Karma chameleon (and friends)

Having exhausted the supply of cute and furry animals (and plants and birds and whales) on the planet, last night on BBC One my hero Sir David Attenborough turned his attention to a smaller and scalier subset of society. Episode 1 of Life In Cold Blood went a long way to disproving the myth that reptiles and amphibians are “primitive, dull and dim-witted”. In fact it showed that they are pretty darn fabulous.

Some of the trailers for the show are moderately disgusting (do we need to see a croc chomping bloodily on a fish?), but the sprinting lizards and burping frogs are just fabulous (although the last two clips are on bbc.co.uk or UK YouTube so viewers abroad may not be able to enjoy them - apologies).

Another person who loved the show as much as I did is Andrew Billen from The Times, who used my favourite phrase of the year to describe the footage of two turtles wrestling, comparing their agility to that of aggrieved bungalows. Fabulous.

If you’re in the UK you can now watch the episode on the the iPlayer (at long long long last) and I would strongly recommend that you do so! And if you can’t wait til next Monday here’s a little chameleon photo gallery to tide you over.

(PHOTO: CARACAL)