Life Blossoms

Even though the subject of mammals were covered extensively in his previous work, Sir David and his team still decided to devote a whole series, The Life of Mammals (2002) to account for them in proper.  As usual, Sir David was not hesitant in travelling around the world with his crew to investigate caves of bats, close-up with grizzly bears and pull themselves up the tree canopy of the tropical rainforests.  A breakthrough in this series involved the use of infra-red filming equipment to capture the activity of nocturnal animals such as lions, leopards and tigers.  The following scene shows the Siberian Tiger and its encounter with Sir David.

“Three and a half million years separate the individual who left these footprints in the sands of Africa from the one who left them on the moon. A mere blink in the eye of evolution. Using his burgeoning intelligence, this most successful of all mammals has exploited the environment to produce food for an ever-increasing population. In spite of disasters when civilisations have over-reached themselves, that process has continued, indeed accelerated, even today. Now mankind is looking for food, not just on this planet but on others. Perhaps the time has now come to put that process into reverse. Instead of controlling the environment for the benefit of the population, perhaps it’s time we control the population to allow the survival of the environment.”

— Sir David Attenborough, in concluding The Life of Mammals

Most documentary makers disregard the invertebrates as they are very difficult to put on screen due to their small sizes.  However, the advancement of the macro photography technology allowed Sir David and his team to capture high quality images of these sophisticated creatures in Life in the Undergrowth (2005).  Challenges faced for his team included seeking the correct timings for seasonal emergence of insects, such as moths in Arizona and mayflies in Hungary.  The footages contributed much to the scientific community by allowing for more precise observations that could not be seen by the naked eye.  The following scene shows the introduction to the series.

“If we and the rest of the backboned animals were to disappear overnight, the rest of the world would get on pretty well. But if [the invertebrates] were to disappear, the land’s ecosystems would collapse. The soil would lose its fertility. Many of the plants would no longer be pollinated. Lots of animals, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals would have nothing to eat. And our fields and pastures would be covered with dung and carrion. These small creatures are within a few inches of our feet, wherever we go on land — but often, they’re disregarded. We would do very well to remember them.”

— Sir David Attenborough, in concluding Life in the Undergrowth

After twenty years of producing the Life series, Sir David realised that he had surveyed many major groups of terrestrial organisms, with the exception of amphibians and reptiles.  And thus Life in Cold Blood was aired in February 2008, as his last major documentary series.  Sir David and his team showcased several innovative techniques in capturing footage, such as thermal imaging to show the fluctuating temperatures of the animals and camera probing to access underground lairs.  Ultra high speed cameras were also used to capture the swift motions of hunting reptiles.  The following scene shows how a python swallows a deer in whole.

“Reptiles and amphibians are sometimes seen as simple, primitive creatures. That’s a long way from the truth. The fact that they are solar-powered means that their bodies require only 10% of the energy that mammals of a similar size require. At a time when we ourselves are becoming increasingly concerned about the way in which we get our energy from the environment and the wasteful way in which we use it, maybe there are things that we can learn from ‘life in cold blood’.”

— Sir David Attenborough, in concluding Life in Cold Blood

Although he initially acknowledge the completion of telling the evolutionary history on Earth through his Life series, he decided to include First Life (2010) as part of it as it dealt with that topic precedent of his first documentary Life on Earth.  This two part documentary showed how fossil evidence allowed biologists to visualise how prehistoric life was when it was first formed.  The following scene shows the formation of multi-cellular organisms in the process of evolution.

“Life originated from the oceans. After an immense period of time, some creatures managed to crawl up onto the land. Those animals may seem to us to be very remote, strange, even fantastic. But all of us alive today owe our very existence to them.”

— Sir David Attenborough, in concluding First Life