It is astonishing, beautiful, repulsive, terrifying, funny, surprisingly touching and often just plain weird. Life in Cold Bloodis a grand tour of the world’s most extraordinary reptiles and amphibians, a festival of slime, scales and bizarre behaviour. It may not be Sir David Attenborough’s last series, but it completes his Life sequence, the grand overview that began with Life on Earth in 1979. There has been much idle speculation about who will be his successor. How could anyone replace “Whispering Dave”? Now, at 81, he shares ten guiding principles for presenting timeless wildlife television. Whoever swims in his majestic wake would do well to take heed.

1 Ask yourself: “Why am I here at all?”

You have to ask “Why am I getting between the camera and the animals?” There are several valid purposes. A narrator can tell you what the atmosphere is like: hot, cold, tense or comic. Furthermore, television has one great disability in that it is always specific, showing one particular animal. If you want to make generalisations a presenter is best doing so “in vision”. Finally, you are a point of identification for the viewer, and if people know you, you bring an audience with you.

2 Don’t undermine your credibility

Nowadays when you can make almost any animal do anything, it is vital that there is a narrator figure whom people believe. That’s why I never do commercials. If I started saying that margarine was the same as motherhood, people would think I was a liar. So when I say in this series that this frog has hip-pockets where it keeps its tadpoles, I would like to think that people will believe it’s true.

3 If needed, cheat to show the truth

Ten years ago I did the first Huw Wheldon Lecture and I called it Unnatural History, all about how you often have to engineer things to produce an impression of the truth. There have been outraged articles about this series because I get spat at by a spitting cobra from a zoo. Of course it is! This is not an adventure series where I wander around hoping to bump into a cobra that will spit at me. And how else are you going to show underground animal behaviour without building sets? Which is more truthful: long-lens close-ups of an owl eating a vole in total silence, or the same shots with appropriate sound added later? I have always been completely open about the methods we use, and we’ve been showing our techniques since The Living Planet. Now we have extra ten minute “making-of” slots, but that’s because US schedulers want 50 minutes and the BBC wants 60!

4 Work out a narrative line before you start shooting

You need a strong story: some feeling that you’re actually getting somewhere. The first programme in this series has more of an abstract thesis than others: the notion that thermo-regulation is extremely expensive for warm-blooded mammals and that other creatures have other ways of doing it.

5 Go the extra mile in research

When you’re planning a programme explaining amphibian lifecycles, for example, you say to your bright, highly qualified researcher: “I know this, this and this about newts and tadpoles, and that means by definition they are fairly well-known. But there must be some guy somewhere who’s doing research on something absolutely mind-blowing which makes that point. Find it!” They will come up with half a dozen and I pick the best. That’s how we discovered the female Venezuelan caymans that raise several other females’ young in a crèche, the legless female amphibian who feeds her young on her own skin, then regrows it, and how we got the last-ever film of Panamanian golden frogs in the wild.

6 Some viewers actually prefer to learn things

I had a huge advantage when I started 50 years ago – my job was secure. I didn’t have to promote myself. These days there’s far more pressure to make a mark, so the temptation is to make adventure television or personality shows. I hope the more didactic approach won’t be lost.

7 Travel light and take the same clothes

It’s so easy these days. There are essentials such as a passport and money, but that’s about it. I always travelled “coach” class by the way, until I reached 70 when the BBC decided I could go business class. I established years ago that there’s no point in having fancy wardrobes. I have only blue shirts and khaki trousers, three or four of each. So I can talk about snake reproduction methods on three continents and maintain some continuity.

8 Be ready for some impact on your personal life

My wife died ten years ago, but in the old days I used to be away for about three months a year. That is much less than a commercial traveller, but yes, there was a certain price to pay.

Sometimes you missed important episodes from your children’s lives. In the old days, rather than presents I nearly always brought little animals back. I was working with London Zoo so they would go into quarantine there. It’s not allowed now of course.

9 Treat the animals with respect

It’s nice to have the animal and the narrator in a two-shot when you can, but don’t make sudden movements. They will panic if they think they are about to be encircled by a film crew. The famous gorilla sequence wasn’t intended at all. Nobody is allowed to get close to the gorillas now in case of transmitting diseases. People make jokes about my hushed whispering, but if you’re next to a 16-stone male gorilla anybody would whisper! Steve Irwin did wonderful conservation work but I was uncomfortable about some of his stunts. Even if animals aren’t aware that you are not treating them with respect, the viewers are.

10 Don’t make people think proximity is safer than it is

I have rarely felt in danger, though I was a little apprehensive during the mammals series when a grizzly bear came lolloping behind me. But you should have a sense of responsibility. You may know how to deal with lions, or the lion may be tame, but game wardens in Africa will tell you that people think it’s safe to get out of the car because they have seen placid lions on television, and then they get eaten! Fortunately lions haven’t yet grasped that they could prise the tourists out of a Land Rover like sardines from a tin. Life in Cold Blood, Mon, BBC One, 9pm

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