WILDLIFE FILMS – ART, SCIENCE, OR BOTH?
NATURAL HISTORY FILM-MAKERS WOULD HAVE LITTLE TO GO ON IF IT WEREN’T FOR SCIENTISTS BUT SOMETIMES THOSE ROLES ARE REVERSED, SAYS STUART BLACKMAN.
Johannes Fritz is en route from Germany to Tuscany in a microlight. He’s not alone. The biologist is accompanied by 31 hand-reared, Critically Endangered northern bald ibises that have been trained to fly alongside his aircraft. He is teaching the birds the route between their breeding grounds and their over-wintering site.
“We are in Tyrol now, near the Italian border,” Fritz says. “There’s bad weather due tomorrow so we’ll wait here a couple of days and then push on. Yesterday was a key stage across the mountains. It went perfectly.”
But the journey might not be taking place at all were it not for the efforts of some remarkably inventive film-makers at the end of the 1980s.
John Downer in the UK and Bill Lishman in the United States were inspired by the work of the celebrated ethologist Konrad Lorenz, who showed that waterfowl chicks will ‘imprint’ on the first thing they see after hatching and follow it everywhere.
“When I was asked about making a film about bird flight, all previous films had showed birds in the air from the ground,” says John Downer. “So when I was thinking about how to shoot it, it was all about how I could make it feel like you’re part of the flock.
“I ended up living with a duck until it could fly. Then I took it up with me on my first parascender flight with a camera and it was suddenly flying alongside me. It was the most natural thing in the world to view it like that.”
That led to Downer’s groundbreaking film In-Flight Movie. Meanwhile, Lishman was working similar magic with Canada geese that would lead to another landmark film.
Johannes Fritz watched Lishman’s Fly Away Home at a crucial moment. He was also building on Lorenz’s work (at Lorenz’s erstwhile research institute, as it happens) to study
the social behaviour of handreared northern bald ibises.
“It went pretty well until one day in August when all 10 birds left the valley,” says Fritz. “We got reports of them from the Netherlands, Poland, Lichtenstein, Hungary. Most of them died.” It became clear that the birds had been trying to migrate but, as all were hand-reared, there were no experienced birds to show them the way.
“Fly Away Home inspired us to think about leading them to an appropriate wintering site.” The first trials were undertaken in 2001 and they are now on their 12th migration training flight.
BENEATH THE SURFACE
There is a long history of film-makers inspiring new lines of scientific research. A whole century ago, John Ernest Williamson built a metal pod that allowed him to film wildlife at depth under water. The photosphere, as he called it, was soon commandeered by scientists to study marine wildlife in its natural habitat for the first time.
According to Piers Warren of the Wildeye International School of Wildlife Film-making, there is a natural affinity between the two disciplines. “Film-makers and scientists both have this constant pressure on them to unearth something new.”
Indeed, film-makers have unearthed some gems of discoveries. There’s the method employed by striped possums to winkle grubs from wood using a bizarre doublejointed digit, or the insects that pollinate the biggest flower on Earth. The nocturnal social behaviour of black rhinos had gone unnoticed until a BBC team turned their sensitive starlight cameras on them.
Perhaps the most important impact of a good wildlife film on science is that it can inspire people to become scientists.
“I’ve been very lucky to work on series with David Attenborough,” says producer Huw Cordey. “I tell you, wherever you go with David you meet scientists who say, ‘I’m doing this job because I watched your films.’”
THE JOURNEY MIGHT NOT BE TAKING PLACE AT ALL WERE IT NOT FOR THE EFFORTS OF FILM-MAKERS.”