The Trials of Life: A Natural History of Animal Behaviour

The Trials of Life surveys the last and most dramatic of these. Every animal, whether rat or rattlesnake, lobster or llama or a human being, must during the course of its life face a series of problems - growing up and collecting food, finding its way around and defending itself against enemies, getting along with its fellows and finding a mate. But though the problems may be the same, the solutions are astoundingly varied. Ants in the Sahara find their way across the featureless sand by taking repeated observations on the sun, fireflies attract their mates by flashing signals like Morse code, and teams of chimpanzees hunt down monkeys in west African forests, collaborating in the most complex way yet observed in the animal world." -- David Attenborough, January 1992