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New Dawn
Leptictidium
- Big Eater: It must eat constantly due to its high metabolism, being a mammal and not a reptile.
- Book Ends: The Leptictidium family survives and is back to patrolling the jungle floor for food, like when it was introduced.
- Decoy Protagonist: While introduced as the protagonist of the episode and used to personify the main theme of mammals diversifying but still remaining small, the Leptictidium stays mostly on the side while the plot gravitates to larger, more striking animals like Gastornis and Ambulocetus.
- Fragile Speedster: Both smaller and weaker than other forest animals, but quick as a whip.
- The Mentor: The mother to her four young. She teaches to them how to survive in the forest.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: A rabbit-sized kangaroo crossed with an elephant shrew. It also has bizarrely human-like hands. However, in real life, it might have been able to run like a theropod dinosaur rather than hop.
- The Nose Knows: The family instinctively knows by smell that the Ambulocetus in front of them is dead at the end of the story. Leptictidium are portrayed with a very sensitive mobile "proboscis".
- Palette Swap: The presumed Cretaceous ancestor appears darker, the ones in the episode appear with warmer colors, both have cryptic lines typical of jungle mammals. The Cretaceous specimen has the same color scheme of the ones shown after the dinosaurs.
- Riddle for the Ages: As explained in the making-off, and despite having whole skeletons, scientists still don't know if it really hopped like a kangaroo or run on two feet, like a theropod dinosaur.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: It is like a cross between a shrew and a tiny kangaroo.
- Slept Through the Apocalypse: The family is deep in their den when the volcanic gas releases, but were lucky enough to be upwind of the lake. They wake up to find all their neighbors dead.
- Who's Laughing Now?: After surviving the catastrophe, the youngsters inspect the carcass of the Ambulocetus.
Gastornis
- All for Nothing: The mother Gastornis spends months watching over a single egg, but it gets eaten by giant predatory ants right as it's hatching when she's out hunting.
- Animals Not to Scale: It's described as weighing half a ton, but in reality was probably less than 500 pounds, never mind 500 kilograms.
- Artistic License – Biology: It reproductive behaviour (lays one egg and only mother cares for it) is rather strange when comparing it to modern predatory birds, large ground birds, and large waterfowl (the closest living relatives of Gastornis), which are virtually always either monogamous or primarily cared for by males and have multiple eggs. The fact it also keeps it unprotected for long periods is also unusual considering how much effort is being exerted for just one egg, but it's necessary for the ants to devour the chick without the mother noticing.
- Ascended to Carnivorism: At the time, there was a debate about whether Gastornis was truly predatory or actually an herbivore which used its beak to crack open nuts and grind tough vegetation. The program chose the former option, probably because it's cooler, but since then the latter option is now the one widely considered to be correct.
- Big Bad: The main predator of the episode.
- Bullet Time: Used while it charges a herd of Propalaeotherium.
- The Dreaded: Most mammals are terrified of it.
- Feathered Fiend: As an avian macropredator, this is to be expected.
- Historical Badass Upgrade: Even those who believed Gastornis was a predator at the time thought that it was an ambush predator rather than a sprinter as portrayed in the episode. And there were many decent-sized carnivore mammals and reptiles in the area at the time, so the narrator's claim that dinosaur-like birds are keeping the niche for themselves is pure shilling.
- Mama Bear: Fiercely protective of her (only) egg.
- Monster Is a Mommy: It nurtures an egg.
- Noisy Nature: The female mother Gastornis fights against a rival to defend her egg, and both birds are very noisy during the combat. In general, the Gastornises screech frequently throughout the story, even the newborn.
- Red Right Hand: The featherless, red face seems to be there just to make it scarier. Carnivore birds with naked faces feed on animals larger than themselves (e.g. vultures), while all the potential prey in this episode is small.
- Rule of Cool: It was debated for a long time if Gastornis was vegetarian or carnivorous, and it turned out to be a herbivore. The show makes it the undisputed top predator. The narrator says it weighed "half a ton"; actually was not more massive than a modern ostrich (150 kgs).
- Rule of Drama: We don't know how many eggs were in a Gastornis nest. But it is more dramatic if it is only one, and ants eat it when it hatches.
- Shoot the Shaggy Dog: The egg gets eaten by a swarm of ants right as it hatches.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: To the Mesozoic dinosaurs. Justified since it is a theropod dinosaur.
- Villainous BSoD: Her chick's unexpected death by giant ants makes it shriek. Since it doesn't appear afterwards, it may have actually left because of it.
- Uncertain Doom: We don't see what happens to it when the deadly volcanic gas is unleashed.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: It doesn't appear again after its chick is killed and we are not told of its fate after the gas explosion in the lake. The book implies that it died, but other sources claim that it was unaffected because it had left the forest after the death of its offspring.
Ambulocetus
- Butt-Monkey: The poor whale has horrible luck through the episode, failing twice to catch prey and then, when things were looking better for him after it catches a small mammal during the night, he's killed by the poisonous gasses from the nearby lake after a violent earthquake releases them.
- Distant Finale: The final shot of the Ambulocetus corpse morphs into the later, more advanced whale Basilosaurus while the narrator says that whales have a long history ahead.
- Fantastic Fauna Counterpart: An aquatic ambush predator like a crocodile, even though it shares a habitat with actual crocodiles.
- Hero of Another Story: Gets its own story arc.
- Irony: Killed by the gas release while the Leptictidium survives, yet the lineage of the former is destined to flourish while the other is to become extinct.
- Misplaced Wildlife: Lampshaded. The narrator states that it reached the lake after swimming upstream from the ocean. It still beggars belief, as early whales like this are only known from India and Pakistan, at the time an island in the middle of the Tethys Sea, while the episode is set in Germany's Messel Shales, which would be around 5,206 kilometres to travel. The oldest record of a basal cetacean from Europe is a partial lumbar vertebra attributed to a protocetid (a slightly more derived group of ancient cetaceans) found in Bartonian strata in (coincidently enough) Germany (about 40 mya), at which point these animals were starting to spread across the globe, including the Americas.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: It is the size of a sea lion, looks and behaves like a crocodile, but it is hairy and swims up and down like an otter. The hands and feet look intermediate between a seal and waterfowl. The only obvious whale feature is the teeth.
- Never Smile at a Crocodile: For all intents and purposes, it acts like one.
- Rule of Cool:
- Shown ambushing land animals rather than catching fish (which were probably its main diet instead, as in its ecological equivalent the Nile crocodile), although since otters, pinnipeds, and some modern predatory cetaceans have been known to occasionally hunt land animals, it's not necessarily implausible.
- The fact it's present in the episode at all. Ambulocetus is not a native of the German Messel Pit, and its fossils are only known from Pakistan, thousands of miles away, but a semi-aquatic whale is a much cooler predator to focus on than a plain old crocodile. During the upper Ypresian-lower Lutetian (around the time "New Dawn" is set), ancient cetaceans were still largely restricted to the Indian subcontinent, but not long after, in the upper Lutetian-lower Bartonian (circa 43-40 mya), they were far more widespread, including finds from the United States and even Peru.
- Who's Laughing Now?: The Leptictidium family inspects its corpse, the morning after the volcanic gas release. However, the narrator notes the Dramatic Irony, as Leptictidium's lineage would later died out, leaving no descendants, while Ambulocetus would evolve into an incredibly successful lineage of mammals.
Propalaeotherium
- Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: They spend the day consuming over-ripened grapes, which causes they to get drunk. Although it's only a tiny amount of alcohol, it's enough to cause them to stumble about and get less alert to their surrounds. For one individual, it proves to be a fatal mistake.
- Butt-Monkey: Hunted by all large predators in the episode, and a victim of geological phenomena to boot. The first time we see one it is almost hit by a small meteorite.
- Fragile Speedster: Its only defense is running away and hoping the predator goes for a different member of the herd.
- Intoxication Ensues: While foraging on the forest floor, the herd consumes ripe grapes — way too ripe, in some cases. This makes some lower their guard and even have trouble standing, becoming easy prey for the Gastornis.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: A horse the size of a cat, as stated by Branagh. It has four small hooves per hand, eats leaves instead of grass, and has cryptic coloration like other small forest dwellers.
- Monster Munch: Shown being hunted unsuccessfully by Ambulocetus and successfully by Gastornis.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: Cat-sized horse sounds cute. But Propalaeotherium was not even a horse ancestor, but still a strict relative of the horse family (the Equids).
Godinotia
- Anticlimax: In more meanings than one. They stay most of the episode sleeping on the trees, but are killed almost as soon as they wake up.
- Artistic License – Paleontology: They resemble simians, with hairless faces, but were more closely related to the lemurs, and so should have pointier, hairy, dog-like faces.
- Informed Species: It's designed to resemble a simian, but Godinotia is an adapid, which are part of the more basal strepsirrhines (or wet-nosed primates), whose living representatives are lemurs, bushbabies, and lorises, so it stands to reason that adapids would have resembled lemurs, not monkeys. Even the novelization calls Godinotia "lemur-like".
- Never Trust a Trailer: The accompanying media shows them awake during the day, when they should be asleep.
- Out with a Bang: Two of them are killed by gasses while mating.
- Really Gets Around: They spend the entire night mating.
- Sleepyhead: Subverted because they are nocturnal. But since the episode takes place over a day, they spend most of the run time sleeping or trying to. Then, as soon as night falls and they become active, the gas release happens.
Titanomyrma
- All There in the Manual: Only called "giant ants" in the episode, because the species was not yet described at the time of the program's original airing.
- Ant Assault: Behaviourally similar to modern army ants, but much bigger, resulting in a giant living carpet of death devouring everything in its path.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: This is the largest ant in the fossil record.
- Eats Babies: Eats the chick that was only minutes old at the time of its death.
- Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: Not thoroughly, but they do turn up very suddenly.
- Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: They swarm around a baby bird and strip it to the bone in seconds, and just show up right the heck out of nowhere.
- Outside-Context Problem: They appear out of nowhere, put everyone at risk, and deliver a blow to the Gastornis that could not be replicated by anyone else.
- Roger Rabbit Effect: Some shots have them being live-acted by real ants.
- Rule of Cool: Their deadly swarming behaviour. Somewhat justified since ants are social insects, and even your average ants will swarm if they find a big source of food. Although, it's not even known for sure if the genus was predatory.
- Stripped to the Bone: The narrator says they do this to any animal they catch in their path, and, sure enough, they do this to the unfortunate Gastornis chick unable to defend itself, leaving it only a bloodied skeleton.
- The Swarm: How else would they kill things thousands of times their size?
- Zerg Rush: Being ants, this is their default attack strategy.
Miacid
- All Animals Are Dogs: Physically, rather than behaviorally. Miacids looked more like tree weasels than terrestrial creatures and were certainly not that pup-like.
- All There in the Manual: Only identified in derived media and never at genus level.
- Anachronism Stew: Even without considering that the model is recycled from the bear-dog, the setting is just too early for carnivorans to have adapted to life on the ground, so the miacid shouldn't have "running legs". A mesonychid or an early creodont would have fit the role better.
