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David Attenborough's Life Stories

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Series of talks by Sir David Attenborough on the natural histories of creatures and plants from around the world

logo for David Attenborough's Life Stories - Adam's Face
David Attenborough's Life Stories - Adam's Face

Testing the value of eyebrow communication came into its own when David Attenborough met the men of an aboriginal tribe in New Guinea where there was no other common language.

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logo for David Attenborough's Life Stories - Adam's Face
David Attenborough's Life Stories - Adam's Face

The broadcaster recalls the importance of human eyebrows for communication, when he met an aboriginal tribe in New Guinea.

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logo for David Attenborough's Life Stories - Amber
David Attenborough's Life Stories - Amber

As a boy, David Attenborough had a piece of amber in which lay a blood-sucking fly. Would it be possible to extract the DNA from one of these and, maybe, recreate a dinosaur?

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logo for David Attenborough's Life Stories - Amber
David Attenborough's Life Stories - Amber

The naturalist wonders if it's possible to extract the DNA from a blood-sucking fly trapped in amber to recreate a dinosaur.

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logo for David Attenborough's Life Stories - Archaeopteryx
David Attenborough's Life Stories - Archaeopteryx

Sir David recounts the story of a feather, like any other feather from a bird - only it was 150 million years old, and the animal that lost it lived when birds had not yet evolved.

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logo for David Attenborough's Life Stories - Archaeopteryx
David Attenborough's Life Stories - Archaeopteryx

The naturalist tells the remarkable story of a 150-million-year-old feather from an animal that lived before birds had evolved.

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logo for David Attenborough's Life Stories - Bird's Nest Soup
David Attenborough's Life Stories - Bird's Nest Soup

Filming the birds that make nests of saliva in the darkness of a Borneo cave proved difficult, until a conical mound of bat guano provided a natural platform.

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logo for David Attenborough's Life Stories - Bird's Nest Soup
David Attenborough's Life Stories - Bird's Nest Soup

The naturalist recalls the challenge of filming the birds of Borneo, who make their nests of saliva so prized by Chinese chefs.

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logo for David Attenborough's Life Stories - Birds of Paradise
David Attenborough's Life Stories - Birds of Paradise

Sir David talks about the Birds of Paradise, a group of birds which evolved in the relative safety of New Guinea, allowing them to acquire resplendent adornments and decorations.

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logo for David Attenborough's Life Stories - Birds of Paradise
David Attenborough's Life Stories - Birds of Paradise

The naturalist muses on the New Guinea residents, who fooled early explorers with their resplendent adornments and decorations.

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logo for David Attenborough's Life Stories - Bower Birds
David Attenborough's Life Stories - Bower Birds

One of the most extraordinary structures in the animal world is constructed by a Bower Bird. David Attenborough tells the life story of the Vogelkopf Bower Bird.

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logo for David Attenborough's Life Stories - Bowerbirds
David Attenborough's Life Stories - Bowerbirds

The famous naturalist muses on the extraordinary structures built by New Guinea's Vogelkop bowerbirds to attract mates.

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logo for David Attenborough's Life Stories - Coelacanth
David Attenborough's Life Stories - Coelacanth

The Coelacanth is a primitive bony fish thought to be an important ancestor to all back-boned animals that ventured onto land. But is it the living fossil it was claimed to be?

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logo for David Attenborough's Life Stories - Coelacanth
David Attenborough's Life Stories - Coelacanth

The naturalist showed the first live specimen of the primitive bony fish on TV. But is it a living fossil, as first claimed?

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logo for David Attenborough's Life Stories - Collecting
David Attenborough's Life Stories - Collecting

Why do we collect things? Today, collecting by children is in decline, and with it the development of an early fascination with the natural world around them.

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logo for David Attenborough's Life Stories - Collecting
David Attenborough's Life Stories - Collecting

The naturalist comments on the decline in collecting by children, which can lead to an early fascination with the natural world.

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logo for David Attenborough's Life Stories - Dragons
David Attenborough's Life Stories - Dragons

What did Sir David do when he was confronted by a 10-foot-long grey-scaled reptile with a long yellow forked tongue whipping in and out of its mouth?

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logo for David Attenborough's Life Stories - Dragons
David Attenborough's Life Stories - Dragons

The famous naturalist recalls meeting a ten-foot-long grey scaled reptile, with a long, yellow forked tongue - the Komodo dragon.

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logo for David Attenborough's Life Stories - Faking Fossils
David Attenborough's Life Stories - Faking Fossils

Sir David recalls when he broke open a piece of Leicestershire limestone and there in his hand was an ammonite. Over the intervening years, fossils have fascinated him.

