Micro Scale

Micro Monsters is a thrilling voyage into a realm that’s close to us yet quite inaccessible to the naked eye and confusing to human sensibilities - the strange, weird and wonderful world of bugs. In six fantastic, action-packed episodes we’ll see how insects use sex to conquer Earth; explain the insect arms race; and look at amazing bug abilities.

The human eye can see extraordinary detail, but the eye of a needle held at arm's length is pretty much at the limit of our vision. Anything smaller is simply invisible, at least to the naked eye. But what if …

The human eye is not all it’s cracked up to be. Human vision is pretty miraculous, but our eyes aren’t quite as powerful as you might imagine. What we can see is stuff that reflects or emits light with wavelengths in a very narrow band (since you ask, from about 750 to 400 nanometres). What we can’t see is the rest. That’s all matter that reflects or emits light over the other 99.99999999999% percent of the spectrum. In fact, we’re almost blind.

Michael Palin's 2000-mile journey along a mountain range of mystery, adventure and challenge.