- Monster Munch: It shows up to be eaten by the Ambulocetus.
- No Name Given: Not even in the manual, since it's not even supposed to be a specific species.
- Palette Swap: Uses the same model as the bear-dog in "Land of Giants", but since bear-dogs had not evolved yet and wouldn't reach Europe for another 12 million years, it's not identified by name.
- Red Shirt: Killed as soon as it appears so the Ambulocetus doesn't come across as all bark and no bite.
- What Measure Is a Non-Cute?: With some Carnivore Confusion sprinkled in. They wouldn't give Ambulocetus a taste of ridiculously cute critters like Leptictidium, Propalaeotherium and Godinotia, but crushing and drowning a meateater was okay (although it may be because the audience already sympathizes with the ridiculously cute critters seen earlier; had this one been given more screen time, it may not have gotten the proverbial axe).
Eurotamandua
An anteater-like animal live-acted by a modern tree anteater (Tamandua), but actually a pangolin ancestor.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: Appears in only one shot, when the setting is introduced.
- Roger Rabbit Effect: Live-acted by a modern tamandua, although it was actually a relative of pangolins rather than anteaters (although it was thought to be an anteater at the time, and a scaleless pangolin would resemble an anteater).
Whale Killer
Basilosaurus
- Always a Bigger Fish: Bigger fish to Physogaleus, Moeritherium — who are confident in the water because they are too big for sharks and crocodiles — and Dorudon. She also dwarfs the Andrewsarchus, which at the time the episode came in was believed to be a distant land dwelling relative and one of the largest carnivorous land mammals of all time.
- Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: Zigzagged. The Basilosaurus never attack each other, but the main female slaughters a pod of the closely related Dorudon in the final act.
- Blood Is Squicker in Water: The main female is shown trailing clouds of blood every time she makes a kill.
- Censor Steam: Subverted. Many bubbles are released while the Basilosaurus have sex, but you can see enough of it.
- Cow Tools: They have well developed hind legs, but they are too small and inconveniently placed to sustain them on land. Scientists theorize that they were used to help the animals position themselves while mating.
- Distant Finale: Serves as one for the previous episode, which ends with the image transitioning from Ambulocetus to Basilosaurus.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: She gives birth to a healthy calf in the end. Subverted in that the species is explicitly stated to go extinct soon afterwards.
- Eats Babies: She slaughters the youngest generation of Dorudon.
- Establishing Character Moment: It's shown hunting sharks and ignoring smaller fish in its first appearance.
- Fantastic Fauna Counterpart: Except for its solitary nature, its behavior is based entirely on modern killer whales.
- Gag Penis: The male has a comically large one that is fully visible after it detatches from the female. Also modern whales have often big penis (because it's easier to use when you have no mobile limbs to help position yourself).
- Genius Bruiser: It has the intelligence expected of a cetacean, and it is a top predator.
- Irony: Most fossils of this marine species have been found in the Sahara Desert, in areas that are now among the driest on Earth.
- Lightning Bruiser: A fast swimmer, relying mostly on speed to hunt.
- Misplaced Wildlife: Invoked by the narrator when he claims that the Basilosaurus would normally not look for food in the mangrove swamps, and that she's there because she's getting desperate.
- Monster Is a Mommy: The female is even more aggressive than usual because she's pregnant and desperate to keep herself and her unborn calf alive during a mass extinction. The pregnancy is used to garner the audience's sympathy for the creature.
- Monster Whale: It's depicted as a fearsome predator, hunting smaller whales, sharks and land creatures that wander into the ocean.
- Prehistoric Monster: She's portrayed in a similar manner to Walking with Dinosaurs's Liopleurodon. Unlike the Liopleurodon, however, she is the protagonist of the episode in which she appears.
- Protagonist-Centered Morality: She would come across as a villain if the episode starred any other animal, but, since she's the protagonist, we cheer because she succeeded in having her baby.
- Rule of Cool:
- It was only 20 tons in Real Life, one-third its weight in the show. This was because it was very thin (more like an anaconda than a whale).
- It's shown as the undisputed apex predator of the oceans in the episode, easily trouncing the sharks it coexists with. However, Basilosaurus actually did coexist with very large sharks (such as the ten-metre long Otodus auriculatus, a direct ancestor of megalodon), but perhaps the episode only showed the much smaller Physogaleus to make Basilosaurus look even bigger and more fearsome compared to everything else.
- Sea Monster: A giant predatory whale big enough to devour nearly anything else it encounters in the water. Though it was an animal and not a monster like the legendary sea-serpent.
- Something Else Also Rises: The tail emerging from the water can be considered a metaphor for the sexual climax.
- Strong Family Resemblance: Its head shape and teeth are still loosely similar to Ambulocetus, smoothing the transition between them despite Basilosaurus having grown to modern filter whales size already (it was, in fact, the largest mammal of all time until such whales evolved 21 million years later together with sperm-whales like Lyviatan).
- Super-Persistent Predator: She chases a Moeritherium to a sandbank and circles around for hours, waiting for the tide to increase. She only fails because she attacks too early and the Moeritherium can swim to safety.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: As stated by the narrator, the Basilosaurus is covering the niches left vacant by the giant sea reptiles of the Mesozoic, and it even resembles the last of them (mosasaurs).
- Villain Protagonist: In the end, she does cause the most damage in the episode.
- The Worf Effect: Her Establishing Character Moment has her playing with the former top predators of the ocean as if they were rag dolls.
Andrewsarchus
- Anachronism Stew: The one specimen we have (a skull) hails from the Irdin Manha Formation, which is Mid Eocene in age (circa 45-40 mya), not Late Eocene. Even more broadly speaking, the true mesonychids' glory days were over by the Priabonian (38-34 mya), while Hyaenodon and entelodonts (like the ones seen in the next episode) were already taking over as the new top predators of Asia at the time, though a few surviving mesonychids like the tiger-sized Mongolestes (the best possible replacement for the role) were still around, making the statement that they are a ''dying breed" at least correct.
- Ascended to Carnivorism: Despite looking like a wolf, it is actually an ungulate and has hooves instead of claws. This is downplayed because it actually descends from the primitive stock of omnivore ungulates, like pigs, rather than having evolved from a strict vegetarian.
- Canis Major: It looks like a giant dog, but with a coloration that resembles more certain felids or viverrids (genets, civets).
- Eats Babies: Although they're just scavenging, they still make quite the effort to consume the Embolotherium's deceased calf.
- Informed Species: It now falls into this thanks to Science Marches On. Though its true appearance remains unclear (since no postcranial fossils are known), it would (based on phylogenetic bracketing) more likely have resembled an entelodont or a larger version of primitive cetaceans such as Pakicetus, while here, it's depicted as a super-sized mesonychid.
- Heinous Hyena: It looks vaguely canine-like but has a felid-like spotted coat and is shown as a scavenger with bone-crushing jaws, essentially making it look like a super-sized hyena with hooves and a disproportionally large head. Spotted hyenas have also been known to occasionally prey on rhinos (especially calves), which is mirrored in the scene where the Andrewsarchus antagonize the brontotheres.
- Misplaced Wildlife: Andrewsarchus is known from a single skull find in Mongolia, but moved to the Pakistani coast (the birthplace of whales) to tie it better with the Basilosaurus plot.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: A large wolf-like carnivore, but it has hooves like an ungulate.
- Rule of Cool: In real life, it's only known from one skull found in Mongolia in the early 20th century. All we know is that it was big and had a big head. Its inclusion in the episode as all counts as this; it didn't live anywhere near the coast or even at the exact time the episode is set, but it was the biggest mammalian land predator known at the time so they just had to show it.
- Scavengers Are Scum: Despite their size, they can appear hardly heroic or scary for some viewers, and this is because they are scavengers, apparently. The mother brontothere has little trouble keeping them away from her dead calf.
- Strong Family Resemblance: Even if by complete coincidence, it also has a long, broadly triangular head, with a short neck, and large, pointy teeth — just like primitive whales Ambulocetus and Basilosaurus. Almost any piece on whale evolution by the BBC uses this model of Andrewsarchus in the spot reserved for land animals prior to Ambulocetus.
- Two Lines, No Waiting: The Andrewsarchus plot is completely removed from the Basilosaurus plot. The only relation between the two is that they are coincidental, both suffer the climate changes of the Eocene-Oligocene transition, and at one point an Andrewsarchus smells a Basilosaurus vertebra that the high tide brought to the beach.
Embolotherium
- All for Nothing: A mother wastes away defending her calf from Andrewsarchus in the aftermath of a brutal drought, unaware that it is stillborn.
- All There in the Manual: Only identified as "brontotheres" in the narration, the name of the larger group they belong to. Though its large size, distinct ram, and living in Asia at the end of the Eocene make it obvious that it's Embolotherium.
- Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism: Instead of horns, the females have expanded bones that look like double-headed clubs. In the males, these are flattened and further expanded, mirroring a shield.
- Cow Tools: The structures, actually part of the nasal bones, are too brittle to be of actual use fighting. If anything, it's the female structures that are more resistant unlike what you would expect from an ungulate. While they are still used for display and dominance in the show, in real life this isn't as sure, they may have supported fleshy nasal sacs, and some artists have even restored Embolotherium with their nostrils at the top of them.
- Death of a Child: It's mentioned that the unusually harsh drought has resulted in many of them being struggling to produce young this year, shown with one mother protecting a stillborn calf from scavengers, unable to understand it's already dead.
- Dire Beast: Resemble rhinoceros, which they are distantly related to, but are twice as big and less than half as smart.
- Dumb Muscle: Big, tough and not too bright. In one scene, a mother continues to protect her dead calf simply because she's not aware that it's already dead. The narrator addresses it directly:Kenneth Branagh: They are twice as big as modern rhinos; their brain is just one third of their size. They are not the brightest of beasts.
- Heroic Second Wind: After a whole day, the mother gives up the defense of her calf, only to mistake the effects of two Andrewsarchus battling for the carcass for her calf moving. Convinced that it's still alive, the mother goes full Rhino Rampage on the Andrewsarchus and makes them flee.
- Mama Bear: A tragic version, because the effort of the mother, while commendable, is also pointless.
- Mighty Glacier: It's large and strong, but not smart or fast.
- Misplaced Wildlife: Like Andrewsarchus, Embolotherium was found in Mongolia, not Pakistan.
- Mood Dissonance: The narrator says the herd is living its hardest challenge yet (in reference to the drought) while a brontothere scratches its butt on a palm.
- Rhino Rampage: Done by the mother to protect her calf, even though it's not an actual rhino. The males also play "pretend rhino" in their fight for dominance, but do not make as much contact because of the fragility of their facial ornaments.
- Rule of Cool: It's actually not that clear if embolotheres had any noticeable sexual dimorphism, unlike other brontotheres with conventional horns. There is at least one proposal that the bony growths of embolotheres were resonance chambers for communication, like the cranial structures of some hadrosaurs.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: One brontothere mother is persistently protecting her newborn from predators, totally unaware that it's stillborn and she's wasting her time.
