David Attenborough Quotes

It seems to me that the natural world is the greatest source of excitement; the greatest source of visual beauty; the greatest source of intellectual interest. It is the greatest source of so much in life that makes life worth living.

No one will protect what they don't care about; and no one will care about what they have never experiened

The truth is: the natural world is changing. And we are totally dependent on that world. It provides our food, water and air. It is the most precious thing we have and we need to defend it.

What about volcanoes?" "What about them?" "All that lava comes up from center of the earth where it is all hot. I saw a program, it had David Attenborough, so it's true.

I don’t know [why we're here]. People sometimes say to me, ‘Why don’t you admit that the humming bird, the butterfly, the Bird of Paradise are proof of the wonderful things produced by Creation?’ And I always say, well, when you say that, you’ve also got to think of a little boy sitting on a river bank, like here, in West Africa, that’s got a little worm, a living organism, in his eye and boring through the eyeball and is slowly turning him blind. The Creator God that you believe in, presumably, also made that little worm. Now I personally find that difficult to accommodate…

We moved from being a part of nature to being apart from nature.

I don't think whole populations are villainous, but Americans are just extraordinarily unaware of all kinds of things. If you live in the middle of that vast continent, with apparently everything your heart could wish for just because you were born there, then why worry? [...] If people lose knowledge, sympathy and understanding of the natural world, they're going to mistreat it and will not ask their politicians to care for it.

We only know a tiny proportion about the complexity of the natural world. Wherever you look, there are still things we don’t know about and don’t understand. [...] There are always new things to find out if you go looking for them.

I just wish the world was twice as big and half of it was still unexplored.

The fact is that no species has ever had such wholesale control over everything on earth, living or dead, as we now have. That lays upon us, whether we like it or not, an awesome responsibility. In our hands now lies not only our own future, but that of all other living creatures with whom we share the earth.

We live our comfortable lives in the shadow of a disaster of our own making. That disaster is being brought about by the very things that allow us to live our comfortable lives.

‎Using his burgeoning intelligence, this most successful of all mammals has exploited the environment to produce food for an ever increasing population. Instead of controlling the environment for the benefit of the population, perhaps it's time we controlled the population to allow the survival of the environment.

David Attenborough has said that Bali is the most beautiful place in the world, but he must have been there longer than we were, and seen different bits, because most of what we saw in the couple of days we were there sorting out our travel arrangements was awful. It was just the tourist area, i.e., that part of Bali which has been made almost exactly the same as everywhere else in the world for the sake of people who have come all this way to see Bali.

We often talk of saving the planet, but the truth is that we must do these things to save ourselves. With or without us, the wild will return.

We have come as far as we have because we are the cleverest creatures to have ever lived on Earth. But if we are to continue to exist, we will require more than intelligence. We will require wisdom.

Young people: They care. They know that this is the world that they're going to grow up in, that they're going to spend the rest of their lives in. But, I think it's more idealistic than that. They actually believe that humanity, human species, has no right to destroy and despoil regardless.

This last chapter .. may have given the impression that somehow man is the ultimate triumph of evolution, that all these millions of years of development have had no purpose other than to put him on earth. There is no scientific evidence whatever to support such a view and no reason to suppose that our stay here will be any more permanent than that of the dinosaur.

We have a finite environment—the planet. Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist.

I saw a program. It had David Attenborough, so it’s true.

I find it far more awesome, wonderful, that creation; our appearance in the world; should be the culmination, or at least one of the latest products of 3,000 Million years of organic evolution, than a kind of country trick, taking a rib out of a man's side in a trance.

We humans, alone on Earth, are powerful enough to create worlds, and then destroy them.

We ourselves (one single species) have taken over vast tracts of the inhabitable surface of the planet. Surely, we should allow those other creatures we share the planet with to retain some part of their ancient heritage.

I know of no pleasure deeper than that which comes from contemplating the natural world and trying to understand it.

