Sir David Attenborough was left “horrified” by spine-tingling footage of spiders hunting and devouring their mothers, in a new BBC documentary.
The veteran naturalist, 99, has lent his voice to Parenthood, a five-part series exploring the tumultuous relationship between parent and youngling within the animal kingdom.
Attenborough may have narrated numerous nature documentaries since the 1950s, but footage captured for the new series left him particularly shocked, according to producer and director Jeff Wilson.
In a scene scheduled to air on Sunday (3 August), Attenborough narrates as a pack of African social spiders – 1,000 in total – hunt their mothers in what looks like a game of musical statues.
They stop and start in unison, before crawling ever closer to their relatives and eating them.
Reflecting on the scene, Wilson told The Guardian that Attenborough was both “delighted and horrified” after seeing the clip, which the director believes will haunt parents long after they watch it.
“It makes one feel quite sort of chilled to the bone that you know that your own young could do that,” he said, quipping: “There will not be a parent of the land who won’t turn up to school pickup without snacks ever again!”
Parenthood was shot over three years across six continents and 23 countries and, according to a synopsis, “showcases astonishing, never-before-seen animal behaviours in stunning 6K ultra high definition”.
“From the remote jungles of Bhutan to the grasslands of Botswana, each episode reveals the unique – and often surprisingly familiar – challenges faced by animal parents around the world. The stakes couldn’t be higher – success for all parents ensures the future of life on our planet.”
The spider scene is expected to become a viral sensation, much like the Asian Sheepshead Wrasse, a sea creature that changes gender after reaching a critical body size in Blue Planet II, and the chase scene between iguanas and racer snakes in Planet Earth II.
Attenborough has brought unbelievable scenes of the natural world to British screens ever since he first fronted Zoo Quest in the mid-1950s.
Over the course of his incredible career, the presenter narrated all 253 episodes of the BBC’s Wildlife on One between 1977 and 2005, in addition to delivering one remarkable series after another.
These include Life on Earth (1979), The Living Planet (1984), Trials of Life (1990), Life in the Freezer (1993), The Private Life of Plants (1995), The Life of Birds (1998), The Blue Planet (2001), The Life of Mammals (2002), Planet Earth (2006), Frozen Planet (2011), Planet Earth II (2016) and Dynasties (2018).
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