All language subtitles for Evolution.2026.S01E01.The.Elephant.1080p.iP.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-playWEB_track3_[eng]

Across our natural world,

life has taken on countless forms.

Wondrous, strange...

..and endlessly diverse.

It's easy to imagine that all
of this is, like,

somehow preordained...

..that it's been made,
a world of balance and purpose,

but the truth...
The truth is much wilder.

This is a world of survivors.

From Earth's earliest moments,

evolution has quietly,

relentlessly,

shaped the story of life.

I can hear it...

And in this series...

It's quite emotional,
if I'm honest with you!

...we'll trace the astonishing
evolutionary journeys of five

iconic modern animals.

Look at this!

Truly spectacular!

We'll meet their oddball
ancestors from the distant past

and discover how generation,
by generation...

Absolutely amazing!

..they changed, to become
the creatures we know today.

From the smallest beginnings come
the most extraordinary stories,

stories of survival,
of bizarre transformations,

shaping life in the strangest
of ways

and, behind it all,
the unstoppable force of evolution.

Look at that! They used to say that
animals couldn't experience joy.

Come on! That looks like muddy,
wet joy to me!

CHRIS LAUGHS

The African savannah elephant has
to be one of evolution's most

enchantingly strange creatures.

I mean, look at the trunk.

When they're adult, that measures
nearly two metres in length,

and it contains
perhaps 90,000 miniature muscles.

And then the tusks.

Those are teeth that never
stop growing.

The ears!
Look at the ears on this one,

the size of a table cloth,

flapping away.

But their one most obvious defining
feature, of course, is their size.

Look at that!

They can regularly
reach five, six, seven tonnes.

The very biggest, ten tonnes.

They are colossal.

So, here's a question for you.

How did evolution come up
with something as complex,

as beautiful
and as enormous as this?

How did the elephant come to be?

Well, to understand the elephant,

the largest land animal
alive today...

..you have to understand
evolution itself.

There was no blueprint,
no grand design.

Evolution is a process, shaped
by powerful, invisible drivers.

Like hunger...

..conflict...

..and even...

..catastrophe.

So where does our story begin?

The answer lies in what
these giants are made of.

They may be the world's largest land
mammals, they may be beautiful,

but brutally biologically speaking,
this is just a giant mass of cells.

Now, in case of the elephant,
that's a lot of cells.

It's a quadrillion.

That's a one with 15 zeros after it.

Cells are the fundamental building
blocks, not just of elephants,

but of all life today, be it
animal...

..plant,

fungi...

..or bacteria.

So, where did those cells come from?

Well, each one of this animal's
cells has come from other

cells, which have either
divided or reproduced.

OK, where did those cells come from?

Well, they come from other cells
that divided and reproduced.

In fact, we can trace this chain
back over unimaginable

periods of time, through many
long-lost extinct species,

until remarkably
it converges at a single point,

a single-celled organism that's
connected to every living thing,

every branch on the tree of life,

a common ancestor that lived
billions of years ago,

the cell that started everything.

Now, when it comes to evolution,
you need to take the long view.

I mean the really long view.

The elephant's improbable journey
begins before mammals, before

dinosaurs stomped about, before
anything even had legs to stomp.

It's a story that starts
with a simple truth.

If you want to evolve,
you have to survive first.

Violent,

loud...

Frankly, overdramatic.

The young Earth is no paradise...

..but beneath the waves,
life has already taken hold.

Trillions of tiny,
primitive cells battle the elements.

Almost all will perish.

But one cell is different.

Within this tiny speck lies
the future of all living things.

It's a speck with a name.

Meet LUCA, the ultimate survivor.

The great-great-great times
a billion grandparent of you,

the elephant, and every other
living thing on Earth.

LUCA stands
for Last Universal Common Ancestor.

So, let's just think about this
for a moment, because it was this

single-celled organism,
floating around in a world entirely

alien to our own, which gave rise
to every living thing on our planet.

