It's impossible to read this book and not hear David Attenborough's voice in your head. He's, like, the quintessential life sciences narrator. I guess this was originally published in the 70s but I'm guessing-- hoping-- it has been updated since then, since science is constantly evolving, and things are always being renamed and reclassified as we understand our world better. For example, slime molds used to be classified under the Fungi kingdom and have now, I believe, been reclassified into three classes under-- I think-- under the kingdom Protozoa. An old book, but if you're itching to hear David Attenborough's voice in your head while you read about sea cucumbers and ancient millipedes as long as cows, then this is your book. In this context, of course, Sir Attenborough also talks about slightly more special places on this planet such as New Zealand or Galápagos, telling us of how important these places were historically in shaping our modern understanding of the natural world. Somewhere in my parents’ photo albums there is a picture of me, aged seven or eight, lying in my bed, reading. On the wall, there are postcards from holidays, a poster of space pirate Han Solo crouching above a fictional snow lizard called a Tauntaun, and a picture of an equally alien but very real cephalopod, a nautilus, a mollusc with a pin-hole eye and tentacular cirri projecting from its tiger-striped shell. It was cut out from the second copy of Life on Earth that my father had acquired, the book that accompanied the BBC series by David Attenborough. The first was for reading, the second, bought cheap without a dust cover, was for the photos. Naturally, you have a better chance of getting a complete impression when watching countless DVDs with hundreds of hours of footage than when reading a book with a few photographs in it. Nevertheless, this book manages to vividly convey the astonishingly colourful displays of amphibians and birds, the raw strength of hunting mammals (especially big cats), the breathtaking grace of whales and sharks and other sea creatures, as well as the quirkiness of insects and the silent beauty of plants (even if they don't bloom).

And how fantastic are these images! We see slow-motion shots of bees flapping their wings; we see colorful bacteria floating around in fluid. We see birds of paradise doing their mating dance, and brightly-colored fish darting through the great barrier reef. We swim with dolphins and fly with bats, we spy on moles crawling through tunnels and watch tadpoles developing into frogs. The sounds are no less impressive than the sights. In addition to the calls of birds, the croaks of frogs, the songs of whales, and the howls of monkeys, is the orchestral accompaniment. I don’t know how they make music for these things, but the music in this documentary was always excellent. It matches the mood of the footage and is timed to dance along with the images. Theme and Variation" looks at some of the ways mammals have developed and evolved after the ending of the age of dinosaurs. The earliest mammals were probably tiny insectivores like the shrews and moles. From would also rise more specialised insectivores like the pangolin, the armadillo and anteaters. Gliding mammals like the colugo hint at how the bats came to fly. The bats would become very successful and branch out from insects to other sources of food like nectar, fruits and blood (the vampire bat). In the water, the whales and dolphins would develop, become some of the biggest and fastest marine animals. The Infinite Variety" gives an overview of the huge variety of life on Earth. After a brief introduction to Evolution by Natural Selection, the reader is then shown the geologic time scale of the Earth compressed into a year, and where along it the various forms of life (from single celled organisms to humans) arose. A look at the possible earliest forms of life is then shown, followed by the evolution of single-celled organisms and the rise of the earliest multi-celled organisms like the sponges, jellyfish and corals. Palaeontology, geology and DNA studies are used to show how much we know (and don't know) about such early forms of life.

Life on Earth was his first program. Nowadays, David Attenborough is such a household name, and his influence on nature documentaries is so widespread, that it made the experience of seeing the young Attenborough a bit jarring. He looks spry, even sprightly. He snorkels, scuba dives, crawls through a cave, holds animals in his own hands, and tries to cut an antelope carcass with a stone tool. He’s slowed down a lot since then. But in all other respects he was and remains the same. Though some parts of the book felt less interesting than others, and that most of the general history phrases and terms from the book were things we already knew or learned in middle school biology, I still really really enjoyed listening to this book. The flow was nice and extensive enough without being too surface-level or boring. Attenborough's narration and writing style is very factual but also gives a sense of intrigue. David Attenborough’s unforgettable meeting with gorillas became an iconic moment for millions of television viewers. Life on Earth, the series and accompanying book, fundamentally changed the way we view and interact with the natural world setting a new benchmark of quality, influencing a generation of nature lovers.

