Swarm – Nature’s Incredible Invasions
View set on FlickrWhen Worlds Collide
Thousands of killer bees invade a football pitch, millions of mice wipe out a harvest, huge fish shoals leaping into boats …animals can reach such immense numbers that they take over our lives. From the outside these superswarms are the stuff of nightmares, but from the inside they’re things of beauty.
Mayflies by the trillion invade a mid-west city for one night only, locust swarms destroy crops as they invade by both land and air, ferocious driver ant swarms invade an east african village, high above Rome 10 million starlings perform incredible aerial displays as they come in to roost.
Swarm ventures into the very heart of these amazing natural phenomena. Incredible high-speed shots from inside swarms reveals how they view our world. Real-life footage from TV cameras, mobile phones and camcorders relives the moment when swarms invade our lives.
Program 2:
One million heads, one beautiful mind
In the first program we saw how animal swarms collide with our world. This time the intelligence behind such mass invasions is explored. When swarms gather, they generate a mysterious swarm intelligence, communicating and learning in amazing ways.
Bees hold commitee meetings to discuss new nesting sites, flocks of quelea learn from each other where to find the best food, fire ants even use their own bodies to form a raft and escape when their nest is destroyed by floods.
All unite as one and act like a giant organism controlled by a single brain. One newly discovered swarm may even use its united strength to save the planet from the greenhouse effect! The superorganism can accomplish far more than the sum of its parts.
As in program 1, real-life footage combined with state of the art high-speed camera techniques shows the complexity of the superorganism, and how this intelligent being affects us and the planet.