Get a look at some of the planet’s great gatherings, creatures that come together in inconceivable numbers — sometimes in millions, billions, even trillions.
Included are bats and bees, locusts and ants, monarch butterflies in Mexico, 17-year cicada hatches, grunion in the Sea of Cortez and carp in the Mississippi River, sardine runs off the coast of South Africa, super flocks of parakeets in the Australian Outback, mayflies on the 4th of July and even penguins and wildebeest.
Some gather to breed or to migrate, some for protection, some simply to keep warm in the cold. But in the process, a kind of super-organism is created in which individual intelligence is superseded by a collective consciousness that shares information and moves with a single purpose for the benefit of all.
Emperor Penguins Huddle to Keep Warm
"As the only creatures on earth to breed in the Antarctic winter
Check out swarm intelligence, essentially a living embodiment of social media in the natural world. Using high-speed camera techniques, "The Gathering Swarms" captures these world-wide displays and explains why they occur:
The Gathering Swarms
"Get a look at some of the planet’s great gatherings
Gulf Grunion Beach Spawning
"In Sonora
Sardine Run in South Africa
"The seasonal movement of billions of sardines along the coast of South Africa
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NATURE is a production of THIRTEEN Productions LLC for WNET. For NATURE, Fred Kaufman is executive producer. A production of John Downer Productions for THIRTEEN Productions LLC and BBC in association with WNET.
