Human Planet - Season 1

As an air-breathing animal, the human is not built to survive in water. But people have found ways to live an almost aquatic life so they can exploit the sea's riches. From a 'shark-whisperer' in the Pacific toBrazilian fishermen collaborating with dolphins to catch mullet, this journey into the blue reveals astonishing tales of ingenuity and bravery.

Daredevil Galician barnacle-collectors defy death on the rocks for a catch worth £200 per kilo. In Indonesia an epic whale-hunt, using traditional hand-made boats and harpoons, brings in a sperm whale. The Bajau 'sea Gypsies' of the Sulu Sea spend so much time on water they get 'land sick' when they set foot on the land!

We dive 40 metres down to the dangerous world of the Pa-aling fishermen, where dozens of young men, breathing air through a tangled web of pipes attached to a diesel engine, capture thousands of fish in a vast net. We see how surfing has its origins in the ancient beliefs of the ocean-loving Polynesians, and we join a Borneo free-diving spear-fisherman on a breath-taking journey 20 metres down in search of supper.

We can survive for weeks without food, but only days without water: it is the essential element of life. Yet many millions of us live in parched deserts around the world. In the second episode of Human Planet, we discover how the eternal quest for water brings huge challenges - and ingenious solutions - in the driest places on Earth.

Battling through a sand storm in Mali, Mamadou must get his cows to a remote lake but desert elephants have arrived first. Can he find a safe way through the elephant blockade? Alone for weeks on end, Tubu women and children navigate the endless dunes of the Sahara. How does young Shede know where to find the last oasis, three days walk across the sea of sand? At the height of the drought we witness a spectacular frenzy: two thousand men rushing into Antogo Lake to catch the fish trapped by the evaporating water. When the rain finally arrives in the desert it's a time for flowering and jubilation - and love. The Wodaabe men of Niger put on make-up for an intoxicating courtship dance and beauty contest and the women pick the winners.

The Arctic is the harshest environment on Earth - little food grows, it's dark for months on end and temperatures stay well below freezing for much of the year. Yet four million people manage to survive here. This film tells the remarkable stories of extraordinary people who make their homes in nature's deep freeze.

In springtime, Amos and Karl-Frederik set out across the sea ice with their dogs to catch a real-life sea monster - a Greenland shark. Inuit mussel-gatherers venture underneath the sea ice at low tide for a perilous race against time as they gather their food.

The children of Churchill, Manitoba, set out on the most dangerous trick or treating Halloween in the world, risking coming face-to-face with deadly polar bears on the streets of their town. Who will get the tastiest snack?

The rainforest is home to more species of plants and animals than any other habitat on the planet. But for humans, life there is not as easy as it looks. Life in the trees requires great skill, ingenuity and sheer bravery.

The Matis of Brazil carve 4m-long blowpipes to hunt monkeys in near total silence. Deep in the Congo forests, Tete defies death by scaling a giant tree using nothing more than a liana vine and he must then negotiate an angry swarm of bees - all to collect honey for his family.

Three children from Venezuela's Piaroa tribe venture deep into the jungle to hunt tarantulas to toast for lunch. In West Papua the Korowai tribe show off their engineering skills by building a high-rise home 35 metres up in the tree tops.

Most memorable of all, in Brazil we join a unique monitoring flight in search of an uncontacted tribe.

From lush cloud forests to bare summits that take your breath away, the higher you climb the tougher life gets on a mountain. Human Planet explores the extraordinary ways in which people survive at extremealtitudes where nature becomes utterly unforgiving.

In the Altai Mountains in western Mongolia, the vast open spaces make hunting for animals almost impossible, so the locals have forged an astonishing partnership with golden eagles which can do the hunting for them.

On the precipitous cliffs of the Simien Mountains of Ethiopia we join a young boy locked in a dramatic battle with fearsome gelada monkeys which are hellbent on raiding his family's meagre grain harvest.

In the Himalayan state of Nepal we witness a rarely seen ceremony - a sky burial. In a land where there is little wood to burn for cremation and where burying the dead is virtually impossible, the dead are fed to vultures in the ultimate reverence of nature.

Grasslands feed the world. Over thousands of years, we humans have learned to grow grains on the grasslands and domesticate the creatures that live there. Our success has propelled our population to almost seven billion people.

But this episode reveals that, even today, life in the 'Garden of Eden' is not always rosy. We walk with the Dorobo people of Kenya as they bravely attempt to scare off a pride of hungry lions from their freshly caught kill. We gallop across the Steppe with extraordinary Mongolian horsemen who were 'born in the saddle'. And in a perfect partnership with nature built up over generations, Maasai children must literally talk to the birds. The honeyguide leads them to find sweet treats, but they'll have to repay the favour.

Rivers provide the essentials of life: fresh food and water. They often provide natural highways and enable us to live in just about every environment on earth. But rivers can also flood, freeze or disappearaltogether!

Human Planet joins Sam Niang, a Laotian fisherman, as he walks a high wire strung above the raging Mekong River rapids on an extraordinary commute to work.

There's also a look at the remarkable partnership between Samburu tribesmen and wild elephants in their search for water in the dried-out river beds of northern Kenya.

Also in the programme, a father takes his two children on a six-day trek down a frozen river as part of the most dangerous school run on Earth, and the ice dam busters of Ottowa provide a dynamite solution to a city centre hold-up.

A look at the one environment that's been made by us for us - the city. Over half of the world's population now lives in the urban jungle. The city is built to keep untamed nature out - but nature can't be pushed away. From bed bugs sucking our blood at night to rats in our restaurants, many animals have adapted to a life with us.

But not all urban animals are seen as pests. In the ancient city of Fez in Morocco, the leather tanneries depend on wild pigeon droppings for their business. Even futuristic Dubai would falter without falcons. In the suburbs of Jaipur, a Bishnoi woman breastfeeds an orphaned fawn. People are starting to realise that nature is key to our continued survival. On Manhattan's rooftops there is a community of beekeepers. In Masdar, Abu Dhabi, British architect Norman Foster is creating a carbon-neutral waste-free future city. Is this the future? The human planet is starting to realise that we'll only survive if we protect nature.