Lynx - Close Up

As one of Germany’s beauties, the river was the gem of German landscape. But with industrialization it became the country’s hardest working river and like everything that has been overworked, it lost it magnificence and charm. Due to tender love and care, the river is now a reigning example of one of the most successful and outstanding renaturation projects in the country.

See the great migration as never before! The Mara River, nature’s best laid trap for migratory animals, is the stage for a grandiose spectacle. When food supply in the Serengeti dwindles, the Masai Mara is a paradise for predators. As the black wildebeests, gazelles, zebras and antelopes make their yearly trip from the south of the Serengeti to the north, nature’s best laid trap, the Mara River in Kenya is waiting ahead. Captivating shots filmed under water show how crocodiles prepare for the Big Hunt while other predators lurk on the banks awaiting their bounty.

Dark green, impenetrable forests cover a landscape with secluded valleys and rugged mountain ridges. 2.000 rivers and streams dig deep into the underground and transport their water into reservoirs or "Germany's Wild Amazon", the Wupper. These forests and rivers, together with heath-lands and moors, are home to a diverse fauna. Martens, badgers, wild boars, hares, roe deer, red deer and wild boars, even black grouse and hazel deer find shelter in these parts. Wolves have also have a dominant presence, not to mention those who live underground, such as lizards, bats, and snakes. Accompany us on a journey where we explore every corner of this rugged land. Climb underground into the Bergisches Land, through the vast hidden cave systems that sprawl far beneath the forests. There is also much to be discovered in the water, dive with us in crystal clear streams and rivers with their diverse flora and fauna.

Every year, in the middle of Croatia, it's the same story: after the annual snowmelt, a huge flood wave spills out of the Alps toward Zagreb and Belgrade. This leads to an increase in the River Sava's water levels of some ten meters. In the species-rich, alluvial flood forests of the last major meadow landscapes of the continent, enormous predatory fish like the catfish lie in wait for prey.

With the aid of modern technology, reveal the unknown behavior of some unusual species of shark: lemon sharks and their white-tip reef counterparts.

The waters of the North Pacific around Canada's Vancouver Island are a strange and little known world. The water is incredibly clean, the location is isolated and huge thermal vents heat the otherwise cold surrounding these factors combined have led to animals and plants that can grow to huge proportions. Humpback whales, orcas, wolf eels and bald eagles all thrive here. Our team of experts go in search of the elusive Pacific Giant Octopus. Growing up to 7.5 meters across with the power to kill sharks, it is a formidable creature, but also intelligent and incredibly shy. The dive team invites us into an alien world, where persistence is rewarded with encounters with three of these magnificent creatures.

These peculiar and roughly rabbit-sized rodents enjoy great popularity at the Grossglockner in the Austrian Alps. Before the last ice age, marmots used to live in the lowland of Tirol, but with the melting of the glaciers they were driven higher up into the mountains – a trend that will continue given the current climate change.

Gourmets all over the world are in love with these famous crustaceans: lobsters! For marine biologists lobsters are similarly fascinating: as research objects. We are on their trail in Cape Breton, an island in the northern Atlantic and part of the Canadian province Nova Scotia, where one of the largest populations of lobsters has its home.

Wildlife filmmaker Sigurd Tesche delves into the mysterious world of the moray eel to reveal the secrets of this supreme underwater predator and the truth behind its ugly reputation.

We observe mantises with our cameras whilst they are hunting, when they shed their skin and whilst breeding and eventually the females practicing their cannibalism. We were also on hand when the female produces a nest of foam on which to lay her eggs; all filmed with time lapse and real-time cameras.

What would happen to the mountains without water? They would turn into deserts, devoid of life and vegetation. But there are very few mountains without water on our planet. They take care of this themselves, creating their life’s element and taking water directly from the sky by entrapping the clouds around them. This water then collects on the flanks of the mountains, where it turns from rivulets into rivers, that flow out into the oceans. Mountains and water are symbiotic, a cycle that keeps life on earth going. Mountain streams slowly move along meadows before, only moments later, turning into the spray of waterfalls or small mystic lakes. What kind of life can be found in and around this mysterious cosmos?

Whether in Alaska or in the Dolomites, eagles are generally seen as Kings of the skies. This film devotes itself on the one hand to the bald eagle, the heraldic bird of the United States, and on the other, the Golden Eagle, Europe's largest predatory bird.

In warm waters around the world a cold-blooded killer hunts its victims. Mysterious in its movements, ferocious and feared, the terrifying Tiger Shark… distinctive in its dark stripes… These man-eaters are the stuff of nightmares… They can slip past our defences to savage us. Highly-adaptable hunters, they swallow up whatever they can catch. Even turtle shell is no defence against powerful jaws and saw-edged teeth.

Some have called the coast of Brittany the Riviera of the North. The many coves with white sandy beaches appear to be idyllic, but the Atlantic here in the northwest of France is rarely calm. The tidal range can be up to six meters; that is up to three times as high as on the North Sea coast. A number of smaller islands can be found offshore - seals have discovered them as ideal places to bear their young.