At the end of the day, the harsh reality is that if you’re a fan of Kate Bush, Charles Dickens, Scrabble, David Attenborough and University Challenge, then there’s not much out there for you in terms of a youth movement.

We are at a unique stage in our history. Never before have we had such an awareness of what we are doing to the planet, and never before have we had the power to do something about that. Surely we all have a responsibility to care for our Blue Planet. The future of humanity and indeed, all life on earth, now depends on us.

To restore stability to our planet, therefore, we must restore its biodiversity, the very thing we have removed. It is the only way out of this crisis that we ourselves have created. We must rewild the world!

We often talk of saving the planet, but the truth is that we must do these things to save ourselves.

Ninety-six percent of the mass of all the mammals on Earth is made up of our bodies and those of the animals that we raise to eat.

Everything is set for us to win this future. We have a plan. We know what to do. There is a path to sustainability. It is a path that could lead to a better future for all life on Earth. We must let our politicians and business leaders know that we understand this, that this vision for the future is not just something we need, it is something, above all, that we want.

Our first point of discussion is the hunt. (...) My idea is to start the film with an image of the vixen locked out of her lair which has been plugged up. Her terror as she's pursued across the country. This is a big deal. It means training a fox from birth or dressing up a dog to look like a fox. Or hiring David Attenbrorough, who probably knows a few foxes well enough to ask a favour.

With or without us, the wild will return. .... It seems that, however grave our mistakes, nature will be able to overcome them, given the chance. The living world has survived mass extinctions several times before. But we humans cannot assume that we will do the same.

All we require is the will. The next few decades represent a final opportunity to build a stable home for ourselves and restore the rich, healthy and wonderful world that we inherited from our distant ancestors. Our future on the planet, the only place as far as we know where life of any kind exists, is at stake.

Anybody who thinks there can be limitless growth in a static, limited environment is either mad or an economist.

Beef makes up about a quarter of the meat that we eat, and only 2 per cent of our calories, yet we dedicate 60 per cent of our farmland to raising it.

It seems that, however grave our mistakes, nature will be able to overcome them, given the chance.

The natural world is fading. The evidence is all around. It has happened during my lifetime. I have seen it with my own eyes. It will lead to our destruction.

I saw a program. It had David Attenborough, so it’s true.

Wherever women have the vote, wherever girls stay in school for longer, wherever women are in charge of their own lives and not dictated to by men, wherever they have access to good healthcare and contraption, wherever they are free to take any job and their aspirations for life are raised, the birth rate falls. The reason for this is straightforward - empowerment brings freedom of choice and when life offers more options for women, their choice is often to have fewer children.

I was asked rather suddenly to join a delegation going to China, early October (alas John couldn’t come because of Oxford term). (Another member was David Attenborough, the very nice animal TV man.)

Now, over half of us live in an urban environment. My home, too, is here in the city of London. Looking down on this great metropolis, the ingenuity with which we continue to reshape the surface of our planet is very striking. It’s also very sobering, and reminds me of just how easy it is for us to lose our connection with the natural world. Yet it’s on this connection that the future of both humanity and the natural world will depend. And surely, it is our responsibility to do everything within our power to create a planet that provides a home not just for us, but for all life on Earth.

Wallace would have none of it. In reviewing The Descent of Man he wrote, ‘Are we to believe that the actions of an ever varying fancy for a slight change of colour could produce and fix the definite colours and markings which actually characterise species?’ Furthermore, he said, it was unacceptable to suggest that birds had an aesthetic sense. That would be crediting a bird with a human characteristic for which there was no evidence. It would be anthropomorphism at its most unjustified.

The flower economy is based on nectar.

Modesty is one of his endearing qualities.

Most plants take their nourishment intravenously, miraculously served up in molecule-sized morsels by leaf and root.

Life on Earth, took three years to make. First shown in 1979,

The standard nature film had been a staid biography of an animal, or the story of a habitat told throughout a year.

