Your Favourite Attenborough Moment
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00:00:00David Attenborough can tell me anything about animals and I'll trust him.
00:00:04His enthusiasm comes from his pure love for what he does.
00:00:08I've never ever watched a David Attenborough show and thought that needs to be explained better or again.
00:00:12He's arguably the best presenter that the world has ever seen.
00:00:15He's fabulous.
00:00:17It was like meeting God or something.
00:00:19What he knows about it and what he tells you about it catches you on fire.
00:00:23Tell me, you know, just tell me.
00:00:25It's David Attenborough. In it.
00:00:31THANK YOU
00:00:52Sir David Attenborough is 80 this year.
00:00:56For more than 50 years we've accompanied him on his television travels as he's explored the wildest parts of our world.
00:01:04I was reasonably confident that it would take my weight.
00:01:07And reveal to us the wonders of nature.
00:01:13This is our 80th birthday tribute to him.
00:01:18And I'm in one of the hottest places on earth.
00:01:22You, the UK TV viewers, have voted in your thousands for your favourite David Attenborough clip.
00:01:28Now it's time to reveal the results and count down to your favourite Attenborough moment.
00:01:34He pumped his head.
00:01:35Well, no one's perfect.
00:01:36Including me!
00:01:40There!
00:01:42The blue whale!
00:01:46So, here are the top 20 clips selected by you.
00:01:53Beginning with, at number 20, the aggressive bramble.
00:01:59Strange though it may seem, some plants can move not just their flowers and their leaves, but they can travel from place to place.
00:02:08Take, for example, this bramble.
00:02:11We all know that plants move, and yet we never see them move.
00:02:15And how were we to demonstrate this?
00:02:18How were we to demonstrate that some plants are aggressive?
00:02:21Territorially aggressive.
00:02:27Of all the woodland plants, this is one of the most aggressive.
00:02:35It waves its shoots agitatedly from side to side, as if feeling for the best way forward.
00:02:43And when a shoot settles on its course, it thrusts ahead relentlessly.
00:02:51It's imperceptible in real life. You just think, God, there's overnight, there's brambles.
00:02:54But this film, you can actually see it moving, and it's incredible.
00:02:57This is the day of the triffids. This is plants in Star Trek that come out and grab you.
00:03:01You can actually see them moving. They're almost like animals, and it's incredible.
00:03:06The invading stem's backward-pointing spines give it the grip it needs
00:03:11to climb over almost anything that stands in its way.
00:03:25It can advance as much as three inches in a day.
00:03:30Before long, the shoot will put down rootlets,
00:03:33and then new territory will have been annexed for the brambles' empire.
00:03:39People said, why do you call it the private life of plants?
00:03:42And I called it the private life of plants because that life, that movement,
00:03:48hitherto had been totally private.
00:03:51And I thought, well, I'm going to call it the private life of plants
00:03:55That life, that movement, hitherto had been totally private.
00:03:59No human eye had seen the way a blackberry stem moses its way across the ground.
00:04:10At 19, it's an even more impressive plant, championed by Alan Titchmarsh.
00:04:15The biggest flower in the world, the Titan Arum, a morphophallus titanum.
00:04:21The Latin name there gives some clues to the shape of the plant.
00:04:25It's always impressed me, and it's impressed David, too.
00:04:29It only flowers once in a thousand days,
00:04:33and when the flower develops, it only lasts for three days.
00:04:37So very few people have seen it, but here it is.
00:04:43Technically, it's a whole group of flowers clustered around this,
00:04:48but you could be justified for regarding it as one flower.
00:04:52And if you do that, well then, this is the biggest flower in the world.
00:04:57It's nine feet tall and three feet across.
00:05:01It's a morphophallus titanum, the Titan Arum.
00:05:06The function of this great spike in the middle is to produce a smell.
00:05:12And if you smell it, it smells very strongly of bad fish.
00:05:17This apparently attracts insects,
00:05:20which come along here and go down into this great funnel
00:05:24to these small flowers that grow at the base.
00:05:29Until this film was taken,
00:05:31no-one was sure what insects pollinated the Titan Arum.
00:05:35We were able to capture the insects.
00:05:37They turned out to be little tropical bees.
00:05:40The job was done by tiny sweat bees.
00:05:44Now, what the Titan Arum does is to produce a smell to attract the bees.
00:05:50And they have to be bees that have been feeding on the pollen of another bloom,
00:05:57which may be a mile away.
00:05:58So that's got to travel, that smell's got to travel for miles
00:06:01in order to attract the right bees.
00:06:03And that's why it grows so tall.
00:06:06The bees seemed to find some reward on the stigmas,
00:06:09for they crawled all over them,
00:06:11distributing the pollen they'd brought with them.
00:06:14But why should the Titan Arum produce the biggest bloom in the world
00:06:18to attract such tiny pollinators?
00:06:21It's the equivalent of a factory chimney.
00:06:24Why do you build factory chimneys so tall?
00:06:27In order that the smoke should be dispersed as far as possible.
00:06:31The impressive thing about it is the size.
00:06:33But you did get the impression that this was likely to move.
00:06:38And indeed, it does move.
00:06:40I mean, it closes up over the three days.
00:06:43But it also had a kind of supernatural feel to it,
00:06:47because it was so out of scale with everything else,
00:06:51you felt that it was really something that had sort of come from outer space
00:06:54and landed in the forest.
00:06:56I hope that David's been able to change people's attitude to plants,
00:07:00showing people that it's on plants that everything else in the world relies.
00:07:06Without plants, there'd be no animals.
00:07:08There'd be nothing for them to eat, nothing for them to live on,
00:07:11nothing to give them shelter.
00:07:13Plants are at the heart and core of life on Earth.
00:07:17And David has made that abundantly clear.
00:07:23You voted one of Bjork's favourites,
00:07:26the groundbreaking termite mound clip, in at number 18.
00:07:30As a kid, David started appearing on Icelandic television,
00:07:37and he very quickly became a bit of a hero to me and my friends.
00:07:43It's to West Africa you must go
00:07:46if you want to see the ultimate in termite architecture.
00:07:49Later, as I grew older, I actually realised that he was like a pioneer
00:07:56in inventing the nature documentary as such.
00:08:00When you were watching, you could actually feel that he was stepping on some new ground.
00:08:06That's always kind of exciting.
00:08:15This, six feet beneath the surface of the Earth, is the cellar of the colony.
00:08:23Its floor is studded with shafts that go down 12, 14 feet,
00:08:27down to the water table,
00:08:29where the worker termites can gather moist mud to carry on their building.
00:08:34And its ceiling is a great plate which carries the entire weight of the colony.