That's me, that's you, that's all
the animals, all the plants,

all the fungi, all the bacteria,
everything!

So, LUCA isn't just a clever
acronym,

something out of a biology class.

LUCA defines the point where the
story of life as we know it

truly began.

There are no fossils of LUCA...

..but because all living
things have DNA

and use the same genetic code, we
know there must be a shared origin.

Look at that.

But why did LUCA
and its descendants survive...

Ooh!
..when trillions of others vanished?

That's actually starting
to burn my hand.

Clues can be found in the Earth's
most extreme places.

I want to take my hand out of there.
That's how hot it is.

With alkaline water up
to 86 degrees Centigrade...

..these are the sort of hostile
conditions LUCA may have endured.

But nevertheless, look.

Life is tolerating it
all round here.

I know what you're thinking,
this doesn't look like much,

and certainly compared to us,
this is pretty simple stuff.

But I've got to tell you, it's not.

The cells in here are amongst
the most complex

things in the known universe.

Each one of these cells
is generating energy,

distributing that energy,
dealing with waste.

It's sensitive to its environment,
it's reproducing.

Every one of these cells is more
complex than any machine

ever made by any human.

Just like these cells, LUCA was
complex, robust, resilient...

..which may have helped it
cling on against the odds.

Now, we know that Luca wasn't the
first cell and that it lived amongst

other cells, but what made it
special is that it didn't just live,

it thrived, it survived.

That little bubble of chemicals,

formed in chaos
billions of years ago.

LUCA was the little cell that could.

Plucky? Yes.

Lucky? Almost certainly...

..but it also has life's greatest
survival trick.

LUCA can copy itself.

Well enough to keep its genetic
line going...

..but not so perfectly that every
copy is identical.

With every new generation,
tiny errors, mutations,

creep into its DNA.

And yet these so-called mistakes
fuel evolution.

The story of our modern,
living world has begun.

Now it's time to hit fast forward.

I mean, you can't cover four billion
years of evolution without

skipping some chapters.

Generation after generation,

little mistakes lead to
entirely new life forms.

Some cells begin to capture the
sunlight - the ancestors of plants.

Others would adapt to feed
on decay - fungi.

Many stay small and simple -
the hidden world of microbes.

But the cells that would give
rise to the elephant

take a very different path...

..three and a half billion
years after LUCA...

..when the Earth is in a deep
freeze.

This is a period of intense
global cooling.

Ice grips the planet,
and food webs are collapsing.

But somewhere in the cold and dark,

one hungry cell is about
to change everything.

The need to feed is one of the great
driving forces of evolution.

Any creature that can find its food
more efficiently is more

likely to survive and pass its genes
into the next generation,

as was the case
over 600 million years ago

when a single cell
was on the verge of a breakthrough,

a breakthrough that would
lead to the incredible

diversity of almost all
animal life to come.

Meet the ancient
ancestor of the elephant...

..indeed of all animal kind.

Urchoanozoan now has
mitochondria for energy...

..a nucleus for control...

..and a tail-like flagellum to move.

But one thing hasn't changed...

..this cell is still tiny...

..just 100th
of a millimetre across.

It's a small cell
with a big problem.

Food is brutally scarce.

And that cell's ancient hunger
may have set life on a new course.

And you can see how, thanks to
a remarkable creature alive today.

You might be wondering, what have

a mass of insects like this got

to do with an ancient
single-celled organism?

Well, the twist is
that in the quest for food,

they both came up with
a similar solution...

..and it's down to numbers.

You see,
single ants are not very good

when it comes to overwhelming prey.

They're simply too small,
they don't have the strength.

So, what they've done is
turn into a mass killing machine.

Each one of the individuals has
become a cog in that machine,

and this means that they're
far more efficient

when it comes to handling whatever
they're going to eat.

Ow! It's all right.

These ants act as one giant
organism...