Moeritherium
- Artistic License – Paleontology: The narrator claims that adults are too big to be bothered by the local predators. Never mind that at just 200 kg, a Moeritherium would be fair game for a decent-sized shark or crocodile, or that it coexisted with a huge madtsoiid snake Gigantophis.
- Diving Save: When the Basilosaurus ends stranded in the beach, the chosen Moeritherium dives rapidly in the water and then swim in an elephant-manner in shallower waters the whale can't reach. Producers used modern elephants as a model for the moerithere's swimming style.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: The Basilosaurus chases this one to a sandbar and circles around it, waiting for the tide to rise. The Moeritherium watches helplessly until the Basilosaurus miscalculates and attacks too early, enabling the Moeritherium to swim to safety.
- Gentle Giant: Big and bulky, but with a docile disposition. In Real Life Moeritherium was not a giant: not bigger than a tapir and shorter than an adult human. Unlike deinotheres and mammoths, it doesn't trumpet but bellows.
- Honorable Elephant: Despite not looking much like one, they are early proboscideans, and like their descendants, they are happy to be left alone.
- Huggy, Huggy Hippos: Their appearance and demeanor definitely evoke this, despite being related to elephants. At their smaller size, they more closely match the pygmy hippo, which is less aggressive than its larger cousin.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: Branagh notes its resemblance to a mix between an elephant, a pig and a hippo. It is naked-skinned, but other paleoartistic works show it hairy, sometimes even without the trunk.
Apidium
- Anachronism Stew: Retroactively; they've since been found to have lived in the Early Oligocene rather than the Late Eocene.
- Butt-Monkey: A rather literal example, given that they are the victim of all kinds of unpleasantries. Apidium is so much a Butt-Monkey that it is brutally killed onscreen by the other Butt-Monkey, Physogaleus.
- Hazardous Water: They are completely unprepared to survive in the water despite living in a mangrove. As a result, they move only through the canopy, jumping from one tree to other if necessary, or walk on land during the low tide. If they stay too close to the water for too long, there is a guarantee something will jump and eat them.
- Non-Indicative Name: They are named after the Apis bull of Egyptian Mythology because the first known fossil was first believed to belong to a small ungulate.
- Le Parkour: Has little problems crossing the channels due to its jumping ability.
- Slo Mo: Used while an Apidium jumps from one tree on the side of the channel to another.
Dorudon
- Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: Pays hard for this trope's aversion, since being a close relative of Basilosaurus doesn't spare it from the carnage.
- Death of a Child: Several infant Dorudon are hunted and eaten by the Basilosaurus, although the actual killing and devouring is left to the viewers' imaginations.
- Forced to Watch: The Basilosaurus comes day after day to their refuge to eat their calves and they can do nothing about it.
- Mama Bear: Though their efforts are futile, as the Basilosaurus manages to eat their babies.
- Monster Munch: They turn up just to get eaten.
Physogaleus
- All There in the Manual: Only referred to as "shark" in the episode.
- Always Someone Better: Sharks were top predator in the 25 million years between the extinction of the mosasaurs and the evolution of its Suspiciously Similar Substitute, the basilosaurid whales.
- Blood Is Squicker in Water: A bright red trail is left when one hunts an Apidium sitting on a branch near the water. Makes for an early scene when it was Physogaleus's blood, following a Basilosaurus attack.
- Butt-Monkey: Zigzagged. Though it's shown worfed by a Basilosaurus at the beginning of the episode and said to avoid the Moeritherium, they're still portrayed as a dangerous predator to smaller animals, as one of the Apidium from the mangroves finds the hard way.
- Jump Scare: Used when it eats a monkey.
- Overshadowed by Awesome: The sharks are portrayed as fearsome, competent predators in the episode, but next to the huge Basilosaurus they look way less impressive.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: The model is very similar to "Cruel Sea"'s Hybodus (minus Hybodus's dorsal fin spikes and horns), and its role is the same: to be laughable next to the episode's Prehistoric Monster/Sea Monster that is protagonist/antagonist.
- Threatening Shark: Zigzagged. Although they're no match for the Basilosaurus, they're still competent predators on their own right, with one shark in the mangroves managing to predate an Apidium in the blink of an eye.
- Throw the Dog a Bone: It nails an Apidium in one scene, and it is awesome.
- What Measure Is a Non-Cute?: A goofy elephant ancestor? We side with it for once and wish for it to escape the Basilosaurus' trap. A slaughter of primitive whale calves? Harsh, but that's Nature, and the Basilosaurus is desperate. Basilosaurus playing catch with two live sharks? How funny!
- The Worf Effect: Eaten by the Basilosaurus in its very first scene after the narration says that sharks remained the rulers of the oceans for nearly 25 million years after the extinction of the giant marine reptiles of the Mesozoic. Also shown to avoid Moeritherium, due to them being too large to hunt.
Land Of Giants
Indricothere
- Abusive Parents: The mother indricothere pushes her calf away rudely several times, including once when she could not lactate because she was dehydrated, and another when she was mating with her new suitor. When calves turn three years old, all maternal instinct vanishes and she drives them away to fend for themselves, because she needs to care for a new calf soon.
- All There in the Manual: The actual genus is Paraceratherium. However this is seldom used even in accompanying material. The name "indricothere" (from the genus's subfamily Indricotheriinae and in turn, Indricotherium, a synonym of Paraceratherium) is preferred.
- Anachronism Stew: The portrayal is based on the colossal Paraceratherium transouralicum (up to 5 meters tall and 15 tons), but this species comes from the Early Oligocene, not the Late Oligocene. The later species, like P. bugtiense and P. linxiaense, were still huge but closer in size to an African elephant, or at most a Columbian mammoth.
- Camera Abuse: The very last shot of the episode involves the protagonist calf charging at, and seemingly knocking down the camera from a tripod. No small feat considering it is made of CGI.
- Coming of Age Story: The episode follows a male indricothere from birth until it is larger than any other animal, baring other indricotheres. This is stressed in the Spanish dub, which changes the name of the episode from "Land of Giants" to "Little Giant".
- Compete for the Maiden's Hand: Two male indricotheres fight for the right to mate with the protagonist's mother.
- Fantastic Fauna Counterpart: Excluding the elephant-long pregnancy and the giraffe-style neck fighting, their behavior is a near copy of the two African rhinos.
- Foreshadowing: The mother drives the protagonist's older brother away when the former is only a few days old. The narrator says that the new calf doesn't know that he is watching his own future: when he turns three himself, his mother (now with another young calf) chases him out.
- Giant Equals Invincible: Being by far the largest animal in its ecosystem, an adult indricothere is completely immune to predation, and even an adolescent can chase off any other animal.
- Guess Who I'm Marrying?: Obviously, animals don't marry, but the scene where the indricotheres mate has shades of this. The Mama Bear is suddenly very permissive with the winner of the duel, letting it drive her son away and (what almost looks like) slapping him for interfering while they are having sex.
- Improbable Infant Survival: In a scene inspired from white rhinos, the mother indricothere drives away the protagonist when she is near the end of her pregnancy. The protagonist is three years old, far from its adult size still, and likely sexually immaturenote . In his first time away, he is injured in a leg (the narrator speculates by an older male indricothere) and tries to return to his mother, who chases him away again. The protagonist then heads into the bush, limping, while the narrator talks of his unlikely odds to survive... only to show up again, completely healthy, in a final scene set months later.
- Longest Pregnancy Ever: Two years, like an elephant.
- Mama Bear: The mother successfully defends her child against Hyaenodon several times and the entelodonts.
- Mighty Glacier: Slow moving, but extremely strong.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: A rhino-relative with the height more than a giraffe, no horns, and some elephant-like aspects.
- Nigh-Invulnerable: After a certain age, they are far too big to be killed by anything.
- Non-Standard Character Design: The mother can be picked apart from others because it has an ear deformity and carries it permanently lower than the other.
- Protagonist-Centered Morality: Obviously the calf doesn't like when his mother mates again, kicks him out and has another calf. But staying with her would have been worse for both and their species.
- Replacement Goldfish: The mother kicks her calf out when she has a new one. The species themselves are essentially nature's replacement goldfish for sauropods.
- Rhino Rampage: Though they do not resemble modern rhinos, the mother slips into this behaviour every now and then.
- Rule of Cool: It was known even at the time that the correct name was Paraceratherium, but "indricothere" sounded better. Another classic name of the animal is "Baluchitherium" from Baluchistan, a region between Iran and Pakistan.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute:
- The Coming of Age story is loosely similar to the Diplodocus in Walking with Dinosaurs' "Time of the Titans", though we don't see the indricothere grow to adult size or become sexually mature (instead, we see the mother mating again and having a new calf).
- The indricothere's birth mirrors the birth of the brontothere calf in the previous episode. Both happen during a drought in Asia and their mothers are forced to fight off two gigantic, canine-like predators who would love to take the child for breakfast. The obvious difference is that the indricothere is not stillborn.
- At the species level, the indricotheres are the mammals' first attempt to exploit the sauropod niche. Although still nowhere near their size, their proportions don't look much different from middle-sized sauropods like Camarasaurus.
- Who's Laughing Now?: The episode ends with the indricothere calf bullying an entelodont out of his path.
- You Can't Go Home Again: The mother expels the protagonist from her side when she is about to have a new baby.
Hyaenodon
- Animals Not to Scale: The size of a big tiger at its largest, and more commonly wolf-sized in real life (depending on the species). The size of a rhino in the series.
- Big Bad: The main antagonist of the episode.
- Bullet Time: Used when a Hyaenodon slips on the mud while chasing a young entelodont under the rain.
- Butt-Monkey: They never succeed at anything in this episode.
- Cool Versus Awesome: Their confrontation with the entelodonts. So awesome, it was chosen as the cover for the DVD release of Walking With Beasts. It makes it look like as if it was the main point of the episode, and the indricotheres where just Supporting Protagonists.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: The hunt for the chalicothere, bordering on One-Hit Kill, as the Hyaenodon bites into its throat before it has time to use its Wolverine Claws.
- Heinous Hyena: Although it's not a true hyena — in fact, it's not even a true carnivoran — its name and looks are both meant to evoke this trope, with its brown pelt, stripes, large bat-like ears, and dark muzzle bringing to mind the brown and striped hyena specifically. They're also aggressive carnivores, significant threats to the episode's herbivores and important antagonists in the young indricothere's story. Furthermore, the opening scene where two Hyaenodon try to snatch the newly born indricothere calf from its mother is a direct homage to spotted hyenas frequently stalking mother giraffes in labor and trying to nab their calf.
- Historical Badass Upgrade: While Hyaenodon gigas was a large and formidable apex predator in its day, it was only the size of a tiger, not the rhino-sized hellhound that can easily curb-stomp a giant chalicothere.
- Meaningful Name: Hyaenodon means "Hyena tooth" though it isn't related to Hyenas.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: Is it a dog? A hyena? A tiger? No! It's a member of the main lineage of mammalian predators that came before true carnivores replaced them, the creodonts.
