The cheeky elephants that walk on tiptoes
A family of elephants has learnt to do something very clever to pilfer food... Their fascinating story is just one of several David Attenborough tells in the latest series of Dynasties
Everyone knows the hardships endured by wildlife film-makers – the long days and weeks spent hunched in a hide, patiently waiting for a single glimpse of an elusive snow leopard or a black jaguar. For camerawoman Mary Melville, filming a family of pumas in Patagonia at the frozen tip of South America for BBC1’s new four-part series of Dynasties, the shoot turned out slightly differently. ‘The pumas weren’t bothered by our presence at all,’ she says. ‘They simply ignored us, in fact. It was almost rude!’
The result was some of the most astonishing footage of big cats in the wild ever captured on film. Single mother Rupestre, bringing up four cubs on the shores of a crystal blue lake in the Chilean Andes, allowed the team to film within a few feet of her family. One afternoon saw the five animals line up side by side, all gazing into the lens as if for a portrait photo, with the spectacular ice-capped mountains as their backdrop.
It’s an image that sums up this bigbudget natural history show, which focuses each week on a single family of animals and follows the journey of a new generation from birth to adulthood. The first series in 2018 included lions, tigers and chimpanzees, and this time the teams watch the pumas, a pack of surprisingly lovable hyenas, a trio of cheetah cubs struggling for survival – and an elephant mother who repeatedly risks everything to save her babies.
Narrated by David Attenborough, every episode is crammed with epic footage. But above all, it’s the astonishing true stories that make this series so memorable, almost like a soap opera set in the wild. ‘The animals write the scripts,’ says producer Simon Blakeney.
The crew had no idea what was in store when they trekked to the Amboseli National Park in Kenya in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro to film a group of two dozen elephants – including a female known as Angelina. With her left tusk twisted so that it points backwards, she is unmistakeable. Already the mother of several daughters, she was heavily pregnant when the team arrived, and when she gave birth her family gathered round her in a tight knot, guarding the male baby – soon dubbed Atlas – as he took his first unsteady steps. Newborn elephants are almost blind, and with so many females around him it took Atlas several attempts before he found his mother and began to suckle. The
IN THIS SERIES IT IS REALLY THE ANIMALS WHO WRITE THE SCRIPTS
camera team were thrilled, but four days later they were left speechless… when another calf was born, a female the crew called Alana.
Angelina had produced twins, an event so rare it has been recorded in Kenya less than half a dozen times before. But this brought terrible risks, because keeping just one infant alive is a tough challenge – this herd had lost 10 calves in five years. Protecting and feeding two
would be next to impossible.
Within a couple of weeks, as the older elephants let their concentration slip at a muddy waterhole, Atlas strayed into fatal danger. Bogged down in soft mud, he fell over and sank. Within seconds, all the crew could see were his four feet and the tip of his trunk, desperately writhing for air. Then he vanished completely. It seemed certain he had drowned, but by a miracle the adults were able to dig him free and roll him into shallow water, where they held his head up until he regained the strength to stand.
Atlas was in danger again when marauding bull elephants, invading the herd in search of a mate, lashed out at the calves with their trunks and feet. The family panicked and stampeded, with the babies battling to keep up. Distressing as it is to see, the herd in full flight is a remarkable sight. But the scenes that follow are more upsetting still as the elephants endure months of
drought. Atlas and Alana are skin and bones, too exhausted to stand. Somehow, their mother finds the will to drive off repeated attacks by hyenas, until at last the rains come.
Mothers willing to sacrifice everything, even their lives, is a constant theme in Dynasties II. In Patagonia, the cameras caught a fight between Rupestre and a male puma who was lying in wait to mate with her – and kill her four cubs. As the four youngsters scattered, Rupestre lashed out, slashing at the male’s flanks with her claws and then rolling onto her back to protect herself. Again and again, as he tried to turn his attention to the cubs, she went on the attack. By the time he broke away, the young pumas were gone. Battered and bleeding, Rupestre spent the next 36 hours searching for them, calling in pitiful mews until the last one returned.
The cameras caught graphic pictures of hunting scenes too, as the pumas stalked wild relatives of llamas known as guanacos. To ensure her cubs had enough meat, Rupestre tackled the biggest animals, taking the risk of being badly kicked by the thrashing guanacos as she threw herself onto their backs. Nine out of 10 hunts ended in failure. And when she returned exhausted, she had to put up with her cubs practising their own hunting skills, jumping on her back as she tried to sleep.
The most impressive pictures of all were taken at night with thermal imaging cameras. A party of bull elephants, searching for an easy meal, were filmed raiding a field of crops. In total darkness, they stepped over the wire perimeter fence and then tiptoed – picking up their feet and moving so slowly that they made no sound at all. By the time the farmers realised they were there, it was too late. Hungry elephants can strip an entire field of maize in less than two hours.
To prevent farmers from harming the elephants, armies of conservationists patrol the fields, throwing firecrackers in the dark to drive the animals away.
It’s a serious problem, but it cannot be denied there is something comical about an elephant on tiptoes.