Nature's Cleanup Crew

Nature & Wildlife, Science 52' 2020 HD

Nature’s Cleanup Crew tells the story of the busy scavengers who live among us in our cities, recycling the mountains of waste our consumer society leaves behind. To us, it’s garbage. To them, it’s dinner.

With the help of thoughtful and passionate scientists who have come to understand and love them, we find out what makes scavengers tick. We debunk myths about them. We ask… What adaptations have they evolved to do their job? What benefits do they provide humanity? How can we humans work with them, so that they can do their job even better?

On Broadway in Manhattan, we see the tourist crowds from the ants’ point of view, as a team of young entomologists discover how important they are to keep the streets clean. In Berlin, we discover how scavenging foxes have adapted to survive in an urban environment – something they’ve had to do because they have nowhere else to go. In Toronto we hunt for the elusive opossum – the shyest scavenger of all – to find out how they help to make our cities healthier. In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia we track the city’s teaming population of vultures to find out how they protect people from deadly disease.

By the end, we may not see all of nature’s cleanup crew as beautiful creatures the way some scientists do. But we might be more willing to give them the respect they deserve.