The video explores the intricate connections between various life forms and how these relationships are crucial for survival and adaptation. It draws attention to the interaction between humans and indris, a type of lemur, which have grown accustomed to human presence due to conservation efforts. The narrative further delves into the fascinating dynamics of tiger cubs' maternal care, emphasizing the precarious yet astonishing aspects of wildlife behavior as observed through groundbreaking filming techniques.

In a broader perspective, the transcript examines the evolutionary processes and ecological intricacies underscored by Charles Darwin’s observations, the conservation struggles of endangered species like the mouse lemur, and how fossil discoveries invoke a sense of wonder and romanticism about Earth's ancient past. It also narrates the cycle of life from eggs breaking to new births, illustrating the marvels of nature's engineering through the structure and function of eggs and tree trunks.

Main takeaways from the video:

Please remember to turn on the CC button to view the subtitles.

Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. tantalizing [ˈtæn.təˌlaɪ.zɪŋ] - (adjective) - Highly attractive and tempting but often beyond one's reach. - Synonyms: (tempting, enticing, alluring)

Our story begins with a tantalizing glimpse of something very special.

2. precarious [prɪˈkɛər.i.əs] - (adjective) - Uncertain or unstable; dependent on chance circumstances. - Synonyms: (uncertain, insecure, unstable)

A young cub's life is very precarious.

3. romanticism [rɒˈmæn.tɪ.sɪ.zəm] - (noun) - An artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that emphasizes inspiration, subjectivity, and the primacy of the individual. - Synonyms: (idealism, sentimentalism, passion)

It's almost seemed to me that fossils are some of the most romantic things on this planet.

4. proselytizing [ˈprɒs.əlɪˌtaɪ.zɪŋ] - (verb) - Attempting to convert someone to one's own faith or beliefs. - Synonyms: (evangelizing, converting, preaching)

And I don't make his programs out of some kind of proselytizing view that people ought to be interested in.

5. transpiration [ˌtræn.spɪˈreɪ.ʃən] - (noun) - The process by which moisture is carried through plants from roots to small pores on the underside of leaves, where it changes to vapor and is released. - Synonyms: (evaporation, moisture loss, water movement)

It's a process called transpiration, and it's particularly important in spring.

6. ecological [ˌiː.kəˈlɒdʒ.ɪ.kəl] - (adjective) - Relating to the relationships and interactions between organisms and their environment. - Synonyms: (environmental, biological, ecosystemic)

So Madame Baert's dema is only found in this particular patch of the forest because of this insect and this Diana, which just shows how complicated ecological connections can be.

7. bonanza [bəˈnæn.zə] - (noun) - A situation or event that creates a sudden increase in wealth, good fortune, or profits. - Synonyms: (windfall, boon, jackpot)

There's a real bonanza at this time of year.

8. retrieving [rɪˈtriː.vɪŋ] - (verb) - Getting back something that was lost or left behind. - Synonyms: (recovering, reclaiming, regaining)

As long as the cubs call, their mother is compelled to keep retrieving them.

9. condensing [kənˈdɛn.sɪŋ] - (verb) - The process by which a vapor turns into a liquid. - Synonyms: (liquefying, precipitating, distilling)

Morning fog condensing on leaves is an important source of water.

10. diverse [daɪˈvɜːs] - (adjective) - Showing a great deal of variety; very different. - Synonyms: (varied, manifold, assorted)

As with all forms of life, what we see are the success stories, the adaptations that work.

Most Soothing Sir David Attenborough Moments - BBC Earth

What made you stop hunting them? Have people's attitudes towards the Indri changed over the years? Without Joseph to help us, it would have been impossible for us to get near the entry. But this group is so used to him that they're not frightened. Indeed, it seemed to me that they almost welcomed his company. Thanks to him, I now had a chance, for the very first time, to get really close to them. It they could easily collect these leaves from the trees themselves, but they seemed to choose to take them from the hand of a human being. Well, that was unastonishing experience. 50 years ago, I spent days and days and days searching for the forests with ease, following the noise. But now this group is so accustomed to seeing people around that I've been right close up to them. Something I never believed could be impossible.

The british resident in the galapagos claimed that he knew from the shape of a giant tortoise's shell which island it had come from. If it had a rounded front. It came from a well watered island where it fed on lush ground plants, whereas one from a drier island had a peak at the front, which enabled it to reach up to higher vegetation. Were these tortoises, each on their separate islands, different species? And if so, was each one a separate act of divine creation? The differences that Darwin had noticed amongst these galapagos animals were, of course, all tiny. But if they could develop, wasn't it possible that over the thousands or millions of years, a whole series of such differences might add up to one revolutionary change? On his voyage home, Darwin had time to ponder on these things. Could it be that species were not fixed for all time, but could, in fact, slowly change?