Living Planet, and spent another three years exploring the Earth’s environments and the way way plants and animals adapt to their surroundings.

Attenborough's role was more fundamental. He launched the strand in 1968, when he was head of BBC2.

We only see a tiny fraction of that creature’s existence. There is a huge amount of its life that we have no knowledge of.

The BBC's flagship natural history programme, was first shown in 1977, with The Bird That Beat The US Navy.

I think we're lucky to be living when we are, because things are going to get worse.

Give and take, that is the essence of what balance is all about.

If we were to disappear overnight, the rest of the world would get on pretty well. But if they were to disappear, the land’s ecosystems would collapse.

The question is, are we happy to suppose that our grandchildren may never be able to see an elephant except in a picture book?

We humans, alone on Earth, are powerful enough to create worlds, and then to destroy them.

Invention accumulates. If you combine the diesel engine, GPS, and the echo sounder, the opportunities they create are not just added to one another, they are multiplied.

The greater the biodiversity, the more secure will be all life on Earth,

A species of willow developed that does not grow vertically upwards, like it's European and American relatives. To do so would to risk being flattened by the ferocious Artic wind. Instead it grows horizontally, keeping close to the ground. Even in the most favorable circumstances it seldom exceeds four inches in height. But it may become as long as some if it's southern relatives are tall. When you walk across a carpet of such prostrate tree, you are, in effect walking over a woodland canopy.

It took a million years of unprecedented volcanic activity during the Permian to poison the ocean. We have begun to do so again in less than two hundred. By burning fossil fuels, we are releasing carbon dioxide captured by prehistoric plants over millions of years in a few decades.

And what effect might all this have had on life beneath the seas? Well, little, we hope, but we actually have no idea. We are astoundingly, sumptuously, radiantly ignorant of life beneath the seas. Even the most substantial ocean creatures are often remarkably little known to us—including the most mighty of them all, the great blue whale, a creature of such leviathan proportions that (to quote David Attenborough) its “tongue weighs as much as an elephant, its heart is the size of a car and some of its blood vessels are so wide that you could swim down them.” It is the most gargantuan beast that Earth has yet produced, bigger even than the most cumbrous dinosaurs.

For life to truly thrive on this planet, there must be immense biodiversity. Only when billions of different individual organisms make the most of every resource and opportunity they encounter, and millions of species lead lives that interlock so that they sustain each other, can the planet run efficiently. The greater the biodiversity, the more secure will be all life on Earth, including ourselves. Yet the way we humans are now living on Earth is sending biodiversity into a decline.

L’homo sapiens, l’essere umano saggio, deve imparare dai suoi sbagli e dimostrarsi all’altezza del suo nome. Noi che viviamo oggi abbiamo il fondamentale compito di assicurarci che succeda. Non dobbiamo perdere la speranza. Abbiamo tutti gli strumenti che ci servono, i pensieri e le idee di miliardi di menti straordinarie e le incommensurabili energie della natura per sostenere la nostra impresa. E abbiamo un’altra cosa, un’abilità unica tra le creature viventi sul pianeta: quella di immaginare un futuro e impegnarci per realizzarlo.

The revolution caused by the sharing of experience and the spread of knowledge had begun. The Chinese, a thousand years ago, gave it further impetus by devising mechanical means of reproducing such marks in great numbers. In Europe, Johann Gutenberg independently, though much later, developed the technique of printing from movable type. Today, our libraries, the descendants of those mud tablets, can be regarded as immense communal brains, memorising far more than any one human brain could hold. More than that, they can be seen as extra-corporeal DNA, adjuncts to our genetic inheritance as important and influential in determining the way we behave as the chromosomes in our tissues are in determining the physical shape of our bodies. It was this accumulated wisdom that eventually enabled us to devise ways of escaping the dictates of the environment. Our knowledge of agricultural techniques and mechanical devices, of medicine and engineering, of mathematics and space travel, all depend on stored experience. Cut off from our libraries and all they represent and marooned on a desert island, any one of us would be quickly reduced to the life of a hunter-gatherer.