Not what I expected—which happens when you forgo reading the blurb. Not sure what I was thinking. But I didn‘t get this audiobook for the story, I got it to listen to him. David Attenborough can tell me anything and I would listen. The man is an international treasure. I love him, probably like many other people growing up on his TV documentaries about nature. In retrospect I would probably have enjoyed this more with moving pictures on a TV screen though. As in: a re-watch of his „Life“ series! David Attenborough seems to have come up against a similar problem, and has solved it by creating his nature documentaries. Don’t try to explain or to analyze natural beauty; just film and enjoy. His voiceovers are typically not analytical, but explanatory; they help you understand what you’re looking at. Attenborough mainly does this through narration. He turns a natural scene into a story, with its own tragedies, comedies, and romances.

It’s not simply that we have observed more of nature with ever increasingly sophisticated technology. Ideas about biodiversity and mass extinctions are now prominently included, and the revelation – now textbook – that birds are dinosaurs is front and centre, having been dismissed the first time round.

Even though the documentary is not heavy on science, I did learn a few things. It seems no matter how many of these documentaries I see, I always learn about a new species. Did you know that lungfish live in ponds in Africa and dig down into the mud to stay there during the whole dry season? And did you know about Caecilians? They are a group of amphibians, related to salamanders, who have lost their legs and which now look like giant earth worms. Life is many things, but it is certainly never dull. Forty years after Attenborough released his landmark BBC documentary, Life on Earth, he has released an updated version—this time, as an audiobook. When he put the finishing touches on that first effort, he was a young and spry 44 year-old, traipsing through jungles and diving with jellyfish. Now he is 94, his traipsing days most likely behind him. If you’re familiar with the work of David Attenborough then you know roughly what to expect here. This is basically the great naturalist’s narrative on how life on earth came about, and it’s thoroughly fascinating if you’re interested in animals – although also occasionally intimidating as well. A Life in the Trees" looks at the primates and related groups. it starts with the Borneo tree shrew who may resemble the early primates. A look at the prosimians is then given, made up of the lemurs of Madagascar and the tarsiers of South East Asia. The primate family is then looked at, divided into the New World monkeys with their prehensile tails, the tree living ones from the Old World and finally the ground dwelling primates like the gorillas and chimpanzees that are most like us. Over the course of nearly four decades, it appears from the photo of me in bed that I haven’t changed much. I have dedicated my life to studying and talking in awe about evolution. Last year, I recorded my daughter commentating over Blue Planet II, and posted it online; it became a minor internet phenomenon. I know Attenborough saw this video, and I hope he knows that the continuity of his work is transgenerational. In another 40 years, there will be scientists continuing to change the way we understand this living planet. Stare at those pictures, wonder at how those beasts evolved. I have little doubt that one of your daughters will cite Attenborough as her inspiration, too.The First Forests" looks at, as the title implies, the first forests that rose on land. They were not spectacular, covering only the shores and consisting of plants like moss and liverworts. Into them can the first herbivores, the millipedes, followed by carnivores like centipedes, scorpions and spiders (and also amphibians). As plants got the ability to grow taller, to compete for light, and developed roots to search for water, they began to move inland. These are the early ferns and horsetails. Insects that could climb and fly, like bristletails and dragonflies, lived in these new forests. Other plants like cycads and conifers also appeared that broke the dependence on water for reproduction. Other flying insects, like beetles, bees, butterflies and flies followed the dragonflies into the air. This lead to the development of flowers, whose plants would make use of these insects to pollinate them. This relationships would become so successful that some plants would come to depend on specific insects for pollination and some insects would come to depend on certain plants to nourish their young.