00:08:40But on its underside is what I think
00:08:43is really the most remarkable animal structure I've ever seen.
00:08:47Lines of concentric veins.
00:08:50They are made of mud and they absorb moisture from the colony above.
00:08:55And as it evaporates, it leaves this incrustation of white salt on them.
00:09:01But more important than that, as it evaporates, it cools,
00:09:05so that this, the cellar, is much the coolest part of the colony.
00:09:15And it's this that drives the air conditioning.
00:09:18The air, continuously heated by all the activity in the middle of the building,
00:09:23rises up into the upper stories.
00:09:25But this basement, thanks to these veins, is many degrees colder.
00:09:30And it draws down the stale, warm air from the colony above,
00:09:34down long chimneys which go right round the edge of the cellar.
00:09:39Then he shows you later how clever termites are,
00:09:44that they made this huge structure,
00:09:46that the proportion of them versus the termite mound
00:09:52would be similar to if we would make a mile-high skyscraper,
00:09:57which we haven't done yet.
00:10:00We might like to think that we are the most accomplished architects
00:10:03that the world has ever seen.
00:10:05But if this was built in human terms,
00:10:08with every worker termite the size of me,
00:10:11then it would stand a mile high.
00:10:14And we haven't done that yet.
00:10:18After the break, clip 17, one of Steve Leonard's favourites.
00:10:22It was just great to see his enthusiasm still for his subject
00:10:27in a place which you won't find the average pensioner.
00:10:32At number 17, Gibbons.
00:10:36This was in Life of Mammals.
00:10:38It showed that even at the age that he was,
00:10:41which was only a couple of years ago,
00:10:43that he was still willing to go to places
00:10:46and put himself in a position which is quite treacherous,
00:10:50you've got to admit.
00:10:52But to find the supreme tree traveller,
00:10:55we have to go to another continent.
00:10:58We have to climb into the canopy of the forests of Southeast Asia.
00:11:08BIRDS CHIRP
00:11:17This forest is home to the fastest of all
00:11:21the flightless inhabitants of the canopy in the world.
00:11:25It's so swift and so agile,
00:11:28it's capable of catching birds in mid-air.
00:11:32Gibbons. Not monkeys, but small apes.
00:11:40Their long jump record is about the same as a shivak,
00:11:44around 40 feet, but they can move at even greater speed.
00:11:48They're such skilled acrobats
00:11:50that they can change direction in mid-flow.
00:11:53They were just utterly astounding,
00:11:56to see how fast they could fly.
00:11:59They were so agile,
00:12:01they could catch birds in mid-air.
00:12:04They were so agile,
00:12:06they could catch birds in mid-air.
00:12:09They were so agile,
00:12:11they could catch birds in mid-air.
00:12:14They were so agile,
00:12:16they were utterly astounding,
00:12:18to see their movement through the trees,
00:12:21and just his wonder at that,
00:12:23and the fact that he got so close to them.
00:12:25It was just great to see his enthusiasm still for his subject
00:12:29in a place which you won't find the average pensioner.
00:12:36It's very difficult not to be carried away, as it were,
00:12:40by the beauty of gibbons.
00:12:43They are, I think, the most graceful mammals you can think of, really.
00:12:47And certainly in terms of aerial displays and acrobatics,
00:12:52they just are incomparable.
00:13:02If I'm 150 feet up in a tree,
00:13:04dangling from a rope,
00:13:07I'm not all that unhappy to get down to the ground again.
00:13:12There's a bit of relief when you get back to terra firma.
00:13:15But nonetheless, going up there
00:13:19does bring you to extraordinary, extraordinary sights.
00:13:36At number 16, David meets the Christmas Island crabs.
00:13:43Now it's nearing midnight.
00:13:45Their numbers can only be guessed at,
00:13:47but on the island as a whole,
00:13:49there are probably 120 million of these crabs,
00:13:52and nearly all the adult females among them
00:13:55have chosen this time for their annual spawning.
00:13:58The mass behaviour of things like Christmas Island crabs
00:14:02are astounding, not only because they are vast numbers of creatures,
00:14:06but because they do this particular action
00:14:09on any one particular day of the year,
00:14:12and that they all do it together.
00:14:14And we really don't understand it.
00:14:17I mean, the ability of simple organisms,
00:14:21relatively simple organisms,
00:14:23to understand time and to synchronise their movements is extraordinary.
00:14:28But when it happens, of course,
00:14:30it produces a spectacle for the film, which is breathtaking.
00:14:34A crab like this is carrying about 100,000 eggs,
00:14:39and she has to shed them directly into the sea if they are to hatch.
00:14:43But that's a hazardous business for her,
00:14:46because although her far-distant ancestors came from the sea,
00:14:49she herself is a land crab, and she can't swim.
00:14:53So if a wave sweeps her away, she will assuredly drown.
00:14:58But nonetheless, her compulsion to launch the next generation
00:15:02is irresistible.
00:15:04And when at length she does reach the sea,
00:15:06her triumph is apparently ecstatic.
00:15:18Next, you voted Ella MacArthur's favourite,
00:15:21The Wandering Albatross, in at number 15.
00:15:25An adult wanderer may travel 5,000 miles,
00:15:29sometimes to Brazil and back,
00:15:31in order to collect squid for its young.
00:15:37I think my fondness for albatrosses
00:15:39began when I started sailing in the Southern Ocean.
00:15:42The first time I went down there was at the beginning of the year 2000.
00:15:45And, you know, sailing down there,
00:15:47you have these birds flying with you for hours and hours and hours.
00:15:51WHISTLE BLOWS
00:16:04Here's this thing that hasn't yet flown,
00:16:07that has been sitting there for a year,
00:16:10that has been totally dependent upon its parents coming back to it,
00:16:16and that soon is going to stretch its wings and lift off, and it's away.
00:16:22I think that the clip shows that you can be so close
00:16:25to these huge, massive, beautiful animals,
00:16:28and yet they don't have a fear for it.
00:16:30This enormous chick weighs 10 kilos,
00:16:34as much as a full-grown swan.
00:16:37It's the biggest of any seabird chick.
00:16:40There's obviously a cameraman on one side,
00:16:42there's David on the other side,
00:16:44and this albatross is feeding its chick right between the two.
00:16:47It's extraordinary, and I think it shows us something
00:16:50that's very rare in this day and age.
00:16:52Well, no, it's a couple of months before it has to face its first flight.
00:16:56It's now at its maximum weight.
00:16:58In fact, it's heavier even.
00:17:01HE CHUCKLES
00:17:03Heavier than the adult.
00:17:06The spring snows are now beginning to melt,
00:17:10but the chick has already faced the worst of the winter weather.
