Monday, July 6, 2009 | Science : Evolution and Biology | print version

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Inside Nature's Giants

by Richard Dawkins - Chanel 4

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/inside-natures-giants/episode-guide/series-1/episode-2
The video is only viewable in the UK.
In this episode experts dissect a 65-foot, 60-ton fin whale - second only in size to its 'cousin' the blue whale - that has died after being stranded off the coast of Ireland. It's a race against time as whale anatomist Joy Reidenberg flies in from New York before the animal's decomposition causes it to explode on the beach.

Veterinary scientist Mark Evans helps investigate why the animal died and explores its extraordinary anatomy. Using whale-size machinery, Joy and the team set to work amidst gale force winds, driving rain, blood, intestines, evil smells and freezing conditions. Meanwhile, advancing tides threaten to engulf the whale, as the team struggles to complete the operation.

Beneath the blubber, the whale's unique anatomy holds vital clues to its evolution. Using a combination of dissection and computer graphics, the programme discovers an animal whose closest living relative is the hippo.

Meanwhile, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins explains why the whale's ancestors may have taken to the water and the evolutionary problems that had to be overcome to transform a land-based mammal into an animal that swims among fish.

_____________________________________________________________________

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/inside-natures-giants/articles/the-whales-evolution
All our ancestors came from the sea and obviously went through great trouble to leave the sea and radically change to live on land.

Some of them, whales, sealions, penguins, turtles, went back into the sea which would seem to undo a lot of hard research and development and the need to reverse it.

Now as they went back to sea... their hind limbs gradually shrank in evolution. Not visible outside at all, but amazingly if you look inside, deep inside a whale you’ll find vestiges of hind limbs, little tiny remanants of bones which shows that their ancestors had real hind limbs that they actually used for walking.

I think it must be that something about living on land equips animals to do things which they could not have done had they not had this sort of long apprenticeship on land.

For example, they got warm blood, a slight misnomer, they got the ability to keep their temperature constant, which is extremely valuable for biochemical reasons.

Having got that then it became an advantage to do that even back in the water, and so going back into the water was a reasonable thing to do.
...
Continue reading
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/inside-natures-giants/articles/the-whales-evolution

Posted: Monday, July 6, 2009 | Permalink

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1. Comment #393916 by Ignorant Amos on July 6, 2009 at 6:08 pm

Watched it this evening...outstanding!!!!

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2. Comment #393917 by Ignorant Amos on July 6, 2009 at 6:11 pm

Both this weeks and last weeks episodes can be watched here for those lucky enough to have access

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/inside-natures-giants

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3. Comment #393926 by phasmagigas on July 6, 2009 at 6:29 pm

sounds very interesting and just the type of programming to have YEC's pulling out their hair and covering their childrens ears.

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4. Comment #393929 by Casa Addams on July 6, 2009 at 6:35 pm

If one would be a pirate one could search for "Inside.Natures.Giants.S01E01.WS.PDTV.XviD-FTP rapidshare.com" on google... but one isn't... is one?

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5. Comment #393930 by iMissDouglas on July 6, 2009 at 6:35 pm

When/where can we watch this in the states?

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6. Comment #393936 by j.mills on July 6, 2009 at 6:59 pm

Brilliant TV! Very 'visceral'! Geddit?

Sensible use of clear computer graphics, nothing to argue with in the commentary, fascinating stuff.

Richard seems to have played it safe, dressing in a cosy anorak even though he's clearly in a nice warm studio...

Gonna watch the heffalump one now.

EDIT: Done that! That was excellent too. How come most of the veterinary students are cute young ladies?

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7. Comment #393950 by RightWingAtheist on July 6, 2009 at 7:55 pm

Dennett... Sapolsky... Dawkins... Hitchens... so much good stuff.

If I told someone I had several gigabytes of downloaded videos on my PC, they would probably think I meant porn.

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8. Comment #393969 by robotaholic on July 6, 2009 at 10:42 pm

blowing bloody intestines in the wind...eww- is it really gross?

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9. Comment #393976 by ColdFusionLazarus on July 7, 2009 at 12:34 am

It's a pity this program is on at 9pm. I suppose it will seem a bit grotesque to some people, but I've watched both episodes with my whole family and it's been really interesting TV for all of us. It really pushes home the message that evolution is true and that each species has a series of fudge engineering solutions (because it's always had to build on what it had beforehand). At the end of the whale program they find the useless leg bones that are hidden within its body and serve no purpose to its existence.

The religious people must be truly appauled at the "lies" being spread here. Good stuff.

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10. Comment #393980 by MQuinn on July 7, 2009 at 1:09 am

Can't watch the program over here in the good ol' USA. That's nice. Once again we "yanks" are screwed. I guess I'm stuck watching "UFO Files" or "A Haunting"--typical American pap...

