David Attenborough: Life In The Undergrowth - The Complete Seires [DVD]

Now the programme makers have a level of technology and skill that enables them to film tiny creatures in their natural environment, so naturally, David Attenborough is on the case. He and his team have made this extraordinary series of 5 programmes (about 50 minutes each) showing different aspects of the life that goes on all around us and under our feet, but that is usually completely unnoticed by us. He casts these invertebrates (that many people see as villains, to be sprayed and swatted out of existence), in a refreshingly positive light - pointing out that if the backboned animals were all to disappear, life on Earth would carry on very well with just the plants and invertebrates, but if the invertebrates were to die out, so would just about everything else. They do so many vital jobs to keep the environment ticking along: recycling waste, turning over the soil, pollinating the plants and so on, that healthy ecosystems depend on them. And when we see these small animals (some less than 0.5 mm) enlarged to a scale where the details of even their faces are clearly visible, they look very beautiful and astonishingly well adapted for the life-styles of their species.

The 5 programmes are: 1) 'Invasion of the Land' which shows how marine invertebrates clambered onto the land about 400 million years ago, and gradually adapted to and populated every suitable environment. 2) 'Taking to the Air' tells how insects began to fly and in some cases became incredibly proficient fliers. 3) 'The Silk Spinners' looks at a variety of invertebrates (not just spiders and silk-worms) that employ silk for many purposes. 4) 'Intimate Relations' examines some of the ways invertebrates interact with other species of plants and animals - both symbiotic and parasitic. 5) 'Supersocieties' focuses on wasps, ants, bees and some sociable spiders, speculating about how social behaviour may have started and showing that hive/nest life is not always as harmonious as we imagine. Finally, there's a very interesting interview with the series producer, Mike Salisbury, who gives us some insights into the triumphs and failures they experienced whilst making the programmes.

It's a fabulous series and I expect it may change a lot of people's opinions about these small animals that swarm under our feet and over our heads (they estimate about 200 million invertebrates to every human being) and that have traditionally been universally despised. As usual, David Attenborough shows us the awe and wonder and persuades us to respect yet another aspect of the natural world. Excellent!

The BBC's "Life in the Undergrowth", presented by the seemingly indefatigable David Attenborough, takes us down into the diminutive world of the invertebrates. There are a lot of them - they outnumber us two hundred million to one - but, apart from spotting the occasional wasp, bee, fly or spider, we rarely pay them any attention.

The television series takes us down to their scale, using the latest in technology to get astonishing close ups of the insect world. And the images are truly astonishing. The tiniest creatures are revealed in their everyday struggle for survival. You are left with total admiration for their problem solving skills - they have each evolved to find a niche which they can exploit and in which they can thrive. There are spiders with ingenious means of capturing their prey … and there's a millipede which climbs inside caves and hunts bats! They live lonely lives, they live in vast societies. They climb high, they delve low. Some fly, some tunnel. There is such variety, each episode holds you rapt.

And my favourites? I am not happy with spiders - now there's an admission - but they fascinate me. So do ants, and the presentation of the ultimate society at work is utterly absorbing. But, my absolute favourite is the mating of the leopard slugs, incredibly beautiful, incredibly tender, incredibly erotic - and I am not planning to see a therapist.

The series explores the many worlds of the invertebrates and also offers invaluable insight into the way the films were made. It's an instructive set of DVD's which should inspire you not only to look more closely at the teeming life which surrounds you, unnoticed, but which may also stimulate your interest in photography and science. A series you can watch again and again, and, if you are hooked, I advocate that you look at the buglife.org website for further information on the subject.

Attenborough puts the world in perspective in this you've-never-seen-it-like-this-before series. He shows you insects and spiders doing amazing things - AMAZING things - and since he only time to show you a few dozen species and there are hundreds of thousands of species out there (pause to think about that for a second)... you are left with the certain knowledge that the world is a wonderful place and you have only scratched the surface. The camerawork and story-telling are up to his usual standard, but the insects are the stars. And the spiders. And the crazy thing is, some of the most amazing stuff he has to show you is not happening in the Serengeti or the Marianas Trench, but in your garden.....