Nature - Season 32 - Eps 17: The Gathering Swarms
A look at some of the planet’s great gatherings, creatures that come together in inconceivable numbers – sometimes in millions, billions, and even trillions. Included are bats and bees, locust and ants, monarch butterflies in Mexico, 17-year cicada hatches, grunion in the Sea of Cortez and carp in the Mississippi River, sardine runs off the coast of South Africa, super flocks of parakeets in the Australian Outback, mayflies on the 4th of July, and even penguins and wildebeest. Some gather to breed or to migrate, some for protection, some simply to keep warm in the cold. But in the process, a kind of super-organism is created in which individual intelligence is superseded by a collective consciousness that shares information and moves with a single purpose for the benefit of all. Check out swarm intelligence, essentially a living embodiment of social media in the natural world.
About Nature
Title: Nature
First Air Date: 1982-10-10
Last Air Date: 2025-04-16
Status: Returning Series
Rating: 8.1/10 (from 35 votes)
Language: EN
Seasons: 44
Total Episodes: 678
Network: PBS
Genres: Documentary, Family
Production Companies: Thirteen, Coneflower Films Studios, Trebitsch Produktion International GmbH, Rubin Tarrant Productions
Synopsis
Consistently stunning documentaries transport viewers to far-flung locations ranging from the torrid African plains to the chilly splendours of icy Antarctica. The show's primary focus is on animals and ecosystems around the world. A comic book based on the show, meant to be used an as educational tool for kids, was briefly distributed to museums and schools at no cost in the mid-2000s.
