DOCUMENTARY | SEVEN WORLDS , ONE PLANET
IMAGES Camera hides were used to get close to cassowaries, the world’s most dangerous bird
If you surprise cassowaries, they could kick you to death with that claw
Another sequence showing an animal looking after its young is the story of the cassowary. This bird lives in the deep jungle in the north of Australia, which is the oldest jungle on Earth. It was once walked by dinosaurs and, when they became extinct, cassowaries took their place. The females stand 6ft tall, the males 5ft, but they rear up above head height and have claws on their feet longer than a velociraptor’s. Napper says: “If they could see you, they might not be a problem. But if you surprise them, they could kick you to death with that claw.” They’re also quite shy, which is why – alongside the knowledge that they could kill – Napper decided to lay camera traps to see which trees they liked to go to before sending in a film crew. “The camera traps came back with the information that there was a male cassowary who had two tiny chicks. It also revealed which trees he was likely to go to, so we set up hides around the jungle at those points. It was a bit of a stake-out to get that sequence actually.”
A MESSAGE TO VIEWERS We couldn’t finish this feature without including the most distressing moment of the series, where walruses are seen unwittingly throwing themselves off large cliffs and are met with a gruesome end. On the coast of northern Russia, in the Arctic, is one of the biggest concentrations of animals on the continent. Almost the entire population of Pacific walrus – over 100,000 of them, are crammed on to a beach no more than a few hundred metres long. These large congregations are becoming more frequent as climate change causes sea ice – where they would normally spend time – to retreat. The location is so remote that it took the crew over a week to get there. It had also never been filmed before, so there was very little that Napper could do to plan. “Before
we left, the extent of what we knew was that, in order to show both the scale and the behaviour of these walruses, we would need two camera systems: the drone was needed to show the scale and the ground system was needed for close-ups, to capture moments of behaviour.” Polar bears also occupy the beach, as they find their sea ice resting spots start to disappear as well. They’re no match for an adult walrus and rarely succeed in killing them, but there is another opportunity for the polar bears to enjoy a blubbery meal. The beach is backed by cliffs and some of the walruses climb up high to escape the crowds below. Drone shots were able to capture the polar bears approaching these precariously placed walruses and reveal for the first time the strange behaviour that followed. Spooked by the polar bears’ presence, the walruses throw themselves off the cliffs to the expectant safety of water, but are instead met by the rock’s sharp edges. The polar bears were then able to feed on the carcasses of the walruses that had died. Napper concludes: “I wanted to open the episode with this story, because it shows somewhere that I think is unexpected for Asia. When I think of Asia, I automatically think of south-east Asia and certainly don’t think about it having walruses. So, I think that was quite surprising for viewers and hopefully quite the spectacle, too.” A spectacle it was. Let’s just hope this new profound method of storytelling resonates with the public. We live on the same planet as the animals and, like these animals, are not immune to the ever-more- apparent effects of climate change. SEVEN WORLDS, ONE PLANET IS NOW ON BBC IPLAYER AND BBC AMERICA
28 DEF I N I T ION | FEBRUARY 2020
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