Life

Recently I have been watching the BBC program Life presented by David Attenbourgh on a Monday night. This is an extremely great show that I find incredibly interesting and enjoyable to watch. The show has been about 3-4 years in the making with camera teams trotting around the globe searching and filming interesting creatures that have a great amount of mystery to them and their activities, showing how each species has similarities amongst them and how all creatures live out their everyday lives through the circle of life.

There are obviously more interesting creatures than others such as how they managed to document the first komodo dragon hunt and attack a full sized buffalo which took place over a period of 4 days. It was recently discovered that these dragons contain a venom in their bites so they poised the buffalo and over the next few days slowly got sick and weak, then died making it a simple kill for the dragons to feast, showing how dedicated and patient these animals really are. What I really like about the show as well is towards the end the show tells the story from the camera mans point of view and what he think of the animal and situation. The men who filmed the buffalo and dragon got very emotional as they had to watch this beast slowly suffer to death, it most have a certain toll on them as they are not able to do anything to help the animal as it is a way of life for not only the dragon but all creatures to survive in general.

Each week features a different species, such as one week it will be reptiles, then it will be fish and this week it was birds. On this weeks episode about the birds it showed a side of pelicans off the coast of Africa that I never knew about and how they fed on other birds, such as they would prey on the young of smaller birds who's parents had gone away to gather food for the chick so therefore would not be able to defend its chick as its fate was to die being swallowed whole where it would suffocate to death and slowly be digested, something my girlfriend and her mother were nearly sick at.

The most interesting creature that I have seen on the program is a small reptile that lives on a little beach, where it was in the world I cannot remember, and this little thing would dig a U-shaped tunnel in the ground protected by an underground cavern of water and at the other side would be its eggs waiting to hatch, out of the way of predators and safe from any sort of damage, but because it was in a small hole blocked by water that meant the little space they were in meant the would run out of air so the male, which was left to protect them would breath in air from the entrance and swim to his young and release the air into the small pocket and would do this a certain amount of times per day to ensure they would live long enough. I even thought that the way they fought of others of the same species was extremely funny to watch as what they would do is raise the mouths and see who had the biggest while walking in a circle, they did this without any means of force and harming one another.

This program has shown me many things about the life that lives on our planet that I never knew existed and would have even thought existed. This is why I love programs like this as it shows me just how vast our world is and how much life is actually on it. These sort of things fascinate me, where they would bore others I find them to be an incite into ourselves and how much we have evolved and how we as a species live out our everyday lives.

I heavily recommend this program and hope that there will soon be more like it, as there are a lot of shows like this but not as interesting to watch and be bothered about.