Micro Monsters with David Attenborough

Our world is not always the same.

Hidden from our view lies a different world.

Creatures utterly unlike us.

Almost alien.

Yet they are more numerous than any other group on the planet.

Welcome to the fascinating world of the arthropods.

Spiders, scorpions and insects.

Today we have new camera techniques

that will allow us to reveal in greater detail

than ever before their lives.

The way they fight and feed and reproduce.

This series uses specially developed 3D camera technology

to study the micro world in extraordinary detail,

both on location and in specially constructed environments.

We'll witness their births, the challenges they face,

and the moments when their lives hang in the balance.

And that may help us understand how it is that today

over 80% of all animal species on this planet are arthropods.

In this series we will see the way they have evolved.

From the comparative simplicity of the millipede,

to vast colonies that contain hundreds, even millions,

of individuals.

We'll witness the most extraordinary transformations

in the animal kingdom.

We'll meet ants that farm,

spiders that can cast their webs...

and the bug that wears the bodies of its victims as a disguise.

Welcome to a strange and dangerous world.

Our planet's rainforests are home to millions of animal species.

Nearly 90% of them are arthropods, some call them bugs,

and they're all searching for food.

In fact, there's food for most of them everywhere,

because over half of all bugs eat plants.

Millipedes were among the first arthropods to move up

out of the water onto the land.

They can have up to 750 legs,

grow to lengths of 30 centimetres and live for as long as seven years.

And this body plan is so efficient

that it's remained largely unchanged for hundreds of millions of years.

Their body is divided into segments, each with its own set of legs

and internal organs.

A heart runs the entire length of it,

supplying each segment with oxygen.

It eats decaying leaves and plants,

just as its ancestors did over 400 million years ago.

Millipedes are peaceful creatures,

but they don't have the forest to themselves.

There are other multi-segmented creatures here

that have a very different way of life.

Centipedes.

They are meat eaters.

Centipedes are closely related to millipedes,

and they prey on other bugs.

There are over 8,000 species of them,

and they all have poisonous stings.

This one lives in caves in India.

Their powerful, independently moving legs

make them much faster than millipedes.

This is the one to be feared most -

meet Scolapendra.

But it's not the only top predator here.

This Red Claw Scorpion from Tanzania

is not as fast or as agile,

but its powerful pincers and sting

make it every bit as deadly.

Scorpions and centipedes are competitors.

They hunt the same prey...

and in the same territory.

And because of that,

if they meet, they fight.

Scolapendra uses all its strength

to try and get under Red Claw's armour.

But the scorpion's defences are too strong.

It's not Red Claw's attack that wins the day,

it's Scolapendra's weak defence that loses it.

If you can't defend yourself,

you're not likely to stay alive for long in the micro-world.

Australia.

Home to a beetle with one of the oddest defences.

This is a pie dish beetle.

The outback certainly gets very dry,

so you might think that this strange shell

is just for collecting water,

but its primary function is defence.

A Mantis.

Normally a hunter, but with this potential prey,

it doesn't know how to even begin.

But the pie dish beetle's armour

does have its disadvantages -

it's not what you might call manoeuvrable.

Other Australian insects have a different defensive strategy.

This stick insect relies on camouflage to make it invisible,

but that too comes at a cost.

Being shaped like a stick makes it difficult to fly.

So if a predator does find it, it could be done for.

A huntsman spider - and it's ready to strike.

It's one of the fastest and most agile of all spiders.

But the stick insect doesn't even try to escape.

She has a weapon of last resort.

The spray can reach half a metre,

and she'll have enough to have a few goes before running dry.

It fills the forest with the scent of peppermint.

To the huntsman, it's an unbearable irritant.