Our story begins with a tantalizing glimpse of something very special. A cub, just ten days old. Wild cubs as young as this have never been filmed before. For their first six weeks, most cubs usually hide away in their density, hardly glimpsing daylight. These are unusually adventurous. They seem totally unaware of the dangers. Although their eyes are just opening, they won't see clearly for another six weeks. They're the mother's first litter, and they're going to be quite a test for her. The tigers must pick them up by the scruff of the neck. It's a delicate operation. A little too much pressure and she'll hurt her cub. She can bite with a force of nearly 500 kilos. But this requires the gentlest touch. Tigers usually have two or three cubs. Four are quite a handful, and these already seem more challenging than most. The ratio between the sexes among newborns is usually equal true to form, two of these cubs are male and two are female. It will be rare indeed for all four of them to reach maturity. Many dangers lie ahead. At this size. They make a snack for even the smallest predator. Their mother must make sure that everyone is accounted for. With two back in the den and one on its way, there's only one straggler left to worry about. The cubs contact cry makes sure he's not forgotten. As long as the cubs call, their mother is compelled to keep retrieving them. But this would try any mother's patience. A young cub's life is very precarious. Had the mother been away hunting at a moment like this, the outcome could have been very different. She's clearly going to be a devoted mother, but she still has a lot to learn. This is not the way to do it. Filming such behavior is unprecedented. It gives us an extraordinary opportunity to follow these cubs as they grow.

It's almost seemed to me that fossils are some of the most romantic things on this planet. I mean, if you came across a pebble like this, for example, and you just happened to knock it with your geological hammer, which happened to be around at the time, but if you just hit it with a hammer and spit it and it opened like that, wouldn't you think that was remarkable? And that hasn't seen the light of day for 400 million years, and you are the first person ever to clap eyes on it. Isn't that the most romantic thing ever? I certainly find it so. When I lived in Leicester when I was a boy, I wouldn't find trilobites like that. But you did find things like this. This actually comes from Kimmeridge, but they're ammonites and I collected them like man. I would be off on my bicycle and sitting around in disused iron quarries, just knocking rocks. And they come in all different kinds and sizes. And actually, this particular piece is rather interesting, because if you turn it over, you see the outside of the shell of a simply enormous one that these others, somehow or other, have got stuck inside it. So fossils, for me, have always been thrilling. And I don't make his programs out of some kind of proselytizing view that people ought to be interested in. I do, because I am interested in them and it gives me huge pleasure. And I think other people can get pleasure from it, too.

An egg, whatever it shape, is an excellent life support system, but paradoxically, its success will ultimately depend on the ease with which it can be broken. The time comes when a chick must break free. Some species invested time building up large yolks, their chicks will emerge fully feathered and ready to search for food. Others have not made that investment. They will have to spend their energies over the next few weeks feeding naked and defenseless chicks. But how do the chicks break out from the cramped confines of the egg? How can the shell that's been strong enough to protect the chick from the outside world be also weak enough to allow the chick to break it? The first breath of fresh air outside the egg, a captive bred jungle fowl chick emerges. It's the climax of the egg's existence. The shell may look the same as when the egg was laid, but out of sight, it's been changing, it's been getting thinner. The chick has been absorbing calcium from the shell into its own bones, making itself stronger and the shell weaker. Not only that, but it also used the shell's calcium to create a tool to help it break free. A hard, jagged tip on the end of its beak, an egg tooth. The chick couldn't have broken free without it. Even so, it can still take hours, sometimes days, to hammer its way out of a shell. This egg and this newly hatched little chick are part of a clutch that was laid on the ground about between 21 and 26 days ago, and they are just now hatching. This one is only perhaps half an hour old, and this one is just beginning to peck its way out. And as they do, they communicate with one another. And the sound of this little chick encourages that unhatched chick to break its way out of the egg, so that within an hour or so, the whole clutch is hatched. And then they can run away as a little group and find safety.

But what of the other woodland birds I was watching? The tits are breaking out of their shells into the british spring. They're naked, blind and hungry. But outside, the woods are filled with food, and the parents careful timing has paid off. They took account of the weather and changed their behavior. And one, each element of the egg combined to create new life. From the nutritious yolk to the defensive albumen, to the protective shell, nature's most perfect life support system has served its purpose. Broken by the life that it sustains. Every new arrival is a confirmation of the complex efficiency of a seemingly simple egg. As with all forms of life, what we see are the success stories, the adaptations that work. So it's little wonderful that we think of eggs as being perfect, but of the 10,000 different species of birds that exist in the world today, there are still hundreds whose eggs have never even been described.

