Right beneath our feet is an often unseen world of disguise
and espionage, social networking and courtship, rape and pillage, parenthood
and relationships. This March, renowned broadcaster and naturalist David
Attenborough reveals the world of the arthropods – the most successful group of
animals on the planet – on MICRO MONSTERS. Discover the
intricate behaviour of insects, scorpions and spiders in this revolutionary new
series as bugs fill the screen. Premieres on Animal Planet (available nationwide in the
Philippines on every major cable, DTH and local provincial operator) every Thursday at 9:00 p.m., starting March 12.
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| Photo courtesy of Animal Planet |
From armies of killer ants and spiders weaving silken
trap doors, to bees communicating with a waggle dance and assassin bugs that
clothe themselves in their victims’ corpses, David and the crew get up-close
and personal to capture the creepy-crawlies, setting up shoots in three
different continents. Pioneering macroscopic filming techniques reveal that
there is much more to these creatures than meets the eye.
Meet the jewelled cockroach wasp. She coaxes a
cockroach into her clutches by first injecting it with a venom that paralyses
its front legs before injecting a second venom directly into its brain. She
then drags her pliant victim to an underground burrow, where she’ll lay her egg
directly onto its body. The larva spends five days sucking the cockroach’s body
fluids, after which it will chew its way into the abdomen and begin to feast
from within. Over a period of weeks, the larva continues to grow and develop
until all that remains of the cockroach is a dead, empty husk and from it
emerges a fully mature adult wasp, ready to repeat the gruesome cycle.
We
also get a glimpse at bug love, from courtship to reproduction. You will be
surprised at the tactics that some bugs employ to get the attention of a
prospective mate. There is a scorpion that engages in an elaborate dance, a
wasp that dabs on perfume, a cricket that resorts to bribery, and a spider that
takes playing ‘hard to get’ to a whole different level. Then there is the
harvestman spider who doesn’t bother with romance or sex, reproducing solely by
cloning.
And
like humans, there are those who are solitary and others who thrive in
communities, like the social spider that spins one enormous 30-metre web for
the whole colony. The Argentine ants take it to the extreme, with a colony so
vast that it spans an entire continent. How do they live? Do they have a social
hierarchy? Who rules the roost? And what is the glue that binds them?
Witness
these and other fascinating behaviours as we explore the realm of the MICRO
MONSTERS. Episodes encore every Friday at 3:00 p.m., Saturday at 7:00
p.m. and Sunday at 2:00 p.m.
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