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11. Comment #393985 by gcdavis on July 7, 2009 at 1:27 am

Zero educational value, minimal entertainment! What was the point? The programmes last year on human autopsies were very informative and had a point; this programme showed a women climbing around in a whales intestines, so what! Lets hope the others are more interesting than a beached whale

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12. Comment #393986 by wouldbesakota on July 7, 2009 at 1:27 am

AURRGG! I really hate being an American. I can't even watch uber-neat stuff here!

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13. Comment #394000 by mark8 on July 7, 2009 at 2:37 am

Inside Nature's Giants: A gory attempt to disprove 'intelligent design' theories

A new Channel 4 series shows the dissection of giant animals. Ajesh Patalay reports.

Of the many extraordinary sights revealed in Channel 4’s upcoming four-part series Inside Nature’s Giants, which uses dissection to take us inside the bodies of an elephant, giraffe and crocodile, the most remarkable is surely afforded by an autopsy carried out on a 65-foot long, 60-ton fin whale (a species second only in size to the blue whale) beached off the coast of Ireland.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/5613900/Inside-Natures-Giants-A-gory-attempt-to-disprove-intelligent-design-theories.html

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14. Comment #394007 by Flapjack on July 7, 2009 at 3:02 am

Enjoyed reading Charlie Brooker's review in the Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/jun/27/charlie-brooker-screen-burn-natures-giants

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15. Comment #394009 by Brokendoll on July 7, 2009 at 3:07 am

Damn these fictional borders.
"Only viewable in the UK..."

:(

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16. Comment #394018 by Ignorant Amos on July 7, 2009 at 3:44 am

11. Comment #393985 by gcdavis on July 7, 2009 at 1:27 am

I'm sorry gcdavis, these two programmes may have had zero educational value for you, I don't know your background, perhaps your knowledge of evolution and the biology of these critters is extensive enough to moot any learning in watching the shows, but I for one picked up lots of knew stuff from the programmes.

Entertainment value....where and when am I ever likely to see the likes of this again....I was gobbsmacked at some of the facts and if seeing a whales intestine explode all over the place isn't entertaining, then what is???

I'm not trying to be critical of your comment, well I suppose I am really, but I would like to think that most people watching these programmes will learn something and it was entertaining even if only for the gore factor.

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17. Comment #394024 by ahmunnaeetchoo on July 7, 2009 at 3:59 am

Well i enjoyed that, it's unfortunate that you can't be as thorough in the situation the whale was in but many key organs where shown and explained. The way it swims using it's jaw muscles was fascinating. I would have liked more depth covering the heart, lungs, bone structure etc. But as something shown as edutainment you can't complain.

In response to that Telegraph article, why should anything to do with evolution exist only as an attack on creationism? Obviously so the article gets more readers, it's just pathetically transparent. Creationism isn't even worth a mention when you're showing the useless rear legs on a whale, forget the conflict and just enjoy a fascination with evolution.

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18. Comment #394034 by Nozzer on July 7, 2009 at 4:17 am

Fascinating, enjoyable and educational (the whale's redundant hind legs;closest living relative is hippo etc). Plus great to see and hear RD give his tuppence worth. Must see tv.

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19. Comment #394085 by anunseenruler on July 7, 2009 at 5:17 am

Nature has a football team?

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20. Comment #394116 by Fizzle on July 7, 2009 at 6:04 am

Dammit! Stingy brits!

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21. Comment #394126 by gcdavis on July 7, 2009 at 6:34 am

16. Comment #394018 by Ignorant Amos
Exploding whale poo great for YouTube. The token interventions from the Prof were interesting but the amount of information gleaned from the 50 minutes or however long it was could have been covered in 5, I guess I have been spoilt by 30 years of watching Attenborough! I hope the others will be better.

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22. Comment #394138 by j.mills on July 7, 2009 at 6:51 am

gcdavis, note that the elephant one (episode 1) is already available if you dig around on the same site. Only the whale one takes place in those unfortunate circumstances: the others are in a lecture hall.

And speaking personally, much as I love Attenborough, I sometimes found his programmes 'info-diluted'. These programmes are at least showing us something new and biologically interesting, rather than just pretty.

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23. Comment #394146 by Ignorant Amos on July 7, 2009 at 7:08 am

21. Comment #394126 by gcdavis on July

Horses for courses then I guess.....no problemo!!!

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24. Comment #394168 by CanadianRealist on July 7, 2009 at 7:50 am

All our ancestors came from the sea and obviously went through great trouble to leave the sea and radically change to live on land.

Some of them, whales, sealions, penguins, turtles, went back into the sea which would seem to undo a lot of hard research and development and the need to reverse it.

