Planet Earth part two - press pack
Planet Earth TV firsts
Planet Earth TV firsts include...
Animals
Humpbacked whales creating a net of bubbles to catch their prey in Antarctica, filmed from the air
Polar bears swimming underwater, caught from the air
Underwater filming of eiderducks diving for mussels in polynas (iceholes with dangerous currents)
Time-lapse filming of emperor penguins in a huddle over winter to protect their eggs –
revealing new science about the dynamics of this extraordinary behaviour
Extensive sequence of a polar bear attacking a walrus herd
Elusive Tibetan fox filmed hunting pika, small rabbit-like animals that live underground on the Tibetan Plateau
Two million Mongolian gazelle migrating across the plains
Lions hunting and killing elephants in the middle of the night, filmed with infra-red cameras
Flock of 20 million red-billed quelea –
the most abundant bird species
Blue bird of paradise displaying in the wild
Gliding leaf frog
The process of the parasitic cordycep taking over the body of an insect, filmed in time lapse
Red crab spider living on pitcher plants and catching prey
Infanticide behaviour of chimpanzees when they capture and eat an infant from another colony
Extraordinary new behaviour revealed as 30-strong bands of highly venomous sea snakes hunt off newly discovered Indonesian coral reefs
Killer bull fur seals attack king penguins
Surfing dolphins at Byron Bay
Mouse lemurs in the extraordinary baobab trees on Madagascar
Exquisitely-shelled nautilus hunting in the dark
Blue whales, weighing over 140 tonnes, feeding on krill
More than 100 sailfish attacking a shoal of bait fish
An extraordinary deep sea light show performed by vampiroteuthis –
literally the "vampire squid from hell" –
one of the weirdest of all the deep sea's weird creatures.
New locations
Svarthamaren –
the most southerly breeding colony on the planet. These remote nunataks are the summits of mountains that are drowned by the Antarctic ice sheet
Newly-discovered Raja Ampat Islands, off Eastern Indonesia, which are home to the richest coral reefs on the planet
Kong Karls Land –
Norwegian Arctic where no human has set foot in a quarter of a century
Mongolian Eastern Steppe
Tibetan Plateau
The first high-definition pictures from extraordinary communities of life that survive on the volcanic hot vents over two miles down off the coast of Japan
Using remotely-operated deep sea submersibles, remarkable new images of rich communities of animal life that exists in the total darkness at the submerged summits of deep sea seamounts off California and New England.
New techniques
The Ciniflex Heligimble –
an aerial photography system developed for Hollywood movies which stabilises a powerful lens so that animals can be filmed from high above without disturbing their normal behaviour
HD time lapse sequence of Southern Lights –
Aurora australis
New night-time cameras and infra-red lights used to film lions hunting elephants
Ultra high-speed cameras creating the ultimate slow motion images of the great white shark taking their seal prey
A flash strobe system linked to an inbuilt timer mechanism that fires the cameras enabling new underwater time-lapse of feeding corals, sea urchins felling forests of kelp, and giant starfish in a feeding frenzy, using a digital stills camera
A remarkable new tracking system to carry a camera smoothly up over a 100 metres to the very top of the world's highest tree in a single seamless shot. This complex rig of ropes and stabilising system was also used in the world's rainforest –
not only to travel from forest floor to the top of the canopy, but also moving horizontally though the thick vegetation
Computerised time-lapse system that ran for many months to show in one gently moving shot a European woodland floor come to life with new flowers, as it went through all the seasonal changes
Highly sensitive high-definition cameras that filmed spectacular displays of deep sea bio-luminescence of the vampire squid
A deep sea time-lapse camera that was specially housed to survive the enormous pressures two miles down at the bottom of the abyss. Operated remotely from a submersible, this camera was used to show how the carcass of the dead tuna was quickly consumed by a weird range of deep sea scavengers.
Printable version