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logo for David Attenborough's Life Stories - Faking Fossils
David Attenborough's Life Stories - Faking Fossils

The naturalist recalls the key moment of finding an ammonite inside some limestone - sparking his love of collecting fossils.

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logo for David Attenborough's Life Stories - Giant Birds
David Attenborough's Life Stories - Giant Birds

The largest egg known to have existed was laid in Madagascar, and the bird that laid it was also a giant.

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logo for David Attenborough's Life Stories - Giant Birds
David Attenborough's Life Stories - Giant Birds

The famous naturalist muses on the largest known egg - laid by a giant bird on Madagascar, an island off Africa's eastern coast.

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logo for David Attenborough's Life Stories - Large Blue
David Attenborough's Life Stories - Large Blue

The Large Blue butterfly died out in Britain in 1979, but why? Investigations led to a complex life cycle linked to a single species of ant.

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logo for David Attenborough's Life Stories - Large Blue
David Attenborough's Life Stories - Large Blue

The naturalist asks why the Large Blue butterfly recently died out in the UK - and the challenge of its reintroduction.

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logo for David Attenborough's Life Stories - Monstrous Flowers
David Attenborough's Life Stories - Monstrous Flowers

Deep in the steamy forests of Sumatra, the largest flowers in the world bloom, albeit for under a week. But why are they so big?

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logo for David Attenborough's Life Stories - Monstrous Flowers
David Attenborough's Life Stories - Monstrous Flowers

The naturalist and broadcaster muses on the world's largest blooms found deep in the steamy forests of Sumatra.

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logo for David Attenborough's Life Stories - Platypus
David Attenborough's Life Stories - Platypus

Along the soft, muddy river banks of New South Wales, the female duck-billed platypus makes a burrow to raise her family. It is a strange creature which is tricky to film.

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logo for David Attenborough's Life Stories - Platypus
David Attenborough's Life Stories - Platypus

The famous naturalist muses on the elusive, burrowing female Duck-Billed Platypus of New South Wales, Australia.

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logo for David Attenborough's Life Stories - Salamander
David Attenborough's Life Stories - Salamander

Sir David's first pet was a fire salamander, given to him by his father on his eighth birthday. He also gave his own son a salamander on his eighth birthday.

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logo for David Attenborough's Life Stories - Salamander
David Attenborough's Life Stories - Salamander

The naturalist recalls his first pet - a fire salamander given to him by his father on his eighth birthday.

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logo for David Attenborough's Life Stories - Sloths
David Attenborough's Life Stories - Sloths

David muses on the natural history of the sloth - perhaps the most lethargic beast in the animal world, and one that he has admitted to wanting to be.

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logo for David Attenborough's Life Stories - Sloths
David Attenborough's Life Stories - Sloths

The naturalist and broadcaster muses on the natural history of perhaps the most lethargic beast in the animal world.

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logo for David Attenborough's Life Stories - Songsters
David Attenborough's Life Stories - Songsters

People are not the only species who sing. Many birds do and even another ape. What messages are conveyed in the syllables, melodies and repeated phrases, and who is listening?

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logo for David Attenborough's Life Stories - Songsters
David Attenborough's Life Stories - Songsters

The naturalist muses on the messages conveyed in the syllables, melodies and repeated phrases of singing birds.

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logo for David Attenborough's Life Stories - The Dodo
David Attenborough's Life Stories - The Dodo

The dodo is the caricature of extinction. This turkey-sized flightless pigeon lived on a remote island and was slaughtered by seafarers for its meat.

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logo for David Attenborough's Life Stories - The Dodo
David Attenborough's Life Stories - The Dodo

Slaughtered into oblivion, the naturalist asks what lessons can be learned from the case of the most famous of extinct species.

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logo for David Attenborough's Life Stories - The Serpent's Stare
David Attenborough's Life Stories - The Serpent's Stare

Underground animals are very different to the animals that spend their life on the surface; they manifestly come from a different world. Does this explain the stare of the snake?

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logo for David Attenborough's Life Stories - The Serpent's Stare
David Attenborough's Life Stories - The Serpent's Stare

The famous naturalist looks at why underground animals have evolved in a very different way from those living on the surface.

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logo for David Attenborough's Life Stories - Tracks
David Attenborough's Life Stories - Tracks

Following fossilised animal tracks is much the same skill as that owned by many aboriginal people, but with a whole new set of extraordinary revelations.

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logo for David Attenborough's Life Stories - Tracks
David Attenborough's Life Stories - Tracks

The naturalist examines the extraordinary revelations found from following fossilised animal tracks.

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