I remember being quite surprised when I learned that whales etc. were descended from land animals which had returned to the sea. It is a very good example of the fact that evolution doesn't have a direction, or a final goal.

I find the phrasing of the second sentence to be quite strange, especially the phrase "a lot of hard research and development". Does it really make sense to say that natural selection performs research?

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25. Comment #394169 by bluebird on July 7, 2009 at 7:53 am

...only viewable in the UK---O.K.
To paraphrase Austin Powers- "turn on the t.v., to the PBS, yeah!". Second episode of Nova scienceNow airs 7/7:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/

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26. Comment #394170 by Quetzalcoatl on July 7, 2009 at 7:53 am

CanadianRealist-

I think it means research in the sense of finding out what works over millions of years. Of course the processes involved are blind and without a plan. It could perhaps be better phrased.

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27. Comment #394197 by TheLordHumungus on July 7, 2009 at 8:45 am

British documentaries are awful! Watch and learn from the colonies you losers!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrENJ4EQjMY

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28. Comment #394207 by Jos Gibbons on July 7, 2009 at 9:23 am

Comment #394168 by CanadianRealist

Dawkins is probably bothering the R&D metaphor from Dennett, who uses it (abbreviated like that) extensively in his book Darwin's Dangerous Idea.

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29. Comment #394210 by louis14 on July 7, 2009 at 9:43 am

I've watched both the programs now and have found them very educational. The elephant one was perhaps better, because they had all the time they needed and they weren't battling fading light, high tides and terrible weather.

But I certainly learned stuff (and I'm an avid watcher of BBC wildlife documentaries). For instance, the whale's evolutionary inheritance showing up in it's three stomachs. Not needed for digesting fish, but a hangover from it's land mammal ancestry.

I think it's funny that Dawkins' was filmed for his contribution obviously in a studio, but was kitted out in all weather gear like the poor sods on that beach.

Excellent stuff, and I'm looking forward to the rest of the series.

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30. Comment #394236 by David Lambie on July 7, 2009 at 1:04 pm

To those across the pond having trouble viewing restricted videos...

Could you try using a proxy program such as Hotspot Shield, perhaps?

David

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31. Comment #394237 by Andrea Gyori on July 7, 2009 at 1:12 pm

I'd like to add a link for those people who don't live in the UK and thus cannot watch the programme directly. This episode (and another one on the elephants) is available on Torrents: http://www.mininova.org/tor/2742185, so if you have a Bittorent client, you can download it using the link above. I would also like to thank all those UK people who had been so kind to post it there for us, so that we can watch this awesome documentary.

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32. Comment #394261 by Squigit on July 7, 2009 at 2:40 pm

I wanna watch it! *pout*

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33. Comment #394269 by Rawhard Dickins on July 7, 2009 at 2:59 pm

Joy and the team set to work amidst gale force winds, driving rain, blood, intestines, evil smells and freezing conditions. Meanwhile, advancing tides threaten to engulf the whale, as the team struggles to complete the operation.

Well, of course, we had it tough....

We used to lick road clean wit' tongue, we had two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at mill for sixpence every four years, and when we got home our Dad would slice us in two wit' bread knife.

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34. Comment #394278 by scarab on July 7, 2009 at 4:20 pm

I agree with gcdavis. It is light on information. If you want to make a case for evolution based on comparitive anatomy then there needs to be more examples of each structure to compare.

Show a human hyoid bone, explain the developmental origins of the structure, the branchial arches, etc.

Show us the moray eel's pharyngeal jaw http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/09/jaws_of_the_moray.php maybe show other examples, maybe cichlid pharyngeal jaws. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1560081

Compare the disarticulating snake jaw with the whale jaw. Contrast the snake's palatine teeth http://wapedia.mobi/en/Snake_dentition as a means of pulling food down their throat with the moray eel's pharyngeal jaw.

Show generic vertebrate structures and contrast with specialized structures and show that the specialized ones are modifications of a common vertebrate structure.

The contrast of the fish horizontal spine flexion and the whale vertical spine flexion was good.

But maybe we could have seen early tetrapod movement to demonstrate that their sprawled stance was a simple adaption of fish swimming movements. Explain the conflict between that form of movement and aspirational breathing. Then show how the evolution of an upright limb stance frees the animal from that constraint. Then show how an upright stance favours vertical spine flexion when running (It extends stride length).

This could also be tied into an explanation of the development of breathing strategies: buccal pumping, gular pumping, aspirational breathing. Explain why buccal breathing comes first (because its a simple modification of fish breathing, evolution modifies what already exists, better solutions come later).

Once you have done all that then the viewer could see why wales have vertical flexion and see that it is a result of evolution.

Its not enough to just assert that things evolved. The programs still assume too much understanding from the viewers.

