Penguin and seal appear to share a joke after epic chase in David Attenborough’s new BBC 

A leopard seal chasing a penguin through crumbling glaciers for territory on the beach is one of the spectacular moments captured in David Attenborough’s new documentary.

Seven Worlds, One Planet will show starfish carpet the seabed in its highly anticipated first episode on BBC1 tomorrow. It is a seven-part documentary from BBC’s Natural History Unit narrated by Sir David Attenborough 

Viewers will be transported to the Antarctic and given an exclusive look at the mannerisms of Weddell seals. 

David Attenborough is pictured on location for Seven Worlds, One Planet. The programme involved 1,749 days of filming across 41 countries

The spectacular footage will examine how the penguins crowd any ice-free space and seal-lions chase them for making their territory

They pursue the Gentoo penguin underwater before they narrowly escape their clutch by launching themselves on to land.

The relentless nature of the Weddell who circles and toys with the penguin is captured in aerial footage. It desperately tries to escape on to broken ice.

Once the penguin lands, the animals communicate in their respective mother tongue’s and share a fiery exchange.

Moments later, the seal skulks off the ice cap’s edge and leaves the miniature penguin exhausted.

Tomorrow’s episode will look at how colonies of king penguins crowd any ice-free land, in the series which involved 1,749 days of filming across 41 countries.  

Cameraman Mark MacEwen filming elephant seals in Antarctica during production of Seven Worlds, One Planet

Cameraman Hugh Miller gets close to the Leopard seal which is three metres long. While the sea mammal is an agile swimmer, this does not deter Mr Miller from edging closer

In tomorrow’s episode, a penguin rockets and propels itself in a bid to escape the chasing sea lion. The seven-part hopes to shed light on the ‘marvellous creatures’ across seven continents

Why don’t polar bears eat penguins? The riddle is probably as old as any other that you will find in a Christmas cracker. And the answer is not difficult to work out: penguins and polar bears live at opposite ends of the world and never meet. Pictured, in mortal danger, a penguin tries desperately to escape the clutches of a leopard seal in Antarctica

The seal species can tell people how the environment is doing because they are ‘long-lived and high enough in the food chain’, according to ecologist Dr Jay Rotella who features in Seven Planets tomorrow. This once again drives home the programme’s message on conservation at its core.

He says ‘we see [seal’s] as a canary in a coal mine’.

Leopard seal mother’s are ‘extremely maternal’ and live in the largest marine protected place on the planet.  

Humpback whales blow ‘curtains of buttons’ to lure their prey in the Antarctica, before swimming up and catching the water in their mouth

Fur seal pups in South Georgia will feature in tomorrow’s pilot episode of Seven Planets and will reveal an exclusive insight into how the South Georgia seals are trying to fight extinction

Meanwhile the spherical harmony of humpback whales lure their prey by blowing water like ‘curtains of buttons’, ready for a ‘banquet’ of fish as Attenborough narrates.

He will also jump to South Georgia where viewers will meet the once-extinct fur seal pups which have been studied for more than 60 years. He will shine a spotlight on the species tough competition as a result of overcrowding on beaches.  

And Attenborough hopes to explain why communities of animals and plants across the seven continents are still so different from one another as a first for a BBC natural history series to break down animals this way instead of habitat. 

Each one has their own ‘marvellous creatures’, ‘own glory’ and Attenborough has spent four years trying to capture their unique characters.