Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
Is this the cuddliest Christmas show ever?
Two polar bear cubs take their first perilous steps with mum in this year’s most heartwarming show
Cold calls in the middle of the night are usually unwelcome. But when wildlife film-maker Philip Dalton was woken by the ultimate cold call at 3am, he was thrilled... because on the other end of the line was a polar bear. ‘My camera crew and I had been in an Arctic cabin for five days in early spring, trapped by terrible storms,’ recalls Philip. ‘So when the phone rang, I thought it would be the office in London demanding to know what was happening. Instead I heard this scratching, sniffing sound, and realised I was listening to a bear.’
Philip and his team had placed a number of camera traps on remote snow plains on the Svalbard
Islands, off the coast of Norway. The cameras are activated by movement, which in turn sends a signal by satellite phone to Philip’s own mobile, 100 miles away.
The crew rushed to collect the videos. ‘We’d got some amazing shots, all captured without a human being anywhere near.’
These are the pictures that mark the start of an incredible trek in Snow Bears, BBC1’s breathtaking Boxing Day documentary that follows two baby polar bears and their mother as they head north in search of food. Polar bears are notoriously difficult to film, and tracking them across hundreds of miles, from den to pack ice, had never been attempted before. ‘It’s an incredible adventure in an extreme environment,’ says Philip.
This unmissable show, narrated by Kate Winslet, begins on a magical morning high above the Arctic Circle. As the cubs poke their heads above the snow for the first time, the mother bear tries to encourage them away from the warmth of the den. During the weeks since their birth, her babies have been safe under the ice, but they must now travel 250 miles to find whale blubber and seal meat, or they’ll starve.
The mother starts to slide down the 1,000ft hillside on her belly. The male cub is quick to copy her but his sister is more cautious. She hangs back... until with a leap, she’s sliding after her brother. These babies are still too small to eat meat and must rely on their mother’s rich milk. But her fat reserves are running low and she needs to feed.
Hunger isn’t her only problem though. An amorous male has picked up her scent. Male polar bears will kill cubs to give their own future offspring a better chance of survival. ‘The mother was very afraid of this lone male,’ Philip says. ‘It was obvious she’d do everything to protect her babies, including put her own life on the line.’ To lure the male away from the cubs, she lets him pursue her for miles across the ice. It’s a risky strategy because she leaves her young unprotected. But another male is soon on the scene. Mum’s two suitors square up to each other – and while they’re distracted, she makes her escape.
Reunited with her cubs, she leads them to the island’s northern coast. As the youngsters play, Mum finds an icehole, a fissure where seals might pop up for air. Layers of snow have settled over it, so to break through she leaps in the air, and crashes down headfirst. The little female bear copies. She doesn’t catch a seal... but she does get smothered in snow.
When a seal pup strays onto the ice it seems the mother bear might get a meal. But the seal pup’s mum risks her life to pop up from an icehole and shriek an alarm. The little seal flees and the bear goes hungry.
At last though, her patience is rewarded and she snares an unwary adult seal. ‘The hunt sequences give us a wonderful insight into the bears’ minds,’ says Philip. ‘They’re uniquely curious, with a repertoire of clever tricks.’
The next sequence is something never shown before on TV – the terrifying effect on bears in the water as a section of glacier crashes in to the sea, causing a tidal wave. Underwater cameras capture the turmoil as the bears tumble through the water. As the chaos subsides, the mother begins to panic: she can’t see her cubs. After a frantic search, she finds them sheltering on the tip of an iceberg. As the bears head yet further north, in some places swimming, in others hauling themselves onto fragmented slabs of ice and walking, the crew follow them using a camera mounted on a fake iceberg that motored slowly along in the water. ‘It got outstanding close-ups that look like the bears are about to jump out of the screen,’ says Philip.
The further north they travelled, the more bears the team saw. It’s a popular myth that polar bears are solitary creatures but, when food is plentiful, they can be amiably gregarious. For the mother and her cubs, their resilience was rewarded when they discovered a dead fin whale floating in the ice. One or two bears had already swum across and climbed onto this island of blubber – but the family were able to join in and eat their fill before the scene became a feeding frenzy.
This extraordinary film ends with a touching and intimate shot of the mother bear reclining on her back, as her babies snuggle in for a meal. However harsh their world, she will always be ready to protect them. Snow Bears will be shown on Boxing Day at 6.30pm on BBC1.