When it comes to the most perfect thing in the universe. There's still much magic and mystery to explore. I'm on my way to the west of the island, where a few small patches of that ancient forest still remain. These strange, beautiful trees. Baerbabs are fire resistant and too big to cut down, so in many places, they are the only remnants left of the original forest that once covered this land. It would have been difficult for a creature the size of an elephant birdhouse to live without vegetation of some kind. And today, even the smallest of animals are struggling to survive here.

One of those that have managed to do so is the tiniest of all known lemurs. It's called Madame Baert's mouse lemur, and it was only discovered ten years ago. Melanie Damhan is part of a team of scientists who are studying the animal, trying to work out how to protect it. Oh, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny. Just only 30 grams body weight. Yeah. Smallest primate in the world. Smallest primate in the world. Big eyes, small ears. Very big eyes. Yeah. And a wet nose. Yeah. Melanie and her colleagues catch these lemurs and tag them to build up a picture of their behavior. Essential knowledge if they're to be properly protected.

And how long will he have been in that now? A few hours at all. So we collect him at night and then he stays in camp and sleeps in there. And then we release him. And you've caught him how many times? Maybe around 20. So he's accustomed to it? He's accustomed to it. And do they travel very far? They travel very far. They have like three hectare home range, so that's quite a bit for an animal like that. Certainly is, yeah. They might even run like 5 night. Really? Yeah. An animal like that, I think that's amazing. Amazing, yeah. Okay, let's see him go. It's coming. Come on. Come on, little one. That's it, that's it. The work Melanie and her team are doing is vital for the survival of this little lemur. It's also revealing just why it is that this tiny creature lives here and nowhere else. This particular liana belongs to a species that only grows in this patch of forest. And on it, and on no other kind of liana, lives this little insect. It's a bug which feeds by sticking its mouthparts into the liana and sucking out the SAP. It then digests what it wants and excretes the rest as honeydew, a sort of sugary liquid. And it's that honeydew, that sugar, that Madame Bairt's dema needs in its diet. So Madame Baert's dema is only found in this particular patch of the forest because of this insect and this Diana, which just shows how complicated ecological connections can be and how much you have to know about an animal if you're really going to conserve it.

Several troops of ringtails manage to make a living in these highlands. Some of the luckier ones occupy a more sheltered valley, where a few trees have managed to take root. Morning fog condensing on leaves is an important source of water. Although the mornings still have a chill to them, life here seems more relaxed, but also more crowded. Pied crows need to be moved on, not least because there are some vulnerable arrivals in the troop. Almost every female is carrying an infant, an indication that life is comparatively easy up here, with more protection from the elements and a little more food. This troop is particularly large and can devote plenty of time to their social lives. One female even has twins, a rare event amongst ringtail lemurs, and a direct result of a good food supply. But this valley troop still has to work hard to collect food in this broken landscape. Few lemurs are such good rock climbers.

There's a real bonanza at this time of year. While some gather canopy fruits, the mother of the twins stays lower and gathers fresh leaves. The young are born during the fruiting season, when demands on the mothers are heaviest. After such a heavy meal, the troop head off in search of their next corner. A daily dose of dirt eating soil is thought to help with digestion, but it also provides minerals and even helps the lemurs to cope with troublesome gut parasites.

A tree trunk is an extraordinary piece of biological engineering. It's packed tight with hundreds of meters of very thin tubing called xylem. It's filled with water, and if I use this apparatus with probe which goes into the trunk there, I can actually hear the water passing along those tubes. That low rumbling sound is actually the movement of the tree trunk in the wind. Those gurgles, that's the sound of the water travelling up towards the leaves. It's a process called transpiration, and it's particularly important in spring, when the nutrients which are dissolved in the water travelling along the tubes, are needed to kickstart growth. If you cut a section of a tree trunk, you can see there's a pattern of concentric rings, and each one of those rings represents one year of growth. The paler part of each ring was laid down at the beginning of the year, when conditions were good and growing was fast. The darker part was when growing was slowing down. Towards the end of the year. Indeed, each ring can give you an indication of what the weather was like during any particular year. The broader the ring, the better a year it was for growing. Counting the rings can tell you the age of any particular piece of wood. This is a section of an oak branch and it took 25 years to grow this part of a trunk 95 years old. And this great tree is certainly a century or more in ancient.

During all those years, its leaves were sucking carbon from the atmosphere and storing it in this enormous trunk. This highlights the importance of the seasonal forest. Its trees are vital allies in the fight to control carbon in the atmosphere.

Conservation, Ecology, Wildlife, Science, Nature, Inspiration, Bbc Earth