Tusks rather than rusks
BABY animals are unfailingly cute.Yes, all of them. They may not necessarily stay that way (some will, while others, as they grow, will become less inclined to let you cuddle them and more inclined to tear you to shreds. My cat, for example…), but yes, in those first few weeks they all seem jolly lovely.
That’s why you really can’t go wrong with a series such as
ANIMAL BABIES: FIRST YEAR ON EARTH (BBC2, 9pm).
The cuties we meet in the first of three episodes include Safina, a new-born baby elephant in Kenya. After fractionally short of two years growing inside her mummy’s tummy (sorry, I gave up biology when I was 12), Safina is taking her first few faltering steps in the big, scary outside world.
And being an elephant, of course, rather than one of us soppy human beings who take forever to master even the basics, she’ll be expected to get to grips fairly swiftly with tasks such as standing up and walking.
It’s amusing to witness her initial struggles, particularly as she slips and slides in the mud, but you don’t get the impression that her mum (who for some reason has been named Cyclone – I reckon she’d be horrified if she knew) will indulge such infantile ineptitude indefinitely.
At birth, Safina is already three feet tall and weighs almost 16 stone (no wonder Cyclone looks shattered), but she’s also horribly vulnerable to hungry predators and suchlike.
So she’ll need to learn as quickly as she can how to keep up with the rest of the herd, walking up to nine miles a day to search for food.
Also, she’ll need to learn to master that trunky thing, which looks like a right old faff.
Did you know that an elephant’s trunk contains 150,000 bundles of muscle fibre?
No, nor did she.To be honest, she looks rather confused even to have discovered it there, this rather funny, bendy appendage sprouting from her face, but with encouragement I’m sure she’ll get the hang of it.
The sooner she does, the sooner she can use it to eat, drink and communicate. In her spare time, she’ll also be able to recreate the dawn patrol scene from The Jungle Book.
As for tonight’s other TV treats, how brilliant it is to have Alex Jones and Steph McGovern back with SHOP WELL FOR LESS?
(BBC1, 8pm).
Oh, don’t be like that. Just look at the effort they’re making in this first show, helping out a mum and dad with eight kids.
These parents desperately want to afford a new bathroom (I’d have thought they’d need at least six), so can Alex and Steph find a nice, polite way to say: “Well, stop buying overpriced tat, then…”