| Summary: | Ben Garrod, primatologist and master skeleton builder, shares his unique passion for bones. He embarks on a very personal journey through the remarkable and surprising story of how a single, universal body plan - the skeleton - has shaped the animal kingdom. There are over 62,000 species of vertebrate of every size and shape from squirrels to sperm whales and aardvarks to anacondas. Each skeleton differs in small, but critical ways and, in Ben's hands, those differences are decoded to reveal an animal’s complete life story - not only how it moves, where it lives and what it eats, but also its entire evolutionary journey. Secrets of Bones brings the remarkable world of bones to life in a unique way. By conducting fascinating experiments, meeting expert contributors, using integrated graphics and a wealth of archive from the BBC's Natural History Unit, Ben unlocks a fascinating and hidden world we never get to see. In this episode, Ben Garrod finds out how the skeleton has allowed vertebrates to do the most remarkable thing of all - take to the air. He discovers why the humble pigeon is such an exceptional flier, uncovers bony secrets as to how the albatross makes mammoth migrations and finds out why some birds have dense bones. Finally, he reveals which surprising flier is his 'ultimate'.
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