INSIDE NATURE'S GIANTS - PBS VIDEO: 'BIG CATS' EPISODE TRAILER - AIRS WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2012 AT 10/9C
In Big Cats, the team dissects a lion alongside a tiger at London's Royal Veterinary College and travel to South Africa’s Welgevonden Game Reserve to see the lion in the wild. The series features veterinary scientist Mark Evans, comparative anatomist Joy Reidenberg and evolutionary biologists Richard Dawkins and Simon Watt.
One of the first things they tackle is the anatomy of the roar, which is the characteristic that separates big cats from small ones. They delve into the lion’s throat to find its voice box and make a new scientific discovery that helps explain how the vocal apparatus works like a trombone. To test their theory, compressed air is pumped into the windpipe and to everyone’s amazement, it makes the dead lion roar.
From the outside, the lion and the tiger look very different, but once their skins are removed, even the experts find it hard to distinguish between the two. At Welgevonden, the team gets a chance to see the cat's weaponry — powerful forearms, protractile claws and powerful bite — up close on an anesthetized lioness, before watching a huge male devour a dead wildebeest. Richard Dawkins explains the evolutionary arms race that has arisen between predators and their prey in the struggle to survive.
In the final part of the program, the team analyzes the contrasting social lives of the two big cats to try and find out why male lions have a mane.
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