Review
Life: Extraordinary Animals, Extreme Behavior
Martha Holmes and Michael Gunton’s spectacular book explores the planet’s most fascinating plants and animals.
By Michael Lowe

Life: Extraordinary Animals, Extreme Behaviour
By Martha Holmes and Michael Gunton University of California Press, 312 pages, $39.95

A male Chilean stag beetle flies through the trees in search of a mate. Unsteadily, he maneuvers himself while buzzing loudly in an attempt to attract females hidden in the canopy. When he lands on a limb he realizes he has company. Staring down over the end of his oversized mandibles, he sees another male, readying himself for battle. Jaws open, the two beetles engage with only the victor surviving the encounter. Shortly after, he finds a willing female and they mate. Success.

That is, until his fighting instinct takes over and he tosses her off the branch as well. Apparently, he wasn’t the relationship type.

This is only one of the quirky vignettes from the animal world we rarely witness found in the pages of Discovery Channel/BBC’s new book Life. The companion to the 11-part TV miniseries now showing Sundays through April 18 is a comprehensive volume illustrating the diverse and complex living world in 300 high-definition photographs and colorful, informative text.

Spanning seven continents, Life journeys through 60 profiles of Earth’s bizarre and endearing creatures and life-forms. It transports readers to the depths of the ocean, where two Humboldt squids spar with their tentacles for position—and perhaps a meal and to the Arctic, where the iconic polar bear’s reddened snout peeks around the skeletal remains of a bowhead whale. Life explores the monarch butterfly’s migration across North America, which ends in a billion-butterfly display that turns forest greenery to orange, and a strangler fig in Borneo which wraps itself around another tree, stealing sunlight and out-competing its host for root space until it dies.

Life is a story about the inhabitants of this planet and how they came to be. The first of nine chapters begins as life did: in “nutrient-rich warm sea water,” chronicling the lives of sea-dwellers. “All living things contain water, and one of the defining features of Earth is the quantity of water that covers its surface.”

Oceans are abundant with life, a place where “sunlight and substrate determine the location of the richest communities.” Marine plants use sunlight to grow and rocky substrate as an anchor. Around them, complex and diverse ecosystems emerge and the ocean comes alive.

More than 2,600 feet below the surface, Australian majid spider crabs gather in late autumn off the coast of Tasmania. During mating season, crab piles can stack 10-deep as males struggle for position with a female, but the aggregations may serve a second purpose: safety in numbers. A photograph of a sweeping manta ray engulfing recently moulted, soft-shelled versions of the crab explains why vulnerability loves company (especially when that company can be your replacement for a meal).

Survival and reproduction are the most basic of functions. “Every day, animals and plants face enormous challenges thrown at them by predators, competitors, and the environment they live in.” So it makes sense that Life “is about behavior—the extraordinary ends animals and plants go to in order to survive and to pass on their genes through a new generation.”

Life’s thoroughly descriptive text bounces from historical anecdotes to scientific factoids, proving both entertaining and informative. But it’s the double-page, full-color spreads that really make an impact, nearly overwhelming readers with the beauty of life.

Click on the image above to watch a video preview of the TV series.

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