Trials of Life - Season 1 - Eps 3: Finding Food
The next installment is devoted to the ways in which animals gather their sustenance. Attenborough begins in the South American rainforest, where the proliferation of animal and plant life does not necessarily make it easy to find food. Some leaves are poisonous, and so those that eat them have to be careful. Other plants use food (or nectar) as a bribe to get their pollen transported, and several species of hummingbird have developed exclusive relationships with certain of them. Fruit is also on offer, again as a means of reproduction, and creatures such as squirrel monkeys eat little else. Meanwhile, parrots and macaws take kaolin as an antidote to their diet of toxic seeds. Attenborough witnesses a 60,000 strong flock of knot and dunlin suddenly take advantage of a low tide to feed on tiny mud-dwelling molluscs. Barracuda hunt small fish, and drive shoals of them into bays to be eaten by pelicans, which are besieged by gulls that attempt to steal their catches. One species of gecko is able to differentiate between worker termites and the more dangerous soldiers. The web of the orb spider is hailed as one of the most elegant food catching devices, and the methods of two others, nephila and its kleptoparasite visitor, argyrodes, are explored in detail. Finally, tropicbirds, their crops full with food en route back to their nests, are ambushed in mid-air by a group of frigatebirds, whose aim is to make them surrender their cargo.
About Trials of Life
Title: Trials of Life
First Air Date: 1990-10-04
Last Air Date: 1990-12-20
Status: Ended
Rating: 8.4/10 (from 21 votes)
Language: EN
Seasons: 2
Total Episodes: 12
Network: BBC One
Genres: Documentary, Family
Production Companies: BBC Studios Natural History Unit
Synopsis
Each of the twelve 50-minute episodes features a different aspect of the journey through life, from birth to adulthood and continuation of the species through reproduction.
Cast
David Attenborough
Self - Narrator (voice)
