We can survive for weeks without food, but only days without water: it is the essential element of life. Yet many millions of us live in parched deserts around the world. In the second episode of Human Planet, we discover how the eternal quest for water brings huge challenges - and ingenious solutions - in the driest places on Earth.

Grasslands feed the world. Over thousands of years, we humans have learned to grow grains on the grasslands and domesticate the creatures that live there. Our success has propelled our population to almost seven billion people.

The rainforest is home to more species of plants and animals than any other habitat on the planet. But for humans, life there is not as easy as it looks. Life in the trees requires great skill, ingenuity and sheer bravery.

From lush cloud forests to bare summits that take your breath away, the higher you climb the tougher life gets on a mountain. Human Planet explores the extraordinary ways in which people survive at extreme altitudes where nature becomes utterly unforgiving.

As an air-breathing animal, the human is not built to survive in water. But people have found ways to live an almost aquatic life so they can exploit the sea\'s riches.

Rivers provide the essentials of life: fresh food and water. They often provide natural highways and enable us to live in just about every environment on Earth. But rivers can also flood, freeze or disappear altogether!

Beginning in Ethiopia, Professor Brian Cox discovers how the universe played a key role in our ascent from apeman to spaceman by driving the expansion of our brains. But big brains alone did not get us to space.

Brian Cox reveals how the wonderful complexity of nature and human life is simply the consequence of chance events constrained by the laws of physics that govern our universe. But this leads him to a deeper question - why does our universe seem to have been set up with just the right rules to create us?

Professor Brian Cox explores our origins, place and destiny in the universe. We all start our lives thinking that we are at the centre of the universe, surrounded by our family and the world as it spins around us. But the urge to explore is strong.

What is our future/destiny?

Professor Brian Cox explores the most precious, most wonderful thing in the universe, us.

Film following a team of scientists in their dramatic quest to recover DNA that is millions of years old and reveal a lost world from before the last Ice Age.

James Hunt has never been equalled. Could swashbuckling Hunt catch the scientific Lauda? Could Niki overcome an appalling crash to come back from the dead and fight James all the way to the last race of the season?

Dr Michael Mosley explores the bizarre and fascinating world of parasites by turning his body into a living laboratory and deliberately infesting himself with them. He travels to Kenya to give himself a tapeworm - a parasite that can grow to many metres inside the human gut.

The award-winning series that gets under the skin of some of the largest animals on the planet,exploring their anatomy to reveal how these creatures really work.

The second run of the BAFTA Award-winning series reveals the anatomy of some of nature\'s most successful predators.The experts travel to South Africa to dissect a 900kg, 15-foot-long great white shark.

The experts venture into the swamps of the Florida Everglades, where giant Burmese pythons are thriving.

The experts dissect a lion and a tiger, and travel to South Africa to see lions in the wild.

The Bafta-winning series returns to Australia on the trail of a bird that\'s been described as a living dinosaur. The cassowary hides in Queensland\'s tropical rainforests.

The team travel to Florida to dissect the ocean's largest reptile - the leatherback turtle. They uncover the evolutionary mystery of how turtles developed shells to protect themselves from some of the sharpest-toothed predators on the planet.

The team explore how this animal has been biologically engineered for speed. They dissect an elite racehorse to reveal the extraordinary spring system that propels it to 45mph, its super-sized organs and built-in turbo-booster.

The team join Inuit hunters and scientists studying polar bears off the coast of Greenland. Polar bears have become a symbol of climate change as their habitat is threatened. And, at the top of the food chain, they are especially vulnerable to physiological side effects from man-made pollutants.

Veterinary scientist Mark Evans joins experts in anatomy, evolution and behaviour in a bid to get under the skin of the crocodile.

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.

The science behind the earthquake and tsunami that have devastated Japan

Documentary, featuring specially commissioned research, which reveals for the first time what really happened during the eruption of the volcanic island Krakatoa in 1883

Series looking at objects of the twentieth century . Carbon 14

David Attenborough looks at the extraordinary ends to which animals and plants go in order to survive. Featuring epic spectacles, amazing TV firsts and examples of new wildlife behaviour.

In nature, living long enough to breed is a monumental struggle. Many animals and plants go to extremes to give themselves a chance.

Fish dominate the planet\'s waters through their astonishing variety of shape and behaviour.