Plants survive and thrive by using different skills than humans. Take a look at how they adapt to their environments, co-opt insects to help them out and manage to survive in extreme climates and terrain.
Plants survive and thrive by using different skills than humans. Take a look at how they adapt to their environments, co-opt insects to help them out and manage to survive in extreme climates and terrain.
2017 • Nature
Plants are able to communicate with each other in ways we are only now beginning to understand. Some plants can differentiate between roots of their "family" and roots of other kinds of plants when they touch underground. See how plants "talk" to each other and find out what they talk about!
2017 • Nature
How have some plants managed to live 5000 years? They are masters of photosynthesis and have survived on trips into space. In fact, there are now "plantimals". Perhaps it is time we learned more from plants about our world and how to live in it as partners.
2017 • Nature
A close-up view of sex, bug-style, as David Attenborough talks viewers through the different ways in which creepy-crawlies reproduce. Size matters for the minuscule male orb spider, creepily sneaking up on its intended and trying to mate without her noticing, while there's no rest for the lothario-like butterfly, which has plenty of notches on its proverbial bedpost. However, the harvestman spider has no use for sex at all, and reproduces by cloning itself.
4 • Micro Monsters with David Attenborough • 2013 • Nature
A captivating world of creepy crawlies exists all around us. And they are the biggest group of animals in the world, outnumbering humans 200 million to one. Thanks to millions of years of evolution, these invertebrates not only survive in almost every landscape known to man, but also thrive by means of fascinating, and sometimes bizarre adaptations. There's the Bombardier beetle that squirts a boiling hot liquid from its anus, the Assassin bug that turns its victims into soup, and the Parasitic wasp that lays her eggs inside her victims, until her young are ready to eat their way out. We end off with the biggest bugs on the planet: the Atlas moth with a wingspan of over 20 centimetres, the Hercules beetle that can carry 850 times its own weight, and the Giant centipede - big enough to catch flying bats from midair!
2015 • Nature
Our body is a true time machine. It is a mirror of the history of the living world. If an engineer today had to fabricate the ideal human, he would most likely not design us the way we are currently made. He would go to the most logical, the most efficient, the most rational; and when you look closely, this is not always what characterizes us.
1/2 • The Secret History of our Evolution • 2018 • Nature
In this second episode Dr Alice Roberts charts how our ancestors’ hunt for food has driven the way we look and behave today – from the shape of our face, to the way we see and even the way we attract the opposite sex.
2/3 • Origins of Us • Nature
The next programme explores the various sea-living invertebrates. In Morocco, the limestones are 600 million years old, and contain many invertebrate fossils. They fall broadly into three categories: shells, crinoids and segmented shells. The evolution of shelled creatures is demonstrated with the flatworm, which eventually changed its body shape when burrowing became a necessity for either food or safety. It then evolved shielded tentacles and the casings eventually enveloped the entire body: these creatures are the brachiopods. The most successful shelled animals are the molluscs, of which there are some 80,000 different species.
2/13 • Life on Earth • 1979 • Nature
Besides humans, of course :)