HISSTERICAL... meerkats rumble BBC’s fake snake
But can you spy the other hidden cameras in the hit follow-up to Planet Earth?
UNDER the searing sun of the Kalahari desert in South Africa, this huge cobra seems poised to launch a deadly strike on a group of tiny meerkats.
They had been goading the venomous snake, knowing their only hope of avoiding a bite was to tire it out and force it to slither away.
But then they realised something was wrong…
For the cobra was, in fact, an ultra-realistic ‘spy’, an animatronic snake whose skin cloaks a hidden camera that allows filmmakers to capture natural wildlife behaviour up close.
It was one of several robot creatures used on the hit BBC show Spy In The Wild to film unique footage of rare, exotic and occasionally dangerous animals, including wolves and crocodiles.
‘I think the reason they worked out the cobra wasn’t real was because it didn’t smell quite right,’ says series producer Philip Dalton, who spent 10 weeks in the Kalahari, enduring 16-hour days to capture the meerkats on camera.
‘We could see their noses twitching. And then one stared down the snake’s throat and may have noticed it had no teeth.’
Once the colony realised they had been frightened by an impostor, their first act was to accept the interloper. Within seconds they were seen crawling all over the cobracamera and cuddling each other. Another camera was hidden inside a model meerkat. ‘It was my job to smear that with the meerkats’ droppings to ensure they accepted it as one of their own,’ says Mr Dalton. ‘It wasn’t the most pleasant task but it worked a treat.
‘The spies meant we see the world – and their behaviour – from the meerkats’ own perspective. And it was fascinating to see how they work as a team.’
As many as 30 cameras were used to shoot remarkable footage of these and other animals.
To get the shots of wolves in the Canadian Arctic, the team used a camera placed inside a phoney cub. Initially, the wolves were suspicious but once they urinated on the robot, they accepted the ‘spy’ into their group.
The new gadgets follow the success of the Robo Spoonbill spy camera used in previous BBC wildlife programmes – and which returns to our screens tomorrow in Winterwatch. ‘Robospoony has been refined,’ says presenter Chris Packham. ‘We are confident we’ll get some pictures of these magnificent birds.’
Spy In The Wild, BBC One, Thursdays, 8pm, and Winterwatch, BBC Two, tomorrow, 8pm.