mountain ranges are high.

Trees are earth's largest organisms and are also one of the planet's oldest inhabitants. Seasonal forests (unlike tropical rain-forest) the largest land habitats.

Shallow seas cover only 8% of earth's surface, but contain the richest, most varied maritime life: from plankton and coral (literally vital for the very existence of reefs) to birds and from various invertebrates to mammals like seals, dolphins and whales and from sea snakes to countless fish species.

On 3% of the Earth's surface, the rain forest is the habitat for half our animal species, even 80% of insects. So its wildlife is most competitive, like the birds of paradise's mating, and specialized with unique relationships of predation, parasitism etc.

A quarter of the earth's land mass, from arctic to tropical, are open plains consisting of lowland as well as highland plateaus.

A large and growing part of earth's land mass is covered in desert - each one widely varied in composition and dryness.

A visually remarkable and most stimulating feast at the world that we live in, this series is not to be missed!
Four years in the making, it was the most expensive nature documentary series ever commissioned by the BBC, and also the first to be filmed in high definition.
With a budget of about £40 million, the BBC were going to have to deliver something pretty special to avoid the usual accusations of waste tax payer’s money. With Planet Earth they have easily silenced the critics to present a nature programme that is interesting and education. The biggest selling point is the footage which is simply breath-taking and actually had me saying “wow” at some points. I am not naturally a nature programme viewer but this show had me hooked from episode 1 where a quick glance at the opening minutes had me staying with it for the following eleven weeks. No words can really do it justice but the series gives footage that you won’t have seen anywhere else before!

The Taiga forest, on the edge of the Arctic, is a silent world of stunted conifers. The trees may be small but filming from the air reveals its true scale. A third of all trees on Earth grow here and during the short summer they produce enough oxygen to change the atmosphere.In California General Sherman, a giant sequoia, is the largest living thing on the planet, ten times the size of a blue whale. The oldest organisms alive are bristlecone pines. At more than 4,000 years old they pre-date the pyramids. But the baobab forests of Madagascar are perhaps the strangest of all.

A humpback whale mother and calf embark on an epic journey from tropical coral paradises to storm ravaged polar seas.Newly discovered coral reefs in Indonesia reveal head-butting pygmy seahorses, flashing 'electric' clams and bands of sea kraits, 30-strong, which hunt in packs. Elsewhere plagues of sea urchins fell forests of giant kelp. Huge bull fur seals attack king penguins, who despite their weight disadvantage, put up a spirited defence.

Jungles cover roughly three per cent of our planet yet contain 50 per cent of the world's species. High-definition cameras enable unprecedented views of animals living on the dark jungle floor.In the Ngogo forest the largest chimpanzee group in the world defends its territory from neighbouring groups. Other jungle specialists include parasitic fungi which infiltrate an insect host, feed on it, and then burst out of its body.

After filming for three years, Planet Earth finally captures the shy Mongolian gazelle. Only a handful of people have witnessed its annual migration. Don't miss the bizarre-looking Tibetan fox, captured on film for the first time.Over six weeks the team follow a pride of 30 lions as they attempt to hunt elephants. Using the latest night vision equipment, the crew film the chaotic battles that ensue at close quarters.

The Arctic and Antarctic experience the most extreme seasons on Earth. Time-lapse cameras watch a colony of emperor penguins, transforming them into a single organism. The film reveals new science about the dynamics of emperor penguin behaviour.In the north, unique aerial images show a polar bear swimming more than 100km. Diving for up to two minutes at a time. The exhausted polar bear later attacks a herd of walrus in a true clash of the Titans.

Around 30% of the land's surface is desert, the most varied of our ecosystems despite the lack of rain. Saharan sandstorms reach nearly a mile high and desert rivers run for a single day.In the Gobi Desert, rare Bactrian camels get moisture from the snow. In the Atacama, guanacos survive by licking dew off cactus spines. The brief blooming of Death Valley triggers a plague of locusts 65km wide and 160km long. A unique aerial voyage over the Namibian desert reveals elephants on a long trek for food and desert lions searching for wandering oryx.

The Cave of Swallows in Mexico is a 400m vertical shaft, deep enough to engulf the Empire State Building. The Lechuguilla cave system in the USA is 193km long with astonishing crystal formations.Caves are remarkable habitats with equally bizarre wildlife. Cave angel fish cling to the walls behind waterfalls with microscopic hooks on their fins. Cave swiftlets navigate by echo-location and build nests out of saliva. The Texas cave salamander has neither eyes nor pigment. Planet Earth gets unique access to a hidden world of stalactites, stalagmites, snotites and troglodytes.

