Living Planet: A new, fully updated edition of David Attenborough’s seminal portrait of life on Earth

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Narration by Attenborough helps significantly. He clearly knows his stuff and knows what to say and how to say it. He delivers it with his usual richness, soft-spoken enthusiasm and sincerity, never talking down to the viewer and keeping them riveted and wanting to know more. The "behind the scenes/making of" scenes too gave some humanity to the series and allowed us to get to know those behind the camera as well as in front. This book is also based on a series of programmes made for the BBC, called Life on Earth (yes, I have the whole set and watched the series many times). The documentaries are describing the way in which animals and plants developed on this planet over the past couple of million years and how they evolved over time. In the chapter titled ‘ The furnaces of the Earth’ we see a world that is in constant upheaval and undergoing physical changes due to volcanic activities and instances of life sustaining in such ‘ fountains of hell’. A beautiful and wide ranging work. The breadth of natural history covered is extraordinary and mesmerising. Life on Earth is still breathtakingly rich, and we would know far less about it were it not for Attenborough’s wonderful skills of communication over the years: our cultural and scientific lives would be poorer without him’ New Scientist The Making of The Living Planet is presented by the humorist Miles Kington, who introduces David Attenborough in his own style:

The first series of Planet Earth was about witnessing the wonderful spectacle and awe-inspiring beauty of our planet and taking the viewer to the last remaining areas of wilderness that were still untouched by humanity. This is a series that will change the way we see our home. We will witness time and again how the lives of animals are driven and enabled by our planet’s great natural forces. While ‘ leaf-cutter ants’ - the largest and most complex animal societies on Earth, next to humans - make use of the grass and leaves for their survival, other animals like anteaters, thrive on these ants and insects. Then there are life forms, which burrow into these grasslands like ‘ burrowing owls’.

The story of the building of the Himalayas and their subsequent colonization by animals and plants is only one example of the many changes that are proceeding continuously all over our planet… Each of these physical changes demands a response from the community of plants and animals undergoing it. Some organisms will adapt and survive. Others will fail to do so and disappear. I liked learning about capybara and other types of rodent. Capybara are chubby. Another rodent was a "portly spaniel" where capybara are pig sized. This is a revised and updated edition of the book published in 1984 which was a companion piece to a documentary Attenborough did of the same name. Despite the fact that January is “Attenborough month” on Australia’s subscription cable/satellite TV and the fact that various other documentaries from Attenborough appear on various other platforms, I can’t find this one to watch which is a bit disappointing! I would’ve been really nice to watch it and absorb this information in a visual way, because there is a lot of information in this book.

The Living Planet' is not just notable for looking amazing and being informative. It also displays a wide range of emotions and found myself really caring for everything that was shown to us on screen. The conflict has genuine tension and suspense, there is some fun and a lot of emotionally powerful moments done with a lot of tear-jerking pathos. Found myself really caring for what we're told.

This year’s Living Planet Report also includes Voices for a Living Planet, a collection of essays from global thought leaders on how to build a healthy and resilient world for people and nature. David Attenborough, всъщност се е постарал да не е много пълна с термини и пак ми дойде по нагорнище. Filmed over the course of nearly five years, the new series uses pioneering filmmaking technology to reveal the greatest wonders of life on earth. Lightweight drones, high-speed cameras and remotely operated deep-sea submersibles transport viewers to spectacular unseen landscapes, from remote jungle to scorching deserts, and from the darkest caves to the depths of the ocean.

It doesn't hurt that Sir Attenborough is an international treasure and has personally seen and often documented the changes himself - and that he has one of the best voices for telling you anything (yes, I listened to the audiobook in addition to having this signed print copy). In the chapter titled ‘ The seas of grass’, the reader gets a ringside seat to life forms, which live, in harmony with the vast open habitats provided by open plains covered with grass. In these unique habitats, which are formed by the tangled roots, matted stems and clumps of growing leaves we meet a variety of small inhabitants like termites, ants, worms, grass hopers etc and a variety of other bigger animals which thrive either on The natural world has changed more over the past few decades than ever previously observed in our human history. This change has been felt across every ecosystem and by the countless creatures that we share this planet with [Source: Natural History Museum] Sir David is a wizard of television, and, like Gandalf or Dumbledore, he has a near-magical gift for combining warmth and gravitas . . . the man who, for me, exemplifies the best in British broadcasting” - Louis Theroux

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Around one third of the food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted – about 1.3 billion tonnes every year. In the savannahs of Africa, Attenborough introduces us to some great instances of large herds of animals migrating from one location to another based on seasonal changes. One of the examples that he refer is the case of a million strength herd of wildebeests that migrate across the Serengeti. A 94 % decline in average size of monitored wildlife populations in Latin America and the Caribbean is the largest drop anywhere in the world.