(THEME MUSIC PLAYING)
NARRATOR: Welcome to North America.
The most diverse continent on Earth.
The only place where you can find every landscape from polar ice cap...
to baking desert, and everything in between.
Whatever the neighborhood, there's a hero who can make it a home.
Smart, tough, brave, you name it.
They all have what it takes to thrive
in the wildest, most beautiful continent on Earth.
SINGER: Patchwork quilt of life
Wildness never dies
Beauty always thrives
Under these spacious skies
(MUSIC FADES)
(INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC PLAYS)
NARRATOR: Every corner of America calls for a different kind of hero.
These are the Teton Mountains of Wyoming.
The edge of North America's biggest mountain range, the Rockies.
With towering peaks and vast forests,
this is a land of giants.
But heroes come in all shapes and sizes.
(MUSIC FADES)
-(BIRDS CHIRPING) -(SQUIRREL RATTLE CALLING)
NARRATOR: A red squirrel.
(RATTLE CALLING)
NARRATOR: Yeah, he's small, but trust me, size isn't everything.
(UPLIFTING MUSIC PLAYS)
NARRATOR: He's collecting pinecone seeds
to help feed him through the long mountain winter ahead.
(BIRDS CHIRPING)
NARRATOR: He's been hard at work for two months.
And he's collected a stash to be proud of.
With all those savings in the bank, you might think he could rest easy.
(MUSIC FADES)
NARRATOR: But life's not that simple.
(SOFT MUSIC PLAYS)
NARRATOR: A freeloading black bear.
Darn!
He's not gonna take this lying down.
(SQUIRREL CALLS)
(MUSIC CLIMAXES, THEN FADES)
NARRATOR: What the...
(RATTLE CALL)
-(WHIMSICAL MUSIC PLAYS) -NARRATOR: Seriously?
I mean, you got to admire the squirrel's guts.
He's taking on a guy a thousand times his size.
(SQUIRREL CHIRPING)
NARRATOR: If he gets too close, he might end up in a pinecone sandwich.
(MUSIC INTENSIFIES, THEN FADES)
(CHIRPS LOUDLY)
NARRATOR: He tries the angry holler.
(CHIRPS)
NARRATOR: The blitz defense.
But dream on.
The whole stash is gone in minutes.
A small snack for the thief,
a big problem for the squirrel.
He's not defeated, though.
He finds some new hiding spots.
As evening falls, he's still hard at work.
And yet more strangers show up on his patch.
Long-eared owls.
They like to dine out on squirrels.
Probably a good time to head to bed.
While he's sleeping, his worst nightmare comes true.
Porcupines uncover one of his new stashes.
And worse still, a grizzly bear, the greediest thief of them all,
finds the last of his buried savings.
(MUSIC FADES)
NARRATOR: Morning brings a scene of...
carnage.
(BIRDS CHIRPING)
NARRATOR: All appears lost.
But here's why this squirrel's a hero.
(DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYS)
NARRATOR: Up in a treetop, he's been gathering a secret supply
that the big guys didn't find.
He didn't put all his eggs in one basket.
Smart thinking,
just what you need to make it in the mountains of America.
Mountain worlds cover one quarter of our continent.
From the glacier-carved Yosemite Valley in the Sierra Nevada...
to the volcanoes of the Cascades and Aleutians.
Most famous of our 300 active volcanoes is Mount St. Helens.
(DRAMATIC MUSIC CONTINUES)
NARRATOR: And the highest point in the continent?
Over 20,000 feet. Denali, in Alaska.
Up high, the extreme cold is the biggest challenge for life.
Drop down to the coast,
and there's a whole different set of problems to overcome.
In the South, thousands of square miles of wetlands sit just above sea level,
including the biggest swamp in all of North America.
The Atchafalaya in Louisiana.
(DRAMATIC MUSIC FADES)
(CROAKING)
NARRATOR: It's ruled over by a giant
that's been around since the time of the dinosaurs.
(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYS)
NARRATOR: An American alligator, our biggest reptile.
Up to 15 feet long, and a half a ton.
How has her kind survived
in America's wetlands for 70 million years?
Patience.
She'll wait as long as it takes to catch her prey.
It helps that she can go for two years between meals.
Eyes and nostrils on the top of her head
mean that she can stay hidden underwater while she looks for food.
