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00:08There's a story that unites each of us with every animal on the planet.
00:14It's a story of the greatest of all adventures, the journey through life.
00:39If you're an actual history filmmaker, you hope to find something and show something that no-one else has seen
00:45before on television, at least.
00:50There are sequences that I've seen for this series which simply blew my mind.
00:57It's hardly believable. There's a pufferfish in Japan.
01:10Part of its mating behaviour, attracting a mate, is to construct the most extraordinary sort of floral pattern in the
01:19sand on the floor of the sea.
01:34If I hadn't seen it on film, I wouldn't have believed it.
01:38And indeed, I dare say there are some people knowing now what you can do with computers who will still
01:43say,
01:44Ah, come on, I don't believe it. But I know the bloke who shot it, and I know it's true,
01:50but it is scarcely believable.
02:03The hazards that face young animals, of course, vary.
02:07And amongst many animals, the great majority of the young which they produce will not survive,
02:15which means, therefore, that the animal, if it is to hand on its genes to the next generation, has to
02:21produce a lot of young.
02:22And the winnowing out, the loss of great numbers of offspring, in some instances, happens really right from the very
02:32beginning.
02:33I mean, barnacle geese in this series, for example, they make their nests on the top of cliffs,
02:42because they're on the ground, there's a lot of predators. And in this instance, there are cliffs which are 300
02:47feet high.
02:48They are safe up there from the predation of Arctic foxes. But when the young hatch, how are they to
02:56get down to the water where they will live?
02:59And there's only one way of doing it, and that is to jump. And you see these little balls of
03:07tiny little fluffy ducklings,
03:09leaping into the abyss, 300 feet. A significant proportion of them were killed as a consequence.
03:19The very first act of their young lives is death. But a few survive.
03:36Of course, scientists are the bedrock of all these series, and scientific research is invaluable to us.
03:45Were it not me for a research scientist, we couldn't make these programmes. But it isn't only scientists.
03:50There are many people who have deep and intimate knowledge of the natural world whose help we are grateful for.
03:59In this, for example, help came from someone who's habituated two young cheetahs.
04:09And they will allow the person concerned to travel with them. He's also a filmmaker.
04:14And so we've been able to get extraordinary shots of really intimate shots of what happens when a cheetah catches
04:24its prey, an antelope.
04:53I mean, it's fairly harrowing.
04:55But at least it shows the reality of what happens when a predator like a cheetah catches its prey.
05:12There's one extraordinary example of a mating display.
05:25When I first saw it, I was knocked out. I was knocked out a second time when I discovered that
05:32what we were going to see was a spider that is smaller than my little fingernail.
05:37I mean, really, really tiny.
05:40And what it does, the male displays to the female, for all the world, like a peacock.
05:49Unbelievable.
05:49It has an abdomen which is able to cock up over its head and then expand.
05:56And when it expands, it has rich patterns of scarlet and yellow and blue, the different species with different colours.
06:04And they display this abdomen, as I say, just like a displaying bird such as a peacock.
06:09And for that to be going on a little spider that's only as big as my fingernail is mind-blowing.
06:20We tend to think that intelligence is something that's most advanced in animals with backbones and immodest creatures that we
06:30are.
06:30We tend to think that we are the cleverest things of all.
06:33I suppose there is some evidence that perhaps we can lay claim to that.
06:38But we seldom give credit to really profound intelligence in animals without backbones.
06:46And the most intelligent of those are the cephalopods or kephalopods, which include the octopus and the squid.
06:53They live in such a different world.
06:56It's difficult for us to transplant ourselves into their world.
07:00And there's a sequence here of an octopus that has learned to make use of coconut shells.
07:08Now, these are half coconut shells that the people have eaten and chugged into the sea.
07:15So they haven't been around since prehistory.
07:18Now, this is quite a recent thing that's been lying on the sea floor.
07:21And this particular octopus is hunted by a flatfish and needs to protect itself.
07:34And it has learned how to go along and seize with a couple of its arms a coconut shell.
07:39And carrying this around like half of a snail shell, it goes and finds another one.
07:45And then he uses another pair of arms to pick that up.
07:49And then it squeezes itself into half of this and then closes the two together.
07:55So it's entirely enclosed within a sphere of coconut shell.
07:59Most extraordinary defensive behavior.
08:02And, of course, while it's there, the fish can't get it.
08:06Unbelievable behavior.
08:08And unbelievably intelligent.
08:17Human beings, when they're old, like me, come to that, and past reproduction,
08:23or indeed have not personally reproduced, nonetheless are of great value to the community
08:29if the community has a shared knowledge of skills.
08:35And old members of the society, old members of the community, have wisdom.
08:42And that applies to human beings.
08:45But it also applies to elephants.
08:47The matriarchs, which can live to 70, 80, 90 years old, are the receptacle, the repository,
08:55of a great deal of inherited knowledge.
08:58And knowledge which they themselves have acquired.
09:02Of migration routes.
09:05Of where water will always be, even in the most extreme doubts.
09:15Of what action to take when there are predators around.
09:23That knowledge is in the female elephant.
09:26And she will take over and lead her family group.
09:30When you see the way in which the matriarchs are treated by their younger sisters or daughters,
09:37a very touching respect for old age, speaking as an old age man myself.
09:43I mean, they look after one another.
09:46It's very touching.
09:48The old female will lead the way and they will trust her.
09:53It's extraordinary.
09:55Think of it and we may dream.
10:13If you have a male one will lead.
10:13I love you, sir.
10:14You ever bought it my handbag projects where you are now.
10:15There aren't people场 competences and stuff like that.
10:15And noticing a sheep's hair will go into it,
10:15It's extraordinary really, very effectively.
10:16You can get there.
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