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The first and most important lesson that all creatures learn in life is how to get enough food.

In northern Kenya three cheetah brothers have developed a new way of hunting. Rather than tackle small prey on their own, they have learnt that together they can bring down ostriches. Running the risk of a mighty kick, which could be fatal, they have to be unusually careful.

The bottlenose dolphins that live in Florida Bay have also made a breakthrough. To catch their fast-swimming prey one dolphin creates a ring of mud to surround the fish by beating its tail down hard in the soft silt, as it swims in a large circle. As the mud mushrooms in the water, the ring gets smaller and the fish get trapped. Panicking, they jump out of the water – right into the waiting dolphins' mouths!

The battle between animals and plants can be intense. Brown-tufted capuchin monkeys in Brazil demonstrate an extraordinary level of skill to crack the hard shell of the palm nuts they love. They harvest the nuts, strip them of their husks and leave them to dry. After a few weeks they transport them to a huge anvil-like stone and smash it with a heavy hammer stone. It can take eight years for a capuchin to perfect this complex art of nut-smashing.

In every animal's life there comes a time when its mind turns to breeding.

The stalk-eyed fly has a mindboggling technique. It sucks in air bubbles and blows them through its head to push its eyes out... on stalks! These are vital for winning females, because the males with the biggest eye span gets the most females!

Animals go to extraordinary lengths to protect and nurture their offspring.

The tiny strawberry poison arrow frog carries its tadpoles to nursery pools held within plants that are high up in the rainforest canopy. But there is no food there for the growing tadpoles. She delivers an unfertilised egg for each tadpole every few days, and climbs the equivalent of nearly half a mile in her endeavours.

But there is only so much a parent can do.

When chinstrap penguins fledge they have no adult to teach them about the dangers that await them. Driven by instinct, the chicks know they have to go to sea to find food. They can barely swim and many fall victim to the formidable and merciless leopard seal lying in wait.

In the end, overcoming life's challenges, whether finding enough to eat or outwitting predators, is only significant if life's final challenge can be met – to pass on the genes to ensure the survival of the next generation.

Ice Alliance

Of all of Life's filming locations, working in Antarctica was the most challenging and only through collaboration could the team hope to achieve their goals.

One team was diving under the ice of the Ross Sea; another camped out in a chinstrap penguin colony; and a third ventured down to the Antarctic Peninsula in search of the two top predators.

Cameraman Doug Allan set out on the Golden Fleece but got stuck in the ice. They wanted to film leopard seals hunting chinstrap penguin chicks – something that only happens for ten days each year.

Filming killer whales hunting crabeater seals proved even more difficult. To help them find the whales in the vastness of the Antarctic Peninsula, series producer Martha Holmes and the crew of HMS Endurance set out in the ship's helicopters. Eventually, the teams managed to film the whales as they hunted – something never filmed before in this, the most extreme continent on earth.

Producer and series producer: Martha Holmes.