- Rule of Cool: The narration says that they are as big as a rhinoceros but no known hyeanodont even approached the size of the smallest rhino (the Sumatran rhino, which can still reach a whopping 800 kg). And although fossils of large Hyaenodon (like the tiger-sized H. gigas) have been found in Asia, they are even more fragmentary than Andrewsarchus, being only known from teeth, jaw fragments and occasional postcrania fragments (like a large claw found at Hsanda Gol), so any reconstructions of them are based on more complete but more modestly sized species from North America and Europe, like the wolf-sized Hyaenodon horridus.
- They also sport large canines that stick out from their mouths, but in life, they would have been covered by lips.
- Smarter Than They Look: Or not. Its last minute decision to mark its territory on a Chalicotere it had just attacked did little to keep a group of Enteledonts away from the Chalicotere's corpse.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Having taken over the large carnivore guild from Andrewsarchus, it is now two Hyaenodon who pester a giant perissodactyl mother for a chance to eat her baby. However, unlike the Andrewsarchus, the Hyaenodon is also capable of jumping, chasing and hunting large ungulates by itself.
- Who's Laughing Now?: One is shown chasing a lone young entelodont in the middle of the rain. It's not clear if it's the same Hyaenodon who was chased away by a group of entelodonts earlier. But then it slips on the mud.
Entelodont
- Abusive Precursors: They are stated to be this to modern day pigs. Justified, since Entelodonts were thought actually ancestors of modern day pigs in real life.
- Always a Bigger Fish: A young entelodont is chased by a Hyaenodon, but it seems that the two are equals, given a group of entelodonts were seen driving a Hyaenodon away earlier.
- Angry, Angry Hippos: Though referred to as pig relatives and having some suid-like traits, their huge size, gray skin, vicious tempers, and penchant for settling disputes via painful jaw-wrestling also bring to mind hippos. Late research would go on to confirm that hippos (not pigs) are one of the entelodonts' closest living relatives.
- Ascended to Carnivorism: They never stopped being omnivores, but growing to gigantic sizes allowed them to feast on other large ungulates.
- Barbaric Bully: A realistic example, as at the end of the day it's just an animal with no morality. The episode depicts the entelodont as a large, oportunistic animal with an intimidating appearance who harass others to get resources more easily and is even referred by the narration as "the bully from the plains".
- Beauty Equals Goodness: The narrator in the previous episode concludes referring to this episode "It's the world of the Big, the Bad, and the Ugly". The "big" is the indricothere, the "bad" the hyaenodont, and the "ugly" the entelodont.
- Cool Versus Awesome: Entelodonts vs. Hyaenodon is excellent: like a boar against a wolf.
- Dark Is Evil: They are blackish and they are portrayed often as jerks.
- The Dreaded: Their aggressive behavior and huge size makes practically all animals from the zone to fear and avoid them. Even the gigantic indricothere bails after seeing a fight of two individuals, not wanting to get involved in the confrontation.
- Dumb Muscle: The narrator says "they are two metres tall, aggressive, and built like tanks... but with a brain no bigger than an orange". Similarly to the brontotheres of the second episode.
- Enemy Mine: Entelodonts in the documentary are portrayed as highly aggressive animals that don't tolerate even themselves (as the narration puts it, they're "their own worst enemy"). However, there are occassions where they temporarily form small gangs in order to bully other carnivores from their prey, as one Hyaenodon learns the hard way.
- Establishing Character Moment: In their first scene, a male individual comes to a watering hole where he intimidates a mother bear-dog and her two cubs from the shore they were drinking water from. Then, a second male entelodont approaches the first with the intention of competing for the right to mate, which ends with the two of them engaging in a vicious battle that ends with the loser getting his face full of cuts from the teeth of his rival. This quickly establishes the entelodont as a violent, nasty bully of an animal it's better not to mess with.
- Full-Boar Action: This was where the term "killer pig" came from.
- Greater-Scope Villain: The Hyaenodon is the main antagonist of the episode, but the entelodonts are powerful enough to drive it away.
- Historical Ugliness Update: As a consequence of shrinkwrapping. Their heads look like someone just draped skin over the bare skull, making them look like hideous gargoyle-like monstrosities. In reality, an entelodont likely had a lot more flesh on their face
, with even conservative takes making them look far more like ordinary animals. - Informed Species: According to the tie-in book (The Complete Guide to Prehistoric Life), they are Entelodon, but their larger size, living in Central Asia at the end of the Oligocene and reduced cheek flanges are more consistent with Paraentelodon.
- Jerkass: One of the better examples in animal fiction. They seem to relish in bullying everyone, including members of their own species.
- Lightning Bruiser: Despite its size, it is shown to be fast and nimble in the confrontation with the Hyaenodon. Modern wild boars also are such. But unlike them, it's improbabile they had the typical piglike tubular nose.
- Messy Pig: When eat the chalicothere carcass, complete with Jabba Table Manners.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: They look like hairless bison with the elongated head of a hippo, but with a lifestyle akin to grizzly bears and hyenas. They also jaw-wrestle like hippos.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: We are shown why most animals don't prefer to get in a fight with them when two entelodonts fight each other for territory. One ends with its face literally bitten bloody.
- Noisy Nature: Spends a majority of its screen time roaring with a wide open mouth.
- No Name Given: Only ever referred as "entelodonts" rather than a genus in particular. The best match size, time and location-wise is Paraentelodon, who also had smaller cheek flanges, unlike earlier genera like Entelodon, but similar to the show's model.
- Red and Black and Evil All Over: The upper half of their face is red, in contrast to their black coat elsewhere. And they are portrayed as the bullies of the ecosystem.
- Red Is Violent: Their forehead is depicted with a vibrant light red color that enhances their hyper aggressive nature and makes them look more imposing.
- Rule of Cool: They appear to be even larger than the largest known entelodont, Daeodon (which in addition was North American rather than Asian).
- Scavengers Are Scum: How they're presented initially. But one then is seen starving near a waterhole near a chalicothere, in a knelt pose, like what modern warthogs do when grazing or drinking.
- Who's Laughing Now?: A Hyaenodon chases after a younger entelodont during the rains, and the grown indricothere calf bullies a grown one out of his path at the end of the episode.
- Zerg Rush: A group gang up on a Hyaenodon, forcing it to abandon a fresh kill to them.
Chalicothere
- Anachronism Stew: Chalicotherium, the creature these guys are based on, didn't appear until well after the time period that their episode is set in (being known from the Mid Miocene to Early Pliocene), and by all accounts, only much smaller, more basal knuckle-walkers could have existed 25-23 mya. A similar-sized relative called Borissiakia did live in Central Asia during the Late Oligocene, although it was part of a subgroup that did not knuckle-walk.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: At the receiving end on this. A Hyaenodon kills a chalicothere with a bite to the throat before it has time to react.
- Composite Character: It's overall based on the giant Chalicotherium goldfussi (the type species), but it is only known from the Late Miocene (nearly 15 million years after the setting of the episode). Its presence at the end of the Oligocene is inspired by "Chalicotherium" pilgrimi and "Chalicotherium" wetzleri (who are known from the lowermost Miocene), but they were much smaller and their classification as knuckle-walking chalicotheriines (let alone species of Chalicotherium) is questionable at best, due to their fragmentary nature.
- Demoted to Extra: In the novelization, it only shows up for one scene to be killed by a pair of Hyaenodon.
- Fed to Pigs: The entelodonts take over one's carcass soon after it is killed.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: Walks like a gorilla, lives like a panda and has similar facial markings, has anteater claws on the front legs and hooves on the hind legs and the head of a horse. Is actually related to equines, as well as tapirs and rhinos.
- No Name Given: Only called "chalicothere", as it is not mean to be any particular one.
- Rule of Cool: Because the genus of reference, Chalicotherium is not known from the place the episode is set in until later, the show crew handwaved their chalicothere as a close relative of Chalicotherium that is yet to be discovered. There are chalicotheres that are known from the region, but they didn't knuckle-walk.
- Wolverine Claws: Though their main victims are trees. A chalicothere doesn't even use them when attacked by a Hyaenodon (it tries though).
Bear-dog
- All Animals Are Dogs: Not much of a bear outside of its name. When confronted with the baby indricothere, the mother bear-dog even emit sounds like an angry dog.
- All There in the Manual: Referred to as "bear-dog" in the episode, identified specifically as a member of Amphicyonidae (and more specifically as based on Cynodictis) on the show's website.
- Animals Not to Scale: If it’s indeed Cynodictis, then it’s much larger than the real animal. Compared to the entelodonts and baby indricothere, it seems to be the size of a wolf, while Cynodictis was no larger than and liklely the ecological equivalent of a fox. Larger sized bear-dogs wouldn’t show until the following Miocene epoch.
- Anachronism Stew: The episode's setting is based on Mongolia's Hsanda Gol formation (33-31 million years old) but it is moved to the end of the Oligocene 25 million years ago (the end of the Oligocene was later moved further, to 23 million years ago). Hsanda Gol has Cynodictis, but this genus and all other small, dog-like bear-dogs had become extinct in Eurasia by the time of the episode, leaving larger panther-like species like Amphicyon and Ysengrinia in their wake (smaller species continued to exist in North America).
- Butt-Monkey: Shown being scared off by an entelodont, and later one is shown having had its den caved in by a flood and her cubs drowned.
- Death by Adaptation: In the novelization, both the mother and her pups get killed by the collapsing den.
- Death by Irony: Born in a desert, cubs die in a flood.
- Hero of Another Story: Its presence is entirely incidental.
- Mama Bear: A mother charges face front against an indricothere to keep it away from her pups. While the indricothere is a baby, it's already several times the size of the mother bear-dog.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: Subverted. The mix and match is only in the name.
- No Name Given: Only ever called bear-dog, since it is not supposed to be a particular species.
- Outliving One's Offspring: All the pups die when the den collapses during the rainy season, leaving the mother alone.
Nimravid
An early cat-like feliform and one of the smaller predators of Hsanda Gol along with the bear-dog. Appears only in the novelization of "Land of Giants".
- Alternate Continuity: Appears in the novelization and the moment where it scares off the indricothere calf on its first day out of the canyon was given to the bear-dog in the episode.
- Foreshadowing: It's only around the size of a leopard and a hunter of small game but its distant relatives (the true cats) would eventually become apex predators, as shown with Dinofelis and Smilodon. note
- From Nobody to Nightmare: Together with the bear-dog, it represents the humble origins of carnivorans, who back in the Oligocene played second fiddle to hyaenodonts and entelodonts, but would later become the apex predators on Earth.
- No Name Given: It's only called a "nimravid". It might be meant to be a species of Nimravus, as fossils attributed to it have been found at Hsanda Gol.
- Wacky Wayside Tribe: It's shown stalking some early rabbits before bumping into the indricothere calf and scaring it off (the latter moment being given to the bear-dog in the episode), and later, it and the bear-dogs try to scavenge a dead chalicothere brought down by two Hyaenodon. Beyond that, it doesn't do much else.
Hyracodont
A pony-sized ancient rhino closely related to the giant indricothere. Appears only in the novelization of "Land of Giants".
