Mother Nature is heartless

Rico's friend Kelley forwards this snippet from a PBS nature show  by David Attenborough, with text from a Washington Post article by Ben Guarino. Attenborough was on the Galapagos at a time when iguanas were hatching out of the sand; turns out that large numbers of Racer snakes dine on these hatchlings. The drama of this clip (from the BBC's usual non-bloggable video) is as good as nature photography gets:

On Sunday night, the BBC aired its first episode of the wildlife documentary Planet Earth II, a sequel to the beloved Planet Earth series. More than nine million Brits tuned in to once again marvel at the natural world, while Sir David Attenborough once again provided his singular narration. And over the course of the next few days, a consensus arose that one particular scene stood above all the rest: the birth of marine iguanas on a Galapagos beach.
The baby lizards were cute, sure, for a species with pebbled faces like lumps of charcoal. From an evolutionary perspective, they are extraordinary creatures, too, the only lizards adapted to live in the ocean. Numbering no more than thirty thousand per island in the Galapagos chain, they cling in groups to the rocks at the very edge of the sea. When hungry, they feed underwater, diving below the surface to scrape up algae with their powerful jaws. Pregnant iguanas bury their eggs on a rocky beach. When the infant lizards are ready to hatch, they burrow up one after the other. But what made the Planet Earth II footage so enthralling was the introduction of an adversary. Attenborough, his narration turning grave, gave them an entrance cue: “Racer snakes”.
With those two words, the beach exploded into action. The predatory snakes flooded the shore, eager for the easiest meal of the year, which, of course, were the cute lizards.
Here Planet Earth II became the stuff wildlife documentary dreams are made of: as one little iguana scampered across the beach, darting from narrow escape to narrow escape, the camera followed. It was a James Bond movie. It was Indiana Jones. It was the way George Miller might track Tom Hardy fleeing apocalyptic gearheads through the deserts of Mad Max.
“Rarely has any real-life footage made the heart thump so hard in my chest,” wrote Telegraph reviewer Gerard O’Donovan, “as during this sublimely edited five-minute sequence, which may prompt many an anxiety dream in years to come.”
It was Forrest Gump, too.
The American side of the pond will have to wait until January of 2017 to see the full episode air on BBC America. 

Rico says you'll have to go there to see the videos, sorry...