She'll eat just about anything.
(SQUEAKS)
(SQUAWKS)
NARRATOR: Although today, she's gunning for a big prize.
A white-tailed deer.
The best grazing is right by the water's edge.
The younger deer have no experience of the danger that can lie beneath.
She has to keep it real slow.
These guys are too wary.
Maybe a resting deer will be easier to approach.
Over a short distance,
she can strike five times faster than a snake.
(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC CONTINUES)
NARRATOR: Not today.
But no worries. She's got all the time in the world.
It just takes one deer to make one mistake,
and she'll be waiting.
(SOFT GUITAR MUSIC PLAYS)
NARRATOR: Head north from the low-lying swamps of the South...
and you enter the vast American heartland.
All along the Mississippi River,
over the spectacular Badlands of South Dakota,
open country of plains, rivers, and forests
stretch for 3,000 miles.
All the way to the Arctic, where North America
reaches closer to the North Pole than any other continent.
In the middle,
the prairies are the meeting place for weather from north and south.
Out here, you got to be ready for all seasons in a day.
(BIRD SQUAWKING)
One minute, it's green all around.
An hour later, snow everywhere.
Be prepared for anything,
whether you're big like a bison...
(GRUNTING)
NARRATOR: ...small like a prairie dog...
or newly arrived for the breeding season.
(GRUNTING)
NARRATOR: Like this burrowing owl.
The greatest temperature change ever recorded on Earth in one day
was on the U.S. prairie, a 100-degree swing.
Sunny and warm again.
And now, it's raining.
The heartland heroes are used to it.
Whatever!
This hard-working prairie dog mom takes it all in her stride.
She's got demanding kids to worry about.
You know the feeling.
Out here, though, it pays to keep one eye on the weather.
There's no mountains to block winds blowing from north or south.
So when the winds shift
and freezing cold air from the Arctic meets baking hot air from the tropics,
things get nasty.
(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYS)
NARRATOR: Up above the prairie dog town,
the most violent type of thunderstorm on Earth is forming.
(THUNDER RUMBLING)
NARRATOR: A supercell.
The warm air is pushing up through the cold at 100 feet per second,
sucking water vapor with it.
The thundercloud can climb to twice the height of Mount Everest.
The low rumble of a storm alerts animals for miles around.
In the most extreme supercells,
the movement of warm and cold airstreams creates a spinning vortex.
The birth of one of the planet's most destructive forces.
A tornado.
Over 1,000 touch down here every year.
(WIND SWOOSHING)
NARRATOR: If you've got a burrow, use it now.
Wind speeds can hit over 300 miles per hour,
the strongest winds on Earth.
-(WIND SWOOSHING) -(MUSIC INTENSIFYING)
(MUSIC CLIMAXES, THEN FADES)
NARRATOR: Tornadoes are getting more widespread as our climate warms.
A big challenge for people,
but for the burrow dwellers of the Great Plains,
a tornado is just a minor inconvenience.
(UPLIFTING MUSIC PLAYS)
NARRATOR: Mama prairie dog gets straight on with rebuilding
the front porch.
She even gets the kids to help out.
But wait, is that another change in the wind?
Oh, man!
(MELANCHOLIC MUSIC PLAYS)
NARRATOR: The heroes at the heart of our continent
endure the planet's wildest weather.
(DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYS)
NARRATOR: Travel out to the sunny California coast,
and the challenges for life are way different.
Just offshore from Los Angeles, there's a special breed of hero.
Dolphins.
(DOLPHINS WHISTLING)
NARRATOR: The secret to their success?
Teamwork.
There are more dolphins per square mile here
than anywhere else on Earth.
A gang like this can be 10,000 strong.
Every one of them swimming as fast as an Olympic sprinter can run.
(DOLPHINS WHISTLING)
NARRATOR: Today, they're hunting within sight of Tinseltown.
(WHISTLING)
NARRATOR: Working together, they scour the ocean for prey.
Soon, they round up a giant school of anchovies.
(DOLPHINS WHISTLING)
NARRATOR: Other hunters spot the opportunity.
Californian sea lions and diving seabirds.
(DRAMATIC MUSIC CONTINUES)
NARRATOR: It looks like an easy meal.
But the anchovies have a dazzling defense.
They stay close and coordinate their movements.
