Giants Episode Guide

Episode Guide

• Bears

  Nigel Marven meets different bear species. First on the itinerary are the grizzlies of Minnesota which roam freely among the human population, closely followed by the massive Kodiak which lives on the coast of Alaska. The daredevil wildlife enthusiast's six-part global tour finally comes to an end after tracking down polar bears, coming face-to-face with the largest specimens on the Norwegian island of Spitzburgen

• Birds

  Nigel Marven turns his attention to birds, taking part in a rather bumpy ostrich race in South Africa, and watching marabou storks scavenge for food in Uganda. He also marvels at the enormous wingspan of condors flying high above the Andes, and meets the great bustard, one of the world's heaviest birds

• Lizards

  Globetrotting zoologist Nigel Marven sets out in search of the world's largest lizards, visiting locations as far afield as Barrow Island, Western Australia, and Malaysia, where he gets a bit too close to the lashing tail of a water monitor. His quest ends in Indonesia, home of the much-filmed Komodo dragons, who obligingly eat a dead water buffalo while he stands and marvels at their strength and voracity

• Sharks

  Nigel Marven goes in search of the world's largest sharks, plunging into murky South African coastal waters in the hope of encountering a great white. The ardent explorer's epic quest also takes him as far afield as America, Australia and Greenland, where he dives beneath a ceiling of ice more than a metre thick to find the massive sleeper shark

• Snakes

  Nigel Marven embarks on a worldwide quest to find some of the planet's largest creatures, beginning with the snake. In the sweltering heat of the Cameroon he wriggles down an aardvark burrow to find an African rock python in its lair, witnesses the courtship rituals of a Burmese python, and wrestles with an anaconda in the swamps of Venezuela

• Spiders

  Intrepid adventurer Nigel Marven searches for scary spiders, visiting the Italian town that gave tarantulas their name, travelling to Thailand, where the eight-legged creepy-crawlies are regarded as a delicacy, and tracking down the monstrous bird-eating variety in the jungles of French Guiana