- Alternate Continuity: Appears only in the novelization, where the opening scene shows an elderly Hyaenodon feeding on one of these and chasing away some bear-dogs trying to scavenge it.
- Big Guy, Little Guy: The little guy to the indricothere (Paraceratherium), being described as close relatives but differing greatly in size (though Paraceratherium is no longer classed as a hyracodontid).
- No Name Given: It's only called a "hyracodont". Given the location, it might be Ardynia or Prohyracodon.
- Wacky Wayside Tribe: It shows up several times as a common small herbivore in the Hsanda Gol environment but only as part of the scenery or the occasional Monster Munch.
Next Of Kin
Australopithecus
- Ambiguously Related: Downplayed in the case of Grey and Hercules. While Blue is doubtlessly Grey's son, it is unclear if Hercules is Grey's younger brother or an adult son. They are most likely related, it is just never stated how.
- Ascended to Carnivorism: Though chimpanzees are no stranger to eating meat, the Australopithecus have started to scavenge the carcasses of large savanna ungulates, heralding the evolution of hominids into large game hunters.
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: The group rises to save Blue from a Dinofelis, after a whole episode treating him like an outcast.
- Bad Boss: Grey is also quite the ass to his females and to Hercules, until the latter kicks his ass and takes over the group. However, he is also the only one that cares about Blue before the ending.
- Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism: Compared to modern humans, the Australopithecus males are noticeably taller, hairier and more muscular than the females.
- Boisterous Weakling: The Australopithecus manage to scare some large animals (e.g. Ancylotherium) because their upright stance makes them appear larger than they are. Most Australopithecus internal conflicts are also ended without actual violence.
- Bowdlerize: The Primal Scene was pixellated in the American release and cut out altogether in the Australian.
- Butt-Monkey:
- Blue, as a literal example. His mother dies of malaria, and he is nearly left behind when a rival Australopithecus gang takes the group's territory by force. Even the other australopithecine children don't want to play with him.
- The group as a whole. It is driven out of their territory by rival Australopithecus, chased off by Deinotherium (twice) just For the Lulz, and hunted by Dinofelis. Eventually, the group finds the strength to fight back at the last one.
- Camera Abuse: One of the stones used as weapons against the feline breaks a camera glass during the final battle by accident.
- Can't Get Away with Nuthin': Every time Blue tries to socialize, something happens and ruins it. Every time the troop tries to settle down and live their lives, some animal comes and ruins it... until the end.
- Chekhov's Gun: Hercules keeps in his hand the branch used to dig for tubers earlier while chasing off the vultures, and it becomes an effective weapon when he fights Grey over the carcass later.
- Chekhov's Skill: Hercules uses the skills used to drive an Ancylotherium away to chase away vultures later.
- Combat Pragmatist: Hercules. He rises his arms to increase his perceived height further and turns his digging stick into a club to defeat Grey.
- Cool Old Guy: Grey, being the oldest and the leader.
- Da Chief: Grey enforces the group's rules strictly while Hercules keeps testing their limits. This is not surprising, given that the rules are largely a defense of the boss's reproductive and feeding privileges. It eventually leads to the final fight between Grey and Hercules and Grey's downfall.
- The Dog Bites Back: To the Dinofelis, eventually. Also, Hercules to Grey at the dead zebra.
- Earn Your Happy Ending/Throw the Dog a Bone: After all their hardships, the group drives off a scary predator and Blue is fully accepted by his peers.
- Fantastic Fauna Counterpart: The behaviors that don't look immediately human are grafted from chimpanzees. The chest-punching, however, is from gorillas.
- Frazetta Man: Zigzagged. The animators found that their own models only worked if Australopithecus walked entirely upright, instead of with the hunched back and legs of a 'missing link' stereotype. On the other hand, Australopithecus proportions are so human-like that it can be described as a human with a chimpanzee's head.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: Mankind's origins were humble and far from the top of the food chain. Some might see the scenes where the australopithecines get a taste of meat and drive a Dinofelis away later as a Start of Darkness...
- Ground Punch: Done by Australopithecus during interspecies conflicts. Of course, it has no effect besides intimidation.
- Handicapped Badass: Grey is grey-haired and blind in one eye, yet remains leader of the group for the better part of the episode. He's probably been on top for years, and the narration implies that he could have driven off the invading group if his own had not been recently depleted by malaria. He is also beaten by Hercules because the latter uses a digging stick as a weapon; Grey prevails in an earlier fight with their bare hands only.
- Improbable Infant Survival: Babble's child is separated from the group and finds itself at the receiving end of a charging Deinotherium. Miraculously, the Deinotherium walks around it and completely forgets about it later, allowing it to rejoin the group.
- Klingon Promotion: Hercules fights Grey to become the top male in the group, and replaces him when he concedes defeat.
- Know When to Fold Them: Australopithecus have reduced aggression compared to other primates and tend to stop a fight before physical contact. The most damage is suffered by Grey in the zebra carcass fight, but he gives up after several stick hits.
- Mama Bear: Babble, after finding out her baby was accidentally left behind and is at the mercy of the Deinotherium, instantly goes back to rescue him. It doesn't work, but still...
- Meaningful Name: Grey has grey hair. Blue is sad.
- Non-Indicative Name: Hercules isn't the strongest member of the group, Grey is. Black Eye (the female killed by the Dinofelis) completely lacks one and they all have the same eye color, and Babble (the female that tries to save her son from the Deinotherium) may yell a lot but doesn't speak many languages.
- No Social Skills: At the beginning of the episode, Blue has no idea how to form bonds with other Australopithecus that aren't his dead mother. Given how political Australopithecus are, this contributes to his isolation.
- Non-Standard Character Design: Grey is easily told apart from Hercules because he has grey hair and a blind eye. Blue is told apart from the other kids because he is slightly older and taller.
- Pet the Dog: Grey, a small-time tyrant otherwise, is also the only member of the group who pays any attention to Blue before the ending. Of course, since Grey was the dominant male and thus had the right to mate with the females it is extremely likely that he is Blue's father.
- Primal Chest-Pound: Done by some males when the two Australopithecus troops have a territorial dispute, and also when the Australopithecus turn the tables on the Dinofelis.
- Riches to Rags: Implied. Blue's mother was the dominant female before she died of malaria. Without her to vouch for him, Blue is relegated to the bottom of the group.
- Rule of Cool: The scene where one Australopithecus walks on his knuckles and waddles, only to stand up when the narrator reveals that this species walks on two feet.
- The Usurper: Another Australopithecus group takes advantage of Grey's group's weakness and drives them out of their territory. That said, since Grey's group was weakened by malaria, which develops in still waters, it is likely that the usurper group will get also weakened from it.
- Who's Laughing Now?: After losing one of their members to Dinofelis, they make it run away the second time it tries to attack them, by throwing rocks at it.
- You Can't Go Home Again: The group is expelled from their territory by a rival Australopithecus troop and must find a new home.
- Younger Than They Look: Grey is thirty years old; Blue is three.
Dinofelis
- Big Bad: The main predator of the episode and the Australopithecus.
- Bullet Time: The frame slows when it runs towards the Australopithecus group.
- Cats Are Mean: Averted. It's presented as just a predator trying to feed itself, although still a constant danger to the Australopithecus clan.
- Crapsaccharine World: The Dinofelis den is in the perfect place for an Australopithecus troop — there is shade, clean water, numerous and varied food to sustain them for all seasons (fruit, roots, eggs, meat), no dangerous herbivores like Deinotherium and no other carnivores. The problem, and likely reason there are no other Australopithecus there already, is that there is a Dinofelis living there.
- Fantastic Fauna Counterpart: Its appearance and behavior is very similar to a modern African leopard (which was also far more likely to be the main predator for early Hominids). Later research via carbon dating has yielded that Dinofelis preferred to hunt grazing animals instead, the hominid-killer role now speculated to have been fellow Sabre-Toothed Cat Megantereon (ironic in this case, given that it was the ancestor of Smilodon, which is given the more sympathetic role in the following episode).
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Dinofelis means "terrible cat" or "terrifying cat".
- Panthera Awesome: Undeniable, being powerful big cats.
- Protagonist-Centered Morality: Appears as a villain because it hunts Australopithecus; in the next episode, another sabertooth cat, Smilodon gets a protagonist role and more sympathy.
- Rule of Cool: The idea that Dinofelis was a specialized primate killer is merely conjectural- evidence suggests that leopards filled that role instead, but a sabretooth cat is a lot cooler than an ordinary leopard. There is also no evidence that Dinofelis perched its prey on trees, or even that Dinofelis climbed trees at all. The reason leopards do this today is to prevent larger carnivores like lions from stealing their kills; Dinofelis coexisted with lions and a larger sabertooth, Homotherium, but was itself larger and heavier than a leopard.
- To Serve Man: It is the main predator of Australopithecus.
- Who's Laughing Now?: At the receiving end of this, once the Australopithecus gain the courage to fight back.
Deinotherium
- Ax-Crazy: A musth-stricken young male encountered by the australopithecines is one of the only creatures that can be described as this in the series.
- Barbaric Bully: You'd think a vegetarian invulnerable to predators may not waste so much energy picking on animals that could never be a threat to it, but you'd be wrong.
- Composite Character: It living in Africa alongside Australopithecus would suggest that it's Deinotherium bozasi, the last of its kind, but its huge size is more comparable to the European Deinotherium giganteum, while D. bozasi was the same size as an African elephant.
- Cruel Elephant: They are not the least honorable, being "sadistic" bullies more than anything. The irony is that everything they do is actually based on modern elephant behaviour.
- Fantastic Fauna Counterpart: Of the African elephant, but with any Honorable Elephant traits removed.
- Giant Equals Invincible: Their massive size means that there is nothing the australopithecines can do against it besides run. Even the calves are too large to tackle.
- Invincible Villain: They are secondary antagonists to the australopithecines who bully them via their greater size. Since the australopithecines' forms of fighting are limited to their hands and objects they can get their hands on, there is nothing they can do to stop a Deinotherium.
- Jerkass: Even the non-musth striken youngsters and females seem to love bullying the Australopithecus for no reason.
- Misplaced Wildlife: The Deinotherium portrayed are described "as tall as giraffes": but in Africa the deinotheres never reached such size. Some of the Asian ones did it, but lived earlier.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Deinotherium literally means "terrible beast" or "terrifying beast".
- Protagonist-Centered Morality: It is more instinctive compared to the mammoths of the last episode, yet the behaviour of both is closely patterned after modern elephants. The Deinotherium is an antagonist to the Australopithecus, so it displays dangerous elephant behaviour, while the mammoth is a protagonist, so it displays more peaceful elephant behaviour and the more questionable one is downplayed by it happening to larger animals that can actually take it.
- Rhino Rampage: It is an elephant relative, but its behaviour fits.
- Rule of Cool: Obviously, there is no way to know if musth happened in non-elephantid proboscideans. Deinotherium was very distantly-related with mammoths or modern pachyderms (it was closer to the small Moeritherium). Probably its trunk was longer than how is depicted in the show.
- Wacky Wayside Tribe: Acts as a one-time challenge in the Australopithecus migration from their lost territory to the Crapsaccharine World that is the Dinofelis hunting grounds.
