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Life in the Undergrowth(TV show/series, 2005)

FSK: 16+ years
| 1h per episode | Genre: Documentary

Mini series in 1 season with 5 episodes

Life in the UndergrowthRating: 4.1/5 (with 18 votes)
Life in the Undergrowth is a BBC nature documentary series written and presented by David Attenborough, first transmitted in the UK from 23 November 2005. A study of the evolution and habits of invertebrates, it was the fifth of Attenborough's specialised surveys following his major trilogy that began with Life on Earth. Each of the five 50-minute episodes looks at a group (or aspect) of the creatures using innovative photographic techniques. The series was produced in conjunction with Animal Planet. The executive producer was Mike Gunton, the series producer Mike Salisbury, and the music was composed by Ben Salisbury and David Poore. The Chief Scientific Consultant was Dr. George McGavin. ()
Poster of Life in the Undergrowth

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About Life in the Undergrowth

David Attenborough reveals the amazing stories behind the tiny lives of invertebrates, exploring their incredible miniature world with ground-breaking camerawork and technology.

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Trailer for Life in the Undergrowth + Featurettes/Teaser/Clips

Amazing miniature world - Sir David Attenborough's Life in the Undergrowth - BBC wildlife(Trailer, 3:03)

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Life in the Undergrowth Seasons and Episodes

11/23/2005Miniseries - 5 episodes
#1 | 11/23/2005Invasion Of The Land
David Attenborough tells the story of the land-living invertebrates. He delves into the private life of Europe's dramatic leopard slug, a common garden resident with a truly bizarre end to its marathon mating ritual; watches the courtship ballet of tiny springtails on the underside of a leaf; sees swarms of bright red South African millipedes find partners, and in the caves of Venezuela meets the giant bat-eating centipede.
#2 | 11/30/2005Taking to the Air
As the early June sun begins to set over a calm river in Central Hungary, masses of ghostly shapes emerge from their larval cases to take to the air for the first time. They are mayflies and in a spectacular display, thousands of them demonstrate how the very first wings were used. From the stunning aerobatics of hoverflies in an English garden to the mass migration of purple crow butterflies in the valleys of Taiwan, this episode tells the tale of the first animals ever to take to the air. Unique footage reveals the lightning fast reactions of bluebottles and hoverflies, filmed with one of the world's fastest cameras, and David Attenborough handles the world's largest (and perhaps most ferocious) insect - the Titan beetle.
#3 | 12/07/2005The Silk Spinners
Silk is the invertebrates' great invention, used in a range of ways from from the protective stalks of lacewing eggs to the amazing hanging threads of New Zealand's 'glow worms'. Spiders, though, have taken silk-spinning to extremes. The common wolf spider has no web, but the female is a gentle parent, encasing her eggs in silk and carrying the precious bundle wherever she goes. The bolas spider uses a ball of sticky silk soaked in a copy of moth pheromone to lure its prey. Millions of communal spiders live and feed together in a vast, towering web - an arachnophobe's nightmare.
#4 | 12/14/2005Intimate Relations
The world of invertebrates exists in a web of relationships with plants and other animals. Unique footage of the world's smallest insect (a fairy wasp only quarter of a millimetre long) shows it flying underwater to find the eggs of water beetles in which to lay its own brood. Some ants 'farm' the trees that give them shelter, creating areas known as 'Devil's gardens'. To make sure these grow without competition, they kill off other seedlings in the surrounding vegetation. The blister beetle's larvae huddle together on the end of a piece of grass and mimic a female bee. When a male bee tries to mate with the 'female', the larvae grab on to his belly. Confused, he flies away and searches for a real female. When he eventually finds her and mates with her, the beetle larvae hurriedly swap from his front on to her back, and hence get carried back to her nest where they eat her pollen supplies.
#5 | 12/21/2005Supersocieties
Invertebrates don't always operate alone. True society was the last feature to evolve in invertebrates, as recently as the time of Tyrannosaurus. In the last programme see the tensions below the surface in some of the great social structures built by insects, and witness the carnage when an ant colony and a termite colony wage war.
?Specials - 2 episodes

Additional Information

Official websites:
Production country: United Kingdom (UK)
Original language: English (EN)
Spoken languages: English (EN)
Translated into 11 languages: Czech (CS), Danish (DA), German (DE), English (EN), French (FR), Hebrew (HE), Hungarian (HU), Polish (PL), Russian (RU), Thai (TH), Chinese (Mandarin) (ZH)
Status: Ended
First episode released on: 11/23/2005
Last episode released on: 12/21/2005
Creator: BBC
Alternative titles in other countries (from previews, ads etc.):
"矮树丛里的无脊椎世界"

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WatchPlayStream ID: SHOWS:1447, Added: 05/11/2018, Last updated: 03/13/2024