..overwhelming their meals with
sheer force of numbers...

..and when they swarm,
almost anything is on the menu.

Crickets, caterpillars,
or, if they're wounded,

even chickens, goats and pigs and,
by the feel of it, even a Packham!

And there's the parallel with those
ancient single-celled organisms,

because they were about to adopt
a similar technique which would

change the world...

..forever.

Oh, my goodness!

My world's been changed forever, I
think, to be quite honest with you.

There are some of them in places
that you won't be filming them.

Get off!

Over 600 million years ago,

Urchoanozoan is about to
do something revolutionary.

Its surface is coated
with sticky molecules...

..and when the time comes
to divide...

..instead of floating off to live
independent lives...

..the two remain stuck together.

They continue to divide.

More and more cells stick
together...

...until...

..a vast alliance forms.

Dubbed the Death Star...

..it's 100 larger
than a single cell...

..and it has something
of the dark side to it.

When the all the flagella wiggle,

they create stronger
water currents...

..drawing in bacteria
so the Death Star can feed.

From cells sticking together
came a new way of living.

A multicellular organism is formed.

Over the next 100 million years,

the Death Star's descendants
continue to grow...

..not just in size,

but in complexity...

..as individual
cells begin to specialise...

..until something truly
revolutionary emerges...

..the first bodies on Earth.

The oceans have now warmed
and they're full of life forms.

And lurking among them
is the ancestor of the elephant.

No trunk, no tusks...

..just a worm,
three millimetres long,

dragging itself across
the seafloor.

Evolution gave it a body,

but one so small
and simple you'd barely notice it.

Building something bigger

and more complex would require
one vital ingredient...

..oxygen.

Inside every cell in our body a
slow, controlled burn is happening.

Not with flames, of course,
that would be concerning.

But just like this fire,
we need oxygen to release energy.

Without it,
we would simply sputter out and die.

But for ancient animals,
oxygen was largely out of reach.

I've got some earthworms here,
charming creatures,

creatures of childhood,
but not terribly sophisticated,

particularly
when it comes to breathing.

You see,
just like those early animals,

they breathe through their skin.

It's permeable,
and as long as it's moist,

they can extract
oxygen from the air.

But imagine you're living
half a billion years ago.

You're much smaller than this,
and living at the bottom

of an ocean where the oxygen
supply is pitifully low.

Life was small, life was slow,

life was stuck.

But this ancient worm has stumbled
upon a new way to

boost its oxygen supply.

Tiny pores along its body,
used to filter food,

are now quietly adapting
to a new role.

They're able to
draw in a fraction more oxygen...

..the beginning of a transformation
that will allow creatures to

grow bigger and stronger.

And beating the competition
is what it's all about.

Generation by generation, tiny
wrinkles inside the pores deepen,

folding, twisting, meaning
more surface area,

more oxygen...

..until a whole new
body part evolves.

In tracing the evolution
of the elephant or, for that matter,

any other large land animal,

the appearance of gills is hardly
an obvious landmark moment.

After all, elephants aren't famed
for

their deep-sea diving capabilities.

But the emergence of
gills was more than a minor upgrade.

It was an evolutionary quantum leap.

This is the fossil of Yunnanozoon.

It lived in the Cambrian
around 500 million years ago.

What is it? Well, it wasn't
a worm, wasn't yet a fish,

but what makes it
interesting is this...

You can see these feathery
structures

running down here in rows.

Some scientists believe that this
is the first evidence

that we've discovered of gills.

Intricate folds like these
can radically increase

the surface area
that's in contact with water...

..giving the animal the potential
to access much more oxygen.

And, of course,
more oxygen means more energy.

That can mean bigger bodies,
faster movement.

This innovation set the stage,
not just for fish,

or for elephants,
but also for you and I.

We tend to think of gills
as a fish thing,

but once they were pretty
much everyone's thing.

Every amphibian...

