Continuing your bloodline is life's ultimate mission. In this unpredictable world, animals will do whatever it takes to keep their families safe. When family sticks together, communicating, collaborating and combining as one, everyone has the very best chance of survival. It takes every superpower possible to protect and provide for the family and secure the future for a new generation of amazing animals.

We love nature and all its glorious diversity. Some creatures we admire for their deadly beauty, others because they are cute, but for some it's hard to figure out exactly why we like them so much, perhaps it's a quirk. How do you decide nature's weirdest animal? Is it the sloth that hangs upside down and moves so slowly that moss grows in its fur? Is it a sea pen that sits rooted to the seabed in endless darkness and emitting its own glow? Could it be carnivorous snails that leave the ocean to digest dead creatures on the beach, finches that drink blood, or the tarantula that keeps a frog as it's pet. But with nature's endless variety, which is the weirdest? We can't decide. Can you?

The Namib Desert is one of the oldest deserts and also one of the most diverse. With 50ºC (120ºF) temperatures and half a millimetre of rainfall annually, we see how this is possible. Half the size of Oklahoma, from its Skeleton Coast through the sea of sand to the haze of distant mountains this apparently forbidding desert hides secret water sources.

Weather controls the distribution of freshwater on Earth. David Attenborough narrates how this uneven distribution has given rise to an incredible diversity of species and habits, from the driest desert to the lushest tropical rainforest. Featuring a colony of ants banding together into a raft every time its home in the Amazon floods, a rain frog that manages to eke out an existence in one of the world's driest habitats on Earth, and the last wild camels that survive the Gobi Desert's bitter winters by eating snow that blows in from Siberia.

The natural world is full of colours. For us, they are a source of beauty, but for animals they are a tool for survival. David Attenborough reveals the extraordinary ways in which animals use colour: to win a mate, to fight off rivals and to warn enemies. New camera technologies - some developed especially for this series – also allow us to see colours and patterns usually invisible to human eyes.
Ultraviolet cameras reveal bright signals on a butterfly’s wings and facial markings on yellow damselfish that are used as secret communication channels. Some animals can also detect polarized light, and specialist cameras can now show us how fiddler crabs see the world, and how mantis shrimp have strange polarization patterns on their bodies to signal to a mate or rival.

Jungles provide the richest habitats on the planet - mysterious worlds of high drama where extraordinary animals attempt to survive in the most competitive place on earth. Flooded forests are home to caiman-hunting jaguars and strange dolphins that swim amongst the tree tops, while in the dense underworld, ninja frogs fight off wasps and flying dragons soar between trees. Acrobatic indri leap through the forests of Madagascar, while the jungle night conceals strange fungi and glow-in-the-dark creatures never filmed before.