Life in cold blood has been a great success. ibid.
Amphibians were the first back-boned animals to leave the water and colonise the land. Today there are some six thousand species of them. And new ones are constantly being discovered. David Attenborough, Life in Cold Blood II: Land Invaders
This is a lungfish. It pumps itself along the river bottom using two pairs of fleshy muscular fins placed low on its body. ibid.
The Giant Salamander – the biggest of all amphibians. ibid.
Amphibians’ eggs have no protective shell. ibid.
Five thousand five hundred different kinds of frog and toads. ibid.
A toad that can live in as parched a desert as this is impressive evidence of the versatility of the amphibians. ibid.
Reptiles: a Monitor Lizard: and its king of this country, the Australian outback. David Attenborough, Life in Cold Blood III: Dragons of the Dry
Madagascar: and here there are over sixty different species of them [chameleon]. ibid.
[Australian] Monitors have big muscular throats which they use like bellows ... speeds of over twenty miles an hour. ibid.
The lizards have colonized the world. ibid.
Whatever your feelings about snakes you can’t deny that they have an extraordinary beauty. David Attenborough, Life in Cold Blood IV: Sophisticated Serpents
The king snake pretends to be venomous when it’s not. ibid.
An African Rock Python – one of the biggest of all snakes. ibid.
Not all snakes lay their eggs. ibid.
Cold blooded animals ruled the world. In some places they still do. Some of these reptiles witnessed the dinosaurs come and go. David Attenborough, Life in Cold Blood V: Armoured Giants
Tortoises: bushfires – these are a major and recurrent threat to all the animals who live here. ibid.
The crocodile in short has rows of very effective solar panels. ibid.
All crocodilians take good care over their young. ibid.
This is the marvellous Spatuletailed hummingbird. And these are his flags with which to attract a mate ... It’s exhausting work. It’s so demanding he can only stay airborne for a matter of seconds before he needs a rest. David Attenborough, Life V: Birds, BBC 2009
Flight gives birds many advantages: there’s a period in their lives when they are forced back down to Earth: the nesting season. This is the time when they are at most risk. ibid.
Lesser Flamingos – they nest in the remotest corners of Africa’s caustic soda lakes. ibid.
Few places are tougher than the Antarctic. Chin-strapped penguins: every day they travel up to fifty miles out to sea hunting for krill. But the hard part is getting this food back to the colony ... For a flightless bird getting to the top of the volcano is a gruelling climb ... Now she joins penguin rush hour ... She must try and find her family among a hundred and fifty thousand birds. ibid.
Great white pelicans ... These pelicans are amongst the heaviest flying birds in the world. ibid.
Cape gannets plunge deep, hunting fish beyond the reach of the pelicans. ibid.
From the Equator to the Poles birds have found the most ingenious ways of overcoming the many challenges of life. And everything revolves around their unique attribute: feathers. ibid.
There are many kinds of beetles in the world. But this one has some of the biggest jaws of all. He is Darwin’s Beetle. He is on his way to the forest to look for a mate. Whether he gets one or not will depend on his strength and on the size of his jaws. David Attenborough, Life VI: Insects
Insects’ bodies have the capacity to take on an almost infinite variety of shapes. This is one of the keys to their success. ibid.
Dawn: and a newly hatched damselfly. She needs to mate and lay her eggs before sunset. ibid.
A journey of two thousand miles. Her destination is Mexico and one small and special group of trees. No-one knows how she finds them in these great mountain forests. She joins other Monarch butterflies that have travelled here from all over North America. Countless butterflies crowd these particular trees hanging from every branch. ibid.
Flies are one of the most successful of all insects: there are 85,000 different kinds. ibid.
The beetle takes aim and fires formic acid straight at the mongoose’s mouth and eyes. ibid.
All kinds of insects have developed chemical weapons ... The master of chemical warfare is the Bombardier beetle: it can create a chemical reaction within its body so violent that boiling caustic liquid explodes out of its abdomen. ibid.
