And farming fuelled the growth of another habitat, one that would become an even bigger challenge to North America's wildlife. The modern city was born. The city is an artificial environment, built around the needs of millions of people, and yet it a...
At first, the Europeans relied heavily on local food supply by native people. But as they settled in, their farming practices began to shape the landscape of North America. The plow allowed them to farm larger areas of land, helping to feed the expan...
Where purple martins had once laid their eggs in hollow threes, in time, they came to rely almost totally on people to provide nests for them. These artificial nests were made from dried out squashes known as gourds. The shape made them perfect nesti...
By the mid 1800s, the horse and the cowboy had come to symbolize the wild west. And of course, with the cowboys came cattle. As the bison quickly vanished from the landscape, cattle filled their place. Meanwhile increasing numbers of the tame horses...
Just over 500 years ago, Europeans arrived in North America. And with these colonizers came an animal that hadnt been seen here for thousands of years. The horse returned to the Americas, now tamed and carrying the Spanish conquistadors. This new for...
...and may trace their ancestry all the way back to the first dogs to enter North America. The Carolina dogs are pack animals with a strick hierarchy topped by an alpha male. Like most wild dogs, they hunt in groups. But many of the kills they make a...
Saber-tooth died out, but another big cat survived. The puma may have been more able to adapt because its diet is more varied and includes small prey. The grizzly bear also lived through the post Ice Age changes and now thrives in North America. Once...
But there is a problem with the idea that hunting caused the mass extinction. Mammoths were not the only animals to disappear. Camels survived for millions of years in North America, but disappeared around the same time as the mammoths. Wild horses f...
The same signs appear in young male mammoth tusks, but those living in North America at the end of Ice Age laid down their stress rings three years earlier than usual. In other words, it seems that young males were leaving the herd at an earlier age....
But even on its own, a mammoth was still highly dangerous and an attack required stealth and teamwork. One of the hunters may have acted as a decoy, distracting the animal while others surrounded it. These hunters had another trick up their sleeve. U...
To find the answers, we need to rewind history around 14,000 years to a time when the first people set foot in North America. The continent was about to undergo a profound change, a change these new arrivals may have played a part in. Throughout the...
Downtown L.A., the ultimate modern American city, but Los Angeles skyscrapers are built over the graves of thousands of extinct Ice Age beasts. Today all we have are memorials to these vanished animals, but imagine if they had survived into the prese...
Though very powerful, shes not a sprinter and she needs to get close to her prey before she strikes. This time shes run too soon and its a fruitless chase. Then her attention is diverted to a slower-moving target, slow but not defenseless. She backs...
In the heat of the day, hunters can afford to slow down and rest in the shade. Its one of the advantages of a high-protein diet. Llamas originated here in North America are the regular visitors to the spring. The strange-looking tapir is common too....
Meanwhile, the ground sloth, like the mastodons, must eat most of the day to fuel its huge bulk. This may be the ice age, but by midday, temperatures soar, drawing another predator to the spring to drinkthe notorious saber-toothed cat. Most creatures...
