Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
SURVIVAL IN THE SNOW
From polar bears to Arctic squirrels, a heart-warming new documentary reveals the tricks creatures use to cope with life in the world’s coldest habitats
There’s a young mum in Canada whose terrible parenting skills will have viewers itching to adopt her adorable twins. She’s a black bear, and she abandons her babies in a blizzard not once but twice in wildlife filmmaker Gordon Buchanan’s latest series, Life In The Snow.
The first time it happens is when Mum picks the worst time to emerge from hibernation with her threemonth-old twins, who’ve never ventured outside before. There’s a howling gale and snowdrifts so deep that the cubs keep vanishing from sight. When they emerge they’re plastered white, with only their eyes and the tips of their noses showing brown.
An experienced mother would take her vulnerable family straight back indoors. But this female, only a few years old herself, can’t control her hunger, and selfishly sets off in search of something to eat. Within minutes the twins are shivering and starting to freeze to death. Their survival instincts kick in, but in the worst possible way. When bears sense danger they climb trees – and that’s exactly what the cubs try to do. Above ground level they’re even more exposed to the vicious winds, and within minutes the snow on their fur has frozen to ice.
By the time the mother returns it’s looking perilous for the cubs. She calls them down... but then hurries away a second time, still desperate to eat. The cubs hunker down in the snow, too miserable and cold to move. ‘That night the temperatures dropped to -12°C,’ says Gordon. ‘It seemed certain that next morning the cubs would be dead. But miraculously, the maternal instinct had kicked in, just in time, and Mum had suckled her cubs as she sheltered them with her body. The sight of their tiny faces, peeping from her fur, is one of the most rewarding sights you can imagine.’
The series focuses on the incredible adaptations that enable animals to survive in conditions so hostile that humans don’t stand a chance. Gordon was lucky enough to film two more cubs emerging from hibernation with their mother – this time, baby polar bears. They’d been underground for three months, feeding on their mother’s milk which is up to 40 per cent fat, and increasing their weight 20 times over. The temperature in their den is 30°C hotter than the air outside: packed snow makes a surprisingly good insulator, keeping heat in.
Polar bears have thicker fur than any of their cousins, but it isn’t just that which helps them survive so far north in the Arctic. Under their skin is a 4in layer of fat, which is so effective that they can swim 30 miles in freezing seas without feeling the cold. To maintain this duvet of oily insulation, they need to eat at least one seal a week, though they don’t consume all of it – just the blubber.
‘Their bodies are specially adapted to deal with extreme cholesterol levels,’ says Gordon. ‘They have supersenses – they can smell and track a seal from 20 miles away, and even detect its scent through 4ft of ice. I’m always very wary around polar bears: they’re supremely confident, with a swagger you don’t see even in tigers or lions, and I know that when they look at this plump Scotsman they see nothing but a hearty meal.’
Still, he finds them irresistible to study. ‘ I watched one last week, rolling about on the ice as if it was relaxing on silk sheets,’ he says. ‘ Polar bears can sunbathe even while we’re freezing solid.’
Arctic animals are among the most advanced on earth, because evolution here is at its most efficient. Only the very healthiest have a hope of survival. The Arctic ground squi r r el , for example, is able to let its body temperature fall to -2.9°C as it hibernates. Adaptations in its body chemistry prevent ice crystals from forming in its blood. And earlier this autumn Gordon was in Churchill, on the north coast of Canada, to film Arctic Live for BBC2, where he was amazed to see red foxes, exactly the same species that lives in Britain. But instead of the sick ly, scrawny animals that slink around our cities at dusk, the Churchill foxes were as bushy as a guardsman’s busby, and twice as big. ‘These were the Arnold Schwarzeneggers of foxes,’ says Gordon.
His fascination with Arctic animals almost cost him his life two years ago, while filming wolves on Ellesmere Island, Canada. Walking from his camp to the spot where he’d spotted the pack a day earlier, Gordon stopped to rest, when he realised that a herd of 20 huge musk oxen were bearing down on him. ‘I was downwind of them,’ he says, ‘so they couldn’t smell me. And they couldn’t see me because musk oxen are notoriously short-sighted. But worse than that, they’re famously badtempered, and even paranoid – they have to be, because they live in constant danger of being attacked by wolves.’
Gordon was terrified the animals would sense him and charge. ‘Not only could they outrun me, they’re massive, the tanks of the Arctic – one ox can easily fight off and cripple half a dozen wolves. But they were getting closer, and I had no means of transport, no snowmobile, just my own feet. This was tundra so there were no trees to hide me, let alone to climb. I had a choice: stay absolutely stock still and try to hide behind my camera, or make a dash for it.
‘Survival experts have told me that, if you’re being pursued by an angry herbivore, an animal that’s intent on trampling you but not eating you, the best technique is to throw objects away as you run – hats, backpacks, anything. The animals might just stop to investigate, instead of chasing you down. So I was ready to run, even if it meant discarding every item I was wearing. But just as my nerve was about to crack, something spooked the herd and they turned and trotted off.’
Gordon believes it might have been the scent of the wolves he’d been filming that saved him. Perhaps he’d been so close to the wolf pack for so long that some of their predator smell had rubbed off onto his clothing. That makes him one of the few humans ever to be saved by wolves in the Arctic.
Life In The Snow is on 29 December at 8pm on BBC1.
‘Polar bears can smell a seal from 20 miles away’