Working together in such an organised society is the insect’s great innovation. ibid.
It’s a metropolis. Home to millions of ants ... A single colony harvests half a ton of grass a year, more than any other animal on these plains. But since they themselves can’t eat it why do they do so? The answer lies underground ... This is a fungus that is found nowhere else on Earth. And the ants cultivate it assiduously ... They construct their nest so that it has an automatic air conditioning system. ibid.
There may be ten million different kinds of insects. And there are two hundred million individuals for every one of us. ibid.
Barely a week old they are fearless. Learning to negotiate these cliffs is central to their [Ibex] survival … David Attenborough, Life VII: Hunters and Hunted
The rain forests of Belize in central America. And as evening falls and the shower comes to an end a predator begins to hunt: the greater bulldog bat, a flying mammal and a fisherman. ibid.
A young stoat ... Stalking, chasing and ambushing all practised in play. ibid.
Mammals must deploy their most sophisticated weapon: their brains. ibid.
Bottlenose dolphins: and they are on a mission – a mission to catch fish ... The dolphins have a plan. They have learnt to corral the fish by working as a team ... This behaviour is unique to the dolphins of Florida Bay. ibid.
A brown bear. Here they grow larger than anywhere in the world. Other bears have also gathered at the edge of the surf. They’ve come here to fatten up for the winter. They’re waiting for an event that happens just once a year: the salmon run. ibid.
The Ethiopian wolf. The only wolf in the whole of Africa. ibid.
A star-nosed mole. Possessor of perhaps the most extraordinary nose on the planet ... Few creatures can hunt equally successfully underground and underwater. ibid.
Young elephant seals risk being dragged off the rocks by the surging waves and swept out into open water. ibid.
The ocean is by no means uniform. Differences in depth, temperature, sunlight and currents pose particular challenges. One and a half miles down these hydro-thermal vents spew out super-heated water at 450° Centigrade from cracks in the Earth’s crust. Despite the enormous pressure, total darkness and scoldingly high temperatures the ancestors of all life may have evolved from a place just like this. David Attenborough, Life VIII: Creatures of the Deep
Humboldt squid: two meters long they have a local reputation as man-eaters ... This is a pack of hundreds. ibid.
A swarm of one hundred thousand stinging jellyfish might seem a daunting prospect for a predator. But not for this one. A huge Fried Egg Jellyfish. It is a killer. Its weapons are harpoon-like cells that cover its tentacles. ibid.
These are spider crabs. They spend most of their lives in deep water. But once a year off the coast of southern Australia a quarter of a million crabs set off on a long journey to the shallows. ibid.
This cuttlefish is one of the cleverest animals in the ocean. She has a very large brain. In fact it’s larger for her size than that of most fish or reptiles ... Cuttlefish can make very dramatic changes to their skin pattern in order to signal their moods. ibid.
The coastal waters of British Columbia: home to this four-metre long Pacific Giant Octopus. She is a formidable predator. ibid.
Out of the depths comes one of the largest and most aggressive star-fish in the ocean – Pycnopodia, a giant sea-star the size of a dustbin lid. It’s a hunter. ibid.
The most impressive invertebrates may seem to be the giants but in fact it’s some of the smallest that can make the biggest impact. Every square inch of this island has been created by an ever-growing living super-structure – a coral reef. It’s taken thousands of years to reach this size. And it all began with creatures smaller than a pin-head. ibid.
Corals are in fact extremely aggressive. And will fight to the death to expand their territory ... Then, just once a year, a few days after the November full moon, the corals take part in a mass spawning event. ibid.
Like animals plants need food and water. But what sets them apart is their struggle for light. David Attenborough, Life IX: Plants
The Venus Fly Trap ... An electrical impulse is triggered and the leaf snaps shut in just a fraction of a second. The tips lock together like prison bars. ibid.