People should understand human anatomy and how it relates to other animals' anatomy and there are lots of interesting case studies that could be used to make the connections clear.

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35. Comment #394296 by Zeratul on July 7, 2009 at 6:57 pm

@casa addams, I just found the torrents :-D

Elephant :
http://www.mininova.org/get/2726003

Whale :
http://www.mininova.org/get/2742185

How I love torrents!

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36. Comment #394301 by j.mills on July 7, 2009 at 7:26 pm

scarab, you say "The programs still assume too much understanding from the viewers", but the amount you want to cram in to 50 minutes does the same thing. For a general-interest audience I felt these shows were a pretty good balance of 'spectacle' and explanation - certainly above average.

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37. Comment #394313 by JazzX on July 7, 2009 at 8:35 pm

Most of the audience are cute young ladies alright.

But I played at a veterinary student's ball a couple of months ago, and sure enough they were nearly all cute females.

For some reason, guys don't often go in for veterinary medicine - I'm sure that'll change after this series!

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38. Comment #394326 by Fuzzy Duck on July 7, 2009 at 11:26 pm

I was quite impressed with this program (which I had to download as a torrent, living in America). It did not go for a gratuitous gross-out edge. It was honestly intriguing and respectful, admiring these amazing examples of natural selection in their marvelous detail. Dr. Dawkins' contributions and those of the other professionals were also greatly appreciated. Looking forward to the next episodes!

-Kevin Schreck

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39. Comment #394334 by Ignorant Amos on July 8, 2009 at 12:40 am

34. Comment #394278 by scarab

agree with gcdavis. It is light on information. If you want to make a case for evolution based on comparitive anatomy then there needs to be more examples of each structure to compare.

By your post it sounds like you already know all this stuff, ergo that type of programme would have been of little interest to you also.....

This programme was only in part a programme on evolutionary comparaison, the title giving the best indication on the rest of the content. A programme such as you suggest would indeed be a delight and I would relish just such a show, but I don't think it was what the makers of this series had in mind and of course your proposal would be an epic taking hours to air. I still hope that the type of show you would've liked to see is made, and soon, not withstanding myself, the kids need to see it.

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40. Comment #394360 by sunbeamforjesus on July 8, 2009 at 2:40 am

I thought both programmes were good television.I agree that in the whale version it was funny to see the good prof in the rough weather gear in a studio.Even the gentle light behind his head giving him a slight halo was funny.He might just as well have gone the whole hog and put his feet up on the table whilst sipping a well chilled Sancerre!

Well, of course, we had it tough....

We used to lick road clean wit' tongue, we had two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at mill for sixpence every four years, and when we got home our Dad would slice us in two wit' bread knife.
'Ome? 'ome? unadulterated luxury! we had no 'ome,we lived in whole at side at road!!

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41. Comment #394388 by GandalfGrey on July 8, 2009 at 4:41 am

@Zeratul
Thanks a bunch!

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42. Comment #394558 by Twopints on July 8, 2009 at 1:32 pm

I found the Whale episode was very disapointing compared to the Elephant episode.

Being waist deep in pink mush and digging around inside a dark body body cavity on a windy beach gave little opportunity to show the detail of the structures of the whales body. I understand that the circumstances were difficult and am looking forward to the Crocodile and Giraffe.

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43. Comment #394578 by Unbudgeable Atheist on July 8, 2009 at 3:22 pm

Part 1 is up for viewing here: http://www.viddler.com/explore/Hominid/videos/2/

Part 2: http://www.viddler.com/explore/hominid/videos/3/

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44. Comment #394611 by Squigit on July 8, 2009 at 5:37 pm

43. Comment #394578 by Unbudgeable Atheist

Thank you so much! Is part 2 up? I didn't see it.

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45. Comment #394619 by Unbudgeable Atheist on July 8, 2009 at 7:01 pm

Yes, part 2 was uploaded.

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46. Comment #394621 by Squigit on July 8, 2009 at 7:18 pm

45. Comment #394619 by Unbudgeable Atheist

Yes, I just watched it! Amazing! I knew some of the stuff from working with the skeletons at an aquarium where I volunteered a while back...but it is utterly fascinating...thank you again!

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47. Comment #396466 by j.mills on July 14, 2009 at 5:23 pm

Here's the crocodile programme. Yucky stomach contents!

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/inside-natures-giants/4od#2928505

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48. Comment #396591 by mark8 on July 15, 2009 at 2:42 am

Drop me a pm and I'll provide links to the first three episodes. Both Flash player and High Definition streaming (Divx)

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49. Comment #398875 by j.mills on July 22, 2009 at 5:20 pm

And just for the record, the giraffe episode was absolutely fascinating!

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