Attenborough aims to persuade first through the detail and intimacy of his account of insect
life: the female bumble bee's patient construction of the chamber
in which she lays her eggs; the cooperative
relationship between African acacias and the ants that make «mansions»
in the «bloated and hollow» bases of the tree's protective spines (and
sting the muzzles of grazing predators, driving them away); the cunning design of the mole cricket's burrow, which amplifies the male's mating song so that, «on a windless night, he can be heard from nearly half a mile away.»
Cut off from their oceanic relatives for millions of years, the golden jellies, Mastigias papua etpisoni, have lost much of their
sting and evolved a symbiotic
relationship with algae that
live in their tissues, lending their eponymous golden color.