David Attenborough Quotes

You might think that a hornbill would have the most powerful excavation tool of all, but in fact its huge beak is a relatively delicate structure and no use at all as a chisel.

To many of us, however, this is the most delectable of natural sounds. It's an hour before dawn, it's spring, this is an English woodland. All around, the dawn chorus. It's so familiar that perhaps we take it for granted.

Penguins underwater look somewhat like dolphins, and indeed the two families have similar evolutionary histories. Dolphins are descended from air-breathing land animals, just as penguins are descended from air-breathing flying animals. Both subsequently took to swimming for their food. They became beautifully adapted and streamlined. And now, both are superlative swimmers and highly accomplished fishermen.

Members of the auk family, such as these guillemots and puffins... propel themselves, not with their feet like ducks, but with their wings, and they have paid a considerable price to be able to do so... Auks have had to evolve shorter, stubbier wings. That gives them a rather clumsy, whirring flight in the air, but it does enable them to "fly" underwater so well that they can outpace small fish.

Mallards must be one of the most familiar birds in the world. Because of that, perhaps we tend to take ducks for granted. But in fact, they are a very varied family.

The food-chain that sustains a meat-eater could scarcely be shorter than it is here. [...] Algae that can uniquely tolerate these salty waters proliferate in the sunshine by the ton. Flamingos filter the algae from the water with their beaks, and vegetable is turned into flesh. And that flesh is food for eagles.

Even though hunters have a formidable armoury and great skill, most of their hunting trips... end in failure.

Those that live in the air have to fight in the air.

It's equally astonishing that the birds are able to measure its relative strength with such accuracy that they can trace it back to its source simply by sensing in which direction it becomes marginally stronger. But a turkey vulture is exceptionally well-equipped among birds, with wide-open nostrils and extremely well-developed sense organs within them.

A spider. Quite big enough and succulent enough to provide a snack for a Scops.

Living on the bodies of mammals, oxpeckers manage to get quite a varied diet. A maggot here, a tick there, a little sip of blood, perhaps a little tasty earwax.

I'll bet when our prehistoric ancestors first dug for tubers and planted seeds in Europe, one of these little robins appeared within a couple of days. Other animals must have done the same job for them before human beings did. Once, not so long ago, wild pig were common all over Europe, and they're great diggers and rootlers. So maybe the robin's boldness and friendliness with other kinds of animals started in prehistory, even before human beings arrived in Europe.

Without thermals, [raptors] can't travel far. But the snow geese fly on... They navigate by the stars.

As the last thermals of summer start to rise, the birds [hawks and vultures] circle up to great heights, 10,000 feet or more, to give themselves a good start for the long journey ahead. As they glide southwards, slowly losing height, they will look for another thermal and make for its base so that, once again, they will be lifted high enough to reach the next.

Its heart that in flight contracted a thousand times a minute, slows until its beat is virtually undetectable. Its body temperature falls dramatically, and its breathing seems to cease altogether. [...] It's hibernating; but for a hummingbird, winter comes 365 times a year.