..reptile, bird,

every mammal alive today
descended from ancestors with gills.

So, if gills were such a good idea,

why did so many of us ditch them?

Well, inside this fish is a clue to
one of evolution's boldest leaps.

Look at this extraordinary animal.

This is protopterus aethiopicus
and it's no ordinary fish.

I mean,
superficially it looks like an eel.

It's got this long dorsal
fin running all the way

back down to this very
spatulate tail here.

Beautiful marbling, but look...

Look at these wiggly limbs
that are emerging.

Two at the front here,
and two more at the back.

Frankly,
what a weird-looking animal!

But I'm dodging the big issue.

What makes it special is that it
can live in very stagnant water,

water which is almost
devoid of oxygen,

and it can do that
because it's a fish with a secret.

Now, it is very, very slimy...

If I can try and pick it up...

I've got to watch my fingers,
because it's well-armed

with powerful, crushing teeth.

Whoop! Come on.

What a slippery customer.

I just want you to be
able to see its mouth,

because it's through that mouth
that it's able to draw

in deliberately deep gulps of air,
into a blood vessel lined sac

where the oxygen can diffuse

directly into its circulatory
system.

There!

Protopterus aethiopicus,
that's its scientific name,

but that adaptation gives
it its common name.

This is not a fish out of water,
so much as a lungfish on land.

This air-gulping ability first
evolved in fish 400 million

years ago, as a simple backup
plan for low oxygen water.

But lungs would become key to
one of evolution's giant leaps...

..the leap on to land.

We're jumping through time again,
a mere 300 million years.

As animals ventured into
new territories...

..limbs evolved,
gills disappeared...

..bodies transformed.

But we're picking up
the elephant's story...

..at an evolutionary crossroads.

In the age of the dinosaurs,

life had gone truly XXL.

The largest animals to ever
walk the Earth.

But the ancestor of the elephant
has stayed stubbornly small.

This tiny fuzzball is an early
Afrotherian.

It's got a long way to go before
it can tower over the Savannah,

but its small size
is about to pay off.

A rather large
lump of rock is coming.

Time's up for the giant dinosaurs.

Mass extinction events don't go
well for large animals.

They need too much food
when there's not much about,

they're slow to reproduce,

they simply can't bounce
back quick enough.

In order to survive, you need
to be resourceful, adaptable,

but above everything else,
you need to be small.

A bit like this little chap here.

Where is he? Here he is.

Look at that.

That is a tree hyrax.

It's about four or five months old.

What a little beauty!

This tree hyrax is
a hand-reared orphan,

allowing us to get an insight
into what the elephant might have

looked like before it bulked up...

..because, believe it or not,

the hyrax is one of the elephant's
closest living relatives.

OK, he's coming, albeit slowly.
Come on.

What about that?

I'm tempted to use the "c-word".
I mean, he's undeniably cute.

Look at the size of those eyes.

After the asteroid impact, it would

have been mammals of this size
that were left roaming the Earth.

All of the big species would have
been wiped out completely.

Hey, come on.

Mind your footing.

And you can see that it's retained
some of the characteristics

that helped them survive.

It's nimble, it's cautious,
undeniably,

and it knows how to stay
out of trouble.

But, you know, that extinction event
wasn't all about devastation.

It also offered up
a landscape of opportunity,

a complete continent
ripe for repopulation.

With no giant
dinosaurs for competition...

..Africa was an empty
stage for evolution to run riot.

The plants waste no time
bouncing back.

But the ancestor of the elephant
remains small and furry.

To get big, it needs food
and lots of it.

But the hard part isn't
finding dinner.

It's eating it.

Plants must be easy to eat, right?

After all, they can't run away,

they can't fight back
and they are everywhere.

Well, not exactly,
because obviously,

plants don't want to be eaten.

So, whilst they can't fight or
claw their way out of trouble,

they have come up with a formidable
range of defences, which

means that all of this greenery here
is almost impossible to eat.

