The Revolting World of Invertebrates

It's official: I have lost my stomach for nature shows. Watching an old VCR tape my father made of David Attenborough's series "Life on Earth." Sir David -- smart, articulate, curious, game! This episode was on invertebrates and offers excellent background on many of the specimens we had in our family museum, which is no doubt why Gene taped it. (Incidentally, Sir David also had a museum as a child, as we did in our household). Starts out nicely with fossil brachiopods, abundant in the Devonian limestone of Ohio where I grew up. Then, an unfortunate and protracted diversion into living ancestors thereof. Dear Reader, I had to divert my eyes. O, the horrible, writhing, gelatinous forms, so fundamentally oral and anal and motile! I'm talking about flatworms and snails and mollusks and larvae, even sea cucumbers. All of which were making me feel distinctly queasy. On to a brief but fascinating equation of fossil crinoids with modern-day sea stars, starfish, sea urchins, und so weiter, followed by repeated and disturbing close-ups of the ghastly thicket of tentacles (anchored by a sinister pinhole eye) that comprise the visible bodily form of a nautilus, whose whorled shell is familiar from relatives way back in the Triassic, and which propels itself via eructations of gas. The horror, the horror! And then an exploration of the beloved trilobite, whose shape we so eagerly sought among the rocks as kids, which is essentially a segmented muck puppy, oh-so-much more appealing in its fossilized form. The spherical, compound eye an amazing invention, but what was there to look at down there? After that -- still watching the episode in deference to my departed father -- some creatures molted and then Sir David picked up a horseshoe crab (later view of horseshoe crab orgy on the beach) and several other creatures with ferocious claws. Eventually, thank goodness, it was over, though not before some preview footage of the next episode on masses of swarming and masticating insects. Well. At least they don't undulate.