Walking with Beasts is a six-part television documentary about extinct cenozoic mammals and birds produced by the BBC in the United Kingdom. It was released in Britain in 2001. In the United States it was retitled Walking with Prehistoric Beasts. Like its predecessor, Walking with Dinosaurs, it recreates extinct animals using CGI and animatronics.
Episodes
- Episode 1 depicts the warm Eocene, 16 million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs. It takes place in a tropical environment and shows a world in which birds rule the earth, and most mammals are still very small. The episode is centered around on a family of Leptictidium (small shrew-like animals). The setting is near the Messel Pit.
- Gastornis
- Godinotia
- Propalaeotherium
- "Whale Killer" — 36 Million Years Ago - Upper Eocene — Pakistan
- Episode 2 takes place in mangroves and the open Tethys Ocean, and its central protagonist is a female Basilosaurus (a large early whale) who is forced into the dangerous mangove in search for food.
- Dorudon
- Embolotherium
- Moeritherium
- Episode 3 takes place in the Oligocene epoch, a drier period. It tells the story of the childhood of a male indricothere (a tall rhino-like animal that is the largest land mammal ever to have lived).
- Episode 4 depicts a family of Australopithecus, an early ancestor of humanity. Grey is the lead male, and is confronted by another male, Bruiser.
- Ancylotherium
- Deinotherium
- Dinofelis
- Episode 5 shows the strange fauna of the isolated continent of South America and explores the effects of the Great American Interchange , 1.5 million years earlier. It focuses on a male Smilodon (a sabre-toothed cat), named Half Tooth, whose leadership of a pride is threatened by two rival males.
- Macrauchenia
- Megatherium
- Phorusrhacos
- Doedicurus
- Episode 6 is set on the North Sea (then a grassy plain) during the last Ice Age. The central focus is on a group of mammoths.
- European lion
- Homo neanderthalensis
- Homo sapiens
- Megaloceros
