Life in the Undergrowth

Open your eyes to the bizarre, ferocious and surprisingly beautiful world of the invertebrates. Join Sir David Attenborough on his groundbreaking exploration into a spectacular miniature universe not normally seen, but teeming all around us. Within this remarkable world lie not just bugs and beetles, but exotic cicadas, neon glow worms, intricate silk-weaving spiders and bat-eating centipedes - not to mention a whole host of other incredible life-forms with intimate, startling behavior. Thanks to technical innovations in lighting, optics and computerized motion control, this turbulent, super-organized world is finally revealed from the perspective of its extraordinary inhabitants. These creatures may be minuscule, but they live life on a truly grand scale.

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Invasion of the Land - Since they left the seas to move onto land just over 400 million years ago, the invertebrates have become the most successful group of animals, conquering every corner of our planet. From the common leopard slug to the nightmarish amblypygid, for every one of us, there are 200 million of them...

Taking to the Air - Behold the stunning aerobatics of earth’s largest damselfly in Costa Rica and the mass migration of Purple crow butterflies in Taiwan. This episode tells the tale of how animals first took flight. The mayfly sheds light on the evolution of wings, and the lightning-quick reactions of hoverflies are captured on one of the world’s fastest cameras.

The Silk Spinners - Silk is the invertebrates’ great invention. From the protective stalks of lacewing eggs to the amazing hanging threads of New Zealand’s glow worms, they use it in a huge variety of ways. The spiders, though, have taken it to extremes, from thousands of individuals living together in a vast, towering communal web, to the Bolas spider's ingenious silk snare...

Intimate Relations - For these tiny beasts, life depends on a complex web of relationships with plants and other animals. Meet the world’s smallest insect – a fairy wasp just 0.25mm long, which flies underwater to lay its brood in a stranger’s eggs – and the blue butterfly caterpillar, one of the greatest con-artists of the insect world.

Supersocieties - Sociality has resulted in some invertebrates becoming truly formidable creatures. In this last programme we move from the loving care of some parents for their young to the staggering complexity of the lives of some of our most familiar animals. See how a bumblebee queen is turned upon by her her own daughters and stung to death, and witness the carnage when an ant colony and a termite colony wage war.

BAFTA® Awards
2006 – Best Titles

"Such good television you'll feel inclined to buy a second TV licence out of sheer gratitude." -Guardian

It now seems certain that all the round-ups of 2005's best TV moments will include two leopard slugs mating ... In many programmes, this would have been a moment so spectacular that it entirely overshadowed everything else. In the first episode of Life in the Undergrowth, it was just one in a breathtaking sequence of breathtaking scenes ... And then there's David Attenborough ... in his own quiet way, he's undoubtedly one of television's great showmen. -Daily Telegraph

There's nothing cuddly about the subjects of this series, nothing that makes you want to go aaah! If they're not slimy, they're creepy; if they're not oozy, they're crawly - but, amazingly, Life in the Undergrowth gives them characters of their own, although it stops short of making them loveable. -Newsquest Media Group Newspapers

Hurray! A new series by David Attenborough! God's in His Heaven! All's Well on Earth! ... Here are ants as elegant and acrobatic as Olga Korbut; giant centipedes that devour bats; and velvet worms that squirt glue from both barrels. But you haven't lived until you have seen the mating habits of the leopard slug. Attenborough is the only man on television who can say: “They slide down on a rope of mucus...” and make it sound miraculous. -The Times

Insects were the first animals to appear on land, 400 million years ago, and have survived five massive extinction events since then.