00:17:14Hatched last March, it has sat here on its nest mound,
00:17:18unprotected and unshielded, for eight months,
00:17:21while the temperatures may have fallen to minus 10 degrees
00:17:25and terrible storms raged round it.
00:17:28It's so big that it can't possibly grow to this very huge size
00:17:33in the short summer season,
00:17:35so the parents have to come to feed it every three or four days
00:17:40for ten months, and in order to do that,
00:17:43they have to be able to reach the open sea.
00:17:52When you see an albatross up close,
00:17:54you see in its eyes what it's been through, well, I do anyway.
00:17:58I've spent months at sea, and you know that they spend years at sea,
00:18:02and, you know, it's all right seeing them on a nest on a nice sunny day
00:18:05or even seeing them on a nest on a rainy day,
00:18:07but when they're out there in the middle of an 80-knot storm
00:18:10in the Southern Ocean, I mean, that's just brutal, and I've been there.
00:18:13I know how horrible it is.
00:18:15It's freezing cold, it's windy, it's rough,
00:18:17and they're out there in all weathers, and I think that's extraordinary.
00:18:20I think, you know, they can live up to 60 years,
00:18:23and they virtually live as long as we do,
00:18:25and the amount of things they could have seen in their lifetime,
00:18:28it's extraordinary.
00:18:29Albatross are such romantic animals.
00:18:32I mean, they're so beautiful.
00:18:34They're astonishingly beautiful.
00:18:39Now another of Bjork's favourites, the huge elephant seal,
00:18:43comes humping in in 14th place.
00:18:47This one sort of sticks out.
00:18:49It's very memorable because this is the one
00:18:52where David could have been seriously hurt.
00:18:56The elephant seal follows him and attacks him
00:19:01and almost gets him.
00:19:03This is a beachmaster,
00:19:06and there are a dozen or so like him spaced out along this beach.
00:19:11Each one of them has his own harem,
00:19:14and I estimate that this one has about 100 females in his,
00:19:19and his sole object in life at the moment
00:19:22is to make quite sure that he and he alone
00:19:25mates with every single one of them.
00:19:27And to that, he must fight.
00:19:30The big beachmasters are very alarming.
00:19:33You can, of course...
00:19:35I mean, you, after all, have got legs, and they haven't.
00:19:38They've got a hump along, so that you can outrun them.
00:19:41I mean, if one starts off and goes for you,
00:19:45well, you can be pretty sure you can keep ahead of it.
00:19:48But the trouble is that you're running on shingle
00:19:51and big shingle at that.
00:19:53And if you slipped and fell,
00:19:56this three tonnes would just go right over you.
00:20:00I mean, you would be as a smear, as a pancake.
00:20:03I mean, talk about a roadkill.
00:20:05I mean, that really would be a roadkill.
00:20:08He alone mates with every single one of them.
00:20:11And to that, he must fight.
00:20:14Came pretty close there.
00:20:17Now, in this clip, number 13 is lucky for one baby bat.
00:20:23I've done television presenting where you learn a piece of the camera,
00:20:26you do it, if you get it wrong, you do it again, and you do it again.
00:20:29I'm standing next to HMS Victory.
00:20:31It's not going to fly away. It's still there. You can do it again.
00:20:34He's now doing a piece of the camera.
00:20:36Between the camera and him,
00:20:38there are a million mother bats flying, and he does it to camera.
00:20:41And you think, he can only do this in one take.
00:20:44And it's incredible.
00:20:46He talks about them, the bats going past,
00:20:48and he even finds a bat that's landed on a bush nearby
00:20:51and says, look, they don't all make it, look, here's one.
00:20:54And it's a wonderful piece of television.
00:20:56For the past few days, many of the babies have been going on
00:20:59short practice flights within the cave.
00:21:02But now some of them are accompanying the adult females
00:21:06as they fly out into the open sky.
00:21:09But they're far from expert flyers.
00:21:11Here's one that has crash-landed within a few yards of the cave.
00:21:15He picks it up and says, you know, a lot of them don't make it.
00:21:18And it's quite a sweet moment. It's quite a very un-Attenborough moment.
00:21:21Cos it's almost sentimental, but there's something quite nice about him
00:21:24wishing he sort of kisses and doesn't quite kiss this baby.
00:21:27He says, good luck, and lets it go off into the...
00:21:29And it is quite touching.
00:21:31When he was in the cave, he was very safe.
00:21:34About one in 100 babies die in there.
00:21:38But out here, he's surrounded by danger.
00:21:41Of the million bats that were born five weeks ago in there,
00:21:45three-quarters will be dead before they're adult.
00:21:49So for this little creature, the trials of life really are just starting.
00:21:54Good luck to you.
00:21:57It's entirely spontaneous, really.
00:22:00Because when you're faced with three million or 30 million
00:22:05or whatever it is, number of bats,
00:22:08an individual life seems of not great import.
00:22:13And you can watch, with equanimity, a bat hawk come out of the sky
00:22:18and hammer an adult bat and just take it away.
00:22:22And I'll say in the commentary, but of course,
00:22:25the loss of one bat means absolutely nothing
00:22:28in a population of 30 million.
00:22:31But somehow, when you had this little naked bat
00:22:34that had never left mummy before, never left the cave before,
00:22:38was setting out on life, it's a little atom, a little particle,
00:22:42a little molecule of humanity, not of humanity, of life.
00:22:46And you can't help feel some kind of sympathy for it,
00:22:50sentimental though it may be.
00:22:52But it's perfectly genuine all the same.
00:22:55You know, it's a little living thing.
00:22:58It needs its chance. Good luck.
00:23:03After the break, which clip is this in 12th place?
00:23:07I had never seen such obvious examples of intelligence in nature.
00:23:13Welcome back to your favourite Attenborough moment,
00:23:16where we've reached number 12.
00:23:20You don't normally think of them as hunters.
00:23:24You don't normally think of them as hunters.
00:23:28More as gentle vegetarians, munching fruit and picking leaves.
00:23:34But if you follow them for any length of time in their true home,
00:23:38these forests in West Africa,
00:23:41you discover that they are hunters.
00:23:43What's more, they hunt in teams
00:23:46and have a more complex strategy
00:23:49than any other hunting animal,
00:23:52except...
00:23:55..except, of course, man.
00:23:58When we filmed those chimpanzees hunting for meat,
00:24:01it was the first time that anybody had really seen
00:24:04the other side of chimpanzees.
00:24:09By golly, it was hard.
00:24:12I mean, running through the forest,
00:24:14tripping over creepers, falling into bogs,
00:24:18until eventually you got to where the chimps were, you see.
