He was a professor of zoology at the University of Swansea and then worked for many years for the Natural History Unit of the BBC. He won prizes with his films for Wildlife on One and for The Living Isles. He produced the television series Supersense (1988) and Lifesense (1991) and wrote the wonderful books that accompanied them. He currently has his own production company that produced the SuperNatural television series, in which he introduced many pioneering filming techniques and for which he wrote this book. John Downer is also a well-known wildlife photographer and made many of the photos in this volume.