For the ancestors of elephants,
plants posed a serious challenge,

not just because of thorns or
toxins, but what they're made of.

Even modern mammals struggle
to digest them.

Whose poo?

Well, those of you with horses
and ponies will probably get this.

This is zebra poo.

Look at that.

We don't have too much time to
admire it from the outside,

let's delve in straight away.

If I take this piece here,
look at that!

It looks like grass clippings.

So, this has been nibbled,
it's been munched,

it's gone through the stomach,
all the way through the gut of the

zebra, and yet it's barely digested,
and that's because the bulk

of the material that you can see
here is something called cellulose.

It's the tough stuff that gives
plants their strength and rigidity.

But think about it.

If a contemporary, complex,

specialised herbivore like a zebra
can't properly digest this

stuff, what chance would those
early mammals have?

In truth, we are not certain whether
the ancestors of the elephant

made the leap to plant eating before
or after the extinction event.

The fossil record is patchy...

..but we do know the leap happened

thanks to an unlikely alliance...

Not with the bugs it was hunting.

With something much smaller.

You see,
inside the elephant's ancestor,

an invisible army of single-celled
microbes is assembling.

It's not an invasion,

it's the start of a vital
partnership.

My goodness!
Who says size is not important?

This is not a termite mound,
it's a termite monument!

It's got to be five metres tall!

Termites are famous for eating wood
and other plant material,

but in truth,
that's not the whole story.

They do the chewing, it's other
organisms that do the digesting.

Inside termite mounds, we find
one of nature's strangest team-ups.

Now, Chris Packham,
a bloke who loves animals,

why is he smashing up
a termite mound?

Well, I've thought long
and hard about this.

Firstly, they're extraordinarily
resilient animals,

they'll rebuild this really quickly.

And the second thing is
that every night, all over here,

animals will be breaking into them.

Just consider me the human aardvark.

Besides, what I'm looking
for is just under the surface.

There are plenty of termites here,
but I'm looking for something else.

Ah!

Another life-form lives
here.

I think this is it.

Small, silent...

Oh, yes, it is!

..and surprisingly useful.

Look at that!

That is termite fungal comb.

Now, the interesting thing
about this fungus is that you can

only find it in termite mounds,
nowhere else in the world.

You see,
the termites sort of farm it.

They go out and they collect
all that dead plant material,

which they can't digest themselves,
and then they come back

and give it to the fungus.

The fungus does digest
the cellulose,

and then turn it into substances
which the termites can eat.

What about that?

And, of course,
it's not just termites.

Almost every plant-eater you can
name has outsourced digestion

to microbes.

The only difference...

..most keep their microbial munchers
safely tucked away inside their gut.

Just as our bodies evolved,
these sorts of partnerships evolved.

It's difficult to know when, though,
because we don't have any

fossils of prehistoric animals
with bacteria in their guts.

But one thing we know for sure, and
that is that over millions of years,

many species have become dependent
on these sorts of relationships.

Without them, they would simply die.

Sometimes, evolution's boldest moves
aren't physical adaptations,

they're partnerships.

And now,
thanks to its microbiome,

it's a good time to sample
the salad bar.

Generation by generation,

the gut balloons
into a fermentation factory...

..filled with trillions
upon trillions

of plant-munching microbes.

Just what you
need for a plant-based diet.

And less than 20 million
years later...

..we get this charming creature,
an early proboscidean...

..now standing at a respectable
one metre tall.

But evolution has hit
a problem of its own making.

This proboscidean has elongated
front teeth.

Great for snagging vegetation...

..but big teeth can have drawbacks.

This is the skull of an adult hyrax.

It's got these massively
oversized incisors there.

What are those teeth for?

Well, for seeing off predators,
things like snakes and eagles,

for displaying to other hyrax,
and, if they cross the line,

for seeing them off too.

