Unforgiving Land (Its Desert Rodents, Especially) Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Canelo Alvarez square off in a high-profile boxing match on Sept. 14, but you don't have to wait until then to see a slam-bang fight. There's an awfully entertaining one between two Arabian jirds on Tuesday night in "Wild Arabia," on Animal Planet. As we learn in the program, jirds are gerbil-like rodents that are exceedingly territorial because in the sands of Arabia there isn't a lot of food to go around. "Wild Arabia," a nature documentary about the creatures in a part of the world better known for oil and unsettling headlines, treats us to a slow-motion fight between two jirds that has fur and sand flying spectacularly. It's one of a number of spunky moments that help this entry in the amazing-nature category of documentaries shake off the sameness that has settled over the genre. Another is the opening segment, which shows not a majestic flight or a quirky mating dance but a camel race. It's rare to see humans in one of these documentaries and rarer still to see the humans controlling animals, given the "wild" part of the title. Yet the opening is not just a gimmick; a point is being made. "For centuries, the Arabs held camel races to celebrate special occasions, but in the last 50 years, camel racing has been transformed, echoing changes that have swept all across the Arabian peninsula," says the narrator, Novella Nelson, whose lilting voice is another refreshing element of this program. One transformation is that tiny robots, rather than people, are the jockeys on the camels we see. And these aren't just any old camels: the valuable animals are bred for speed. "The average speed of a racehorse in Europe hasn't changed in 50 years," we're told, "while the average speed of a racing camel has increased by 30 percent." The point, here and elsewhere, is that oil money has made for some odd intersections between the natural world and the one created by humans. The program has plenty of "wild": eagles practicing team hunting; a wolf pack tussling with a striped hyena in the night; rare images of an Arabian leopard. But "Wild Arabia," unlike some similar programs, does not pretend that humans don't exist. It eventually shifts its attention from the inland deserts and the mountains to the coast, where Dubai springs up jarringly from the edge of the Persian Gulf. The skyscrapers there are impressive, but so are the underwater grasslands, which all sorts of sea creatures depend on for survival. In one striking segment, a researcher leaps from an inflatable boat onto a dugong, a blobby oceangoing animal similar to a manatee. It's a friendly assault; he's trying to attach a transmitter to the dugong so that its migration patterns can be tracked. But it's oddly reminiscent of that territorial battle between the jirds earlier in the documentary. Wild Arabia Animal Planet, Tuesday night at 8, Eastern and Pacific times; 7, Central time. Produced by the BBC and Animal Planet. Brian Leith, executive producer for the BBC. Mick Kaczorowski, executive producer for Animal Planet.