Fresh water defines the distribution of life on land. Follow the descent of rivers from their mountain sources to the sea. Watch spectacular waterfalls, fly inside the Grand Canyon and explore the wildlife in the world's deepest lake.Planet Earth captures unique and dramatic moments of animal behaviour: a showdown between smooth-coated otters and mugger crocodiles; deep-diving long tailed macaques; massive flocks of snow geese on the wing and a piranha frenzy in the perilous waters of the world's largest wetland.

Tour the mightiest mountain ranges, starting with the birth of a mountain at one of the lowest places on Earth and ending at the summit of Everest.One of Earth's rarest phenomena is a lava lake that has been erupting for over 100 years.The same forces built the Simian Mountains where troops of gelada baboons live, nearly a thousand strong. In the Rockies, grizzlies build winter dens inside avalanche-prone slopes. The programme also brings us astounding images of a snow leopard hunting on the Pakistan peaks, a world first.

The lives of animals and plants are dominated by the sun and fresh water which trigger seasonal journeys. The latest technology and aerial photography enable the Planet Earth team to track some of the greatest mass migrations.In the Arctic spring, a mother polar bear and cubs emerge from their winter den. They have just two weeks to cross the frozen sea before it melts and they become stranded. Share the most intimate and complete picture of polar bear life ever filmed. Further south, time-lapse cameras capture the annual transformation created by the Okavango floods.

The sixth programme looks at the regions of the Arctic and Antarctica. The latter contains 90% of the world's ice, and stays largely deserted until the spring, when visitors arrive to harvest its waters. Snow petrels take their place on nunataks and begin to court, but are preyed on by South Polar skuas. During summer, a pod of humpback whales hunt krill by creating a spiralling net of bubbles. The onset of winter sees the journey of emperor penguins to their breeding grounds, 160 kilometres (99 mi) inland. Their eggs transferred to the males for safekeeping, the females return to the ocean while their partners huddle into large groups to endure the extreme cold.

The penultimate episode surveys the coniferous and deciduous seasonal woodland habitats — the most extensive forests on Earth. Conifers begin sparsely in the Arctic but soon dominate the land, and the taiga circles the globe, containing a third of all the Earth's trees. Few creatures can survive the Arctic climate all year round, but the moose and wolverine are exceptions. 1,600 kilometres (990 mi) to the south, on the Pacific coast of North America, conifers have reached their full potential.

This programme is devoted to the shallow seas that fringe the world's continents. Although they constitute 8% of the oceans, they contain most marine life. As humpback whales return to breeding grounds in the tropics, a mother and its calf are followed. While the latter takes in up to 500 litres of milk a day, its parent will starve until it travels back to the poles to feed — and it must do this while it still has sufficient energy left for the journey. The coral reefs of Indonesia are home to the biggest variety of ocean dwellers.

The next instalment examines jungles and tropical rainforests. These environments occupy only 3% of the land yet are home to over half of the world's species. New Guinea is inhabited by almost 40 kinds of birds of paradise, which avoid conflict with each other by living in different parts of the island. Some of their elaborate courtship displays are shown.

This instalment features the harsh environment that covers one third of the Earth: the deserts. Due to Siberian winds, Mongolia's Gobi Desert reaches extremes of temperature like no other, ranging from -40°C to +50°C (-40°F to 122°F). It is home to the rare Bactrian camel, which eats snow to maintain its fluid level and must limit itself to 10 litres (2.6 U.S. gal; 2.2 imp gal) a day if it is not to prove fatal. Africa's Sahara is the size of the USA, and just one of its severe dust storms could cover the whole of Great Britain. While some creatures, such as the dromedary, take them in their stride, for others the only escape from such bombardments is to bury themselves in the sand.

This episode deals with savanna, steppe, tundra, prairie, and looks at the importance and resilience of grasses in such treeless ecosystems. Their vast expanses contain the largest concentration of animal life. In Outer Mongolia, a herd of Mongolian gazelle flee a bush fire and has to move on to new grazing, but grass can repair itself rapidly and soon reappears. On the Arctic tundra during spring, millions of migratory snow geese arrive to breed and their young are preyed on by Arctic foxes. Meanwhile, time-lapse photography depicts moving herds of caribou as a calf is brought down by a chasing wolf. On the North American prairie, bison engage in the ritual to establish the dominant males.