But we've got to remember that
this is a herbivorous animal.

How's it going to be nibbling leaves
with these in the way?

Well, it's going to struggle,
and I can demonstrate

that by adapting my own teeth
with some elongated

incisors of my own, and then try
and tuck into a hyrax salad.

Frankly, it's just not working.

So, look, whilst big teeth can be
impressive, and they certainly have

their uses, if you're a herbivore,
they can represent somewhat

of an evolutionary challenge
when it comes to grabbing your grub.

Big front teeth come
with trade-offs.

For the hyrax, it means eating food
through the side of the mouth.

But with the proboscideans,

evolution went
down a different path.

One individual was born with
a slightly longer nose.

It's the beginning of something
special.

There they are.
There they are.

To see what a flexible
face can be capable of,

we need a snout specialist.

It's like being a lion, isn't it?
Going out warthog hunting.

Graceful? Not really.

These are animals
built for getting the job done.

Warthogs...

So ugly that they've crossed that
line back into being beautiful.

But we're not here for a beauty
pageant, we're here for biology,

so let's concentrate on their noses,
a remarkable multi-tool.

Warthog noses aren't
just for sniffing snacks.

They're for digging roots,
and manoeuvring food into place.

It's tough,
it's not a delicate nose like ours.

It's really robust.

But even the best nose
has its limits...

..especially when your food is
on the ground, and your face isn't.

The thing is,
when you see them standing up,

they've got quite long legs
and short necks,

so how do you get your nose
down closer to the ground?

Well, you do it like that -

kneeling down.

OK, so technically
these are the creature's wrists,

but either way, it's a
brilliant example of evolution

solving a problem of its own making.

Certainly an effective solution,
but it's not the only way

of meeting that challenge of getting
your nose closer to the ground.

But there was a creature that lived
millions of years ago that

met the challenge in a completely
different way

and came up with something
even more extraordinary.

A tool, if you like, that it
could use for eating, drinking,

smelling and exploring the world.

It would be the final flourish of an
extraordinary evolutionary journey,

a journey that started
4.2 billion years ago with

a single cell that multiplied...

..and grew in complexity...

..gained a body...

..took a deep breath,

and jumped onto land...

..before teaming up with microbes,
giving it the guts to go vegan.

And now, after countless
generations...

..the nose gets longer...

..stretching down to the ground,
giving better access to food,

so the body continues to grow...

..until we get an animal
of mindboggling complexity

and size that you
might just recognise.

Meet Paleomastodon.

It's got the trunk,
it's got the tusks.

Big ears?
Still a work in progress...

..but it's a body shape
we might finally call an elephant.

And evolution didn't stop there.

From creatures with bizarre
jaw extensions...

..others with downward-curving
tusks...

..and, of course, those
icons of the Ice Age, the mammoths.

Giant proboscideans once
spanned the globe.

Africa, Asia, Europe

and South America.

We have evidence of our relationship
with proboscideans

from all over the world, in the form
of these carvings and paintings.

These were not just creatures that
were living in that landscape.

We evolved alongside them.

Our histories are uniquely
intertwined.

Some proboscideans were lost
to natural climate change,

but for others, it was
the actions of our own ancestors.

Today, just three
species of proboscidean remain...

..each emerging within
the last 10 million years -

the Asian elephant...

..the African forest elephant...

..and, the biggest of them all,

a grass-eating giant
shaped on the open plains...

..the African savannah elephant.

Remarkable!

Aw, you're wonderful, aren't you?

Let's take one last look at these
incredible creatures.

Made up of a million billion cells,
powered by the largest lungs

of any land animal, and in there,
a gut coiled up, 20 metres long,

packed full of microbes so it can
digest all of this plant material.

And then look at the front here,
these tusks, and between them,

this extraordinary,
modified nose, its trunk,

strong enough to pick up
and carry a human,

delicate enough to pick up a penny.