- Would Hurt a Child: In its frenzy, the Deinotherium may attack anything.
Ancylotherium
- Gentle Giant: The two chalicothere types of the series appear such, but we don't know if in reality they were so harmless.
- Informed Species: Due to being a Palette Swap of the Chalicotherium with modified front feet, but Ancylotherium was part of the schizotheriine chalicotheres and as such, had very different proportions compared to chalicotheriines. Its front limbs weren't as disproportionally long compared to its hindlimbs, its snout and neck were longer, and it even had a slightly domed head.
- Monster Munch: In the novelization, it's stated to be a prey item for the Dinofelis. The Australopithecus group later stumbles upon a dead Ancylotherium killed by a Dinofelis and scavenge it (instead of a zebra).
- Last of Its Kind: One of the last chalicothere species in existence, described in the episode as "the last". However, a few later surviving species of chalicothere have since been identified that survived until the Early Pleistocene in Asia.
- Strong Family Resemblance: It is immediately recognizable as a relative of the chalicothere in "Land of Giants", despite missing the Wolverine Claws, and was probably modified from the same model. It was slightly smaller than the earlier relative, being no taller than a modern adult human. Both chalicotheres emit sounds like a hippopotamus.
Sabre Tooth
Smilodon
- Adaptational Intelligence: In the episode, one of the brothers dies by foolishly confronting a giant Megatherium head-on. In the novelization, both brothers are more cautious and try to intimidate it with bluff charges, but one of them stumbles, and the ground sloth lunges at the fallen cat and mauls him to death (rather than killing him with one blow).
- Anachronism Stew: Fairly minor, but Smilodon populator evolved over 200,000 years after the time this episode was set in. Several other species depicted are also anachronistic, although not their generanote .
- Amazon Brigade: The females hunt and raise their cubs together.
- Artistic License – Paleontology:
- Their behavior, which was bluntly copied from extant African lions. Most notably, the females are seen chasing down Macrauchenia, being able to do sharp turns while running. Smilodon was an ambush predator that could only run in very short bursts of speed; its short tail would have made it very unbalanced in a high speed chase.
- Smilodon males and females were similar in size and built, making the lion harem-style pack even more unlikely (a wolf-like social life has been proposed based on remains from Rancho La Brea, but it is controversial still).
- Attributing Smilodon populator's extinction to climate change wiping out its prey is at least odd. South America was stable for the last million years (to the point this episode is the only in the series to be filmed in the claimed location) and S. populator survived through the whole cycle of ice ages before going extinct when humans colonized South America. This episode could just as well been set after the mammoth one; they likely only set it before to make the terror birds less of an anachronism and for the powerful last shot in "Mammoth Journey" to be the end of the series.
- Babies Ever After: Half-Tooth has a new litter in the last scene of the episode, to replace the one that was slaughtered by the brothers.
- Badass Crew: The pride/pack is the most efficient killing machine in the plain of its era. However it's later zig-zagged due to the fact it doesn't do much to defend their young from the brothers and quickly runs away without giving a fight when their leader is killed by a Megatherium.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: The brothers who usurp Half-Tooth are the main antagonists. Unlike most examples from the show, they're not predators of the protagonist; the "hero" is another Smilodon.
- Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism: Not as much as other examples, but males are noticeably larger and have short lion-like manes.
- Book Ends: The episode ends with Half-Tooth having another litter, and taking care of the kids while the females hunt Macrauchenia.
- Cats Are Mean: The brothers are the primary antagonists of the episode.
- Decapitation Presentation: One of Half-Tooth's cubs is decapitated by the brothers. The other is never seen, but it's dead too.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Half-Tooth gets one after fighting the two brothers, and has new cubs to replace the ones that were killed.
- Eats Babies: Zigzagged. Half-tooth eats a Macrauchenia baby, that was killed by a Phorusrhacos, but Half-Tooth was already stalking before the bird appeared.
- Fantastic Fauna Counterpart: The behavior is copied from African lions, ignoring contrary evidence if necessary.
- Forgotten Fallen Friend: The females will defend their cubs while they are alive, but submit to the brothers as soon as they are killed. They are also not loyal to Half-Tooth or the brothers. If the pack's male changes, so be it.
- Green-Eyed Monster: How the brothers are portrayed in their introduction.
- Handicapped Badass: Half-tooth may have a broken saber, but that barely slows him down.
- Historical Badass Upgrade: Not only did they plagiarize lions, the narrator actually hails Smilodon as "the most powerful big cat of all time". Yet there were lions (Panthera spealea) and faux-lions (P. atrox) that were more likely to be social than Smilodon. That said sabretooths did outnumber large Panthera members across the New World by a wide margin, so it did seem they were still apex predators, just ones with rivals.
- Informed Attribute: Half-Tooth is supposedly larger and stronger than most Smilodon males, but this is hard to notice.
- It's Personal: You can almost hear Half-Tooth say this when he finds his dead cub... or what remains of it.
- Know When to Fold 'Em: Half-tooth is quick to realize that he can't beat both of the brothers, and reluctantly withdraws. The brothers won't do it, which leads to their deaths.
- Mama Bear: The females fiercely protect their cubs from the brothers after they ousted Half-Tooth. Their efforts, however, were futile.
- Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: Defied by the males tendency to kill all cubs after taking over a pride. However, it is possible there are already pregnant females when a takeover happens.
- Mega Neko: It's the largest species of sabertooth cat known to science.
- Non-Standard Character Design: Half-Tooth has a broken saber, making him easier to tell apart from the brothers.
- Panthera Awesome: Big cats with big teeth. What are you expecting? There is a reason it is one of the most memorable creatures of the show.
- Papa Wolf: In the beginning of the episode, Half-Tooth chases away a pair of terror birds attempting to eat one of his babies.
- Protagonist-Centered Morality: The "villain" brothers are just doing what Half-Tooth did years ago (and eventually does again, when they are reduced to one).
- Rule of Cool:
- Besides all the Artistic License – Paleontology, there is the scene where the pride's younger females decide to test their hunting abilities on a Nigh-Invulnerable Doedicurus, rather than choosing a viable and less dangerous target.
- The choice to use the less popular Smilodon populator over the much more well-known Smilodon fatalis probably boils down to the fact that S. populator was the biggest Smilodon species.
- Sean Connery Is About to Shoot You: The "Walking with Beasts" logo is crossed by claw marks. At the end of the intro, a male Smilodon claws it and roars to the camera.
- Series Mascot: In the same way Tyrannosaurus was one for Walking with Dinosaurs.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: For the brothers: both die in the end after their short, violent reign and do not pass their genes down, unless those cubs Half-Tooth nurtures at the end aren't his.
- Spared by the Adaptation: The second brother in the book, who simply runs away after his brother is dead. In the show, he is mortally injured by Half Tooth and devoured by the terror birds.
- Siblings in Crime: The two brothers that drive Half-tooth from his pride.
- Too Dumb to Live: One of the brothers dies by foolishly confronting a Megatherium head-on. Averted in the novelization, where he's more cautious around the giant but accidentally stumbles, causing the sloth to lunge at him with surprising speed and kill him.
- The Usurper: The brothers to Half-Tooth, Smilodon to Phorusrhacos.
- The Worf Effect: Half Tooth is driven away by the brothers. Later turned around when a Megatherium kills one of them.
- Would Hurt a Child: The brothers kill Half-Tooth's cubs to make the females mate with them and have their children.
- You Can't Go Home Again: After being defeated by the brothers, Half-Tooth abandons his former territory in the plains and heads for the closed forest outside. However, the death of one of the brothers allows him to return.
Phorusrhacos
- Anachronism Stew: Phorusrhacos became extinct 13 million years ago, although this was because there was a hypothesis at the time that lumped other large terror birds into the genus, such as the much later Titanis, as noted in supplementary material (though Titanis itself turned out to have died out 2 million years ago).
- Artistic License – Paleontology:
- In addition, terror birds would have had no trouble coexisting as a predator with sabretooths, as they were much faster and hunted faster prey. In fact, they were the only South American carnivore along with opossums to migrate northward successfully during the Great American Interchange. This is mentioned by the narrator, despite the constant theme of terror birds being outcompeted by cats.
- While one large terror bird (Titanis) did briefly co-exist with sabre-toothed cats, it only coexisted with the earliest and smallest Smilodon species, S. gracilis, which lived two million years ago, not one million years, and in North America, not South America.
- Circling Vultures: The wounded brother is pursued by phorusrhacids after he is usurped. Guess how it ends for him...
- Composite Character: Its name and existence in South America come from the Miocene-aged Phorusrhacos longissimus but most other aspects, such as it living in the Pleistocene alongside Smilodon and (outdated) wing claws are based on the North American Titanis walleri. Notably, supplementary material shows that the producers treated Titanis as a synonym of the earlier-named Phorusrhacos. Furthermore, a line from the narrator about how this terror bird has "cousins" in Texas and Florida implies they are meant to be a different species from "Phorusrhacos walleri" (and they obviously aren't P. longissimus, who vanished 14 million years earlier).
- Eats Babies: Introduced chasing a Smilodon cub; one later hunts a young Macrauchenia, but it is stolen by the Smilodon Half-Tooth.
- Feathered Fiend: While Gastornis was arguably vegetarian, the phorusrhacids were arguably strict carnivores.
- Historical Downgrade: One of the most severely underrated predators of the entire series, being depicted as a cowardly scavenger instead of the lightning-fast apex predator capable of competing with any mammalian carnivore it really was. Then again, the show does state they've become more opportunistic, and if they can get to meat the smilodons can't, they're not going to be picky.
- Lightning Bruiser: It appears out of nowhere to kill a young Macrauchenia.
- Riches to Rags: They are portrayed as having lost their spot at the top of the food chain with the arrival of Smilodon.
- Rule of Cool: Introduced as "3 meters tall" but looks more like 2 and a half in both show and reality. Phorusrhacos was also the tallest terror bird known at the time the show was made, until surpassed by Kelenken in 2007. It was also not a contemporary of S. populator.
- Scavengers Are Scum: Presented as scavengers, making them less sympathetic than the equally carnivorous Smilodon. This despite the fact it was not a scavenger and was just as good a predator as its rival in-universe. They are seen killing a juvenile Macrauchenia at least once, though.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: To Gastornis, which is why they are subjected to The Worf Effect. Ironically, since Gastornis has been confirmed as a vegetarian, terror birds have been left as one of the few known flightless hunting birds.
- The Worf Effect: Most of their screentime involves them being chased off by Smilodon.
Macrauchenia
- Animals Not to Scale: It's depicted as only slightly larger than the Smilodon, when the real animal was much bigger, weighing a ton◊.
- Butt-Monkey: Serves the episode simply as prey for Smilodon and terror birds (and possibly the Megatherium).
- Don't Go in the Woods: A mother Macrauchenia and her calf (foal?) get separated from the herd and walk right into a stalking sabertooth and a stalking terror bird.
- Fantastic Fauna Counterpart: Its coloration is similar to an impala's, complementing the Smilodon's lion.