00:24:23And you're absolutely, by this stage, exhausted.
00:24:25I mean, it's humid, you're soaked to the skin with perspiration.
00:24:29And the monk and the chimpanzees are just getting out of their best
00:24:32and saying, well, that was great sleep,
00:24:35what about some, boy, some sunny-to-eat chaps?
00:24:38And so they all go gambling off to the forest.
00:24:40You think, oh, good, so you're off.
00:24:42You don't necessarily realise,
00:24:44but we had been running through that forest
00:24:46at 100% humidity,
00:24:48being strangled by lianas.
00:24:51Horrible, horrible place, frankly, for day after day after day.
00:24:55And there was no guarantee that they would hunt that day,
00:24:58or the next day, or the next day, or the next day.
00:25:01And eventually we got it, but, by golly, it was hard work.
00:25:05The technique they'll in a certain use
00:25:09is that one of them will be driving the colobus ahead of him,
00:25:14then there will be others that go up on either side,
00:25:17who are the blockers, who won't make any attempt to catch the monkeys,
00:25:20and then there are chasers who go and grab at the monkey if they can,
00:25:24and finally there's one male who will go up ahead and ambush it,
00:25:29so bringing the whole trap closed.
00:25:34The monkeys are now getting alarmed.
00:25:39A driver's going up to prevent the group from settling
00:25:42and to drive them towards an area where they're more easily trapped.
00:26:03Now it looks as though they're all in position.
00:26:05The driver's gone up, the blockers have gone up,
00:26:08and now the one who's going to make the ambush and close the ring
00:26:11he's gone up too.
00:26:13The colobus will be very lucky if they escape now.
00:26:29They've got one!
00:26:33Everyone, the hunters in the trees and the spectators on the ground,
00:26:36are screaming with excitement.
00:26:42And the chimps brought the monkey to the ground to rip it up.
00:26:45Seventy chimpanzees screamed together.
00:26:48Now, I don't know if you've ever heard a single chimpanzee scream.
00:26:51It's ear-splitting.
00:26:53When seventy scream, I mean, it is without doubt
00:26:56the most horrific thing I had ever heard or seen in nature.
00:26:59It was horrific.
00:27:01I mean, the tape recorder was just going completely bonkers.
00:27:05And now the kill is brought down
00:27:08so that the females and others can share it.
00:27:12And then suddenly, once the monkey had been ripped apart,
00:27:16this eerie silence descended on the forest.
00:27:20And you could see the way these chimps were organised.
00:27:23You could see the way that they were sharing the meat.
00:27:26And that was completely fascinating.
00:27:28I had never seen such obvious examples of intelligence in nature.
00:27:33And, you know, chimpanzees share over 99% of our genes.
00:27:37So it's completely fascinating
00:27:40and has wonderful resonances to our understanding of our own humanity.
00:27:44And there's the reward for that long chase.
00:27:47The divided body of a colobus monkey.
00:27:51These blood-stained faces may well horrify us.
00:27:57But we might also see in them
00:28:00the face of our long-distant hunting ancestors.
00:28:06And if we are appalled by that mob violence and bloodlust,
00:28:13we might also see in that too, perhaps,
00:28:16the origins of the teamwork
00:28:19that have, in the end, brought human beings
00:28:23many of their greatest triumphs.
00:28:26I think it's very, very important when we make natural history films
00:28:29that we show nature as it is.
00:28:32At times, it can be very red in tooth and claw.
00:28:39In 11th place, extraordinary underground elephants.
00:28:44David has set up an infrared camera
00:28:46to see what it is that makes these strange scratch marks on the wall.
00:28:49And you watch, and it's like a detective story,
00:28:51because first of all you see a little tiptoeing deer,
00:28:53and then you see the water buffalo,
00:28:55then you hear a harumphing and a puffing.
00:28:57It's the most extraordinary thing in the world.
00:28:59The first Europeans to visit these caves
00:29:02noticed marks like these in the walls.
00:29:06And they imagined that maybe they had been made by ancient Egyptians
00:29:10who came here to mine for gold and precious stones.
00:29:13And certainly these grooves do look like the marks made by a pickaxe.
00:29:18But to discover what actually made them,
00:29:21you have to wait until nightfall.
00:29:23This extraordinary detective story of what was it
00:29:27that made these deep, deep scratches in the rock.
00:29:31We've set up infrared lights that the animals can't see,
00:29:35but our cameras can.
00:29:37And I'll be able to keep watch from the safety of a side chamber.
00:29:41In a few minutes' time, it will be as dark outside as it is in here.
00:29:47And to see these little creatures,
00:29:50the delicacy of that little anxious deer,
00:29:53wondering if she should be there.
00:29:55She's been there for a purpose.
00:30:00It's eating.
00:30:02You can see its throat as it swallows.
00:30:05And it's understandably very nervous and apprehensive.
00:30:10It's licking salt.
00:30:12And then to find that they were after salt,
00:30:16but they didn't make the marks, elephants did.
00:30:19I think my hair just stood up on end at the thought of that.
00:30:25A bushbuck has heard something.
00:30:28It sounds like distant thunder.
00:30:36It's an elephant.
00:30:40And this great rustling, sort of soft, leathery sound
00:30:45of elephants against cave walls,
00:30:48going into what must be, for an elephant,
00:30:51used to the great, wide-open savannahs of Africa,
00:30:54suddenly to find their way in
00:30:57to such a dark, enclosed and quite treacherous area,
00:31:02because they need the salt.
00:31:04Every foot's being placed very carefully.
00:31:07The elephant couldn't tell, because it was pitch dark
00:31:10where the end of the cave was, and so it went boof,
00:31:13and as it bumped its head, he sort of went oof,
00:31:15like that, as if he too had felt it.
00:31:19He bumped his head. Well, no-one's perfect.
00:31:22It's a very intelligent creature with very good memory
00:31:25and got its own traditions within a herd.
00:31:30That's the picture from our camera at the cave mouth.
00:31:33The rest of the herd have arrived
00:31:35and are climbing up to the entrance.
00:31:37How they're managing this steep slope, I just don't know.
00:31:42There's even a young calf among them.
00:31:46There's a baby coming in a most perilous position
00:31:49as they climbed up or down a ramp, I can't quite remember,
00:31:52but some perilous position for those great elephant putty hands.
00:31:57When you think how massive and soft their great feet are,
00:32:00squish, squash.
00:32:06Elephants, like other herbivores, need salt,
00:32:10and it doesn't occur everywhere,
00:32:12so the elephants used to regularly visit a place
00:32:15where salty minerals outcropped.
