Boogie at an Animal Dance Party | BBC Earth

[Music] [Music] meadows that only a few weeks ago were buried beneath the snow are now full of life [Music] but in these mountains the good times will not last long so the bears must feed as fast as they can during the summer months an adult can put on 180 kilos gorging on plants and if they can catch them [Music] a mormont or two but just now the bears have something else on their minds it's becoming warmer and the bears are keen to shed their thick winter coats mothers show the cubs what to do

about this they'll soon catch on some trees it seems are particularly suitable for rubbing bears have their favorites and will travel long distances to visit them some itches just have to be scratched [Music] there are now around 30 bears in this one valley [Music] as they rub each leaves an individual and recognizable scent [Music] [Applause] so the tree soon carries a list of who's around which might help individuals to avoid a fight to best spread their scent they really have to put their ba

ck into it [Music] um [Music] but summer is short it is satisfactorily scratched it's time to eat in a couple of months they will have to return to their dens to hibernate so now they must put on as much weight as they can one of the ultimate expressions of female choice can be found high above the forest floor of papua new guinea [Music] male raghiana birds of paradise [Laughter] [Music] everything about these ostentatious birds has been fashioned by countless generations of difficult to please

hens dawn breaks with their noisy clamour so the dowdy females can easily locate the groups of displaying males they visit one site after another judging each individual by his performance [Music] their arrival causes a flurry of excitement [Music] at each site one nail occupies a central position which is more attractive to the hens it takes seven years before the males mature and acquire their ravishing plumes by contrast the hens are ready to mate much sooner and tend to outnumber the males

[Music] huh [Music] display perches are used year after year but only the most virile males hold the best position center stage in a forest so rich in fruit the females can rear their chicks alone the males are merely a colorful sperm bank [Laughter] such independence means that the hens can shop around for the most exciting males [Laughter] wow each generation of females chooses just a few elite males [Music] the majority are doomed never to breed [Music] [Music] this male is lucky but even now

at the moment of mating he cannot be absolutely sure that he'll father the females next brood [Music] there are six different species of flamingo and i've come to slim bridge wetland center in the uk to find out more about the greater flamingo in their efforts to attract a mate they do something no other flamingo species does flirting for these flamboyant birds is all about producing your best moves and looking fabulous while you're doing them paul rose from exeter university has spent the last

three years studying how these birds pick their partners everything about flamingos is about doing stuff with your friends and i've often thought it's a bit like the primary school disco in that there are some kids that really want to kind of go on the dance floor and you know they really want to get there and their boogie on they're like come on come on do it with me maybe i'm not sure and eventually it kind of spreads and everyone's like oh like we can do this as well and then off they'll go

and all do their dance together but you don't often get flamingos where one is just kind of shuffling out in the middle going woo i'm really beautiful you have to have every single bird doing it at the same time of course there's always that awkward moment when someone has to make the first move fortunately experience steps in to lend a hand typically it's the oldest tallest males in the flock who are first to grace the dance floor the first display that you're likely to see is something called

head flagging so the bird stands very tall it extends its head and its neck and it kind of moves its head from side to side okay and that's normally started by the tallest males in the flock okay not to say that the females don't get involved they're not like a peacock where you have the boys display and the females go maybe you no i'm not sure they all do it at the same time but putting yourself out there doesn't always go according to plan timing is everything so i do feel sorry for them somet

imes when they want to do their head flagging and look really tall and really beautiful and everyone else is on one leg fast asleep that's a bit sad overly eager youngsters are the ones who get it wrong most often being ignored by the rest of the flock is never a good look sticking your neck out is only the start scientists have discovered that flamingos have nine signature moves designed to show off their best assets another display that normally follows the head flagging which is called wing s

aluting [Music] it's to basically give a sudden shock of colour against their uniform their pale body color [Music] what are they all doing this is this whole let's all run in that direction yeah come on let's go and try and see if we can get everybody together doing the same thing at the same time very complicated isn't it yeah they don't do anything by heart [Music] huh [Music] up [Music] yes [Music] ultimately all of dhofar's riches are sustained by the sea and the sea itself is undergoing a

radical transformation warm surface waters are being dragged away sucked to the north by the mighty indian monsoon an oceanic vacuum is created and something must fill the space cold water welds up from the depths bringing nutrients from the sea floor with it [Music] chilled water also holds more oxygen and more oxygen means more life as the temperature drops these seas are transforming into some of the richest in the world microscopic plankton flourish and an explosion of life begins [Music] fi

sh from every corner of the indian ocean have come to feed fusiliers blue triggerfish and graceful devil rays some have traveled from as far as australia to enjoy these riches this is why the humpbacks never leave they don't need to migrate to cold waters to feed cold water comes to them and this bounty attracts one species that arrives not in thousands not even millions the indian oil sardine arrives in billions a single shoal can be over three miles long [Music] [Music] by moving in unison the

y confuse predators rays are too slow socotra cormorants struggle to pick a target but synchronized swimming won't protect them from the ocean's most voracious predator man the arrival of the sardines means the jabali mountain men become part-time fishermen over half a million tons of fish will be brought in sometimes they can fly more than six kilometers to get enough nectar and pollen back because they need a plentiful and vast supply it's a huge problem and to solve that problem requires mass

ive organization but the bees have an almost incredible solution [Music] adam has set up an observation hive it's completely dark inside and so infrared cameras reveal what's going on [Music] there's all sorts of behaviors going on initially it looks very chaotic it looks like bees are everywhere but you can see some vibrations going on and some movements that are actually part of a very sophisticated communication system the bees perform a striking behavior that's key to solving the problem of

gathering enough food it's called the waggle dance the waggle dance is a very sophisticated way of directing forages towards nectar in the environment so it's sat now for bees it's telling them where to go [Music] the waggle dance isn't just for show this bee has found a good source of food and she's performing a set of very precise movements to tell the others exactly where to find it and it tells them the direction and the distance of the nectar the best way to understand how the waggle dance

actually works is to get up high because then you can get a view of the landscape in which the bees are operating [Music] this church tower gives adam a bee's eye view of the landscape [Music] from up here it's easy to see where the sun lies over the landscape and where it would be if it were on the horizon so you imagine the sun drops down to the horizon that's the line the bees have to follow and that's what the waggle dance is doing it's giving them direction one of the dancing bees in the hi

ve was waggling at an angle of 5 degrees so if this tower were a massive beehive the waggle dance would be telling us that the nectar is 5 degrees from the relative position of the sun somewhere in that direction but they can also advertise distance because the duration of that waggle run that central component tells the bees how far away the resource is the closer it is the shorter the waggle run [Music] you