The blur of twisting and turning fish confuses the hunters.
They can't pick out any single fish.
This looks like a job for team dolphin.
They drive a wedge into the shoal.
Working together, they gradually break the shoal up into smaller chunks.
Now, it's easier to target the individual fish.
Every predator eats as much as it can...
before the gatecrashers arrive.
A humpback whale can eat 80,000 anchovies in a single gulp.
So, two whales together soon bring an end to this Hollywood drama.
(MOANING)
NARRATOR: Since humans were banned from hunting whales,
some have made a comeback here.
Including the greatest of all.
The blue whale.
(UPLIFTING MUSIC PLAYS)
NARRATOR: The biggest animal that's ever lived.
Up to 200 tons and 100 feet long.
North America is one of the best places in the world to see blue whales.
Almost as many live here now as there were before hunting began.
The rich Pacific sustains these ocean giants,
and also giants of the land.
Off Northern California, fog banks form over the cool ocean.
Breezes blow the fog inland...
where coastal redwoods, the tallest trees on Earth,
absorb the fog water through their leaves.
There are woodlands watered by the ocean on our Atlantic Coast too.
This is the only tropical forest in the Lower 48.
The South Florida home to one of our smallest heroes.
You're looking right at him.
North America's tiniest toad.
An oak toad, the size of a nickel.
He's got to head out to eat.
The problem is, when you're this small,
pretty much everything else wants to eat you.
This little guy needs courage.
For him, a 50-yard journey to find food is a dangerous quest.
With predators at every turn.
In his path, the biggest toad in America.
At over ten times his size,
this cane toad could swallow him whole.
(CROAKING)
NARRATOR: Better hope the big guy's not hungry.
(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYS)
(UPLIFTING MUSIC CONTINUES)
NARRATOR: Oof. Lucky escape.
It won't always be so easy, though.
Some hunters here are hungry.
(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYS)
NARRATOR: A garter snake.
She smells the air with her forked tongue to track her prey.
She's nearly on him.
But she loses the trail.
Maybe the toad used the smell of the snail to mask his own scent.
(SOFT MUSIC PLAYS)
NARRATOR: It pays to be small sometimes.
Now, there's just one last predator in the toad's path.
Perhaps the most sinister of them all.
A sundew, a carnivorous plant.
(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYS)
NARRATOR: It uses a sugary secretion to lure in its prey.
The ant is trapped by the sticky droplets.
Allowing the sundew to slowly engulf it.
A deadly predator...
but just what the toad's been looking for.
He fires out his tongue faster than the human eye can blink...
stealing ants from the sundew's sticky grip.
Who doesn't love an all-you-can-eat buffet?
Brave and crafty,
he's definitely a hero of this lush coastal forest.
(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC CONTINUES)
NARRATOR: Inland, America is a drier world.
In California, humid Pacific air can't cross the High Sierras.
Beyond is the driest place in North America
and the hottest place on Earth, Death Valley.
Named by European settlers
who almost died crossing this scorched plain.
The western deserts are the setting
for some of the most famous landscapes on Earth.
Some are the stuff of legend.
In the stories of the Navajo,
the 1,000-foot-tall towers of Monument Valley...
are the bodies of defeated monsters.
The bare rock of these deserts have been carved by the elements
for thousands of years.
With spectacular results.
The Grand Canyon, the largest canyon in America.
Nearly 300 miles long...
and over a mile deep.
It's truly awe-inspiring.
But how do you make a living here?
(MUSIC FADES)
NARRATOR: Rule one. You gotta be tough. Able to endure months of drought.
Rule two. Everyone, from this mountain lion
all the way down the food chain, has to grasp the opportunity
when rain does make it beyond the mountains.
-(THUNDER RUMBLING) -(ETHEREAL CHANTING)
NARRATOR: When it rains here...
it rains here, up to two inches an hour.
After the storm,
all the locals come out to drink.
Even those,
like this rattlesnake, who usually stay hidden.
For this roadrunner,
the rain presents more than just a chance to quench his thirst.
He has his eye on a female.
(WHIMSICAL MUSIC PLAYS)
NARRATOR: But despite his best efforts at personal grooming,
she's not interested.
So, lucky for him,
the rain has brought out what he needs to impress his lady.
Food.
The perfect gift for a first date...
a scorpion.