00:32:18And as they mined away at it,
00:32:22they developed a small cave.
00:32:25Now, whether, in fact, it's entirely the work of elephants,
00:32:28we can't be sure, but there is a very, very big cave there.
00:32:32And the elephants go into this pitch blackness,
00:32:36which is an extraordinary thing for an animal to do.
00:32:40The passage here is so narrow
00:32:42that the big male can only just squeeze through.
00:32:49Digging with their tusks,
00:32:51scratching their way into this narrow bit
00:32:54where you could almost hear the luscious saline dripping
00:32:59in a rather gloomy frightening.
00:33:02And now I can hear that noise,
00:33:05he's using his tusks to gouge out the salt.
00:33:10The scratching down and the falling of the salt
00:33:13and then hoovering up and blowing it into their mouths
00:33:17and sniffing in their nose and going down the throat.
00:33:29Elephants must have been coming here like this for centuries,
00:33:32each generation deepening the cave a little
00:33:35and passing on to the next its knowledge of the route
00:33:38through the darkness to the precious salt.
00:33:42The elephants in the Kita Mines, Mount Elgon.
00:33:46Mount Elgon sounds like a made-up name.
00:33:48I mean, of course, it is made up, but I mean, Mount Elgon,
00:33:51it sounds as though they went,
00:33:53heck, we've got a mountain here, what shall we call it?
00:33:56What? No, that sounds... Have you got a Swahili name?
00:33:59No, you haven't. OK, what's on this camera bag?
00:34:02Elgon, OK, call it Mount Elgon.
00:34:04That's sort of what it sounds like, doesn't it?
00:34:08Into the top ten, with another of Joanna Lumley's favourites,
00:34:11the artistic Bowerbird.
00:34:13There's a kind of bird here in New Guinea
00:34:16whose females select a male not because he's a better meal ticket,
00:34:20but because he's a better artist.
00:34:23How else would you describe this wonderful bird?
00:34:27Well, it's a great bird.
00:34:29It's a great bird.
00:34:31It's a great bird.
00:34:33It's a great bird.
00:34:35How else would you describe this wonderful construction
00:34:38except as a work of art?
00:34:43This is its creator, the Vogelkop Bowerbird.
00:34:51He has a passion for interior decoration.
00:34:54His hut, almost big enough for me to crawl into,
00:34:57is neither a home nor a nursery.
00:35:00It's a gallery in which he can display his artistic creations
00:35:04to visiting females.
00:35:07These flowers come from a creeper that has only just started to bloom,
00:35:12great new material for anyone who likes colour.
00:35:15And he loves it.
00:35:17I think the Bowerbirds really are up there
00:35:20amongst the top of strange things to do with flowers.
00:35:24Except look at us.
00:35:26We pick flowers and put them in a vase and hope we make the home look pretty.
00:35:29The man comes in and we say,
00:35:31I hope he notices the new lipstick and sit by the flowers.
00:35:37He collects beetles' wings.
00:35:39They've just flopped onto the ground, beetles thrown off its wing.
00:35:42He's collected them up, put them in shiny, shiny piles.
00:35:46The iridescent wing cases of beetles also appeal to him
00:35:50and he's amassed an impressive collection.
00:35:52But they're always in need of a little rearrangement
00:35:55to show them off to their very best advantage.
00:35:58Bowerbirds are creating words of art.
00:36:01It has no other function
00:36:03other than to please the eye of the female.
00:36:07He calls to invite female visitors.
00:36:12The thicker woman just comes along and goes,
00:36:14yeah, I think it's quite nice.
00:36:16Then he goes, oh, she doesn't do anything at all.
00:36:18And then he just pats the cushions a bit,
00:36:22waits for the next one to wander in.
00:36:24Hello, is this your house? He says, yes, it is.
00:36:27He's turned into Leslie Phillips by now.
00:36:29I just was enchanted.
00:36:42At number nine, you voted for our second chimpanzee clip
00:36:46and these amazing, poignant images.
00:36:58Seeing those chimpanzees suddenly stand upright
00:37:01and wade through the water,
00:37:03every time I saw it, the hairs on the back of my neck,
00:37:06what few hairs are left, would actually stand up.
00:37:09There was something very sort of weird
00:37:11about the connection between what the animals were doing
00:37:14compared to humans.
00:37:16The fact that you were seeing these chimpanzees,
00:37:18one of our nearest relatives, living relatives,
00:37:21walking up to you and saying,
00:37:23and being able to experience that with David Attenborough,
00:37:26for me, was a real champion moment.
00:37:39Suddenly, an image from our remote past
00:37:42becomes vivid little light.
00:37:44The time when our distant ancestors,
00:37:46in order to keep up with the changing environment,
00:37:49The time when our distant ancestors,
00:37:51in order to keep up with the changing environment,
00:37:54had to wade and keep their heads above water
00:37:57in order to find food.
00:37:59That crucial moment when our far distant ancestors
00:38:03took a step away from being apes
00:38:06and a step towards humanity.
00:38:10Suddenly, these pictures that you saw
00:38:13in the old children's encyclopedias
00:38:16of the past fossil history of humanity
00:38:19and of the existence of ape men,
00:38:21suddenly it comes to life.
00:38:23Suddenly it's real.
00:38:25Suddenly, you see both the apishness
00:38:29and the humanness of this extraordinary animal.
00:38:33Suddenly, you see both the apishness
00:38:36and the humanness of this extraordinary animal
00:38:39that's wading in the water.
00:38:41Particularly when the females are cuddling,
00:38:43are cradling their young to the breast,
00:38:46wading through the water.
00:38:48Or when the male comes along,
00:38:50and just as you and I might do if the water was rather cold,
00:38:53start wading with their hands above your head.
00:38:57They are so human,
00:38:59and yet the expression on the face is not human.
00:39:04It's intelligent, but it's not humanity.
00:39:07It's somewhere in between.
00:39:10And that's almost creepy.
00:39:12It's certainly moving.
00:39:15After the break, we're at number eight.
00:39:18But just what is David talking about here?
00:39:21And this was a particularly sexy,
00:39:24sexed-up, testosterone-full male.
00:39:31At eight, the first of Bill Oddie's two favourites.
00:39:35I mean, I was very envious of David getting that piece of film,
00:39:38because I wanted to do it.
00:39:41So I was a bit cross that he got there first.
00:39:44And I was even crosser when I went up a couple of years later,
00:39:47and the bird was still at it.
00:39:49And I was due to film it, and I thought, you know,
00:39:52OK, I'll really go for it. I'll wrestle it.
00:39:54I'll do the whole thing, if necessary, you know.
00:39:57And it had gone. It had gone.
