Discovery BBC World Service

Underwater cameraman Roger Munns set himself and his team an incredible challenge. In 2008, they visited Tonga to film the biggest courtship ritual of the animal kingdom, the humpback heat run, for the very first time underwater and up close.
In the first few days, Roger had intimate encounters with the whales but most of the time, he was sat on the back of the boat, waiting to find a heat run. After two unsuccessful weeks, he started to wonder whether they would ever see one.
But a few days later somebody spotted a heat run, and everything sprang into action. Roger got in position and dove down ten meters underwater on a single breath. From then on, his job was just to wait and hold his camera ready. In a moment that seemed to stretch out time, he waited, nervously, for a group of 40-ton bus-sized whales to speed past him…
And Victor Vescovo describes his adventures into the deep, diving to the deepest parts of all five oceans.
Victor's longest dive was solo to the lowest point on Earth - the Challenger Deep at the bottom of the Marianas trench in the western Pacific. On reaching the bottom, some 35,853 feet below the ocean surface, should something have gone wrong, there was no hope of rescue.
Victor describes his feelings before making this historic descent and on the way down. Touching down on the sea bed, he was astounded by the abundance of marine life. Victor describes how he hopes that the mapping, observations and sample collections he has made on his dives will advance scientific understanding of the deep oceans, and where his eternal quest to explore might take him next.
Produced by Florian Bohr and Diane Hope

Credits:
Humpback whale mother and calf sounds - Acoustic Communications CNRS team & CETAMADA
Humpback whale calf sounds - Lars Bejder (MMRP Hawaii), Peter T. Madsen (Aarhus University) & Simone Videsen (Aarhus University)

Primatologist Catherine Hobaiter has spent more of her adult life in the rain forests of Uganda, with family bands of chimpanzees, than she has with her own human family members. For more than 20 years now she has spent 6 months every year at a remote field station, getting up before dawn every day to observe and collect behavioural data on family bands of chimps as they wake up and go about their daily lives. What is she trying to find out, that has gripped her for so long?
It turns out that life in a chimpanzee troupe is every bit as gripping as a soap opera. But there are many more moments of beauty, revelation and the joy of discovery, as Catherine pursues her continuing, multi-decadal quest to understand what it means to be a chimpanzee.
And when Sara Dykman set out to bicycle with the monarch butterfly migration, from the mountains of central Mexico, across the USA to Canada, she didn't think about the 10,201 miles that she would cover. Coping with headwinds, heavy rain storms, and everything from dirt roads to busy highways were not the challenge for Sara though. It was seeing how little of the Monarch's only food plant, milkweed, was left for them to feed on during their amazing, multigenerational, multinational migration.
However, Sara found solace in the many conservationists and backyard butterfly gardeners she met along the way, and in the 9000 schoolchildren she gave talks to en route. The most emotional part of the journey for Sara was the last three miles - arriving successfully back at the monarch's overwintering site in Mexico.
Produced by Diane Hope.
Credits:
Monarch butterfly recordings - Robert Mackay

Professor Ben Garrod and Dr Jess French get under the skin (and blubber) of the California sea lion, to crack the key to its success both on land and at sea. Its ability to dive hundreds of meters down, keep warm in icy waters, and run on land, can all be explained through its unique internal anatomy. They are joined by zookeeper and sea lion trainer Mae Betts, who adds insight into the intelligence of these sleek marine mammals.
Co-Presenters: Ben Garrod and Jess French
Producer: Ella Hubber
Editor: Martin Smith
Production co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth

The tiny sap-sucking aphid, at just a few millimetres long, is the scourge of many gardeners and crop-growers worldwide, spreading astonishingly rapidly and inflicting huge damage as it seeks to outwit many host plants’ natural defences. With insights and guidance from aphid expert George Seddon-Roberts at the John Innes Centre, Norwich, some delicate dissecting tools, and a state of the art microscope, Prof Ben Garrod and Dr Jess French delve inside this herbivorous insect to unravel the anatomy and physiology that has secured its extraordinary reproductive success, whilst offering new clues as to how we could curtail its damaging impact in the future.
Co-Presenters: Ben Garrod and Jess French
Executive producer: Adrian Washbourne
Producer: Ella Hubber
Editor: Martin Smith
Production co-ordinator: Jana Bennett-Holesworth

Ominously called the lamb vulture, there are many myths and misconceptions surrounding the bearded vulture. Flying the mountainous ranges across central Asia and eastern Africa, with a wingspan of almost three meters, the bearded vulture is am impressive Old World vulture. Prof Ben Garrod and Dr Jess French are looking past the beautifully coloured plumage, and delving deep inside to learn what this bird of prey really eats and what keeps its great wings aloft.

Wild Inside returns for a new series to take a look at some of our planet’s most exceptional and unusual creatures from an entirely new perspective: the inside. Whilst we can learn a lot from observing the outside, the secrets to the success of any animal – whether they swim, fly, or hop – lies in their complex internal anatomy. How do these wild animals survive and thrive in harsh and changing environments? To truly understand we need to delve inside.
Professor Ben Garrod, evolutionary biologist from the University of East Anglia, and expert veterinary surgeon Dr Jess French, open up and investigate what makes each of these animals unique, in terms of their extraordinary anatomy, behaviour and their evolutionary history. Along the way, they reveal some unique adaptations which give each species a leg (or claw) up in surviving in the big, wild world.
The series begins with an icon of the outback – known best for its hopping, boxing, and cosy pouch – the red kangaroo. Despite the immense heat and lack of water, these marsupials dominate Australia, with their evolutionary history driving them to success. From the powerful legs which allow them to hop up to 40km an hour, to an unexpected reproductive system that keeps their populations plentiful, Ben, Jess and marsupial expert Dr Jack Ashby reveal a mammalian anatomy which holds many surprises.