Original air date: 6 February 1979
This episode is exclusively about flowers and insects. It is constructed of 3 main parts as shown in the outline below.
As the outline shows it starts, somewhat thematically, with the plants (naturally shown in green) and their relationship with insects. This is followed by insects (mainly larvae) mimicking plants to hide in plain sight and then changing to adults like butterflies. This can also be seen as a step towards being less dependent on the plants. In blue the final part of the episode is about super organisms.
Selected sequences
Showing (through UV filters) the way insects view flowers differently from us (6’50-7’12).
Some kind of tool use and cooperation among ants (starts at 42’35)
Green tree ant workers pull together two sheets of leaves gripping them with their legs and jaws to pull them together (top) and (bottom) use grubs that they squeeze to produce silk to tie them together and then moving them back and forth on the leaves to apply them as tubes of glue (bottom) until they stick together. This looks like highly coordinated team work and tool use. The arrows point at the grubs that may not be obvious otherwise.
Final words:
While Attenborough was watching army ants he spoke the following words (in admiration):
“Man has been doing battle with insects ever since he picked off the first flee and I dare say long before. Today we continue the fight with fire, with radioactivity, with the most lethal poisons that our chemists have been able to device and yet we haven’t managed to exterminate a single species of them”.
Whether Attenborough is right is debatable. Decades earlier the rocky mountain locust had been wiped out, but that was done indirectly* as with most animals of this size. It is true that poisons and other weapons have worked as discussed in the final episode of Living Planet.
*Garcia, M. 2000. “Melanoplus spretus” (On-line), Animal Diversity Web
Filming locations
Western Australia: Talking about termite mounds (32’30-33’30), introducing the term “super-organism”
Southeast Asia: Talking about social society of green tree ants (42’35). Attenborough talks about them and points at the ground where the vegetation is quite different from the next scene (probably the difference between a normal and a close-up sequence. Only during the close-up does he mention the location, possibly because it’s in an entirely different location.
Other filming locations (without Attenborough appearing):
South America: Mention of the parasol ants stripping trees of their leaves (44′)
Central America: Stinging ants living inside thorns of acacia trees (47′). They are fed by the acacia and defend it against any intruder.