12.2.08

Life in Cold Blood: Land Invaders

Monday 11th February, 21.00, BBC1
5.6M Viewers, 23.6% Audience Share
(Average for Monday 21.00: 6.37M, 26%)

Radio Times: 2/5 - Land Invaders
As David Attenborough's slimy, scaly epic continues, it's the behind-the-scenes sequence that again hits the hardest. In the main programme, we learn that Panamanian golden frogs have a sweet way of signalling to each other by waving. In the postscript, however, we discover that, thanks to a fungal disease, the footage of them doing so was to be the last ever filmed of them in the wild. You may find you haven't felt so emotional towards a frog since Kermit. It's not all sad, though. One of the pleasures of an episode devoted to amphibians is the chance to see species where it's the males who look after the kids. The proud African bullfrog excavating a canal for his shoal of tadpoles before ushering them through to the big pond is wonderful, as is the poison-arrow frog giving piggybacks to his young. Neither, though, can match the devoted parenting of the mother caecilian, a wormlike creature that lives mostly underground: she feeds her writhing young on (shudder) her own skin.

A male Alpine Newt courting a female by wafting its pheremones with it's tail


A few comments from the viewers panel:

"A masterclass "
Male 61

"You have to watch attenborough"
Male 44

"What knowledge would we have on animal behaviour if it wasn't for David Attenborough"
Female 63

"Another triumph for the BBC wildlife programs - they never let you down!"
Female 35

"Nothing left to say in praise of this series of programmes - he has maintained the same high standard for 50 years."
Male 68

"Surely anyone would be enthralled. The camera work was excellent and David Attenborough is always superb - he sounds so interested in his subject."
Female 67

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