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

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So somewhere among the rocks there must be rodents – marmots or pikas – cautiously nibbling the grass and the cushion plants that grow, here and there, on the rubbly slopes. But the grazing is so poor that it can only sustain a very small number of individual animals, and those species that do manage to survive here are all scarce. To be honest, looking at the categories, this one could count towards quite a few but I’m going to use it for Popular Science. While humans are good at managing unwanted species (such as rats and other vermin), Attenborough argues that man has failed to look after natural resources and highlights the ignorance in assuming that the Earth has an infinite capacity to absorb waste. Please Note: This book has been transferred to Between the Covers from another database and might not be described to our usual standards.

Conversely, areas such as the Himalayas permitted no transportation at all, so the only option was to walk. A couple of small white marks to upper board, else near fine or better in a fine and unclipped dust jacket. 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. If the lava that erupts from the ground is basalt, black and heavy, then the area may have been continuously active for many centuries.The ridge volcanoes, in fact, are creating the ocean floor which is slowly growing away from them, on either side of the ridge. This is a UK first edition hardcover published by William Collins in 2021 AND HAND SIGNED BY SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH TO A CUSTOM DESIGNED FRONT END PAPER (NOT A BOOK PLATE).

Mussels keep their shells closed at low tide to deter attackers but the oystercatcher is adept at dealing with them. When you stand close to its source, high on the wall of its valley, tracing its course with your eye as it writhes away like a silver snake into the distant mountains, you cannot believe that the river could have cut its way through the mountains by itself. As the ammonites died, so their shells fell to the bottom of the sea and were covered by fresh deposits of mud and sand. Further south, the warmer climate sees the pine trees give way to broad-leaved species, such as the oak and beech.

The series comprises: Life on Earth (1979); The Living Planet (1984); The Trials of Life (1990); The Private Life of Plants (1994); The Life of Birds (1998); The Life of Mammals (2002); Life in the Undergrowth (2005); Life in Cold Blood (2007); Life on Earth (revised and expanded edition 2018). Ahead, the ramparts of snow are falling towards a brown streak on the horizon that is the high, dry, half-frozen plain of Tibet. In years when the vole population is high, the numbers of their main predator, the owls, increase correspondingly and spread out. In this new edition, the author, with the help of zoologist Matthew Cobb, has added all the most up-to-date discoveries of ecology and biology. Large format paperback(two small scratches and nick on the edges of the cover and spine) in fine condition.

There is little now on the rocky hillside except a few tussocky plants and an occasional bush of buckthorn or juniper. The series is available in the UK for Regions 2 and 4 as a 4-disc DVD set (BBCDVD1234, released 1 September 2003) and as part of The Life Collection. How this came about was, until the middle of the 20th century, the subject of great controversy among geologists and geographers. I really liked the way the sections were broken down as well, focusing on each “type” of environment as a whole – not even region specific, there are areas with the same or very similar environmental parameters and factors that stretch across the globe and many of those different locations have species that are very similar, sometimes the only real difference being the name they’re known by.He changed plants by harvesting them: the vast wheat fields of America now constitute a monoculture, where no other species are permitted. However, before the latter, Attenborough wrote and presented two shorter series: The First Eden (1987), about man's relationship with the natural habitats of the Mediterranean, and Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives (1989), concerning the discovery of fossils. Despite this, it is one of the best adapted desert animals: it can go without water for ten times as long as a man.

It’s honestly just incredibly sad to think about the loss of whole species and how it’s going to continue to happen. The volcanic islands of Hawaii have become rich in vegetation and therefore a multitude of colonists: for example, there are at least 800 species of drosophila that are unique to the area. They habitually soared to great heights and so had no difficulty in moving up into the huge valleys, as long as there were creatures below to provide them with meals. kilometres to the north, in Venezuela, the clay soil enables the Llanos to hold flood water, and some creatures, such as the capybara, relish it.Here, there is only just enough light for the pine trees to survive, but it is extremely cold during the winter.