Programme 1 – Life Before Birth
Even before an individual, human or animal, sees the light of day it has experienced many onslaughts and influences that will affect the rest of its life. The mother’s nutrition, the smell of a predator in the air and cannibalistic siblings in the womb can all mean life or death, health or sickness as an adult. When 9/11 happened the mothers who were pregnant at the time, and near the event, not only suffered intense stress themselves, but many have passed on the hormonal marker of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to their new babies.

Programme 2 – Early Days
Once out and in the world the first few early days or weeks of life are crucial to future survival. How much food is available? A young kookaburra’s life depends on how much food is available in the territory. If times are hard then the youngest chick is stabbed to death by the elder ones. How competent are your parents? Undoubtedly older mothers are much more competent than younger ones and for sea otters a first time mother can be a disaster. And Aubrey looks at the role of play, just how much does it help a youngster learn about the world?

Programme 3 – Going Independent
When does an infant stop being dependent on its mother and break out into the world alone? Depending on the animal and the type of system it lives in it can be very traumatic. As with humans, learning to go it alone can be difficult and painful for many animals; there is just so much to know and understand. Adolescent male elephants are sexually mature in their late teens but probably won’t breed until their thirties; they are kept firmly under control by a dominant bull. Male bower birds spend the first 7 years of their life looking like females before they change into their male plumage; they are learning what females really like. And groups of young magpies need ASBOs putting on them!

Programme 4 – Pairing Up
Attracting and keeping a mate is not that easy, as many young lovers will affirm. For many animals it is all down to the males to battle it out and show off to attract females; often at great cost to themselves. At the end of the October rut, red deer stags are exhausted, underweight and often injured. In some species it is a free for all, garter snakes in Canada have mass orgies when spring arrives but some male snakes may find that the female they are trying to mate is actually a cross-dresser! And the females? Well, even if they have matings forced on them, many species can select the sperm they want to use inside their bodies, rejecting the sperm of undesirables. A trick even the humble chicken can perform to perfection.

Programme 5 – Happy Families
A scene of domestic bliss: mum and dad busily bringing food to the nest while the young chicks grow bigger everyday. Well, perhaps not quite so happy families, especially if a cuckoo has been in town. Reed warbler parents can expend huge amounts of energy everyday rearing a monster chick that is nothing to do with them and that has callously killed their own young. But in other animal societies mum and dad have numerous helpers who collect food and care for their young. Meerkat parents in Africa show what benefits an extended family can bring.

Programme 6 – Food Is Not For Free
Feeding is a very dangerous activity for many animals. If your attention is on eating then it isn’t on what predators are around sizing you up for dinner! Feeding comes at a cost. Spiny lobsters screech like a violin to scare off predators while meerkats keep lookouts posted. Small migrant birds travel many thousands of kilometres over the earth in search of the richest food supplies, often at great danger to themselves. But sea otters become sea food specialists in one area, concentrating on one type of shellfish to eat, passing on their knowledge of fishing through the generations.

Programme 7 – The Twilight Years
The process of getting old is now of great interest to scientists and even animals such as the humble fruit fly can give us clues to how the human body prepares itself for death. In some animal societies age brings respect and dominance, as with elephants, in others it is a sign of weakness and is eliminated, as with lions. Long lived animals develop remarkable skills that help them survive for long periods in complex environments. The memory of birds that bury food is phenomenal, as is the memory of an echidna in Australia. A bizarre side effect of skills gathered through a long life is the ability of parrots to talk and crows to use tools.

Programme 8 – Changing the Rules
Humans have a profound effect on the behaviour of animals in the wild, not just through habitat loss and global warming but in more subtle ways. Fishing for horseshoe crabs off Delaware Bay has been catastrophic for red knot who use the beaches where the crabs spawn for a feeding stop over on their way to their breeding grounds in the Arctic. Building high rise hotels along beaches in the Mediterranean has affected the sex ratio of the offspring of turtles who dig their nests there and human encroachment into lion habitat in southern Tanzania has forced the lions to switch their prey from zebra and wildebeest to the humans themselves.

Content last updated: 18/10/2005