A Horizon presentation of seven programmes on animal life.
Ten percent of the world's food is eaten each year by insects. There are an estimated billion billion insects in the world, and some scientists speculate that with their superb adaptability, just as they were the first living creatures on earth they will be the last.
Plant life cannot sustain all the creatures in the sea. Animal life can and does. In the sea the struggle to survive begins at birth. For many species only an enormous birth rate can ensure that some will live to carry on the species. The overall odds of survival are often incredibly small in the fish-eat-fish world of the oceans.
One-seventh of the total land surface of the earth is desert, forbidding, inhospitable. Under the relentless sun it seems that nothing can live. Yet these desolate wastes often contain life that has adjusted to the extremes of heat and cold.
Like man, animals are very aggressive. They fight each other for possessions, for power within the group, for territory. Unlike man, they seldom fight to the death. Scientists are today studying the social behaviour of many species with a very definite purpose as within their complex communities may be the key to our own survival. Whether man can control his aggression as animals do is of vital importance and and it may be that these studies may eventually teach man something about himself.
The beaver builds a dam across a river: it changes the local environment, but it's small change compared to man. When he builds a dam, like the one at Kariba, the changes are monumental. The environment-ecological balance-is upset. Perhaps permanently by man's activities-only temporarily by the beaver. Can man continue to dam as the beaver does, without thought for the future? Or is more planning needed before major changes are initiated?
Normal children are learning far more, and at a far faster rate, than most adults realize. Today psychologists are watching and learning how they do it. Eye on Life this week shows fascinating evidence of babies learning and the men who are measuring and trying to understand these mechanisms.
Only recently has science uncovered the 'DNA Molecule,' and 'broken the genetic code.' What does this mean? Riddle of Heredity traces the history of genetic investigations of chromosomes and genes. It raises some fundamental questions. Will man be able one day to manipulate his biological destiny? Will we ever create supermen? Should we, and if so, who will dictate our genetic future?