- Last of His Kind: The last of the Litopterns, South American ungulates that evolved in isolation since the Paleocene.
- Monster Munch: They are weird, they are preyed on, and that's about it.
- Mix-and-Match Creatures: A llama-like animal with a tapir-like head (although it's generally thought nowadays it didn't actually have a trunk). Ironically, while both existed in South America in this time and still do today, they are not related to South American native Macrauchenia, but are recent immigrants from North America instead. Their feet are rhinoceros-like, which never colonized South America.
Megatherium
- Ascended to Carnivorism: They spend most of their day munching on tree leaves, but in one scene one decides that it'd rather have what the Smilodon are having. The exact thing, that is.
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: A sloth the size of an elephant, that eats both plants... and meat. And it takes no shits from anyone.
- Black Bead Eyes: In contrast to every other mammal in the series. If anything, they remind the most of Physogaleus, a shark. It contributes to making it unsettling despite also looking like a giant teddy bear.
- Big Eater: Seen constantly feeding, probably due to how large it is and how poor most of its diet is.
- Bulletproof Vest: How the Megatherium's chest bones are described by the show.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Think a giant sloth does not sound intimidating? Wait till you see it kill a Smilodon with one strike!
- Curb-Stomp Battle: He kills a Smilodon with a Dope Slap.
- The Dreaded: Despite its non-threatening appearance, even the Smilodon do not dare to mess with it. And for good reason, it kills one of the brothers with a single swipe from its claws.
- Giant Equals Invincible: It's a giant that none of the predators in the episode want to mess with. One of the Smilodon brothers does, and the Megatherium kills him with a casual slap that makes the rest run away without second thoughts.
- Historical Badass Upgrade: The killing of the Smilodon is based on a controversial theory that has been called "fanciful" by critics. Megatherium teeth were typical of a herbivore.
- The Juggernaut: Large as an elephant, with giant claws and chainmail-like bony armor under their skin. When the Megatherium wants to take food from carnivores, nothing gets in their way. One of the Smilodon brothers wasn't in that detail and tried to stand his ground against the megatherium, and it kills him with a casual slap.
- Killer Rabbit: Does not look formidable at all, but is a capable killer.
- Mighty Glacier: As a super strong sloth, this is to be expected. Not just their huge size, but it's noted that it possesses bony growths under its skin that render it virtually indestructible.
- Noisy Nature: Constantly makes bellowing noises.
- One-Hit Kill: Kills one of the brothers this way with its huge claws.
- Rule of Cool: There is no evidence of scavenging behavior, kleptoparasitism, or any carnivorism at all.
- Small Role, Big Impact: A random Megatherium kills one of the Smilodon brothers before they reproduce or Half-Tooth gets too weak or old, allowing him to make an unlikely comeback.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: The more we know about therizinosaurs, the more it looks like ground sloths were deliberately imitating them.
- Wolverine Claws: Like modern sloths, but enlarged accordingly.
Doedicurus
- Adaptational Expansion: The novelization gives it two more scenes, as we see a mother and her young digging for food, and later we see another mother defending her offspring against two terror birds, who try to drag it away but the adult Doedicurus wards them off.
- Beware My Stinger Tail: The tail even has longer spikes than most examples... but it is entirely organic. Oh, and it's like a spiked club, to boot.
- Book Ends: The same path, shot from the same POV, that is used by a defeated male Doedicurus after a fight, is later walked down by a female Doedicurus and what are probably his rival's children.
- Compete for the Maiden's Hand: Two Doedicurus use their flails to fight for the right to mate with a female while she watches.
- Epic Flail: Should be obvious by now.
- Mighty Glacier: They are invulnerable to predators, so they don't bother running.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: Someone stuck a mammalian head and legs in an ankylosaur, and gave it a stegosaur thagomizer for good measure.
- Nigh-Invulnerable: In an aversion of Armour Is Useless, the cats can do absolutely nothing to it.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: To ankylosaurs.
Hippidion
- Alternate Continuity: The novelization (Walking with Beasts: A Prehistoric Safari) shows a terror bird killing a Hippidion foal and getting its kill stolen by Half-Tooth, a role that went to of a young Macrauchenia in the episode proper, and also fights over it with a second terror bird. The accompanying image of two Phorusrhacos struggling for the foal's carcass implies that a Hippidion model was worked on at some point before being cut.
- Deleted Role: It is likely Hippidion would be introduced as the narrator talks about the Great American Biotic Interchange right before returning to Smilodon, but was cut, likely due to budget cuts.
- Informed Species:
- The foal appears to have three toes, but Hippidion only had one. This is either because the foal's model was modified from Propalaeotherium and left unfinished, or a confusion born from the fact that, at the time, Hippidion was believed to be a descendant of the three-toed Pliohippus despite being one-toed (DNA later showed a closer relationship between Hippidion and Equus than expected, despite also confirming them as separate genera).
- Inexplicably, The Complete Guide to Prehistoric Life claims that it is a Smilodon cub, even though it is clearly not.
- Monster Munch: Only there to be eaten by Smilodon and Phorusrhacos, which made subsuming its role into Macrauchenia very easy. The narration in the novelization also suggests that it's one of the main prey items for Smilodon along with Macrauchenia.
- No Name Given: Only ever called "horse" or "hippidiform horse". All other genera of once-called "hippidiform" horses have since been synonymized into Hippidion, rendering this its only possible identity.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: There is a small horse-like animal who does nothing but get distracted, run for its life, and get killed by a giant flightless bird. Propalaeotherium? No, Hippidion.
Mammoth Journey
Woolly Mammoth
- All There in the Manual: The mammoth species is the most famous one, Mammuthus primigenius. Mammuthus africanavus, the african ancestor of the other mammoths, is referenced.
- Always Someone Better: They used to be Nigh-Invulnerable to predators... until hominids came along.
- Amazon Brigade: The herd consists entirely of females and their subadult children.
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: In their yearly migrations, the matriarch-led group leaves behind a female that fell through thin ice, and then another female delayed by her calf. Both are likely the matriarch's own daughters or sisters. However, when the second female and calf finally reach the group, the matriarch and the other females are eager to display their affection as a way to reinforce their ties with them as members of the same herd - showing mammoths are actually among the most social and loyal mammal species that have ever existed.
- The Baby of the Bunch: The youngest of the herd is a six-month old male calf. Then is joined in the Alps by a little female.
- Badass Adorable: Its species appears basically as a big fluffy elephant. Indeed mammoths were close elephant relatives.
- Birth-Death Juxtaposition: A mammoth (possibly) becomes pregnant and another gives birth (not the same one, due to how long elephantine pregnancies are) in the same episode three adults are killed.
- Camera Abuse: A young mammoth spraying mud over a camera. Also modern elephants spray mud over their bodies with their trunks to cool themselves like what is seen in the mammoths' alpine habitat.
- Disney Villain Death: Two are forced by neanderthals to fall off a cliff. One survives... briefly and severely injured.
- Distant Finale: The end flashes to a British Museum 30,000 years later, where a life model of a mammoth and a Paleolithic mammoth statuette are exhibited.
- Fate Worse than Death: One is forced to watch her herd give up on her and continue their march while she's trapped in ice and surrounded by hungry, opportunistic predators. Another is driven off a cliff by neanderthals... and survives to see them approach with spears while she can't do anything about it.
- Giant Equals Invincible: Once they reach adult size they are out of the menu for most animals... except Techno Wizard hominids.
- Honorable Elephant: More than the Deinotherium at least. When a male engages in the same "step out of my way" behavior, the negative effect is avoided because it is directed at larger animals that can take it, like bison (maybe the extinct Bison priscus), or animals who weren't very sympathetic to begin with, like man-eating cave lions (Panthera spelaea).
- Kill It with Fire: Indirectly. Like all animals, they are terrified of fire. The neanderthals use torches to drive a couple over a cliff, which is what actually kills them (or not).
- Mama Bear:
- The mammoth left behind with her calf is very defensive of her, protecting it from lions and risking her own safety by losing the herd for its sake.
- Given how elephant herds work (and we know mammoth herds worked), the matriarch is likely the mother or Cool Big Sis of all the other females. Indeed, she's succeeded by her sister after her death.
- Mammoths Mean Ice Age: It is the Ice Age episode, alright, and it stars mammoths. It takes place at the beginning of the last glacial maximum.
- Mighty Glacier: Big, strong but not super fast. Opposite to the giant deer and the woolly rhinoceros (both Lightning Bruiser).
- Non-Standard Character Design: The old mammoth bull is far larger than the females (and even other males) and has tusks so long, they almost draw circles over themselves. While there is some Rule of Cool, it is justified because proboscideans continue growing while they are alive unlike most mammals.
- Not the Fall That Kills You…: One of the mammoths survives falling off a cliff, although with devastating injuries.
- Precursors: Newly arrived cro-magnons seem fascinated with mammoths. They build huts with their bones, imitate their "mosquito-proof mascara", carve mammoth figurines in bone, and use their trails to migrate south. All while trying not to disturb them.
- Protagonist-Centered Morality: Their behavior is entirely elephant-like, like Deinotherium. But while Deinotherium was a villain, the mammoths come near Too Good for This Sinful Earth in their protagonic episode.
- The Quest: Every winter, the lead herd walks from the North Sea (which is dry in this time) to a hidden valley in the Swiss Alps. Along the way, they meet other mammoths and challenges.
- The Shangri-La: The mammoths wintering valley.
- Xenofiction: The story is told from the POV of the mammoths, even though two hominid species are present.
- You Are in Command Now: The matriarch is killed by neanderthals, lending the leadership of the group to her sister, who successfully takes the group back to their summer pastures.
Megaloceros
- Awesome, but Impractical: The antlers prevent them from taking refuge in wooden areas. This gets a large male killed by humans.
- Blood from Every Orifice: After not one, but two expertely tossed spears makes one of them slowly bleed out from one in its neck and another in the side of its stomach and faint from blood loss, letting one last loud bellowing cry.
- Compete for the Maiden's Hand: Two males fight for the right to reproduce, but they get crashed by humans just after they are finished.
- Failed a Spot Check: The males are supposed to have been surprised because they were too busy fighting. However, in the earlier summer scene it seemed like the Megaloceros didn't care much about the humans getting near them.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: During the rutting scene, while the two males are fighting over the trio of nearby females in the background, the females aren't observing the fighting males and are instead watching something else in the distance (and off-camera). When the males break off from the fighting, the females are long gone, having escaped the trap set by the Cro-Magnons long before the humans were close enough to spring it. Though one of the males isn't so lucky...
- The Marvelous Deer: With antlers that massive, it's hard not to see them this way. But these antlers are shaped incorrectly, flatter than were in real life.
- Mighty Roar: The stags repeatedly utter them while fighting, which are actually the famous roar of the red deer.
- Oh, Crap!: After both of the males realize they've fallen into a trap, they have this reaction and their first instinct upon being scared by the sudden arrival of the cro-magnons is to run.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The less fatigued male jumps over one of the attackers and saves its life. The other cannot, and is killed.
