Video of the Week: What's so Great about the Great Migration?

Pretty much everyone has heard of the Great Migration. And most people have a pretty decent sense of what it is — a bunch of wildebeest and zebra running across the plains trying to not get eaten, right? Well, yes, but it’s so much more than that. In fact, it’s one of those things, maybe like child birth or a Grateful Dead show, that you just have to experience to really understand.

For starters, as the largest movement of mammals on Earth, it occurs on such a vast scale that it’s hard to wrap your head around: 1.7 million wildebeest, 470,000 gazelles and 260,000 zebras on a 500-mile circular journey from the southern Serengeti in Tanzania to Kenya’s Maasai Mara Game Reserve to the north. Then, throw in lions, leopards, cheetahs, crocodiles, add countless dramas, tragedies and triumphs along the way; hundreds of thousands perish, hundreds of thousands more are born. It is, hands down, the greatest nature documentary you’ve ever seen, but in real life. This video gives you a pretty good sense of what it’s like. But you still should go.