Life Story - 7. The Full Circle | BBC.HD.ZigCOM.mp4

English subtitles
First broadcast: 1st Jan 2015

In this highlights programme compiled from the recent Life Story series, David Attenborough brings us the universal story that unites each of us with every animal on the planet, the story of the greatest of all adventures - the journey through life. For each stage of life we see the most spectacular, beautiful or dramatic stories from the Life Story series.

The journey begins with one of the most talked-about sequences - flightless barnacle goose chicks making an extraordinary leap down a cliff face from the ledge where they hatched. Newly independent arctic foxes travel great distances across the frozen, northern landscape, learning how to catch prey. They leap high into the air and plunge nose-first into the snow to catch the lemmings living underneath.

In pursuit of a home, tropical hermit crabs do something seen nowhere else in nature. They form an orderly queue, largest at the front, smallest at the back. It's a housing chain. When the chain is complete there is a mass swap as each crab moves into the newly vacated shell ahead of it in the line. In meerkat society, a youngster must quickly learn how to defend home and family from snakes. In a spectacular showdown between the meerkat clan and a venomous cobra, the youngsters learn a vital life lesson.

In a sequence that has since gone viral across the globe, a tiny, drab male puffer fish creates the most complex and beautiful structure made by any animal on earth. He builds a spectacular submarine 'crop circle' in the sand to attract a female's attention. Parenthood for a mother zebra involves a life-and-death choice on where to cross the river during migration.

In a touching final scene, elephants delicately stroke the bones of an ancestor.

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