Like most things that thrive in harsh environments, lichens are slow-growing. It may take a lichen more than half a century to attain the dimensions of a shirt button. Those the size of dinner plates, writes David Attenborough, are therefore "likely to be hundreds if not thousands of years old." It would be hard to imagine a less fulfilling existence. "They simply exist," Attenborough adds, "testifying to the moving fact that life even at its simplest level occurs, apparently, just for its own sake." It is easy to overlook this thought that life just is. As humans we are inclined to feel that life must have a point. We have plans and aspirations and desires. We want to take constant advantage of all the intoxicating existence we've been endowed with. But what's life to a lichen? Yet its impulse to exist, to be, is every bit as strong as ours- arguably even stronger. If I were told that I had to spend decades being a furry growth on a rock in the woods, I believe I would lose the will to go on. Lichens don't. Like virtually all living things, they will suffer any hardship, endure any insult, for a moment's additional existence. Life, in short, just wants to be. But- and here's an interesting point- for the most part it doesn't want to be much. p336

Both chi-chaks and tokays have discovered that the lights used at night by human beings in their houses attract great numbers of flying insects, so they establish their territories nearby, quite unconcerned by the presence of people a few yards away. Often a single gecko will claim the entire area illuminated on the ceiling by a bulb and aggressively chase away any other that dares to venture on to it. The tokay repeats its two-syllable call about half a dozen times and then ends each sequence with a low gargle. The number of repetitions, however, varies and the local people, who are often dedicated gamblers, will sit late into the night placing extravagant bets on how many times a male will next repeat himself.

We have less than a decade to switch from fossil fuels to clean energy. We have already increased global temperature by 1oC from pre-industrial levels. If we are to halt its increase at 1.5oC, there is a limit to the amount of carbon we can yet add to the atmosphere–our carbon budget–and, at current emissions rates, we will add this amount before the end of the decade.6 Our careless use of fossil fuels has set us the greatest and most urgent challenge we have ever faced. If we do make the transition to renewables at the lightning speed required, humankind will forever look back on this generation with gratitude, for we are indeed the first to truly understand the problem–and the last with a chance to do anything about it.

my reworking of that marvellous list. 1. Live as enjoyably as you can within financial reason. 2. If you have a bath, draw an inch or two of cold water and splash about in it. A cold shower will have the same uplifting effect. 3. Never stay up all night watching Netflix Originals about serial killers. 4. DON’T THINK TOO FAR AHEAD. EVENING IS FINE, BUT TOMORROW CAN LOOK AFTER ITSELF. 5. Keep reasonably busy. 6. See as much as you can of the friends who like you, support you and make you laugh. See as little as you can of the friends who judge you, compare you to others and tire you (and don’t pretend you don’t know who they are). 7. Apply the same rules to casual acquaintances. If your instincts tell you they are toxic, walk away and don’t look back. 8. If you are low in the water, do not pretend that you aren’t. It makes it so much worse, and A STIFF UPPER LIP ONLY GIVES YOU A SORE JAW. 9. Good coffee and tea are a genuine help. 10. DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES OR FOR ANY REASON AT ANY TIME COMPARE YOURSELF TO ANYONE ELSE. 11. Cultivate a gentle, healthy pessimism. It can result in more nice surprises. 12. Avoid drama about what is wrong with the world (unless it is funny), emotionally powerful music, other sad people, and anything likely to make you feel anxious or that you are not doing enough. 13. RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS ARE HUMAN ANTIDEPRESSANTS. 14. Form a close bond with a local tree. 15. Make the room you most like sitting in as much of a comfy nest as you can. 16. Listen to David Attenborough. 17. STOP JUDGING YOURSELF. STOP PUNISHING YOURSELF. IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT. 18. Keep warm. 19. Think as much as you can about space, infinity and the beyond. Anything that much bigger than you can be very relaxing. 20. Trust me.

