Secrets of bones. Food for thought. Episode 5

Description

Ben Garrod, primatologist and master skeleton builder, shares his unique passion for bones. He embarks on a very personal journey through the remarkable and surprising story of how a single, universal body plan - the skeleton - has shaped the animal kingdom. There are over 62,000 species of vertebrate of every size and shape from squirrels to sperm whales and aardvarks to anacondas. Each skeleton differs in small, but critical ways and, in Ben's hands, those differences are decoded to reveal an animal’s complete life story - not only how it moves, where it lives and what it eats, but also its entire evolutionary journey. Secrets of Bones brings the remarkable world of bones to life in a unique way. By conducting fascinating experiments, meeting expert contributors, using integrated graphics and a wealth of archive from the BBC's Natural History Unit, Ben unlocks a fascinating and hidden world we never get to see. In this episode, Ben Garrod uncovers the secrets of how vertebrates capture and devour their food using extreme jaws, bizarre teeth and specialized bony tools. He takes a cherry picker up a giant sperm whale's jaw, finds out which animal has teeth weighing five kilos each and which uses its skull as a suction pump. Ben gets his own skull scanned and 3D printed to discover how diet in humans isn't just affecting our waistlines but is also changing the shape of our bones.

Runtime

30 minutes

Series

Subjects

Genre

Database

Alexander Street

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