The evolutionary journey
that created the bizarre

and beautiful elephant
is just one story.

Because, thanks to LUCA,
that single-celled

Last Universal Common Ancestor,

we are all part of
an ancient family.

A family that may be
bad at keeping in touch,

and may be a little dysfunctional,

but is always undeniably miraculous.

Look at this!

I'm literally leading a group
of elephants through the forest.

Who would have ever thought it?

Every living thing,
everything that's ever walked,

swum or flown is all connected
in that one tangled story, connected

by that thread that runs through a
four billion year tapestry of life.

Evolution is messy, evolution's
unpredictable and so grand,

we're still really figuring out how
it works, but there is one

thing that we do know, and that is
that given time and the resources,

it comes up with creatures
that are as remarkable as this.

And we should cherish all
life on Earth, not neglect it or

destroy it, because evolution
is wonderful,

life is beautiful.

# You're such a

# Beautiful freak

# I wish there were

# More just like you... #

Next time - how the ostrich got
the biggest egg on the planet...

It's quite emotional,
if I'm honest with you!

..a four billion year love story...

..from the first sex...

..to conquering the land.

An incredible journey of flirting...

..feathers

and fornication...

..giving rise...

Look at this!

..to one of the most
extraordinary birds.

But first,

how do we know that all
life on Earth has a common ancestor?

For centuries, fossils have provided
a window into the past,

helping scientists reconstruct
the tree of life.

In the past, our understanding
for how a fossil fits in this

larger system of life on Earth
was comparative anatomy,

and it worked for a long time,
and it was a beautiful tool.

Scientists would look at what
animals or other organisms

had in common,
or didn't have in common,

to try to recreate
their evolutionary relationships.

I think one thing
we have to bear in mind is

when we look at fossils,
we're looking at just the remains,

what is left behind,
and it's not always complete.

So, it's like trying to reconstruct
a hand from a fingerprint.

And we made lots of mistakes.
LAUGHS

But in the middle of the last
century,

a discovery changed everything.

The appearance of DNA really
was a game-changer.

We couldn't study the tree of life
with just comparative anatomy.

You need DNA.

We can compare genes to each other,
compare those gene sequences

to each other, look at the letters
that those genes contain,

and use that information to try
to figure out how different

organisms are related to each other.

By analysing DNA, scientists
have discovered that some

creatures that look very different

are actually closely related,

like the Afrotherian mammals.

And it's also allowed us to trace
the tree of life back further

than ever before,
all the way to its root.

ALL: LUCA.
LAUGHS

The Last Universal Common Ancestor
to all life on Earth.

It's the last organism that we can
point back and say, "This is

"a relative of not only us, but
bacteria and elephants and bananas."

I love thinking of LUCA
as being not just my

great-great-great-great-great-great-
whatever grandparent,

but everybody's
great-great-great-great-great- whatever grandparent.

In a landmark study,
scientists analysed

the DNA of 700 different microbial
species, searching

for patterns that would help them
reconstruct LUCA's genetic code.

Our ability to sequence DNA really
has unlocked our ability to

look deep in time to
4 billion years ago

and come to a better
understanding of what

our Last Universal Common Ancestor
may have looked like.

The study revealed that LUCA
was likely to have had

over 2,600 genes,
making it surprisingly complex.

So, it wasn't
necessarily the first form of life.

It almost certainly wasn't,
but it's the one that got by.

From that one spark, we see
the origin of all the life that we

see today in its incredible
diversity.

Realising that we all
came from LUCA,

the same seed of the tree of life,
is really humbling to me.

It's a way of thinking
about the world

in a much more connected way.

We all came from the same place.

We've not only expanded our
understanding of the tree life, but

it's changed our understanding of
where we fit into the tree of life.

Do you want to know how an elephant
is related to a clownfish?

Discover more in a poster from the
Open University on the tree of life.

To get your free copy, scan the
QR code on screen, or ring...

..or visit...