He is the consummate professional, but never pompous or arrogant, and always ready to oblige and assist the production team, and credit them for their efforts.

His autobiography is Life on Air: Memoirs of a Broadcaster.

Sir David was born in London but grew up in Leicester,

In 1952 he joined the BBC.

(Everyone, I guess, sees their position as the neutral one and everyone else's position as biassed. I wonder why 177 minutes of the Today programme is completely secular; you feel horribly excluded by 3 minutes of Thought for Today. I see a sinister anti-religious bias when David Attenborough goes through a whole series without ever once aying "On the other hand maybe God made it all"; you feel that 30 minutes of hymn singing on Sunday evening amounts to theocratic oppression.)

Si algo constituye una plaga, tal y como afirma el naturalista David Attenborough,186 o un cáncer, como señalaba el Club de Roma,187 quien lo erradique será un héroe, o un verdadero salvador planetario en este caso.

It seems to me that the natural world is the greatest source of excitement; the greatest source of visual beauty; the greatest source of intellectual interest; the greatest source of so much in life that makes life worth living. Sir David Attenborough

a bizarre footnote, in 2010 Julia Thomas’s skull was unearthed in the garden of the broadcaster and naturalist Sir David Attenborough. A team of builders discovered the skull when they were excavating foundations for an extension, at the spot where the Rising Sun once stood. In July 2011, the West London coroner Alison Thompson formally identified the skull as belonging to Julia Thomas and recorded a verdict of unlawful killing.

Sir David Attenborough shared his wisdom that “There are some four million different kinds of animals and plants in the world. Four million different solutions to the problems of staying alive”.

The men were working in a leisurely way, stopping frequently to rest or to give their full attention to the chorus that everyone was singing. I asked Turnim-talk how long it took to complete one axe. "Some-fella time, t'ree fella moon," he replied. "Some-fella time, six-fella moon." If this were so, it was only because the men approached their work in such an unhurried spirit for, from what we had seen, I felt sure that if a man were prepared to work hard every day he could finish one axe in two or three weeks. But such ridiculous single-minded application to a task is largely a Western characteristic; these people worked only when they felt inclined to do so.

The carcasses were covered by a blanket of handsome orange-yellow butterflies, flexing their wings as they fed on the meat. I reflected sadly that natural history often deals harshly with our romantic illusions about wild life. The most brilliantly beautiful butterflies of the tropical rain forest do not fly in search of appropriately gorgeous blossoms, but instead seek a meal from carrion or dung.

We came all this way to explore the Moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth.’ We had all simultaneously realised that our home was not limitless – there was an edge to our existence.

Prypjatin asukkaat näkivät ensimmäiseksi jättimäisen ydinvoimalan, joka eräänä päivänä tuhoaisi heidän elämänsä. Suurin osa asukkaista oli siellä töissä. Muut saivat toimeentulonsa voimalan työntekijöiden kautta. Monet varmasti ymmärsivät, miten vaarallista on asua niin lähellä voimalaa, mutta en usko, että yksikään olisi halunnut sammuttaa reaktorit. Tšernobyl oli antanut heille jotain arvokasta: mukavan elämän. Nyt me kaikki olemme prypjatilaisia. Vietämme mukavaa elämää itse aiheuttamamme katastrofin varjossa. Tämä katastrofi syntyy juuri niistä samoista asioista, jotka tarjoavat meille mahdollisuuden mukavaan elämään. Ja on aivan ymmärrettävää jatkaa samaan malliin, kunnes löytyy vakuuttava syy lopettaa ja oikein hyvä vaihtoehtoinen suunnitelma.

Since I started filming in the 1950s, on average, wild animal populations have more than halved. I look at these images now and I realize that, although as a young man I felt I was out there in the wild experiencing the untouched natural world... it was an illusion. Those forests and plains and seas were already emptying.

