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Home Planet

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Factual: Science & Nature

Programme answering listeners' questions about planet Earth and our impact upon it

Home Planet: 03/08/2010

03/08/2010

BBC Radio 4 - Home Planet, 03/08/2010

The panel tackle flooded canals, drinking seawater and rabbits' tails.

Rabbits need to hide from predators - so why do they attract attention with their flashing white tails when they run? And why haven't humans evolved to be able to drink seawater?

If you fly over the British countryside at this time of year you will see brown fields of ripening crops, broken up by oases of green woods and spinneys. The trees will continue to grow well into the autumn while the crops will be harvested shortly, losing months of potentially valuable growing time.

One listener wants to know whether food production would be higher if we could exploit that extra time by switching to tree crops rather than annual plants. 

There's also the puzzle of why rabbits - creatures hunted by a variety of other animals - give their presence away by flashing their white tails as they run. 

We explore the zone between fresh and salt water, and the potential of canals to reduce flooding. And, more than two hundred years after Coleridge wrote of the curse of the Ancient Mariner, we ask why it is that humans cannot drink seawater.

On the panel are human geographer Professor Sue Buckingham of Brunel University; Prof Andrew Watkinson, Director of Living With Environmental Change and Professor Philip Stott, an environmental scientist from the University of London. 

The programme is presented by Richard Daniel.

Contact: 
Home Planet
BBC Radio 4
PO Box 3096
Brighton
BN1 1PL

Or email home.planet@bbc.co.uk

Or telephone: 08700 100 400

Producers: Nick Patrick and Toby Murcott
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.

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