00:39:59Although I personally think it was...
00:40:02How can I put it? It was removed or encouraged to depart.
00:40:06Possibly terminally, or possibly it was just taken over to Sweden
00:40:10and chucked out and said, go and molest people over there.
00:40:13Go and attack some Swedes, because it's a very boring country
00:40:16and nothing very interesting happens.
00:40:18So, you know, a rogue capercaillie would have made the front page there,
00:40:21no problem.
00:40:23The capercaillie is the biggest of grass.
00:40:30The arenas on which the males display are vigorously contested,
00:40:35and the best, in the end, is claimed by the most powerful male
00:40:39who will defend it against any intruder.
00:40:45And I'm sure David would be the first.
00:40:47He probably was the first to say,
00:40:49do you think it'll attack me then?
00:40:51And he'd be in there. Of course he would.
00:40:54Who wouldn't? Any presenter worth their salt would get in there
00:40:57and have a, you know, say, go on, knock me over, knock me over.
00:41:01I'm going again now. Indeed? What?
00:41:05But things don't always go to plan.
00:41:09Even for David Attenborough.
00:41:11Anything, including me!
00:41:15Let's face it, David, most of the time,
00:41:18has dignity and people, you know, literally worshipping.
00:41:23So I think he needs taking down a pegatoon,
00:41:26and that capercaillie did a very good job.
00:41:29He is so charged up, this being the breeding season,
00:41:34that he would display a capercaillie,
00:41:36and he would display a capercaillie,
00:41:38and he would display a capercaillie,
00:41:40and he would display a capercaillie,
00:41:42and it was the breeding season that he would display
00:41:45almost anything, including me!
00:41:50No doubt.
00:41:51You know, some birds are friendly and some birds aren't,
00:41:54and some birds are irritable and some birds are easy going.
00:41:57And this was a particularly sexy, sexed-up,
00:42:01testosterone-full male capercaillie
00:42:06who was prepared to have a go at anybody.
00:42:13MUSIC
00:42:17At number seven, you voted for David talking to woodpeckers.
00:42:24In this part of the world, in Patagonia,
00:42:27on the southernmost tip of South America,
00:42:29two knots on a tree trunk has a very particular meaning,
00:42:32at least among birds.
00:42:34If I do it, I might even get an answer.
00:42:38CLICK
00:42:42We needed a signal which I would be able to reproduce.
00:42:49Now, woodpeckers, although they do have calls,
00:42:52most species have calls,
00:42:54they communicate, actually,
00:42:56by striking the tree trunks on which they live.
00:43:02One of them has a very simple call,
00:43:04which is the two-note bang-bang, like that.
00:43:08And so we thought, well, it might be possible
00:43:11for me to make that kind of call, bang-bang.
00:43:16The time between the two strikes, it turned out to be crucial.
00:43:22So I had to get two pebbles, or two sticks,
00:43:25and then go bang-bang with two hands,
00:43:27and that worked like a charm.
00:43:30It's a Magellanic woodpecker.
00:43:34One of the largest of all woodpeckers,
00:43:36and he thinks he's heard a rival.
00:43:40He comes in for a closer look.
00:43:44As soon as I suddenly went bang-bang,
00:43:46it turned up, what's that?
00:43:48And it came across within minutes.
00:44:05He's now on my tree.
00:44:10They have a look of permanent surprise on their faces.
00:44:13Against the tree trunk,
00:44:15that's enough to make a sort of tiny surprise.
00:44:23Just outside the top five, at six,
00:44:25a close encounter with a grizzly beaver.
00:44:29Just outside the top five, at six,
00:44:31a close encounter with a grizzly bear.
00:44:35Up here in Alaska, during the summer,
00:44:37a whole succession of different food become available.
00:44:41Something's going on, and you get an inkling of something's going on,
00:44:44because he does a nervous look to the left.
00:44:46And there's a spectacular animal here
00:44:48that's prepared to sample each and every one of them.
00:44:51No one dish remains available for very long,
00:44:54so you have to make the best of it while you can.
00:44:56And his timing is impeccable.
00:44:58And these moments in television are rare,
00:45:01when something happens so perfectly,
00:45:03and yet, again, like a true professional, he doesn't fluff it.
00:45:06He doesn't miss this.
00:45:08And top of the menu right now is salmon.
00:45:12What must have been going through his mind is,
00:45:14first, am I going to get nailed by this bear?
00:45:17And then second, I know what will be in his mind is,
00:45:20this is going to be great!
00:45:22It's the favourite food of the largest
00:45:24and certainly the most formidable of all omnivores,
00:45:28grizzly bears.
00:45:30One of the difficulties, of course, in that situation
00:45:32is that in order to talk to the camera,
00:45:34you've got to turn your back on the animal.
00:45:37The grizzly bear is surely the most formidable carnivore
00:45:41in all the world.
00:45:43It's found right round the northern hemisphere
00:45:45in desert and tundra and forests and mountains.
00:45:48And that is unsettling, to put it mildly.
00:45:51Top of the menu right now is salmon.
00:45:55And so when I heard a splash behind me
00:45:57and I knew the bear had jumped into the stream,
00:46:00I was quite relieved.
00:46:02And so were David's film crew.
00:46:0514, take one on the end.
00:46:14Into the top five and your favourite chimpanzee clip.
00:46:19Well, I think one of the absolute best clips ever
00:46:22of David Attenborough is when he meets the orphan chimps
00:46:26in Congo.
00:46:33He's sitting on the log and watching the chimps nut-cracking
00:46:37and he has some nuts in his top pocket,
00:46:40which he kind of hands out
00:46:43and he's obviously delighted
00:46:46that this chimp cracks open the nuts so well
00:46:49and just this little orphan, he's learning how to do it.
00:46:52Find your fingers.
00:46:55Ah!
00:47:10Of course, there are many different ways of cracking a nut.
00:47:15The chimp carries on and there's missiles flying
00:47:19and David is obviously tickled pink.
00:47:22And come to that, there are many different kinds of nuts.
00:47:26And so different groups of chimps have developed different ways
00:47:31of dealing with the problem.
00:47:33That is the beginning of a culture.
00:47:36It was like meeting other people, really.
00:47:38I mean, we were establishing a relationship
00:47:40and some were friendly and some were less friendly,
00:47:43but he was a charmer.
00:47:45And, well, the chimps, of course, are also...
00:47:48You may understand subconsciously
00:47:51that all the action has to go on in front of the camera
00:47:54and with the microphone.
00:47:56So the action is here and the technique is over there,
00:47:59but the chimps don't accept there's that particular division.
00:48:02I mean, they'll go anywhere.
