Fighting • 1990 • episode "8/12" • Trials of Life

Category: Nature
Share:
Download:

How many animals - including zebras, moose and stalk-eyes flies - assess their opponents' fighting prowess before making an attack that risks injury or death.

Trials of Life • 0 • 13 episodes •

Arriving
48:46
Arriving

An examination of the diverse techniques employed by animals to disperse and protect offspring.

1990 • Nature

Growing Up
48:38
Growing Up

For animals, there is no greater challenge than surviving the vulnerable first years of life. This episode demonstrates that nature's solutions are as varied as those in human society.

1990 • Nature

Finding Food
49:28
Finding Food

The search for food in the animal world. With leaves defended by poisons and seeds clad in thorns, animals fight back in very innovative ways.

1990 • Nature

Hunting and Escaping
49:16
Hunting and Escaping

Life-and-death duels are fought daily in the wild: an orchid turns out to be a predator, killer whales ambush sea lions and chimps pursue colobus monkeys.

1990 • Nature

Finding the Way
48:27
Finding the Way

How animals ranging from albatrosses to ants can navigate themselves over long distances.

1990 • Nature

Home Making
49:22
Home Making

How all animal architects aim to keep both the elements and intruders at bay through features that include defensive moats.

1990 • Nature

Living Together
49:13
Living Together

Examining some of the weird relationships that develop between species, from birds that relieve clients of hangers-on to hermit crabs that enlist stinging anemones to repel octopuses.

1990 • Nature

Fighting
49:00
Fighting

How many animals - including zebras, moose and stalk-eyes flies - assess their opponents' fighting prowess before making an attack that risks injury or death.

1990 • Nature

Friends and Rivals
47:45
Friends and Rivals

From vampire bats to baboons, Sir David Attenborough investigates the importance of recognising friends and respecting the power of rivals throughout the animal kingdom.

1990 • Nature

Talking to Strangers
49:25
Talking to Strangers

From the love songs of fish to the flashes of millions of tiny beetles, Sir David Attenborough examines methods of communication used by animals.

1990 • Nature

Courting
48:57
Courting

This edition looks at the various methods employed by species to attract a mate, including whales that sing "songs", hamsters that emit an odour, and manakins that do acrobatic dances.

1990 • Nature

Continuing the Line
49:16
Continuing the Line

A look at the many and varied ways in which animals procreate in order to ensure that their genes are passed on to the next generation.

1990 • Nature

Once More into the Termite Mound
49:27
Once More into the Termite Mound

The inside of a termite mound proved especially challenging for Attenborough: it was so cramped that he could only face in one direction. He therefore had to slowly crawl backwards out of shot when performing re-takes.

1990 • Nature

You might also like

Summer
57:50
Summer

This programme, narrated by Andrew Scott, celebrates the glorious nature of summer on Earth and the extraordinary ways animals and plants rise to the challenges it brings. With the sun shining and the flowers blooming, this is the season of splendid abundance, and the long hours of daylight make life burst out in a riot of activity. But you have to find clever ways to get your share of the good times while they last, and as temperatures soar, everything has to deal with sweltering heat. For a whole range of animals, from sneaky ring-tailed lemurs to battling ibex, and from overheated penguins to astonishing colour-changing lizards, summer is a time when the living is not always easy.

2016 • Earth's Seasonal Secrets • Nature

Friends and Rivals
47:45
Friends and Rivals

From vampire bats to baboons, Sir David Attenborough investigates the importance of recognising friends and respecting the power of rivals throughout the animal kingdom.

1990 • Trials of Life • Nature

A Curious Hoax?
22:15
A Curious Hoax?

David Attenborough highlights the curiosities that have led to accusations of forgery, but have ultimately helped assist the rethinking of evolution. When early explorers brought the first specimen of a duck-billed platypus to England in 1799, it was considered so bizarre it was deemed a hoax. Similarly, the midwife toad became the centre of a scientific storm in the 1920s that led to accusations of fakery.

2013 • Natural Curiosities • Nature

Ngorongoro
48:44
Ngorongoro

Formed during a cataclysmic volcanic eruption two million years ago, Tanzania's Ngorongoro Crater is home to the highest concentration of mammals in the world. Explore this vibrant ecosystem and the extraordinary geological features that have made it a haven for biodiversity.

2018 • Nomads of the Serengeti • Nature

Living on the Edge
29:03
Living on the Edge

Today, Iolo discovers the difficulties birds face in order to stay alive, and the programme includes a dramatic scene in which a sparrow hawk seizes the moment to attack a woodpigeon nest.

2012 • Secret Life of Birds • Nature

Reptiles and Amphibians
58:48
Reptiles and Amphibians

Reptiles and amphibians look like hang-overs from the past. But they overcome their shortcomings through amazing innovation. The pebble toad turns into a rubber ball to roll and bounce from its enemies. Extreme slow-motion shows how a Jesus Christ lizard runs on water, and how a chameleon fires an extendible tongue at its prey with unfailing accuracy. The camera dives with a Niuean sea snake, which must breed on land but avoids predators by swimming to an air bubble at the end of an underwater tunnel. In a TV first, Komodo dragons hunt a huge water-buffalo, biting it to inject venom, then waiting for weeks until it dies. Ten dragons strip the carcass to the bone in four hours.

2009 • Life • Nature