Walking with Beasts - Episode 2: Whale Killer

Description

Walking with Beasts is a 2001 six-part television documentary produced by the BBC in the United Kingdom, narrated by Kenneth Branagh. In North America it has been retitled Walking with Prehistoric Beasts, and the original Discovery Channel broadcast was narrated by Stockard Channing. Like its predecessor, Walking with Dinosaurs, it recreates life in the Cenozoic by using a combination of both computer-generated imagery and animatronics. However, the Miocene period is not included. Also like its predecessor, it was re-edited and re-narrated as a "second season" of Prehistoric Planet for the Discovery Kids lineup. Some of the concepts it illustrates are the evolution of whales, the evolution of horses, and the evolution of humans.

Episode 2: "Whale Killer"

36 Million Years Ago - Late Eocene - Pakistan, Egypt

The second episode is set in late Eocene, when the polar caps froze over and drastically changed the Earth's ocean currents and climate. The first part of the episode explains how an early whale, Basilosaurus mates and how the world is changing into an ocean famine. On land there is an Andrewsarchus driven to the beach to feed on sea turtles. The narrator explains that Andrewsarchus, the largest land mammal predator  ever to walk the earth, has hooves and is related to sheep, so it is, in a sense, a "sheep in wolf's clothing". Back in the ocean, a starving mother Basilosaurus is forced to hunt in the mangrove swamps. Unable to catch the Apidium, she is then hunting a Moeritherium. The Moeritherium crawls on to land, but in the mangroves, land does not last long. However the Moeritherium escapes and the Basilosaurus returns to the sea. The cast moves on to land where a herd of Embolotherium (identified as Brontothere) struggle to survive: one of their calves dies and two Andrewsarchus feast on it but the mother Embolotherium drives them away because she has a strong bond with her offspring, even if it is dead. Back in the sea the mother Basilosaurus preys on a group of Dorudon and is successful. The episode ends with the mother Basilosaurus swimming with her newborn calf.
    * Basilosaurus
    * Andrewsarchus
    * Embolotherium
    * Dorudon
    * Moeritherium
    * Apidium

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