No luck there.
How about a juicy lizard?
Surely, this will win her heart.
I mean, who couldn't resist fresh lizard delivered with a shake of the tail?
She's leading him on a dance.
She's interested.
But there's trouble ahead.
(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYS)
NARRATOR: The rattler is still out.
(RATTLING)
(SOFT MUSIC PLAYS)
NARRATOR: The shock puts her off romance.
It's too bad.
But no unwanted gift should go to waste.
Especially in the desert, where the good times
usually don't last long.
(DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYS)
NARRATOR: Out here, change can come fast.
But for sheer scale of change, head to the north of our continent.
The White Mountains of New Hampshire.
(BIRDS CHIRPING)
NARRATOR: Scene of one of the most famous transformations on Earth.
As winter approaches, the trees lose pigments from their leaves.
The cue for a magical display.
The fall colors of New England.
The color change sweeps through the plants
and the animals.
Some caterpillars here change color with the leaves.
It's a neat trick, which means they can stay camouflaged
while their home changes around them.
The fall transformation is the beginning of the great northern winter.
(SQUAWKING)
NARRATOR: Brutal... and beautiful.
(TRANQUIL MUSIC PLAYS)
NARRATOR: The northern lights dance over the summit of Denali in Alaska,
our highest mountain and the coldest place on Earth
outside of Antarctica.
Through the long winter months, the weak sun brings no warmth.
(DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYS)
NARRATOR: So, you've got to be ready to take advantage of the good times
when spring finally comes.
-(MUSIC FADES) -(BIRDS SCREECHING)
NARRATOR: A caribou herd is on the move...
seeking out the newly exposed grass.
But this female has dropped behind the herd...
to have her calf.
(REINDEER GRUNTS)
NARRATOR: He's the last-born youngster of this calving season.
It's going to take a heroic effort from Mom to keep him safe.
At just an hour old, she pushes him to get moving.
They're vulnerable alone.
Way ahead, the herd offers safety in numbers.
She's nearly caught up with another mom and calf
who are also trailing behind the herd.
But her tiny, last-born calf is struggling to keep pace.
And the last place you want to be is bringing up the rear.
Grizzly bears are on the caribous' tail,
recently emerged from hibernation and very hungry.
This bear is more desperate than most.
She's a mother too, with three young cubs in tow.
(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYS)
(REINDEER GRUNTS)
NARRATOR: The older calf tries to keep safe by keeping still.
But he panics.
Mom calls to encourage him.
But she's helpless against the bear.
Some battles can't be won.
This small meal won't sustain the bears for long.
The mom of the youngest calf needs to keep him on the move.
Soon, they catch up with the rest of the herd.
The caribou choose a dangerous route to shake off the bears.
Ahead of the herd is a river, fast flowing and swollen with melted snow.
It's tough for the adults. For the calves, it can be deadly.
They've only just learned to walk, and now, it's sink or swim.
The mother of the youngest calf has brought him safely this far,
but she can't help him with this.
It's possible death in front...
or certain death behind.
(REINDEER GRUNTING)
NARRATOR: Where she leads, hopefully, he'll follow.
(DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYS)
(MUSIC INTENSIFIES, THEN FADES)
NARRATOR: He's struggling to swim.
-(DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYS) -(BABY REINDEER GRUNTS)
(REINDEER GRUNTING)
NARRATOR: He's made it!
The bear won't risk crossing with her cubs.
(REINDEER GRUNTS)
NARRATOR: Mama caribou has led her calf to safety.
And just in time, he found his inner hero.
-(SOFT MUSIC PLAYS) -(BABY REINDEER GRUNTS)
NARRATOR: It's ultimately the land itself that shapes our heroes.
(THEME MUSIC PLAYS)
NARRATOR: Just look deeper into every corner of this great continent,
and you'll find beautiful landscapes, graced by icons of the American wild.
SINGER: This is paradise
NARRATOR: Heroes supremely adapted to the challenges of their worlds.
SINGER: Seed and grain, new life
NARRATOR: Striving to overcome all that life throws at them...
SINGER: All that we don't even know
NARRATOR: ...and surviving to raise new generations...
(HOWLING)
NARRATOR: ...that can call this beautiful land... home.
SINGER: This is paradise
Under these spacious skies
(THEME MUSIC FADES)