Dragons Alive (BBC1): THEY have sharp teeth, extraordinary senses and very smart survival strategies. Sounds like a few TV executives I know, but the narrator of this new wildlife series was talking about reptiles.

These "living cousins of the dinosaurs" fall into four groups - lizards, snakes, crocodiles and tortoises and turtles.

Apologies for sounding like a David Attenborough lecture but the programme did bombard us with facts and figures. The narration refused to call a snake simply a snake. No, snakes were "slinky", crocodiles were "cunning" and Komodo dragons "swaggered".

There was an awful lot of sex and violence considering the programme went out before the watershed. Not that you could tell the giant tortoises were mating. You'd see more movement in a mortuary. The makers had to speed up the film to make it more interesting.

Death featured as the reptiles hunted for food, ripping apart zebras, buffalo and rabbits. Their food habits were as nasty to watch as Jill's dinner party in the blissfully bad taste Nighty Night on BBC2. Cath declared that she didn't eat meat. "Don't worry," said Jill, "it's mostly gristle".

Unlike Cath, the alligator snapping turtle will eat anything it can gets its jaws around. Leatherback turtles ("the gentle giants of the reptile world grow as big as a double bed") had better watch what they eat or they'll have no future.

They like jellyfish but can't tell the difference between those creatures and an indigestible plastic bag. Scientists predict such turtles might be heading for extinction in the next ten years.

We learnt what puts a smile on a crocodile's face - herds gathering for their annual migration across the river. The problem is that this fast food is too fast. The wildebeest move as one through the water, a mass studded with horns and hooves that presents a real threat of crocodiles being trampled underfoot.

But crocodiles are clever. Of all reptiles, their brain is most like ours. They've even developed a method of dividing up the carcass of the animal they've killed. This involves one croc holding the body, while the other's spinning action "carves" up the corpse. They don't leave much on their plate either, consuming bone, skin and hooves.

As you'd expect from a BBC wildlife series, there was some remarkable photography of these animal happenings. The hatching of baby turtles was particularly spectacular. Nine weeks after mum has buried her eggs on the beach, they hatch and the babies tunnel upwards through the hard-packed sand. Their digging is synchronised so they all surface together.

Then it's a quick dash for the sea together, in the hope that stragglers won't get picked off for food by other creatures.

Published: 25/03/2004