Nature Shock

In 2006, a series of explosive fires ravaged pig farms across the U.S. and Canada, leaving a wake of destruction and death. No one could figure out the cause, but there was a pattern: all of the barns were new and all of them were enormous. There was also a recurring clue: a peculiar and mysterious foam rising from the barns' manure pits prior to the fires. So, was the goo responsible for this outbreak of infernos? Fire investigators, scientists, and a waste management specialist join forces to get to the bottom of this perplexing puzzle.

An African lion's diet is generally less than 1% giraffe, and yet, in Selous Game Reserve in Tanzania, the number has jumped to a staggering 50% almost overnight. Why? Join Wildlife Research Director Dennis Ikanda and a team of lion experts as they investigate why these East African prides are suddenly risking death to attack an animal six times their own size. They need to uncover the reasons, and fast. With African giraffe populations plummeting by a third in just a decade, the future of one of nature's gentle giants is in grave danger.

A mysterious pack of blacktip sharks has arrived off the eastern coast of South Africa, taking charge of the reef and antagonizing local fisherman. Shark scientists are stunned. Normally sharks are loners, but it seems that this group may be organized. What's behind this unprecedented behavior and what brought the gang to these waters? Take the plunge with dive boat operator Mark Addison as he swims with sharks, tries to study their pack mentality, and makes discoveries that could inspire a new realm of shark research.

Game wardens at Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary in South India are horror-stricken when they discover dead female elephants littering the once peaceful 350-square-mile block of land. The cause of death isn't clear: one has a mutilated trunk, two have head injuries, and one has a shattered jaw. Local conservationists are forced to become investigators, but they are running out of possible explanations for these mystifying deaths. Can they track down who or what is killing these gentle giants?

In 2001 biologists in Australia's island state of Tasmania found that the Tasmanian Devil, an iconic species unique to Tasmania, was afflicted with a new, fatal kind of cancer. The mystery was how thousands of Tasmanian Devils could have the same cancer at the same time.

On April 16th 2006 an American sports hunter, Jim Martell from Boise, Idaho, happened upon the rarest bear on earth. Martell had purchased, for forty thousand US dollars, the right to hunt on remote Banks Island, high above the Arctic Circle.