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There aren’t many 93 years olds who could get the Glastonbury audience cheering. But Sir David Attenborough, national treasure, champion of the environment is the man who can. And of all his life’s work, Life on Earth, the iconic tv series first broadcast 40 years ago, is one of his masterpieces.

Newly updated, it’s nothing less than the greatest story ever told: the story of the evolution of life on our planet from the humble bacteria to homo sapiens. Listen now to some of the highlights on 成人快手 Sounds.

Attenborough is not only a brilliant naturalist, passionate about everything from the digestive juices in an elephant’s gut to the Giant Japanese Spider Crab, he’s also a superb storyteller. From the fossils that reveal our earliest beginnings to the insects whose wings beat a thousand times a second, he vividly reveals the story of life on our constantly changing planet.

40 years ago Attenborough boiled 4.6 billion years of history into 13 hours. Now we’ve gone further: 4.6 billion years into 200 minutes. Here are seven highlights to listen out for:

Attenborough reveals that the squid is a master of disguise. Its ability to change colour and shape is breath taking. It can match itself to an almost inexhaustible variety of environments and communicate to other members of its species by using patterns that arc over across its surfaces. Attenborough tells us that one female squid was filmed indicating to a neighbouring male that she wasn’t interested in mating. Meanwhile, on the other side of her body she was playing the coquette and parading an altogether different pattern to beckon a different male.

Attenborough during the filming of Life on Earth

2. Insects: for every one person there are over a billion of them

For every human being alive there are over a billion insects. Put together they would weigh perhaps seventy times as much as the average human being. Army Ants march in columns through the South American countryside looking for prey. Sometimes a column comprises 150,000 individuals. The flanks of the column are guarded by soldier ants who are armed with huge jaws and totally blind. Attenborough describes Army Ants swarming over snakes that he had in captivity, biting them to distraction and ultimately, to death.

3. Fish: it’s all a matter of bone or cartilage

‘You and I are more closely related to a cod than the cod is to a shark.’ It’s all a matter of bone or cartilage: 450 million years ago one group of fish developed bone in their skeletons. Their descendants became the ancestors of all backboned animals today – including humans. The other group chose cartilage – their descendants are sharks and rays… (And by the way that doesn’t make them weaker - a shark can smell blood from half a kilometre away.)

4. Birds: they’re flying dinosaurs

‘Dinosaurs today are flying around our gardens.’ 66 million years ago dinosaurs were wiped out when an asteroid crashed into Mexico – all except the birds who took to the skies and continued to evolve into some of the most extraordinary, diverse and dazzling animal species. Listen out for the swifts who can fly at speeds of 70 kph and 900 kms in a day, and the penguin who ingeniously uses a pebble to find its ideal mate.

5. Mountain Gorillas: the most peaceful of primates

The footage of Attenborough sitting with the gorillas of Rwanda is an amazing moment of TV history. Gorillas are very similar to humans in terms of sight and hearing, of life expectancy and in the way they live in family groups. But despite their fearsome reputation, they are in fact the most peaceful of primates.

Attenborough with a baby gorilla at Bristol Zoo in 1976

6. The Japanese Macaques: washing a sweet potato

Scientists studying macaques in Koshima Japan left sweet potatoes for them to eat. One macaque began washing the mud off her potato in a nearby pool and soon the others copied her. The action of washing their food became a universal action, one that continued long after the scientists left. Learned knowledge is how cultures start.

7. Humans: it is up to us to care for the planet and creatures

Attenborough considers the history of life as a calendar year – for the first five or six months there was only bacteria. Fish arrived in the second week of November. Humans only came on the scene in the evening of 31st December. How have we been so successful? One reason he believes is our ability to communicate so thoughts and ideas are not limited to a single generation. He ends “We are now by far the most powerful single species that has ever existed on earth. That power brings great responsibility. It is now up to us to care for the planet and for all the other creatures for whom it is home.”