Life across continents

From the depths of the South American jungles to the frozen peaks of Asia, a new BBC nature series co-produced with Chinese partners is now being aired, Xu Fan reports.

On an icy corner of Antarctica, two male elephant seals are violently biting and crashing into one another to compete over the mating rights of the 60 or so females.

For most people, it's such a rarely-seen sight that they would have the chance to encounter at such close quarters.

It's a moment captured by BBC cameramen and featured in the first episode of BBC's latest nature documentary series, Seven Worlds, One Planet, which started broadcasting simultaneously in China and the United Kingdom on Oct 28.

From the depths of the South American jungles to the frozen peaks of Asia, and from the cities of Europe to the vast plains of Africa, the seven-episode documentary features extraordinary scenes of animal behavior and untold stories of wildlife that shape the remarkable diversity of our planet.

More than 1,500 people worked on the project, which assigned four teams to 41 countries, filming for nearly 1,800 days and capturing more than 2,260 hours of footage. The entire documentary spans seven hours.