Life in Colour episode 1: Using the latest camera technology, David Attenborough reveals the extraordinary ways in which animals use colour: to win a mate, to fight off rivals and to warn enemies. The natural world is full of colours. For us, they are a source of beauty, but for animals they are a tool for survival. David Attenborough reveals the extraordinary ways in which animals use colour: to win a mate, to fight off rivals and to warn enemies. In India, peacocks dazzle females with magnificent tail feathers; a tiny hummingbird in the deserts of North America unfurls his spectacular headdress as he dances for a mate; and in the darkness of a rainforest, powerful mandrill baboons signal their status with red and blue face masks, while tiny frogs warn of deadly poisons with brilliant colours.
New camera technologies – some developed especially for this series – also allow us to see colours and patterns usually invisible to human eyes. Ultraviolet cameras reveal bright signals on a butterfly’s wings and facial markings on yellow damselfish that are used as secret communication channels. Some animals can also detect polarised light, and specialist cameras can now show us how fiddler crabs see the world, and how mantis shrimp have strange polarisation patterns on their bodies to signal to a mate or rival.
Life in Colour episode 1
David Attenborough
Sir David Frederick Attenborough is an English broadcaster and naturalist. He is best known for writing and presenting, in conjunction with the BBC Natural History Unit, the nine natural history documentary series that form the Life collection, which form a comprehensive survey of animal and plant life on Earth.
David Attenborough is a former senior manager at the BBC, having served as controller of BBC Two and director of programming for BBC Television in the 1960s and 1970s. He is the only person to have won BAFTAs for programmes in each of black and white, colour, HD, 3D and 4K.
Attenborough is widely considered a national treasure in Britain, although he himself does not like the term. In 2002 he was named among the 100 Greatest Britons following a UK-wide poll for the BBC. He is the younger brother of the director, producer and actor Richard Attenborough, and older brother of the motor executive John Attenborough.
