DAVID ATTENBOROUGH'S LATEST EPIC SERIES, LIFE STORY, TO AIR ON CBC

#LifeStory

CBC is proud to present Life Story, the latest epic series from the BBC’s world-renowned Natural History Unit. Life Story is the narrative that unites all creatures, ourselves included: the journey through life and the struggle and mission to leave offspring - the next best thing to immortality.

The series, which begins Sunday, Jan. 11 on CBC-TV and hosted by David Attenborough, follows this journey through six parts. It begins with baby animals’ First Steps, through the pains of Growing Up, then the struggle to find and defend a Home, the inevitable battles and implications of Power, the unfathomable mysteries of Courtship and the pressure and ultimate reward of Parenthood. Every stage presents new challenges, each a hurdle that must be surmounted if animals are to win at the game of life.

See the impressive stats behind the making of Life Story.

Shot with state-of-the-art cinematic techniques and ultra-HD, this series showcases some of the most stunning images of the natural world ever captured.

The stories are told from the perspective of individual animals, giving the viewer a sense of what it is like to be an animal in nature, facing pressure, danger and life-changing decisions. The featured journeys take in some of the most varied and extreme experiences faced by animals in the wild, from a gosling leaping from a 120-metre-high cliff to a tiger cub growing up in one of the world’s most dangerous animal societies, to the life-changing moment when an orphan chimp makes his first friend, and the life-or-death decisions a mother zebra must make for her foal.

Four years in production and filmed in 29 countries across six continents, a team of 18 people spent over 1900 days in the field. The series first premiered to wide acclaim on the BBC in October, 2014.

Vulnerable, naïve but determined, some young animals face their biggest challenges in the first few days of life. Barnacle geese goslings must take a leap of faith, falling 120 metres from a cliff ledge to get their first meal. In the first images of their kind, a tiny, young, long-eared jerboa faces the daunting nighttime world of the Gobi desert completely alone. And at just two months old, a humpback whale calf, preparing to embark on a migration halfway round the world, is caught up in a ‘heat run’ of aggressive males, each around 40 tonnes, fighting for a female. In infancy, every challenge is a new one. How a creature fares at the very beginning of its life is the foundation upon which its future success depends.

For an arctic fox, the end of childhood is abrupt: his own mother chases him from the den and onto the Arctic ice. At this crucial stage in life every small success is a triumph. In the high-octane world of a booted racket-tail hummingbird, even to survive the day is victory. For Bengal tigers, growing independence brings with it extreme danger. They need the help of their parents to grow up in a very dangerous society. Time is already running out for two hungry cheetah sisters, recently separated from their mother - scraps are not enough. This episode follows them as they embark on their first big game hunt.

Good homes are rare and competition can be intense. On a paradise island, an empty shell washes ashore and a young hermit crab joins others in a property chain. In unique behaviour the crabs actually form an orderly queue so that each can quickly move into the next shell up in size. In a weaver and colony, even the larvae must contribute to home building, while remoras, also known as ‘shark-suckers’ have a long wait for the right mobile home to appear - a bull shark. Finding a home is one thing, but defending it is quite another. Pikas must guard their larders from thieving neighbours while a pack of hunting dogs rely on disciplined teamwork to protect their home turf when hyenas try to muscle in.

A honeypot ant queen allies with other queens to build an army, but when the job is done all but one royal will be eliminated by the army they have created. For a juvenile bald eagle, power - or the lack of it - could mean starvation. While a young meerkat’s spectacular altercation with a cobra will influence his standing in the clan, a male chimpanzee’s existence is one long battle for power; one false move can undo a lifetime of struggle. But power is the ultimate prize: animals will use any means to rise through the ranks and win the game of life.

The male of the dazzling, aptly-named peacock jumping spider must pick his way between the bodies of failed suitors for his one chance to win a female’s affections. For the green turtle, it’s the female who risks her life: as males pile in to mate with her, she struggles beneath their combined weight, desperate for a breath of air at the surface. But few will go as far as one unlikely architect. Diminutive and drab, a male pufferfish compensates for his lack of charisma by building the most complicated and perfect structure made by an animal - a spectacular submarine ‘crop circle’ in the sand - created to get himself noticed by a female.

Some parents risk their own lives for their offspring. After laying her eggs in the best possible location, a mother green turtle races time and tide to survive, while a mother bison must fend off an entire pack of wolves in pursuit of her precious calf. There’s no substitute for a mother’s love; a hanuman langur gratefully accepts the services of an apparently adoring babysitter, but must intervene when playtime gets too rough for her delicate infant. A devoted fork-tailed drongo mother is duped into caring for someone else’s offspring. And a bonobo mother’s commitment to her son lasts a lifetime, in the most intimate wild footage captured of this species in 10 years.

The CBC Life Story website will have every single episode, as well as photos, articles, graphics and videos that follows their journey from birth to parenthood.

From behind the scenes stories that range from fascinating baby animal survival techniques, to hummingbird fight clubs to the new technology that was used to capture the magic of Life Story, the site is the perfect resource for more in-depth information on Life Story and for viewing the full episodes online.

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For more information including series synopses, press releases, hi-res images, video clips and bios, please visit the CBC Media Centre at cbc.ca/mediacentre. Follow CBC’s publicity team on Twitter @CBC_Publicity.

Corey Black, News and Current Affairs publicist, CBC

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Corey.Black@CBC.ca