If the forest transition in the tropics runs its course, the loss of carbon to the air and species to the history books would be catastrophic for the whole world. We must halt all deforestation across the world now and, with our investment and trade, support those nations who have not yet chopped down their forests to reap the benefits of these resources without losing them. That is easier said than done. Preserving wild lands is a very different prospect to preserving wild seas. The high seas are owned by no one. Domestic waters are owned by nations with governments able to make broad decisions on merit. Land, on the other hand, is where we live. It is portioned into billions of different-sized plots, owned, bought and sold by a host of different commercial, state, community and private parties. Its value is decided by markets. The heart of the problem is that, today, there is no way of calculating the value of the wilderness and environmental services, both global and local, that it provides. One hundred hectares of standing rainforest has less value on paper than an oil palm plantation. Tearing down wilderness is therefore seen as worthwhile. The only practical way to change this situation is to change the meaning of value. The

Perez might irritate the shit out of him, but he was the best judge of character Taylor knew. He watched men like David Attenborough watched animals.

Such an intermediate form between egg and adult that is capable of independent life is known as a larva. All insects except the most simple and primitive pass through such a stage of development during their lives and often exploit it by drawing upon two different food sources during the course of their lives, one as a larva and the other as an adult. Amphibians are the only group of backboned animals to have such a stage in their life history. Interestingly, the newly hatched larvae of salamanders are indistinguishable to the naked eye from the hatchlings of the Queensland lungfish.

A young male shingleback (skink), in spring, travels quite widely through the semi-desert, seeking a partner. He identifies a female by her chemical scent, her pheromones. He may then start to follow her, trailing behind her with his head close to her tail. The pair may stay together for six to eight weeks. If she is not physiologically ready to receive him, she will keep her body close to the ground. But eventually her mood may change and she will straighten her hind legs so that the rear of her body is lifted above the ground. He then crawls beneath her and twists his body so that their cloacas meet and he is able to insert his sperm. The two then separate and go their own ways. Unlike many lizards, the female retains her fertilised eggs within her until the young are so well developed that they are capable of independent life. This takes a long time. They grow so large that there is only room within her body for a very small number of them — usually no more than three. Then at last, after five months, she gives birth. The young waddle off into the desert and the female resumes her lonely life. But when spring returns, an adult will once again seek out the partner it had during the previous season. Such partnerships may last for as long as two decades. If one individual is killed, perhaps, as happens only too often, crushed beneath the wheels of a car, the survivor may stay beside the body gently licking it. A coldly dispassionate explanation of this is, of course, that the bereaved has formed a liking for its partner’s pheromone and is reluctant to leave its source. Other interpretations, more sentmental and anthropomorphic, might suggest that the survivor is disconsolate — if not grieving.

The tuatara's most efficient operating temperature seems to be around 12 degrees C. At such low temperatures, the chemistry of an animal's body works very slowly indeed and in consequence, the tuatara has a very lethargic life style. It only breathes about once every seven seconds, even when active, and when resting it may go for an hour without breathing at all. It takes about twenty years to grow to maturity. A female, having started to develop her eggs within her oviduct, needs four years to complete them. Even wrapping a shell around them, which a bird manages in a matter of a few hours, takes her six to eight months. And once her eggs have been laid, they take about fourteen months to hatch-the longest embryonic development of any reptile. Such is life in the slow lane. On the other hand, it is thought that tuataras may live for as much as a hundred and twenty years or more-and that is longer than any known lizard.

The most elaborate way of delivering venom has been evolved by yet another family of snakes, the vipers. These include, as well as several different species of viper, such feared creatures as the bushmaster, the fer-de-lance, puff adders and rattlesnakes. The fangs of a king cobra are little more than a centimetre in length. The Gaboon viper (Bitis gabonica), by contrast, which is less than a third of the king cobra’s size, has fangs four times longer. They are so big that if they were fixed in their sockets the snake would be unable to shut its mouth. But they have hinges at their base so that they can fold back and lie, each sheathed in a scabbard of mucous membranes, along the roof of the mouth. Furthermore, a viper can control every element in the movement of its fangs. It can open its mouth until its gape is effectively 180 degrees wide and not even erect its fangs. It can also bite without discharging any venom. And it can bring each fang forwards separately or together. The fangs themselves are shed every six to ten weeks and replaced with new ones that appear alongside the old.

