The Trials of Life: A Natural History of Animal Behaviour was published by Collins and Little, Brown in 1990, completing the trilogy that began with Life on Earth and The Living Planet. Where the first book organized life by evolutionary history and the second by habitat, the third organizes it by behavior — the things that animals do, and why they do them.
The structure follows the arc of an individual life: birth, growth, finding food, finding a home, navigating, signaling, finding a mate, fighting, cooperating, raising the next generation. Each chapter surveys the astonishing diversity of behavioral solutions to these universal problems. Homing pigeons navigate by magnetic field, sun position, and memorized landmarks. Peacock spiders perform elaborate dances to attract mates. Ants wage wars of extermination against neighboring colonies. Elephants mourn their dead.
Attenborough’s prose in this volume is perhaps his finest — he had by now been writing about the natural world for over thirty years, and the confidence of his knowledge allows him to move effortlessly between the specific (a particular species’ behavior observed in the field) and the general (the evolutionary pressures that shaped that behavior). The book is simultaneously a celebration of animal ingenuity and a meditation on the universality of life’s challenges.
Collecting The Trials of Life
First edition (Collins, London, 1990): Cloth binding, dust jacket, illustrated.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $20–$50
- Very good/very good: $8–$20
- Signed: $60–$150