00:48:04They'll sit on top of the camera.
00:48:06They will grab the microphone if they get half a chance.
00:48:10Of course, there are many different ways for cracking a nut.
00:48:15And come to that, there are many different kinds of nuts.
00:48:19LAUGHTER
00:48:28Take three.
00:48:32Now then, children.
00:48:35What about this?
00:48:37Do you want one of these? Hey.
00:48:40You want one of these?
00:48:43There.
00:48:45And what about that?
00:48:47Take that, too.
00:48:49Yes.
00:48:51Now then, how do you do it?
00:48:53Ah. Ah.
00:48:55LAUGHTER
00:48:57Ah. He pinched it.
00:48:59That's not fair, is it? Have one more.
00:49:02There.
00:49:07All right. One more.
00:49:10Young chimps are the most engaging creatures.
00:49:13They're so intelligent, they're so bright,
00:49:15they're so inquisitive, they're so full of fun,
00:49:18so that whatever they do,
00:49:20you know it's going to be entertaining and engaging.
00:49:29At number four, David delivers a profound environmental warning.
00:49:35There's an extraordinary piece that David does
00:49:38at the end of Stage of the Planet on Easter Island
00:49:41where he talks about how the Polynesian settlers there
00:49:44basically destroyed their environment,
00:49:47and through doing that, destroyed their own civilisation
00:49:50and their own existence.
00:49:52And I think it's one of the most powerful bits of TV ever.
00:49:58So I didn't think I would ever get to Easter Island.
00:50:01And it so happened that while we were writing that particular programme,
00:50:06some papers were being published, scientific papers,
00:50:10on the ecological catastrophe that represented Easter Island.
00:50:15And Kate Broome, who was the producer, said,
00:50:18I think that encapsulates the situation in the microcosm of the world,
00:50:24and if we can do it, it would just summarise the whole thing.
00:50:30So I said, all right, let's go and do it.
00:50:32About 500 years ago, things changed.
00:50:35The fish almost disappear from the diet,
00:50:38and changes in the pollen and the reduction of its quantity
00:50:42give us the reason why.
00:50:44Almost the last of the trees had been felled by then.
00:50:48So the islanders no longer had timber to build seagoing canoes,
00:50:53and at about the same time,
00:50:55the carving of the great stone statues came to an end.
00:51:03Without wood to make canoes,
00:51:05the people couldn't leave their shores, even to fish.
00:51:08Starvation threatened.
00:51:10Warfare broke out between rival clans
00:51:13as they fought over the limited food and the remaining productive soil.
00:51:17The old culture that had sustained them was abandoned,
00:51:21and the statues toppled.
00:51:23What had been a rich, fertile world in miniature
00:51:26had become a barren desert.
00:51:30I think there's nobody who's more qualified
00:51:33to actually tell us what's happening with the natural world than David.
00:51:37He has seen so much in his lifetime,
00:51:40and I'm sure he's seen so much change in his lifetime.
00:51:44And he very rarely gets on his little soapbox
00:51:48and bangs away and tells us what we should or shouldn't be doing.
00:51:52And I think it's almost this kind of...
00:51:56plea to get us to stop and think
00:52:00about the consequences of our actions
00:52:03is really emotional,
00:52:06although he doesn't do it in a very emotional way.
00:52:09He just gives it to us straight.
00:52:11But I think it's absolutely brilliant.
00:52:14I think it's just one of the moments in sort of TV history, actually.
00:52:19And it's David saying it,
00:52:22and as we've said, he has so much authority
00:52:26that people sit up and take notice.
00:52:29The future of life on Earth depends on our ability to take action.
00:52:34Many individuals are doing what they can,
00:52:37but real success can only come if there's a change
00:52:41in our societies and our economics and in our politics.
00:52:45I've been lucky in my lifetime to see some of the greatest spectacles
00:52:49that the natural world has to offer.
00:52:52Surely we have a responsibility to leave for future generations
00:52:57a planet that is healthy and habitable by all species.
00:53:12After the break, the top three.
00:53:15But can you guess what's at number three?
00:53:19I'd been in the business a long time,
00:53:21and it was one of those things that you actually thought was impossible.
00:53:24And at number three, the blue whale.
00:53:28It combines all those Attenborough essentials,
00:53:31the deep, profound knowledge of this subject,
00:53:34the passion for it and the sheer thrill of being there
00:53:37in the same place as a 100-foot-long whale.
00:53:41There he is in his tiny little motorboat alongside it,
00:53:44and he can't believe his luck.
00:53:47It was one of those things that you actually thought was impossible.
00:53:51I mean, here's this animal which operates singly for the most part,
00:53:57only comes up for a few seconds at a time,
00:54:01then goes down into the depths again
00:54:04and will turn up another quarter of a mile away or more.
00:54:08How on earth are you possibly going to get alongside it?
00:54:12I mean, it doesn't seem reasonable.
00:54:14I can see its tail just under my boat here.
00:54:18And it's coming up, it's coming up.
00:54:21There!
00:54:23The blue whale is 100 feet long, 30 metres.
00:54:29Nothing like that can grow on land
00:54:33because no bone is strong enough to support such a bulk.
00:54:37Only in the sea can you get such a huge size.
00:54:42Only in the sea can you get such a huge size as that magnificent creature.
00:55:03And down it goes.
00:55:07And as it tilts its 100-tonne body downwards,
00:55:11so it can plunge to the black world 500 feet or more below the surface.
00:55:20The heart is as big as a small family car.
00:55:24It only beats five or six times a minute,
00:55:28but it drives 10 tonnes of blood through a million miles.
00:55:35David has the knack of taking something often quite complicated
00:55:39and putting it over in an enthusiastic way,
00:55:42but also a way which is appealing and which people can understand.
00:55:46And all that is left of the hind legs and the hip bones
00:55:50are these two isolated fragments buried in a mountain of muscle.
00:55:56I tell you, when that enormous tail suddenly lifts up towards the surface
00:56:02and goes from deep aquarine-marine blue,
00:56:06gets lighter and lighter in the air,
00:56:09it's quite a sight to behold.
00:56:12It's quite a sight to behold.
00:56:15It's quite a sight to behold.
00:56:18It's quite a sight to behold.
00:56:21It's quite a sight to behold.
00:56:24It's lighter and lighter, and then you see the shape of it.
00:56:27I can see its tail just under my boat here,
00:56:30and it's coming up, it's coming up.
00:56:33There!
00:56:35The blue whale!
00:56:37It's the biggest creature that exists or has ever existed on the planet!
00:56:44This enormous thing, like a small aeroplane,
00:56:48comes out of the water, dripping, and that takes your breath away.
