Seven Worlds, One Planet: Everything you need to know

Sir David Attenborough at Stokksnes beach, Iceland (BBC One, Seven Worlds, One Planet)

Seven Worlds, One Planet originally aired on Sunday evenings at 6.15pm on BBC One. Currently, you can watch the whole series on BBC iPlayer. There are seven episodes in total, each looking exclusively at one continent and its rarest wildlife.

Gentoo penguins preparing to enter the water, Antarctica (BBC One, Seven Worlds, One Planet)

First, the crew heads to the most inhospitable place on Earth, Antarctica. Despite the fact that Antarctica is 98% ice, and that it is the world’s largest desert, it is still home (in places) to an abundance of wildlife as the waters surrounding the continent are incredibly rich.

Here, the team watch elephant seals square up to each other, albatross tending to their young, whales, and huge waddles of king and gentoo penguin.

Golden snub-nosed monkeys in eastern China (BBC One, Seven Worlds, One Planet)

Next, the film crew head to Asia, the largest and most varied continent on the planet.

From Siberian Russia to Sumatra in Indonesia, the team capture incredible scenes of Kamchatka bears, golden snub-nosed monkeys, spider-tailed horned vipers, orangutans and the rare Sumatran rhino in their natural habitats.

Pumas in Chile (BBC One, Seven Worlds, One Planet)

Episode three focuses on South America, the most biodiverse continent on Earth, home to 40% of the world’s animal species.

Here, the crew hid in boxes to film penguins, trekked 4,000m up mountains to lay camera traps for Andean bears and used drones to chase pumas in Chile.

A cassowary (Shutterstock)

Of the seven worlds the team explore, the Australian continent is the oldest. Separated from the rest of Earth’s land masses in the time of the dinosaurs, it is subsequently home to some of the planet’s wackiest creatures.

Most of the wildlife in Australia exists nowhere else on Earth. Expect to see the red flying fox, wombats, dingos, sharks, Tasmanian devils and the cassowary.

At six feet tall, the cassowary is the second heaviest bird in the world, and one of the most dangerous. Their claws are longer than those of a velociraptor… and they have a distinctly prehistoric appearance.

An Iberian lynx (Shutterstock)

In Europe, we take a look at some of the continent’s lesser known species. From Viennese graveyards to Italy’s mountainous villages and Slovenia’s expansive caves, the team spend time with wolves, Barbary macaques (Europe’s only primate), olms, brown bears and the elusive Iberian lynx.

Native to central Spain, the Iberian lynx has incredible eyesight and can spot a mouse from 250ft away. It may be hard to spot in the wild, but it’s a relative of the common house cat.

Prairie dogs (Shutterstock)

Onto North America, the continent that experiences the most dramatic seasonal change. Appropriately, the team explore a variety of landscapes: from the frozen Yukon, to the southern swamps and the Arizona desert.

The producers were aware that the US is an area that viewers are fairly familiar with, so they went the extra mile to shoot a side of the region that is rarely seen.

As a result, they had cameramen lying facedown in rivers filming river chubs, and boat crews belting out the Jurassic Park theme to attract beluga whales.

They team also shined a spotlight on prairie dogs in South Dakota. These adorable rodents use a complex form of communication, supposedly superior to that used by chimpanzees and even dolphins.

An oxpecker feeding on a Zebra (Shutterstock)

Finally, we conclude the series in Africa: wildlife capital of the world. But this isn’t your average safari.

From elephant and rhino to the humble oxpecker, the team traverse the continent in search of its most fascinating creatures. Look forward to the aardvark, pangolin and cichlid.

The team takes a particularly close look at the oxpecker, the helpful birds that eats ticks, earwax and parasites off the likes of zebras, hippos and giraffes.