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The Living Planet (1984)

by David Attenborough

Series: Life Trilogy (2)

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1,170717,050 (3.96)3
The Sunday Times Bestseller A new, fully updated narrative edition of David Attenborough's seminal biography of our world, The Living Planet. Nowhere on our planet is devoid of life. Plants and animals thrive or survive within every extreme of climate and habitat that it offers. Single species, and often whole communities adapt to make the most of ice cap and tundra, forest and plain, desert, ocean and volcano. These adaptations can be truly extraordinary: fish that walk or lay eggs on leaves in mid-air; snakes that fly; flightless birds that graze like deer; and bears that grow hair on the soles of their feet. In The Living Planet, David Attenborough's searching eye, unfailing curiosity and infectious enthusiasm explain and illuminate the intricate lives of the these colonies, from the lonely heights of the Himalayas to the wild creatures that have established themselves in the most recent of environments, the city. By the end of this book it is difficult to say which is the more astonishing - the ingenuity with which individual species contrive a living, or the complexity of their interdependence on each other and on the habitations provided by our planet. In this new edition, the author, with the help of zoologist Matthew Cobb, has added all the most up-to-date discoveries of ecology and biology, as well as a full-colour 64-page photography section. He also addresses the urgent issues facing our living planet: climate change, pollution and mass extinction of species.… (more)
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» See also 3 mentions

English (6)  Catalan (1)  All languages (7)
Showing 1-5 of 6 (next | show all)
couldn't focus on the ocean chapter, the rest was great. ( )
  mahallett | Oct 26, 2018 |
Science has advanced since this book was written, but it still provides a lot of great information. Many of the creatures and science facts do show up in the films Attenborough appeared in, but this is not just a transcript of the films. It's well written, with some good photos, and not too jargon-laden for most readers to understand the text. ( )
  JBarringer | Dec 30, 2017 |
Rafflesia, Jungles, Rainforests,
  Alhickey1 | Nov 6, 2019 |
7/10/22
  laplantelibrary | Jul 10, 2022 |
Showing 1-5 of 6 (next | show all)
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The titanic forces that built the Himalayas and all the other mountains on earth proceed so slowly that they are normally invisible to our eyes.
Prologue: The Kali Gandaki River flows through the deepest valley in the world.
Preface: This book is based on a series of programmes made for BBC Television.
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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
Disambiguation notice
Do not combine with "THE LIVING PLANET : AUGMENTED AND ENLARGED EDITION".
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The Sunday Times Bestseller A new, fully updated narrative edition of David Attenborough's seminal biography of our world, The Living Planet. Nowhere on our planet is devoid of life. Plants and animals thrive or survive within every extreme of climate and habitat that it offers. Single species, and often whole communities adapt to make the most of ice cap and tundra, forest and plain, desert, ocean and volcano. These adaptations can be truly extraordinary: fish that walk or lay eggs on leaves in mid-air; snakes that fly; flightless birds that graze like deer; and bears that grow hair on the soles of their feet. In The Living Planet, David Attenborough's searching eye, unfailing curiosity and infectious enthusiasm explain and illuminate the intricate lives of the these colonies, from the lonely heights of the Himalayas to the wild creatures that have established themselves in the most recent of environments, the city. By the end of this book it is difficult to say which is the more astonishing - the ingenuity with which individual species contrive a living, or the complexity of their interdependence on each other and on the habitations provided by our planet. In this new edition, the author, with the help of zoologist Matthew Cobb, has added all the most up-to-date discoveries of ecology and biology, as well as a full-colour 64-page photography section. He also addresses the urgent issues facing our living planet: climate change, pollution and mass extinction of species.

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"Watching and filming animals world-wide has occupied most of my working life. By the end of the 1970's, the marvels and wonders I had witnessed had become a dazzling, almost confusing kaleidoscope and I began to feel a need to put them in some kind of order, to try to produce a coherent survey of the natural history of the planet. So I started on a decade of work which was to result in three books and three 13-part televisions series: Life on Earth, The Living Planet and the Trials of Life. Between them, they looked at the three major aspects of natural history that can be studied simply by observing living wild animals - their diversity, their ecology and their behaviour".

The Living Planet surveys the earth, from the highest mountains to the deepest seas, from parched deserts to drenched rain-forests. Each environment presents animals with particular problems for survival, and different groups develop their own varied and often very surprising solutions.
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