Life in Cold Blood

David Attenborough reveals the surprising truth about the cold-blooded lives of reptiles and amphibians. They are as dramatic in combat, as colourful in their communication and as tender in their parental care as any other animals. Join giant courting crocodiles, tortoises that joust with 'lances' and bright red sumo-wrestling frogs - as they live their sophisticated, solar powered lives to the full. How, have they successfully endured for over 300 million years?

David Attenborough delves into the extraordinary and intimate lives of the soft skinned amphibians and finds marsupial frogs where the father carries his young in pouches and then gives birth, giant salamanders over a metre long that wrestle for territory and newts that display just like underwater birds of paradise. From steamy jungles to dry deserts amphibians have taken their first footsteps onto land using their bizarre life histories to break their ties with the water and invade the Earth.

David Attenborough comes face-to-face with a monitor lizard that stands on tiptoe, is flashed at by anole lizards and uses a rod and line to tempt a timid skink out of its burrow. Other scaly stars include jacky lizards that wave, wrestling beaded lizards and the largest chameleons in the world jousting in the trees. He also encounters the world's smallest chameleon, no bigger than his thumbnail, and the biggest lizard in Australia.

How have this most misunderstood group of reptiles used the most simple but elegant body plan to succeed on land, sea and even in the air? A CCTV stakeout of rattlesnakes hunting shows, for the first time, what clever predators they are. David Attenborough is himself on the receiving end of a spitting cobra's chemical weapons. But snakes aren't all about violence. Their tender side is displayed in the sinuous courtship of kingsnakes and the water birth of 15 beautiful yellow anacondas.

David Attenborough meets the reptile heavyweights - the tortoises, turtles and crocodiles and shows what it's like to live within a suit of armour, and reveals a dynamic, warm and caring side to these ancient giants. Mating giant tortoises fit together like spoons, green turtles passionately mate in tropical seas, a mother spectacled caiman rescues a huge creche of babies and sophisticated saltwater crocodiles ambush fish just like bears catching salmon.