The Planet Earth Movie

So today, in class, we watched this movie. It was really sad. I learned SSSOOO much: the grass covers over 1/4 of the world and is almost indestructible. Most of the movie was about where the grass is, then it talks about the animals that live there. Gazelle migrate and if there's a fire in the plains, they loose very valuable grass, food that would've helped the gazelle. In the summer, the Snow Geese migrate from the gulf of Mexico all the way across North America, to the Arctic Tundra. There are 5 million of those birds in the sky. The movie showed us how many that is, and believe me, it's INCREDIBLE!!!!! Once the geese get to their destination, they lay their eggs. The egg incubation is about 3 weeks long. The Arctic Fox is one of the predators for the Arctic Geese. The fox was shown taking one of the eggs and burying it for later supply. Once the eggs hatch, the fox still hunts them. She actually tried to take 5 chicks at once! Thin, one of the adults scared her away, so she only got one. But at least she had something to feed to her babies (which by the way were adorable!).

In another area, wolves, even though they are bigger, have a harder time finding food. The wolves have to track down a continually moving herd... caribou. The caribou travel 30 miles a day, and can be very hard to track. Once the wolf picks up the trail, the hunt is ON. The young of the pack of caribou, are singled out, and some of them get eaten :(.

Wild ass are very peculiar to me. They fight for the ladies (that doesn't really surprise me, it's the next part that's weird). They search for a great land, watery and grassy, stay there for a few hours and then go back to the dust and the heat.

Back to the grass, elephant grass is the biggest in the world. Based on the footage, it looked tall and thick enough to hide an elephant! Speaking of elephants, during the day, the elephants and the lions are friends, meaning they don't really bother of threaten each other. But at night, because the elephants' night vision is only a little bit better than our night vision, the tables turn and the lions now have a significant advantage. The calves are easier targets, but the adults form a circle around the young and make it really tough to get the young. some of the slagger elephants who are exhasted and left behind, get eaten by the whole pride, and one adult would feed a whole pride.

Baboons, when going into paradise, they change their behavior. They swin to get to their food, because it's in the middle of the water. The baby baboons cling to their mother's stomach, if it's not wet, or their back, if it's getting deeper. In the jungle, the monkeys are a little different. They live in the canopies of the Rainforest and eat the fruit from all the trees. There is one type of tree that ALWAYS delivers for the monkeys. The Fig Tree. baboons, spider monkeys, cabbage monkeys, and much more love eating the figs. The sounds that are made in the rainforest are really loud. some monkey's calls can be heard a mile away! Even some of the insects can be heard (not a mile away)! In conclusion, the movie was incredible and educational.