Running Time: 60 minutes (approx)Our planet may be home to more than 30 million different animals and plants and every single one is locked in its own life-long fight for survival. Life, a new series narrated by David Attenborough, uncovers some extraordinary strategies they've developed to stay alive and to breed. Using state-of-the-art filming techniques, the series is about extreme behaviour. It's survival of the fittest in their battle against daily life or death challenges. Four years in the making, mind-blowing behaviour captured for TV for the first time includes cheetahs collaborating together to bring down prey twice their size; the courtship battle, known as the heat run, of the humpback whale; a huge number of enormous Humboldt squid joining forces for night-time hunting; and the legendary, fearsome Komodo dragons bringing down their buffalo prey. The first and most important lesson that all creatures learn in life is how to get enough food. In northern Kenya, three cheetah brothers have developed a new way of hunting. Rather than tackle small prey on their own, they have learnt that together they can bring down ostriches. Running the risk of a mighty kick, which could be fatal, they have to be unusually careful. The bottlenose dolphins that live in Florida Bay have also made a breakthrough. To catch their fast-swimming prey, one dolphin creates a ring of mud to surround the fish by beating its tail down hard in the soft silt as it swims in a large circle. As the mud mushrooms in the water, the ring gets smaller and the fish become trapped. Panicking, they jump out of the water – right into the waiting dolphins' mouths. The battle between animals and plants can be intense. Brown-tufted capuchin monkeys in Brazil demonstrate an extraordinary level of skills to crack the hard shell of the palm nuts they love. They harvest the nuts, strip them of their husks and leave them to dry. After a few weeks, they transport them to a huge anvil-like stone and smash it with a heavy hammer stone. It can take eight years for a capuchin to perfect this complex art of nut-smashing. In every animal's life there comes a time when its mind turns to breeding. The stalk-eyed fly has a mindboggling technique. It sucks in air bubbles and blows them through its head to push its eyes out – on stalks. These are vital for winning females, because the males with the biggest eye span gets the most females. The final 10-minute diary – Ice Alliance – follows the challenges the Life team experienced while filming killers whales hunting in Antarctica. When is Life next on TV?
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Life is a Nature programme. Life is a 4 star programme.
 Picture: Hugh Miller Next Show TimesSeasons in DetailTags |
In the UK... it's next showing on BBC 1 
United States
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