When animal attraction gets back to basics.

DR Dolittle could do it and now Charlotte Uhlenbroek does it in this new TV series. There can't be anyone who hasn't wondered what animals would say if they could speak. Of course, the point is they can communicate - it's just that we don't understand the language.

As David Attenborough or some other camera-carrying wildlife film-maker points a lens at them, they might simply be saying, "Get lost, you're invading my privacy" or "Go away, I'm fed up with being the bug version of Big Brother". Uhlenbroek knows otherwise, telling us that animals have many different and surprising ways of sending messages, shaped by the world in which they live.

In the Arctic - "one of the most inhospitable places on earth," she reminded us - male polar bears have problems finding a date as they search areas the size of Britain for a female. Picking up a bird, so to speak, is as likely as Big Brother's Jade squeezing into a size eight dress.

Polar bears have good eyesight, but are looking for a white object in a white landscape. In their favour, they have a fantastic sense of smell. They can smell a seal sitting on the ice 30kms away, which is very bad news if old Bruno fancies a snack.

So male polar bears sniff around for the opposite sex's scent. The female's huge feet have scent pads which leave aromatic marks in the snow, indicating "I'm female, come and get me".

A randy male has been known to follow female footprints for more than 100 kilometres.

Next, we found Uhlenbroek on a golf course in search of lovesick beetles. You thought the programme was about animals communicating, she obviously thinks it's about pulling.

She applied a drop of "potent love potion" - the pheremone that female beetles use to attract males - to her body and within minutes had hundreds of beetles crawling all over her and into her T-shirt. Lucky old beetles, you thought.

Desert iguanas can't rely on scent as the heat means perfume evaporates in seconds. They deposit small packets of waxy scent as they move across the ground.

Ultra-violet vision allows them to see and follow the marks. They can tell if the visitor is a neighbour or outsider as well as sex and age, providing all the information you'd get through a dating agency.

Just as you thought it couldn't get any odder, Ulhlenbroek materialised amid the sun-drenched vineyards of Slovenia in search of something called a stink bug.

The female gives off a scent to attract the male but, because it wafts around, he can't pin down the exact location. So the clever female shakes her body, producing short bursts of vibrations which travel down the plant and into the soil, carrying this insect morse code message to the male. "What can be more romantic than the idea that plants across the world are humming to the tune of love?" suggested our glamorous guide.

It's amazing what you hear on the grapevine.