Human Planet (US)

Humans have always lived near the water, and while we're not well-adapted for a life in a river or ocean, we're well-adapted for living next to one. Marine life has always been a main source of food for us, whether it's a sperm whale harpooned by Pacific Islanders or a fish snatched from a raging river in Cambodia.

Living at altitude presents a number of unique problems — from avalanches to invading Gelada monkeys — that humans have solved in creative ways. When there's no firewood for cremations, a Tibetan sky burial provides a solution.

The arctic is one of earth's most difficult environments — cold, windswept and dark much of the year. Yet in a land where edible vegetation is rare, people have learned to survive by figuring out how to harvest meat in all its forms, from auks and mussels to narwhals and Greenland sharks.

On the grasslands, game is plentiful, the horizons are endless and large predators like lions compete for food. In a jungle, game is scarce, there are no horizons and the main predator is man. Humans living in these two very different environments face a unique set of problems — which they solve with incredible resourcefulness.

Deserts are the least populated of all environments on earth for a reason. Whether you're a boy racing a herd of thirsty elephants to the next watering hole, or a young girl learning how to find a well in the middle of featureless sand dunes, survival in the desert always depends on finding water.

Humans living in every corner of the earth have found ingenious ways to survive — whether it's stealing a wildebeest haunch from a pride of hungry lions, teaching an eagle to hunt foxes or building a tree house ten stories above the ground.