Trials of Life

E01▶

Arriving

Oct 4, 1990 · 50m

E02▶

Growing Up

Oct 11, 1990 · 50m

E03Playing

Finding Food

Oct 18, 1990 · 50m

E04▶

Hunting and Escaping

Oct 25, 1990 · 50m

E05▶

Finding the Way

Nov 1, 1990 · 50m

E06▶

Home Making

Nov 8, 1990 · 50m

E07▶

Living Together

Nov 15, 1990 · 50m

E08▶

Fighting

Nov 22, 1990 · 50m

E09▶

Friends and Rivals

Nov 29, 1990 · 50m

E10▶

Talking to Strangers

Dec 6, 1990 · 50m

E11▶

Courting

Dec 13, 1990 · 50m

E12▶

Continuing the Line

Dec 20, 1990 · 50m

The next installment is devoted to the ways in which animals gather their sustenance. Attenborough begins in the South American rainforest, where the proliferation of animal and plant life does not necessarily make it easy to find food. Some leaves are poisonous, and so those that eat them have to be careful. Other plants use food (or nectar) as a bribe to get their pollen transported, and several species of hummingbird have developed exclusive relationships with certain of them. Fruit is also on offer, again as a means of reproduction, and creatures such as squirrel monkeys eat little else. Meanwhile, parrots and macaws take kaolin as an antidote to their diet of toxic seeds. Attenborough witnesses a 60,000 strong flock of knot and dunlin suddenly take advantage of a low tide to feed on tiny mud-dwelling molluscs. Barracuda hunt small fish, and drive shoals of them into bays to be eaten by pelicans, which are besieged by gulls that attempt to steal their catches. One species of gecko is able to differentiate between worker termites and the more dangerous soldiers. The web of the orb spider is hailed as one of the most elegant food catching devices, and the methods of two others, nephila and its kleptoparasite visitor, argyrodes, are explored in detail. Finally, tropicbirds, their crops full with food en route back to their nests, are ambushed in mid-air by a group of frigatebirds, whose aim is to make them surrender their cargo.