Channel 5 - Nature Shock (All 8 Episodes) (2007)

This intriguing documentary series examines freak occurrences in the natural world. Whether it's animals behaving oddly or even the planet that perplexes, each episode sees scientists studying baffling phenomena in a bid to understand what Mother Nature's really up to. The reasons behind incidents will vary, but there's one conclusion that we always reach: the world isn't as predictable as we'd like to think.

Part 1: The Revengeful Elephant
This episode examines violent cattle and rhino deaths which took place across a large area of Africa in the early 1990s. Locals and scientists came to believe that the perpetrators were elephants seeking revenge against Maasai villagers who had previously been responsible for barbarous behaviour towards elephants, as evidence suggested they being specifically targeted for retribution

Part 2: Killer Whale Attack
This episode explores the life of the killer whale. In Mother's Day 2004 a grey whale is spotted from aboard popular tourist boat. Enthusiastic passengers enjoy the scene, but then it suddenly turns to a bloodbath when a pod of orcas launch a coordinated attack on a grey whale and her calf. It's first in a long chase. Streamlined and cunning, killer whales have many hunting techniques. They live and hunt together in cooperative pods much like a pack of wolves, and work together as they hunt.

Part 3: The Bodiless Bear
This programme looks at a series of brutal attacks on black bears in Yellowstone Park, including the extraordinary case of a severed bear head. In 1990, whilst hiking through Yellowstone National Park, bear expert Dr David Mattson came across a most hideous and unbelievable sight: the severed head of a black bear. The case of the bodiless bear, and three subsequent bear slayings, would go on to shed new light on what scientists understand about bears and their habitat.

Part 4: Zombie Alligators
In May 1997, the bloated bodies of a number of adult alligators were discovered on the shoreline of Lake Griffin in central Florida. This episode focuses on a bizarre chain of events which turned a once peaceful wilderness into a scene reminiscent of a horror film. Over a period of years, a number of Griffin’s resident alligators were turning up dead, but scientists were baffled as to the cause.

Part 5: The Devil's Disease
This episode uncovers the mystery of a group of hideously disfigured Tasmanian devils discovered by scientists in the late 1990s. In 2001 biologists in Australia's island state of Tasmania found that the Tasmanian Devil, an iconic species unique to Tasmania, was afflicted with a new, fatal kind of cancer. But how could thousands of Tasmanian Devils have the same cancer at the same time?

Part 6: Man Eating Lions
Tanzanians are under siege from a plague of man-eating lions - it has the world's largest lion population but until recently attacks were far and few between. All of that has changed. Over six hundred people have been killed in the last fifteen years in the South East of the country. How and why is lion behaviour changing to targeting human beings as a prey source?

Part 7: Alien Bear
On a remote Canadian island, an American sports hunter shoots what he believes is a polar bear. But is it? The killing unleashes an investigation by the Canadian authorities. The hunter is under threat of prosecution for a crime he says he didn’t commit. With each new discovery the mystery deepens as they try to discover the exact species of this animal…

Part 8: The Whale that Exploded
This episode focuses on the circumstances surrounding the gruesome events of January 2004 when a dead sperm whale exploded in the middle of a Taiwan street. On the Southern tip of Taiwan a dead sperm whale weighing 56 tons is being transported on the back of a lorry. But at 6.30am the journey turns into a disaster. As the city wakes, it is greeted by an enormous explosion - intestines, blubber and blood blow out of the whale with the force of a bomb. What could have caused this unprecedented explosion?