Birds and the bees have nothing on the angler fish
Viewers in ‘safe hands’ of Attenborough for series on mating in the wild that may invite awkward questions
THERE comes a point in every parent’s life when they have to explain the birds and bees – and now they may be able to illuminate the subject with the humpback whale and the hairy angler fish.
Sir David Attenborough’s latest BBC wildlife series, The Mating Game, explores the wonders of reproduction. When writing his script, Sir David was aware that inquiring young minds may have quite a few questions.
Keith Scholey, executive producer of the series, said: “We’ve been really careful about that. Whenever this particular subject comes up there’s always the danger of the questions being asked: ‘What’s this all about?’
“That’s part and parcel of understanding not only the natural world, but our own world. We’ve thought hard about that and having David narrate it, you know you’re in very safe hands.”
He told Radio Times: “The series is very much more about the strategy – the final act is not what this is about.”
In fact, of the 3,837 hours of footage collected in 22 countries over the course of filming, the crews only captured eight hours of mating. It includes what Sir David describes as the “ravishingly beautiful” mating behaviour of the hairy angler fish.
Behaviour recorded on film for the first time included the final stage in the courtship ritual of humpback whales off the coast of Hawaii. A single female was chased by two dozen males in what is known as a “heat run”, before Doug Anderson, the cinematographer, dived down to capture the victorious male blowing bubbles at the female.
And the five-part series, which begins this Sunday on BBC One, does include birds and bees. Sir David, 95, did not travel with the camera crews but recorded the narration at home. His biggest thrill was seeing the mating behaviour of the argus pheasant, a bird he had been trying to film “forever”.
The crew laid camera traps over a year-long period and finally captured “one of the most dramatic bird displays ever”.
Digger bees were filmed in Tucson, Arizona, emerging from underground and performing a “mating song”.
Filming was disrupted by Covid with 18 shoots cancelled and 127 days spent in quarantine as the crews travelled across 22 countries.
One of the rarest sequences was filmed in a rainforest in French Guiana, where frogs from 10 different species descend in their thousands upon a large pond created by floods.
The spectacle happens only once a year, and had been witnessed by fewer than 10 people. The crew spent Christmas and New Year in the jungle waiting for a specific patch of forest to flood.
Just as Christmas lunch was about to be served, the frogs began to arrive.
The air was so thick with frog calls that the team had to wear ear plugs.
Sir David praised the crew for enduring a “wretched” situation in order to get the scenes on film.
“You need a hundred per cent humidity and high temperatures and no sunlight and, to top it all off, it happens over Christmas,” he said.
“It’s obviously a sensational event, the air filled with so much noise that you can hardly hear yourself speak. What a way to spend eating your Christmas pudding.”