- Shown Their Work: The hair coloration is based on contemporary cave paintings.
Woolly Rhinoceros
- All There in the Manual: The species name, Coelodonta antiquitatis.
- Blind Mistake: It has extremely poor sight, but its fine sense of smell makes up for it.
- Compete for the Maiden's Hand: Two males duel for the right to reproduce in the mammoth's refuge at the Alps.
- Disproportionate Retribution: One charges at a neanderthal who was picking firewood — and also tried to not be noticed by the rhino, no less — right after smelling him. On the other hand, given what neanderthals can do to mammoths, it's actually wise of the rhino to not take any chances.
- Dumb Muscle: Zigzagged. It's shown to attack a Neanderthal minding his own business without provocation, but the males also solve territorial disputes peacefully. note
- Hair-Trigger Temper: When a Neanderthal accidentally gets too close to one, it attacks him the moment it catches his scent, despite not having done anything to anger it.
- Hidden Depths: Indeed, though we are led to believe they are violent and prone to Rhino Rampage, in the show when they duel for females they do it peacefully.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: It resembles essentially a big white rhinoceros walking in a mammoth skin, but its closest modern relative is the dwarf Sumatran Rhino, also with some hairs in its body.
- Mundane Utility: The flattened horn is just as good to shovel snow and dirt, as it is for combat.
- Rhino Rampage: Goes full into this the moment it detects a neanderthal nearby.
- Shown Their Work: The darker abdominal hair is based on cave paintings.
Cave Lion
- Advertised Extra: Despite promotional material showing it confronting the mother mammoth and her calf, and having its own entry in the tie-in book, its actual screentime is very limited and inconsequential.
- All There in the Manual: Called Panthera spelaea or Panthera leo spealea. It's still controversial if it was a species on its own or a subspecies of the modern lion.
- Animals Not to Scale: Both the novelization and 2005 tie-in book say that it stood 5 feet at the shoulder, a foot taller than it would actually get. Though the two lions who are seen eating a human corpse appear to be accurately sized.
- Artistic License – Paleontology: They reused the Dinofelis model for the lion, recoloring it white and giving it a small mane and long tail. This results in an anatomically inaccurate cave lion with typical sabertooth features like protruding fangs, large shoulders and arms, and a forward arched back.
- Cats Are Mean: A pair eats a human at one point. Another stalks a baby mammoth.
- Eats Babies: Tries to, at least.
- Informed Species: As it shares the same model as the Smilodon and Dinofelis, it looks more like a machairodont rather than a lion (which are pantherines), with its saber-teeth, small, pointy ears and overly muscular front limbs being the most glarings issues, and the white pelt doesn't help. Cave lions looked nigh-identical to African lions other than lacking manes and having thicker fur. The promotional images even keep the Smilodon's short tail.
- Misplaced Wildlife: Invoked, then justified by the narrator. A lion may look out of place in 21st century Europe, but it is common in the Paleolithic.
- Palette Swap: The Dinofelis model, just with a light grey coat and long tail (promotional images even lack the latter).
- Panthera Awesome: Subverted. It's a big cat, but it doesn't do anything awesome or memorable, given its limited screentime.
- To Serve Man: They eat a human at one point.
- Shown Their Work: Unlike African lions, they have very short, almost non-noticeable manes and appear either solitary or in pairs. This is consistent with cave paintings and the known behavior of non-tropical lion populations (Cape, Atlas, Asian), which are all extinct today or critically endangered.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Its part is brief and inconsequential compared to other cats like Smilodon and Dinofelis.
Cave Hyena
An Eurasian subspecies of a modern African predator, the spotted hyena.
- Deleted Role: Extremely likely, though unconfirmed still. As the camera pans out from the Megaloceros kill, the narrator counts hyenas as a threat to the hunters along with wolves (who appear in the prologue) and lions (who have a couple of scenes immediately after). Later, hyena laughs can be heard closing in on both the scavenging lions and the neanderthals butchering the mammoths while the narrator talks about the neanderthals' incoming extinction. It's basically a long setup for a hyena-neanderthal clash over the mammoth kills that also serves as a counterpart to the earlier (and presumably faster, safer, and more efficient) processing of the Megaloceros by cro-magnons, but the hyenas never appear on the screen. Evidence of hyena-lion and hyena-neanderthal conflict is also much more common in the European fossil record than of conflict between hyenas and modern humans.
- The Ghost: Can be said to appear as a namedrop and a disembodied voice. The novelization also mentions it but never shows it. The closest we get is hearing a horse neighing in pain as its being mauled by a clan of hyenas in the distance.
- Heinous Hyena: Only mentioned in passing as an antagonist to hominids.
- Misplaced Wildlife: An even greater subversion than the cave lion, as gene flow between African and Eurasian spotted hyenas was never cut unlike between cave lions and modern Afro-Asian lions.
Neanderthal
- All Cavemen Were Neanderthals: Averted. There are two human species, only one of them is neanderthal. And they aren't shown in caves, although they take refuge there in the winter.
- All There in the Manual: The species name, Homo neanderthalensis.
- Always Someone Better: They used to be the dominant intelligent life of Europe, now they are being replaced by the Cro-Magnons.
- Apocalypse How: To the point of being an Endangered Species at the time of the episode. The causes continue to be very debated.
- Arrows on Fire: Spears, actually, but the book has an image where a mammoth is being hunted by Neanderthals, and one of the spears embedded in its body is set on fire. One of the Neanderthals looks ready to throw or thrust another flaming spear at the mammoth.
- Don't Look Back: This is exactly what gets one of them knocked aside by the Woolly Rhino after they are more preoccupied with looking back to see if the Woolly Rhino is still charging after them than they are running.
- Dying Race: The narrator notes that at this point, Neanderthals are an endangered species and their population has drastically declined as a result of climate change. Only 2000 years later, they'll be completely extinct.
- Gender Is No Object: Both neanderthal men and women take part in the mammoth hunt, and in equal conditions. This is in contrast with the cro-magnons, where we only see men hunting.
- Genius Bruiser: Though not as intelligent as the cro-magnon, they use tactics and technology to slaughter the mammoths and have culture and language.
- Glamour Failure: Not a potent glamor as it consisted only in staying still and trusting the woolly rhino's poor eyesight to not notice him, but it was ruined anyway, due to the rhino's sense of smell.
- Hero Killer: They are the only creature to kill a mammoth in the episode. They do it twice, and one of them is the herd's matriarch, no less.
- Hidden Depths: More intelligent than they seem to be; unlike cro-magnon they actually hunt the mammoths, making use of the landscape and fire.
- Human Subspecies: Subverted. They were considered a subspecies once, but have been confirmed as a separate species (although one close enough for limited interbreeding).
- Humans Are Average: They're portrayed as no more significant than any other predator, and the narrator's matter-of-fact reveal of their fate — dying out within two thousand years — is in the same tone used for every other species on the show that will become extinct.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: They use heavy spears (of sharpened wood rather than pointed) to deliver the killing blow up close — but interestingly, they don't have throwing spears.
- The Juggernaut: They aren't Nigh-Invulnerable, but they can survive encounters that would kill a modern human.
- Kill It with Fire: They use this to hunt mammoths, coupled with Disney Villain Death.
- Made of Iron: And how. They could take a direct charge from a woolly rhino and leave with only a few broken ribs. They were thicker and hardier than our species of homo, and were found with injuries consistent with rodeo clowns.
- Medieval Stasis: Compared to cro-magnons, they are slow to adopt new technologies and adapt to changes, which is leading them to extinction.
- Oh, Crap!: The neanderthal who spots the woolly rhino freezes instantly, and is visibly aware things can go south very quickly. And does.
- Pelts of the Barbarian: In contrast to the cro-magnons, they wear less elaborate clothing, with hairs sticking out, and don't have the sewing needle.
- Rubber-Forehead Aliens: Because of their proximity to humans, the show used human actors wearing face prothesis and makeup to recreate them, rather than CGI. They should have bigger arm muscles, though.
- Stealth-Based Mission: Picking firewood becomes one when a neanderthal realizes that he's unwittingly walked onto a woolly rhinoceros's path.
- Took a Level in Badass:
- Downplayed in the case of the Neanderthal that was charged at by the wooly rhino. He still sustains injuries in the form of broken bones, but that he survived and walked away from the encounter is still a testament to how tough Neanderthals were. We see him hunting with his tribe just months later.
- They're also the only species in the series shown to weaponize fire, using it to drive a pair of mammoths off a cliff to their deaths.
Cro-Magnon
- All Cavemen Were Neanderthals: Averted. They're not neanderthals, and they are as removed from a media caveman stereotype as they could be. For one, they don't live in caves, and on first glance you could mistake them for modern mountain luddites.
- Ambiguous Situation: The one human who gets eaten by the two cave lions is called a "straggler" but it's not made clear if he was caught by the lions or just found dead. Subverted in the novelization, where it's explicitly said that the straggler was killed by the lion.
- Dated History: They're relatively light-skinned, but most humans would have been much darker since they hadn't had much to diverge from African ancestors, and it wasn't until the advent of agriculture in the Neolithic they lightened up.
- Hidden Depths: They make art, too!
- Humans Advance Swiftly: The cro-magnons' main strength is their inventive and quickly advancing technology, as this allows them to colonize even areas they aren't suited to biologically without having to wait for slower, random evolutionary changes to appear.
- Humans Are Average: Seems to be An Aesop of the entire series. One is killed by hungry felines offscreen and treated no sadder than if it was another animal. The last scene reminds the viewer that all species go extinct in the end.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: Averted. They are shown as just another predator, and as far as the mammoths are concerned they are less threatening than the cave lions and neanderthals.
- Humans Are Special: Despite being treated as no different from all the other animals, humans are still noted by the narrator to be predators unlike any before in Earth's history, using not strength, but strategy.
- Leitmotif: Significantly, the first major scene involving our direct ancestors hunting includes distinct human voices and vocals, for the first time in the series (and in a Walking With... miniseries in general).
- Mars and Venus Gender Contrast: Men hunt, women (implicitly) gather.
- People of Hair Color: In an example of Shown Their Work, all the cro-magnons are dark haired (while the neanderthals include some fair-haired), dark eyed and look vaguely Mediterranean or Eurasian despite living in northwestern Europe. This is because blonde hair and other eye colors had not evolved in humans yet (red hair is unclear).
- Rain of Arrows: Javelins, actually, since bows have not been invented yet. They are the only species to use them.
- Techno Wizard: They are the smartest and most technologically advanced species portrayed. Our own.
- Took a Level in Badass:
- They specialize in small game, but when pressed during the winter they rise to take on a fully grown bull Megaloceros.
- They are also accomplished hunters and strategists, in contrast to the previous hominids in the series, the hapless Australopithecus.
- The Usurper: To the neanderthals. They came recently from Africa and are thriving, while the locally-evolved neanderthals are facing extinction.
Mosquitos
- Mosquito Miscreants: Mosquitos become a pest for mammoths and humans as soon as the temperature raises enough, forcing their victims to bathe on earth, mud, or failing that, to get out of place.
