Radio Times: Review by:; David Butcher

This week’s most striking story concerns not an animal but a plant. The resurrection plant is a kind of tumbleweed that rolls around the Sahara looking for water. It doesn’t actually look, it just gets blown about until it arrives somewhere damp, soaks up moisture and puts out seeds hoping for rain to scatter them and re-start the cycle.

David Attenborough tells us the plant can blow around for 100 years before waking up if it finds water (you wonder how they know these things). We hear other awe-inspiring tales of survival in the desert, including a tireless dung beetle and some superb silvery ants.

About this programme

4/6. David Attenborough describes some of the wildlife spectacles of southern Africa, starting out in a little-explored rainforest discovered only six years ago by scientists who spotted it on satellite maps. There, thousands of butterflies dance for the right to mate, while on a tiny island off Mozambique, green turtles emerge from eggs and begin a hazardous journey to the water - with pied crows and hungry crabs eager to get them. Cameras also capture one of the largest gatherings of great white sharks on the planet as 30 of the predators circle around a dead whale.