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Life
2009 · TV series · documentary · 50 min episodes · 1 season
Created by Martha Holmes
David Attenborough looks at the extraordinary ends to which animals and plants go in order to survive. Featuring epic spectacles, amazing TV firsts and examples of new wildlife behaviour.
3 positive2 neutralfrom 5 commenters
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5 comments on Hacker News
Anything by Adam Curtis. Is he right? Is he wrong? What is going on? He makes some strong arguments at a system-level and of an interdisciplinary nature that really make you think. Despite how people like to write him off, he is likely not too far off the mark most of the time.
Samsara and its kin are engrossing, if not quite stressful. They show you how insane humanity is in rather raw form.
The BBC's Blue Planet, Planet Earth, and Life series are masterclasses in ecological storytelling.
Exit Through the Gift Shop is about as subversively hilarious as you can get.
I'll need to look it up later, but there's a really good documentary about the people who still hand-make Steinway pianos in New York.
I think there's a series called The Planets (?) that covered a lot of the various probes that were sent out.
There's some documentary about the various moon programs, covering Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, etc. It was a series. I can't remember the name or immediately find the one I am thinking of.
There's been a lot of fascinating animal documentaries I have lost track of.
BBC's "Life" documentary is absolutely mind-blowing. The footage they managed to get is unbelievable. It's on Netflix and I could not recommend it enough.
On a nature documentary whose name I don't recall [1], they showed a great example of a cuttlefish disguising himself.
There was a larger than average male with a harem of females, and there was a smaller than average male that wanted to mate with the females, but was nowhere near strong enough to beat the big male in combat.
So the small male took advantage of his small size. He took on the appearance of a female, and approached the large male as a female would.
The large male was fooled, and accepted the small male into the harem. As the large male continued vigilantly watching for approaching challengers, the little male mated with all the harem females right under the big male.
[1] I almost certainly saw it on one of the Nat Geo channels, one of the Discovery channels, BBC America, or PBS.
Edit: a bit of Googling turned it up. It was in the BBC documentary series "Life" from 2009. It's this segment: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p005bpsl
I misremembered a little. The large male only had one female, not a harem, when the small male joined.
BBC Life documentary always had an "On Location" at the end. Here are two examples.
One involves a lot of fake, they searched for a spot outside to observe and then rebuild the whole set indoor in order to be able to film growing of the plants [1].
In the other one they follow a dragon hunting a buffalo around for a long time trying best not to interfere [2].
But there is more, for one episode a cameramen built a shelter to hide himself from a bird. He had to improve it and stay for a long time to finally catch his footage. (Couldn't find it, sorry)
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrDnCLczYA4
[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2-mTbv8gYo
I agree. I have a lot more respect for quiet agnostics like Sir David Attenborough+. To the best of his knowledge, there is no God, and if there is likely God used evolution as a tool for creation. But he never insists that everyone believe it as fact, or that anyone who doesn't believe is ignorant. He simply says what he thinks is true.
+the gentleman who narrated Earth an Blue Planet, as well as the "BBC Life" nature documentary series.