Natural World Special: Attenborough's Ark, BBC Two, review David Attenborough's Natural World Special: Attenborough's Ark (BBC Two, Friday) acted as a prelude to a three-part autobiographical retrospective devoted to the life and work of this national treasure which will be broadcast later this month. Attenborough's Ark had a simple but effective format: he selected 10 rare or endangered species, all displaying peculiar characteristics which instantly mark them out as riveting television personalities. Among those that made the grade were the cuddly but lethal solenodon from the Dominican Republic, one of the planet's only venomous mammals; the blind but acutely sensitive amphibious olm, which can survive without eating for 10 years at a time; and the minute Darwin's frog, the males of which incubate eggs in their jowly mouths and then spit them out when they're hatched. Everyone will have had their own favourite - mine was the black lion tamarin monkey, long thought to be extinct but in fact hanging on bravely in the Amazonian Morro do Diabo Park. Brief interviews with conservationists dedicated to studying and nurturing these freaks of evolution added depth to the picture. The photography was as stunning as ever, and the animals were all weirdly endearing. I only wish that in playing Noah, Sir David would curb his tendency to patronise these remarkable creatures - many of them with ancestries millions of years longer than our human one - by referring to them as "little chaps."