00:56:54Now here's a surprise.
00:56:57In only second place, the classic mountain gorilla clip from Life on Earth.
00:57:03There's one ape, however, that spends nearly all its time on the ground.
00:57:08It lives here, 10,000 feet up, on the flanks of the volcanoes of Central Africa
00:57:13on the borders of Rwanda and Zaire.
00:57:17It's the biggest of all the apes, the shyest, one of the rarest,
00:57:21and until recently, one of the least known.
00:57:24The gorilla.
00:57:27The group of gorillas that lives here has been studied by scientists for several years
00:57:31and has become sufficiently accustomed to human beings
00:57:34to allow you to approach quite close.
00:57:37It was absolutely mind-blowing.
00:57:41I didn't think it was going to happen, I didn't know it was going to happen,
00:57:45I wasn't prepared for it to happen.
00:57:48And when it did happen, I wasn't frightened in the least
00:57:54because I hadn't made that advance.
00:57:58That final closure in the gap between us was made by the gorillas themselves.
00:58:03They did it.
00:58:05But you have to behave properly, and you mustn't conceal yourself too well.
00:58:09If you suddenly appeared close to them and took them by surprise,
00:58:13then they would almost certainly charge.
00:58:16The first thing that actually happened
00:58:19was that I called up to some gorillas that I thought were in the distance.
00:58:27There's a lookout sitting on that tree, and he's already seen me.
00:58:32And then I turned round, because I heard a noise,
00:58:36and there was this enormous female gorilla
00:58:41sitting within a yard of me.
00:58:46And I thought, I've got to go and see what's going on.
00:58:50And then I turned round, because I heard a noise,
00:58:54and there was this enormous female gorilla
00:58:59sitting within a yard of me.
00:59:16I looked at her, and it was too late to sort of run or anything.
00:59:21I just thought, cracky.
00:59:24And she put her hand on my head.
00:59:28And then, and I'd forgotten this,
00:59:31I looked in my journal the other day to see my description of it.
00:59:35She took this finger, which was like a sort of huge sausage,
00:59:41and she opened my mouth and felt around the inside of my mouth,
00:59:45and looked inside.
00:59:47Don't know why, but she did.
00:59:53And I suppose I just thought, well, what is happening?
00:59:57I have no idea, but I certainly wasn't alarmed.
01:00:00There is more meaning and mutual understanding
01:00:04in exchanging a glance with a gorilla
01:00:09than any other animal I know.
01:00:12We're so similar.
01:00:15Their sight, their hearing, their sense of smell
01:00:20are so similar to ours
01:00:23that we see the world in the same way as they do.
01:00:27They live in the same sort of social groups,
01:00:31hardly permanent family relationships.
01:00:36They walk around on the ground as we do.
01:00:38They're there.
01:00:42Immensely more powerful than we are.
01:00:44And so if there was a possibility of escaping the human condition
01:00:50and living imaginatively...
01:00:55Mmm.
01:00:57..in another creature's world,
01:01:00it must be with a gorilla.
01:01:06Then the two babies turned up and started taking off my shoes
01:01:11and sitting on my legs and so on,
01:01:13and I was just in delirium, really.
01:01:16I mean, it was just mind-blowing.
01:01:19And it went on for a long time.
01:01:23BIRDS CHIRP
01:01:32It's a reference point for not only natural history programmes
01:01:37but also comedy programmes as well.
01:01:39You know, everybody knows that clip.
01:01:41It's a great, great, great clip.
01:01:43And also, you know, how close do any of us get to gorillas?
01:01:48The male is an enormously powerful creature,
01:01:51but he only uses his strength
01:01:54when he is actually protecting his own family
01:01:58from a marauding male from another group.
01:02:04And it's very, very rare that there is any violence within the group.
01:02:12So it seems really very unfair
01:02:15that man should have chosen the gorilla
01:02:18to symbolise all that is aggressive and violent,
01:02:23when that's the one thing that the gorilla is not and that we are.
01:02:28Like the rest of us, Sanjeev simply assumed the gorillas clip would win.
01:02:33I just cannot believe that. What were you thinking?
01:02:36It's David and the gorillas. Now, you're going to regret that.
01:02:39You really are going to regret that. Now, go to your beds in shame.
01:02:44So, that's it. We've finally reached number one.
01:02:48But if it isn't the gorillas, what is your favourite Attenborough moment?
01:02:55At number one, with nearly a quarter of the UK TV audience vote,
01:02:59it's that extraordinary mimic, the lyrebird.
01:03:03The sequence with the lyrebird I particularly love
01:03:07because I have actually heard that going on.
01:03:10What bird has the most elaborate, the most complex
01:03:15and the most beautiful song in the world?
01:03:17I guess there are lots of contenders, but this bird must be one of them.
01:03:22The superb lyrebird of Southern Australia.
01:03:28To persuade females to come close and admire his plumes,
01:03:31he sings the most complex song he can manage.
01:03:34And he does that by copying the songs of all the other birds he hears around him,
01:03:39such as the kookaburra.
01:03:46It's a very convincing impersonation.
01:03:55Even the original is fooled.
01:03:58He can imitate the calls of at least 20 different species.
01:04:06He also, in his attempt to out-sing his rivals,
01:04:09incorporates other sounds that he hears in the forest.
01:04:12When I first heard the noises, I thought, though, somebody's chopping wood
01:04:16or a car horn's going off.
01:04:18And then it suddenly goes...
01:04:21And I realised what I was hearing was the repertoire of that particular lyrebird.
01:04:25That was a camera shutter.
01:04:33And again.
01:04:39And now a camera with a motor.
01:04:45And again.
01:04:50A motor drive.
01:04:58And that's a car alarm.
01:05:09And now the sounds of foresters and their chainsaws working nearby.
01:05:15Each individual bird has a different repertoire. Of course it does.
01:05:19Although certain noises do recur.
01:05:28The ironic thing was that we eventually found a lyrebird
01:05:33that, having been imitating kookaburras and things like that,
01:05:38was then singing and performing in a forest
01:05:42that was being felled.
01:05:44So it was singing of its own doom,
01:05:48because it actually imitated the sound of chainsaws
01:05:54cutting down its own home.
01:06:07I would like to think that what I've done over the past 50 years
01:06:12has produced so many hours of television,
01:06:16100, 150 hours of television,
01:06:18in which you can say, well,
01:06:20if you want to know what the world, the natural world, looked like,
01:06:24at the end of the 20th century,
01:06:26there's a superficial but relatively coherent picture
01:06:31of the animals and the plants,
01:06:34the seas and the forests and the mountains and the glaciers
01:06:37of planet Earth at that time.