AT the age of 77, Sir David Attenborough is to be sent crawling on his hands and knees for what could be his last wildlife series. Life in the Undergrowth will tell the story of the world’s insects.

The naturalist, who often enthuses about the ground-breaking work of his camera crews, may at last be lost for words because the BBC is to experiment with miniature surveillance cameras attached to the backs of snails and cockroaches to capture a “worm’s- eye” view of the bug world.

“We won’t need computer graphics because even ants will look enormous,” said one of the programme’s researchers.

Attenborough’s series such as The Life of Mammals and Life on Earth have made millions for the BBC in overseas sales, and Life in the Undergrowth should do the same.

It is a far cry from when Attenborough started out 50 years ago. The technology was then so primitive that the rainforest was too dark to film in and cameramen used clockwork cameras that had to be re-wound every 40 minutes.

As well as the “snailcam”, the new series will use fibre- optic probes, similar to those used in surgery, to enter ant heaps and wasp colonies.

Attenborough, who will be 80 by the time the programme reaches the screen in 2006, said: “The series was my suggestion and I am doing the research. I hope it will be as captivating and exciting as the others, but I have no idea whether this will be my swan song.”

Researchers from the BBC’s natural history unit are drawing up a list of subjects for the programme.

Attenborough is likely to visit the world’s most populated “city” in Japan, an ants’ nest with more than 1m queens and 306m workers, and travel to New Guinea to marvel at a spider that can spin two-metre webs which are so strong that local people use them as fishing nets.

However, much of the filming will be done in Britain at his own request to avoid the strain of too much travel.

He will study the empid fly, which attracts a female to mate with by hunting a smaller insect and offering it as a wedding present for her to eat. The fly first learnt to “gift wrap” the present in silk and then discovered that it could get the desired effect just as well by parcelling up a piece of grit if there were no smaller insects to be caught.

“There is more sex and violence in your compost heap than on Channel 4,” said Dr George McGavin, assistant curator of entomology at Oxford University Museum of Natural History and also scientific adviser to the programme. “This series will open people’s eyes to the incredible range of behaviours and species.”

The programme will delve into an acre of British pastureland to “find” a billion insects, mites and spiders, including 38m centipedes and millipedes. “If you could compare weights on a giant scales, there would be 300lb of insect for every 1lb of human in the world,” said Simon Williams, one of the programme’s researchers.

Attenborough will examine the largest and the smallest: from stick insects in Borneo that are 14 inches (36cm) long, long-horned beetles in South America with bodies that are 6in (15cm) long and African locusts in swarms that can weigh as much as 70,000 tons, to tiny wasps measuring 0.2mm that can swim underwater.

The curious will include a wasp that hunts spiders and carries them off and a beetle that can use an “appeasement” scent to disguise its identity as it enters an ants’ nest.

The £5m series will consist of at least five programmes looking at the evolution of the insect, its ability to fly, its use of silk and its social relationships within its own world and with other insects.

It is possible that Attenborough could find and name his own species during filming. In early field research a scientist looking for one type of beetle in New Guinea used a method known as “fogging” to smoke insects out of trees — and found 80 unknown species.

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