'Life: Extraordinary Animals, Extreme Behaviour' - Plants

Plants' solutions to life's challenges are as ingenious and manipulative as any animal's. Innovative time-lapse photography opens up a parallel world where plants act like fly-paper, or spring-loaded traps, to catch insects. Vines develop suckers and claws to haul themselves into the rainforest canopy. Every peculiar shape proves to have a clever purpose. The dragon's blood tree is like an upturned umbrella to capture mist and shade its roots. The seed of a Bornean tree has wings so aerodynamic they inspired the design of early gliders. The barrel-shaped desert rose is full of water. The heliconia plant even enslaves a humming bird and turns it into an addict for its nectar.

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'Life: Extraordinary Animals, Extreme Behaviour' - Birds

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Birds owe their global success to feathers - something no other animal has. They allow birds to do extraordinary things. For the first time, a slow-motion camera captures the unique flight of the Marvellous Spatuletail Hummingbird as he flashes long, iridescent tail feathers in the gloomy undergrowth. Aerial photography takes us into the sky with an Ethiopian Lammergeier dropping bones to smash them into edible-sized bits. Thousands of pink flamingoes promenade in one of nature's greatest spectacles. The Sage Grouse rubs his feathers against his chest in a comic display to make popping noises that attract females. The Vogelkop Bowerbird makes up for his dull colour by building an intricate structure and decorating it with colourful beetles and snails.

'Life: Extraordinary Animals, Extreme Behaviour' - Fish

Tonight, 21:00 on BBC One
Fish dominate the planet's waters through their astonishing variety of shape and behaviour.

The beautiful weedy sea dragon looks like a creature from a fairytale, and the male protects their eggs by carrying them on his tail for months. The sarcastic fringehead, meanwhile, appears to turn its head inside out when it fights.

Slow-motion cameras show the flying fish gliding through the air like a flock of birds and capture the world's fastest swimmer, the sailfish, plucking sardines from a shoal at 70 mph. And the tiny Hawaiian goby undertakes one of nature's most daunting journeys, climbing a massive waterfall to find safe pools for breeding.

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Weedy Sea Dragon
If you never thought Dragons could be weedy then Watch 'Life' tonight. Things are going to get fishy...

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The tiny fins of a sea dragon beat frantically to prevent the current sweeping it away. At the beginning of spring, sea dragons begin their courtship, dancing in pairs in the evening light. In a graceful duet, each partner mirrors the actions of the other and this continues well into the dark night. Two months later, the result of their courtship is revealed. The male now carries rows and rows of eggs embedded on his tail. The female passed them over to him on the night of the dance. By carrying them with him he keeps them safe from predators until they are ready to hatch. In the calm of a summer morning, with its yolk sack still attached, a baby sea dragon is born. In the weed bed are older youngsters, already able to feed themselves. After being well looked after by their father, the new babies must now make their own way in the world.

'Life: Extraordinary Animals, Extreme Behaviour' - Mammals

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Mammals dominate the planet. They do it through having warm blood and by the care they lavish on their young. Weeks of filming in the bitter Antarctic winter reveal how a mother Weddell seal wears her teeth down keeping open a hole in the ice so she can catch fish for her pup. A powered hot air balloon produces stunning images of millions of migrating bats as they converge on fruiting trees in Zambia. Slow-motion cameras reveal how a mother rufous sengi exhausts a chasing lizard. A gyroscopically stabilised camera moves alongside migrating caribou, and a diving team swim among the planet's biggest fight as male humpback whales battle for a female.

The Elephant Shrew

Once known as the elephant shrew, the rufous sengi is permanently hungry and must hunt and feed industriously and efficiently in order to fuel its frenzied lifestyle. For maximum efficiency, the sengi creates an intricate netweork of pathways through the undergrowth that enable it to reach prey more easily. The sengi carries a mental map of these pathways, and should trouble appear, its speed and intimate knowledge of escape routes help it win the day. As an enemy, such as a lizard, appears, the sengi leaps into action and shoots off down the trails at high speed. Like most mammals - and unlike reptiles - the sengi's legs are directly underneath the body which makes for greater speed and agility. This female not only outruns the reptile, but outwits him and it's just as well, as she has a youngster to care for.

Life: Reptiles & Amphibians

Reptiles and amphibians look like hang-overs from the past. But they overcome their shortcomings through amazing innovation.

The pebble toad turns into a rubber ball to roll and bounce from its enemies. Extreme slow-motion shows how a Jesus Christ lizard runs on water, and how a chameleon fires an extendible tongue at its prey with unfailing accuracy. The camera dives with a Niuean sea snake, which must breed on land but avoids predators by swimming to an air bubble at the end of an underwater tunnel. In a TV first, Komodo dragons hunt a huge water-buffalo, biting it to inject venom, then waiting for weeks until it dies. Ten dragons strip the carcass to the bone in four hours.

The Venezuelan Pebble Toad

BBC Wildlife Finder 

Venezuela pebble toads have a very unusual defence mechanism, shared with only a few close relatives. They roll themselves up into a ball and bounce down the hill, away from danger. These tiny amphibians weigh so little that if they hold their muscles rigid, the bouncing doesn't damage them at all. Pebble toads also breed communally, so a single nest can contain over 100 toads. One nest found had 103 toads and 321 eggs in it.

Life: Extraordinary Animals, Extreme Behaviour

If you don't own a TV then get one for this (and make sure that it's HD). 'Life' is a jaw-dropping, pant-wettingly exciting visual feast that will keep you hooked till Christmas. Narrated by Sir David Attenborough this 10 part series will breathe Life back into the aching void that was left when the end credits of 'Planet Earth' rolled back in 2006. And if you thought that was mind-blowing then this is sure to blow your socks off. Quite simply 'Life' will never be the same again...

Read on for a glimpse of some of the treats coming to your screens.

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 uncovers some extraordinary strategies they've developed to stay alive and to breed.

Using state-of-the-art filming techniques, this 10-part BBC One series, narrated by David Attenborough, is about extreme behaviour. It's survival of the fittest in their battle against daily life or death challenges. Mind-blowing behaviour captured for TV for the first time includes cheetahs working 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.

Four years in the making, Life is full of surprises, drama and spectacle. It's nature but not as you know it. There are strange creatures such as the star-nosed mole, the stalk-eyed fly and the weedy sea dragon. There are epic spectacles including millions of fruit bats darkening the Zambian sky, dozens of polar bears feasting on a whale, and a billion butterflies cloaking a forest in Mexico.

To find out more visit www.bbc.co.uk/life

Life: Coming Soon to BBC One

The greatest wildlife stories ever told. Witness the breath-taking ingenuity of life on Earth as its animals adapt their behaviours to overcome the challenges of both their environment and adversaries.

Starring a cast of charismatic characters, filmed on every continent and in every habitat across the world, each episode is entirely dedicated to one of the planet’s ten most important wildlife groups. Mike Gunton executive producer of 'Life' explains the premise of this series and why it will really shine when it's broadcast on BBC One in October (2009).

'The definitive guide to Life on Earth'.