One of the most widespread and adaptable mammals on the planet: the brown rat. ibid.
It’s not the meek who’ve inherited the Earth, it’s the opportunists. ibid.
The most unlikely can swim. David Attenborough, The Life of Mammals VII: Return to the Water
The sinuous agility of the sea-otter. ibid.
South of New Zealand, in the Antarctic, it’s so cold the sea freezes over. ibid.
Foxes prey on newborn seals. ibid.
There are bigger predators here than foxes: polar bears. ibid.
In the warm clear waters of the Florida Creeks there still are – Manatees. ibid.
Manatees are so big nothing much attacks them. ibid.
A river dolphin: Ganges – it’s completely blind: sonar. ibid.
Dolphin teams may number several hundred. ibid.
The sardines are forced to the surface they come within a range of seabirds overhead. ibid.
The Blue Whale is a hundred feet long. Thirty meters. Nothing like that can grow on land ... That magnificent creature. ibid.
Meerkats in the Kalahari Desert ... They spend the night in burrows ... They have to warm up in the early morning sun. David Attenborough, The Life of Mammals VIII: Life in the Trees
Someone must always stand guard. ibid.
A third of the Earth’s land is still covered by trees of one kind or another. ibid.
The Sun Bear of Indonesia: it also is a fruit-eater and it spends more of its time in the trees than any other bear. ibid.
Fruit bats are extremely strong fliers. They can travel great distances. ibid.
This roost alone contains a staggering five million. ibid.
How ill-equipped we are for a life in the trees. ibid.
There’s a very good living to be had – up there. ibid.
Some monkeys however have particular specialities. David Attenborough, The Life of Mammals IX: Social Climbers
Pygmy Marmoset – the smallest monkey in the world. ibid.
Monkeys of many kinds travel side by side. ibid.
There’s a ruthless class system in monkey society. ibid.
The most important thing we share is our big brain. David Attenborough, The Life of Mammals X: Food for Thought
Chimpanzees: they are clever, social, political creatures. ibid.
Barely a week old they are fearless. Learning to negotiate these cliffs is central to their [Ibex] survival … David Attenborough, Life e7: Hunters and Hunted, BBC 2009
The rain forests of Belize in central America. And as evening falls and the shower comes to an end a predator begins to hunt: the greater bulldog bat, a flying mammal and a fisherman. ibid.
A young stoat ... Stalking, chasing and ambushing all practised in play. ibid.
Mammals must deploy their most sophisticated weapon: their brains. ibid.
Bottlenose dolphins: and they are on a mission – a mission to catch fish ... The dolphins have a plan. They have learnt to corral the fish by working as a team ... This behaviour is unique to the dolphins of Florida Bay. ibid.
A brown bear. Here they grow larger than anywhere in the world. Other bears have also gathered at the edge of the surf. They’ve come here to fatten up for the winter. They’re waiting for an event that happens just once a year: the salmon run. ibid.
The Ethiopian wolf. The only wolf in the whole of Africa. ibid.
A star-nosed mole. Possessor of perhaps the most extraordinary nose on the planet ... Few creatures can hunt equally successfully underground and underwater. ibid.
Young elephant seals risk being dragged off the rocks by the surging waves and swept out into open water. ibid.
3) The first of the mammals: Solenodons – they can be found in a remote corner of the Dominican Republic. Attenborough’s Ark: Natural World Special, BBC 2012
Elephants: they are the heaviest land mammals alive and the longest lived. Attenborough’s Natural Curiosities s1e3: Young Wrinklies, BBC 2013
If one small and odd lineage of fishes had not evolved fins capable of bearing weight on land (though evolved for different reasons in lakes and seas,) terrestrial vertebrates would never have arisen. If a large extraterrestrial object – the ultimate random bolt from the blue – had not triggered the extinction of dinosaurs 65 million years ago, mammals would still be small creatures, confined to the nooks and crannies of a dinosaur’s world, and incapable of evolving the larger size that brains big enough for self-consciousness require. If a small and tenuous population of protohumans had not survived a hundred slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (and potential extinction) on the savannas of Africa, then Homo sapiens would never have emerged to spread throughout the globe. We are glorious accidents of an unpredictable process with no drive to complexity, not the expected results of evolutionary principles that yearn to produce a creature capable of understanding the mode of its own necessary construction. Stephen Jay Gould
With mammals the male appears to win the female much more through the law of battle than through the display of his charms. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, 1871
One of its rarest animals: the Dugong. Oceans V: Indian Ocean, BBC 2008
We weren’t always top of the food chain: we are only one of five thousand species of mammals. Secret History of Humans IX: Man & Beast, History 2020