Reptile eggs are easily damaged. The parchment in which they are wrapped — which allows adults to breed away from open water — is not wholly impervious. In a dry atmosphere, it would allow so much liquid to escape that the contents of the egg would desiccate, and the embryo die. The eggs are also killed if they overheat or are seriously chilled. All lizards, therefore, take great care about where they place their eggs. Many species of monitors bury them at the end of long tunnels. Some, however, including the perentie, have discovered a way of providing their eggs with an environment that remains at exactly the same temperature and humidity whatever the weather-and without any effort whatsoever on the part of the females. They lay their eggs inside a termite nest.

The body of its victim travels slowly down the snake’s throat. The snake’s lack of front limbs and pectoral girdle means that there is no bony ring encircling its shoulders through which its prey has to pass. The skin of the snake’s tubular body is also elastic and stretches as the muscles of its body wall steadily force the meal down towards the stomach where the process of digestion will at last begin. If the meal has been a big one, this may take some time. If its victim had spines or even horns then sudden movement could cause a puncture of the snake’s body wall. So the snake will now do its best to keep out of harm’s way and avoid too much activity. Particularly large meals stimulate changes in the snake’s internal organs that are necessary to deal with the task of digestion and storage. Its heart swells by 40%. Within two days, its liver has doubled in size. Absorbing the whole meal may take a week or more. When at last the task is completed, the snake’s bodily systems shut down once again, leaving only the equivalent of a pilot hght activated.

The elapids as a group are dangerous animals. They include the most terrifying of all snakes, the king cobra (Ophiophagus hannah). This species fully deserves its regal status. It is easily the biggest of all venomous snakes, reaching a length of 5.5 metres. It is thought to be among the most intelligent of all reptiles. If threatened it rears up almost to the height of a man, spreads its neck into a hood and growls loudly. It is the only snake to make a nest of leaves for its eggs. This it will actively defend against intruders of all kinds, including elephants which it can kill with a bite on their trunk. And its main food is other snakes-pythons, rat snakes and even other lesser cobras.

The rattlesnake represents the very acme of serpentine sophistication. It has superlative sensing organs that exploit infra-red and chemo-sensory stimuli to enable it to locate its prey. It is armed with one of the most powerful of all venoms with which it can inject its victims with surgical precision. It is long-lived and produces its young fully formed and immediately capable of fending for themselves. But it has one vulnerability, one way in which human beings who see rattlesnakes as a threat to their own dominance are able to attack it. In North America, in the northern part of the rattlesnake’s range, winters can be so severe that a cold-blooded snake cannot remain active. So many species that are common elsewhere in North America do not spread far north. Rattlers are among the few that do. They survive the winter by another special adaptation. They have developed the ability to hibernate. On the prairies of the mid-West and north into Canada, they choose to do so in the burrows of prairie dogs, rodents related to marmots. Elsewhere in the woodlands, they find outcrops of rocks that are riven by deep clefts. But such places are not abundant. As autumn approaches and temperatures fall, great numbers of rattlesnakes set out on long cross-country journeys of many miles following traditional routes to the places where they and their parents before them hibernate each year. Some of these wintering dens may contain a thousand individuals. So those human beings who hate snakes and who, in spite of the rattler’s sophisticated early warning system, believe that they are a constant and lethal threat, are also able, at this season of the year, to massacre rattlesnakes in thousands. As a consequence one of the most advanced and wonderfully sophisticated of all snakes — perhaps of all reptiles — is now, in many parts of the territories it once ruled, in real danger of extinction.

