Professor Wallace Arthur takes us on a trip from the starting point of familiar animals of the here and now to unfamiliar ones of the past and possible ones on other planets. Along the way, he'll ask a series of questions, including: What exactly is an animal? When did the first animals live? How did animals become more complex over time? Which animals have survived space travel – not inside spacecraft but outside them? Are there animals on exoplanets – either the 2000 or so discovered so far or the millions that we haven’t found yet? And how many different species of animals are there on Earth?
