PBS Nature - The Seedy Side of Plants (1999) TVRip - SoS

Documentaries

Butthe plants master plan for world conquest is no longer a secret.NATUREs THE SEEDY SIDE OF PLANTS rips the husk off the many remarkableways plants make sure their offspring are spread far and wide. Applesmake themselves as red and tempting as possible to encourage us to pluckthem and take a bite so the seeds inside can escape to new ground. AnAfrican melon has a mouth-watering method of convincing aardvarks to goto the trouble of tunneling deep into the earth to liberate a few toughpits.
There is no doubt that plants are one of the worlds mostsuccessful life forms. Indeed, Earth is a planet of plants, withmillions of kinds growing in virtually every environment imaginable,from the driest deserts to the wettest jungles. Even paved parking lotsoften display a few tufts of tough grass poking up through the cracks.But it didnt take a gardeners green thumb to design this globalgarden. Plants did it themselves, millions of years before humans everappeared, by evolving countless methods of producing and spreadingseeds. These tiny packages of genetic material have proven an almostunstoppable means of ensuring a species survival.
At firstglance, some seeds designs make plants seem downright intelligent. Takeapples, for instance. As THE SEEDY SIDE OF PLANTS shows, these sweetfruits have evolved to be bright and shiny for good reason: they attractpeople and other animals. Drawn in by their effective advertising, wedo the work of carrying apple seeds to new territory where the speciescan gain a toehold and expand. Indeed, we like apples so much that weveplanted orchards especially for our favorite fruit. The practice hasprompted some biologists to ask who really is the boss in thisrelationship: do the apple trees work for us -- or do we work for them
Similarexamples can be found throughout nature, from fig-eating bats thatbecome unwitting cargo planes for fig seeds, to squirrels andwoodpeckers that unknowingly help oak trees spread their acorns. THESEEDY SIDE OF PLANTS even includes the remarkable tale of an Africanmelon that grows a gourd-shaped bladder of water deep underground. Inthe dry season, aardvarks sniff out the watery melons, digging deep toquench their thirst. In the process, however, the thirsty aardvarks alsosip up a few pit-like seeds, which they later deposit insidefertilizing manure. Its hard to say who gets the better end of thedeal: the melon or the mammal.
Both plant and animal, of course,get something out of these mutually beneficial relationships. Appletrees, for instance, didnt set out to fool people into picking theirfruit. But somewhere along the line, certain apple trees ended up with acombination of genes that made their fruit a bit brighter or sweeterthan all the other apples. Since we liked these apples so much, we beganselectively planting the trees, and learned how to breed even sweetervarieties. In exchange for the tender, nutritious fruit, the trees getsteady care and even protection from potential enemies, such as insectsand browsing deer.
Evolutionary accidents may explain how othertypes of seeds developed, too. On the island of Mauritius, for instance,there once were trees that dropped their tasty fruits full of seeds tothe ground. Then, a new bird arrived on the island. It loved the fruits,but the trees seeds couldnt survive the trip through the birdsstomach. As a result, the tree was in trouble, since fewer of its seedswere surviving. Then, perhaps through a random genetic mutation, onetree, the calvaria, produced fruit with tougher seeds that could survivebeing eaten by the birds. Given this significant advantage, the toughercalvaria soon began to thrive. Eventually, they crowded out theirancestors completely.
As THE SEEDY SIDE OF PLANTS shows, however,evolution can sometimes produce a plant that is too reliant on aparticular animal for survival. Thats exactly what happened onMauritius. There, some biologists believe that lonely 300-year-oldcalvaria trees await a bird that will never return: the dodo. In 1598,Dutch explorers established a colony on Mauritius. In the search forfood to eat and sell, the settlers plundered the islands naturalresources, killing giant turtles, lizards, and the huge, flightless dodobirds with abandon. When the settlers did in the dodo, however, theymay have also put the death of the calvaria in motion. Some biologistsbelieve the dodos ate the trees fruit, and that the trip through thebirds stomach helped prepare the seeds for germination. But now thattheir partner in life is gone, only a few calvaria survive. They aresilent reminders of a lost past, with their seed-bearing fruit litteringthe ground and inviting a feast that will never come.
ScreenShots:

Download:
http://www.filesonic.com/file/2712135711/PBS_Nature___The_Seedy_Side_of_Plants_1999.TVRip.SoS.part3.rar
http://www.filesonic.com/file/2712151841/PBS_Nature___The_Seedy_Side_of_Plants_1999.TVRip.SoS.part2.rar
http://www.filesonic.com/file/2712151261/PBS_Nature___The_Seedy_Side_of_Plants_1999.TVRip.SoS.part1.rar
Mirror 1:
http://www.filejungle.com/f/E3JMke/PBS_Nature___The_Seedy_Side_of_Plants_1999.TVRip.SoS.part1.rar
http://www.filejungle.com/f/NGdV3T/PBS_Nature___The_Seedy_Side_of_Plants_1999.TVRip.SoS.part2.rar
http://www.filejungle.com/f/PWFRkn/PBS_Nature___The_Seedy_Side_of_Plants_1999.TVRip.SoS.part3.rar
Mirror 2:
http://www.wupload.com/file/955457586/PBS_Nature___The_Seedy_Side_of_Plants_1999.TVRip.SoS.part1.rar
http://www.wupload.com/file/955457476/PBS_Nature___The_Seedy_Side_of_Plants_1999.TVRip.SoS.part2.rar
http://www.wupload.com/file/955452526/PBS_Nature___The_Seedy_Side_of_Plants_1999.TVRip.SoS.part3.rar
Mirror 3:
http://www.fileserve.com/file/tMTCCs4/PBS_Nature___The_Seedy_Side_of_Plants_1999.TVRip.SoS.part1.rar
http://www.fileserve.com/file/Srtt9cQ/PBS_Nature___The_Seedy_Side_of_Plants_1999.TVRip.SoS.part2.rar
http://www.fileserve.com/file/4QqHGgS/PBS_Nature___The_Seedy_Side_of_Plants_1999.TVRip.SoS.part3.rar

PBS Nature The Seedy Side of Plants 1999 TVRip SoS

Free Downloads PBS Nature - The Seedy Side of Plants (1999) TVRip - SoS, Shareware, Ftp, Direct links, RapidShare, Megaupload, DepositFiles, HotFile, Uploading, Easy-Share.