The axolotl is remarkable because it becomes sexually mature while still retaining the external gills of its larval form. It seems, however, that this is due to nutritional problems. The change from larva to adult is triggered by hormones, including thyroxine produced by the thyroid gland. Conditions in this one lake, both chemical and physical, are such that this gland does not develop properly. But that can be corrected. If an axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum) is kept in a tank and a little thyroxine added to its water, the animal loses its external gills, climbs out of water and assumes a terrestrial life.

The chances of any individual animal leaving behind fossilised remains are infinitesimal. First, its dead body has to lie in a place where sediment accumulates. That is most commonly in a lake or sea. Bones lying on the surface of the land are much more likely to be destroyed than preserved. Next, the sediment has to cover the bones before they disappear, preferably even before they are disarticulated. After that, the mud-and the bones within it- has to be compressed and turned into stone by the great, infinitely slow, movements that distort and crumple the earth's crust. That has to happen without the total obliteration of any sign of the bones. And finally, those bones have to be located in the tiny proportion of rocks which happen to be sufficiently close to the surface for them to be discovered by a prospecting palaeontologist. Thus not only have the vast majority of individual animals disappeared without a trace but great numbers of species and families have doubtless existed of which we have no knowledge whatsoever.

Anoles (species of Anolis), American members of the iguanian clan, reinforce their head-bobbing signal in a special way. Like all iguanians, they have a muscular tongue that forms a large fleshy lump in the floor of the mouth. This has an internal scaffolding, part-cartilage part-bone, that is known as the hyoid. Its main component is a substantial rod that helps to support the tongue and enables iguanians to project their tongue forwards and use it to pick up insects. The anoles, however, have a rather more elaborate hyoid. There is a second rod, hinged to the base of the main one, that extends downwards into the skin on the underside of the throat of the males. The anole can flick this down and forwards so pushing out a triangular-shaped flap of skin. In some species this is coloured a brilliant red, in others a pale yellow. It is so big that when it is extended, it projects well beyond its owner’s chin. The vivid flash this creates can be seen from many yards away as a stab of light in the gloom of the forest. Creep up towards a displaying male, holding a mirror in your hand, and as he catches sight of himself he will respond with repeated flicks of his throat flag. Persist and he may become so infuriated by this rival who does exactly what he does that he may eventually turn around and abruptly leap at the mirror in an all-out attack

Many amphibian eggs are black with the pigment melanin that protects their delicate cells from damage by ultra-violet light. Newt eggs, however, are white and lack pigment so they need protection of leaves.

Female caecilians, however have many different ways of dealing with their young. One Brazilian species feeds them with her own skin. The female lays her eggs in cluster and then protectively curls her long body around them. After they hatch, the young-at three day intervals-suddenly and simultaneously start to bite her flanks and tear off strips of skin. She lies there passively, allowing them to swarm all over her until she has been stripped of the entire outer layer of her body. The frenzy lasts for some seven minutes. Then the family rests for three days while the female grows another layer of skin-and another meal.

Caimans sometimes adopt a creche system. Several females will use the same nursery pool. As the young grow, mothers begin to leave until a single female is left guarding as many as a hundred youngsters in a single pool.

Ingen ville att djur skulle utrotas. Människor började bry sig om naturen när de blev mer medvetna om den. Och televisionen bidrog till det, världen över.

I often get letters from people who say how they like the programs a lot, but I never give credit to the almighty power that created nature, to which I reply and say, "Well, it's funny that the people, when they say that this is evidence of the almighty, always quote beautiful things, they always quote orchids and hummingbirds and butterflies and roses." But I always have to think, too, of a little boy sitting on the banks of a river in west Africa who has a worm boring through his eyeball, turning him blind before he's five years old, and I reply and say, "Well, presumably the god you speak about created the worm as well," and now, I find that baffling to credit a merciful god with that action.

He watched men like David Attenborough watched animals.