Life Story
SERIES 1 - 1. FIRST STEPS
BBC One Thur 23rd Oct 9pm - 10pm
Repeat: BBC One Sunday 26th Oct 4:55pm
Review by: David ButcherDavid Attenborough launches his latest look at the trials of wildlife gazing at adorable young meerkats. Don’t be fooled, though. He’s just softening us up. Because the first chapter of his look at the struggles animals face takes us to the far less cuddly world of Greenland barnacle geese.
These birds choose to nest on a 400ft-high finger of rock. The trouble is, their two-day-old chicks won’t be able to fly for weeks and they need to get to the valley below to feed… somehow.
So, following their parents, the tiny balls of fluff jump nervously off their ledge and – in a sequence that will have you flinching in sympathy – pinball down the sharp rock face, bouncing and tumbling through one of nature’s more painful rites of passage.
Can they survive it? Well clearly, their parents did. And that’s Attenborough’s message here – that surviving to produce offspring is every animal’s main task. Lion cubs, humpback whales and those lovable meerkats face their own tests tonight in a classy opener.
1/6. Naturalist David Attenborough documents the universal story that unites humanity with every other animal on the planet - the journey through life, and the goal to continue the bloodline through offspring. This edition focuses on the first hurdle any animal will face, surviving infancy. Cameras follow flightless barnacle goose chicks as they strive to find food, leaping 400ft down a cliff from the ledge where they hatched. Meanwhile, in New Zealand, young fur seals have stumbled across a safe haven in which they can learn how to avoid predators, while deep in the Gobi Desert, the long-eared jerboa learns to use its impeccable hearing to catch insect pray. Plus, albatross chicks make their first flight, as threatening tiger sharks wait patiently for them to slip up and land in the sea.
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