This programme made me realise how absurd we are: animals might encourage their babies to jump off cliffs but it's humans who dress their young in tiny denim jackets, get their little ears pierced and call them Britney.
David Attenborough's new series, Life Story, (BBC1) is about 'the greatest of all adventures': the battle to survive long enough to reproduce. Sir David tells us that, for animals, having young is 'the next best thing to immortality' but it's also the hardest thing to accomplish as predators are everywhere.
But this series is not about babies and nurturing. It's about battles and brutality. In the animal kingdom, mothering does not mean going soft and posting boring Facebook updates. It means fighting, teaching and protecting, and it makes our culture's approach to motherhood look ridiculous. We've reduced it to something simpering.
In tonight's episode we saw Barnacle geese encouraging their babies to fling themselves off a cliff. The parents chose to nest at the top of a rocky tower, 400 feet high. When the goslings were just 48 hours old they began to cry for food but there was nothing on the bare clifftop. They are herbivores so had to get to the ground where the grass is. The problem was that the little chaps couldn't fly; the only way down was to jump.
The mother took off and called to her babies to follow her. Driven by instinct, they piled off the cliff and it was almost impossible to watch. One by one, the chicks puffed up their tiny chests, took a breath and leapt. For 400 feet they fell, battering off rocks, slamming into cliffs, bouncing off boulders.
The lucky ones waddled off behind their parents to enjoy their first meal, and the rest lay crumpled on the rocks.
There's nothing cute about that type of parenting, but it was the only way for them to live. The babies must be born on the high cliffs so they're out of reach of predators, and then they simply must get down to where the food is. There's no other option and certainly no room for tears and fretting. The dead babies are just dead babies. The rest will go on to become adult geese and will one day reproduce and tempt their own babies off a high cliff.
We humans wouldn't last a day with such harsh survival tactics! For a start we'd be so busy arranging the babies for Facebook pictures as they lined up at the cliff edge that that a few would die of hunger or perhaps boredom. Then there'd be lengthy arguments about whose brats get to go first - rock rage incidents! - and so we'd lose a few more to exposure.
When the children finally took the leap, the obese ones (of whom there'd obviously be plenty) would be the ones to make it as their flab would offer protection against impact, so survival of the fittest would be turned on its head with only the fat ones surviving to pass on their unhealthy genes and unhealthy habits.
No, we humans wouldn't last. We need our mollycoddling. Children expect it and adults need to administer it, and so we've evolved into softies. That's why post-apocalyptic novels and films are so fascinating: they look at how we'd cope when the mollycoddling is whipped away by nuclear war or a virus.
But back to the animals. There can't be a creature on this Earth, furry, slimy, growly or beastie, who hasn't had David Attenborough crouch beside him. It's all been done. This episode even opened with meerkats and surely we're bored with them now? Every drop of cuteness has been wrung out of those blighters, but get Attenborough to hunker down beside them, speaking in his hushed tones over their little heads, and we're lost in fascination all over again. You've seen elephants and lions on TV, and you've certainly seen meerkats, but in Attenborough's company you're seeing them afresh and in the company of the Master. Even the meerkats seemed relaxed in his presence as though they knew it was Sir David and not some oik from BBC3.
But praise is also due to the cameramen and the unseen technical teams, which is why these programmes now have ten minutes at the end devoted to them and their work.
People often refer to these shows as 'the David Attenborough' when he's obviously but one member of the team, and the cameramen normally only get a mention at the BAFTA ceremonies. I've started to find these segments even more enjoyable than the main body of the programme as technology has advanced so far that the footage can now take your breath away. It's great to listen to the crew tell us precisely how they filmed that grasshopper being slapped in the chops with a single drop of water or how they captured the mantid clinging to a wobbly leaf, its wet black eyes swivelling for predators.
Life Story has everything: the knowledge, joy and prestige of David Attenborough, the incredible skill of its crew and a magnificent story to tell but, if that isn't enough, it also has kung fu mantids, tumbling lion cubs and base-jumping goslings.
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