Wild Animal Babies
Biologist Patrick Aryee on how his new series shows the highs and lows of parenting in the animal kingdom
SUNDAY / SKY NATURE
Aww! These adorable baby meerkats are among the stars of this beautiful three-parter that follows a cast of animals over their first days, weeks and months on Earth. Biologist Patrick Aryee tells us about capturing them on camera.
WILD ANIMAL BABIES
NEW SUN / SKY NATURE / 8PM / EP 1 of 3 / NATURE
Few things in life are more likely to make you go ‘aww’ than footage of adorable baby animals. But it’s easy to overlook just how difficult it is to be a parent in the wild – whether you have to teach your kids to fly, or keep them away from predators until they’re old enough to defend themselves.
In Wild Animal Babies, a new three-part documentary starting on Sky Nature this week, biologist Patrick Aryee travels around the world to show us just how all kinds of species handle the ever-challenging job of raising their offspring.
Here, Patrick chats to TV Times about what we can expect from his latest series…
What can you tell us about
Wild Animal Babies?
Each of the different species that we film has a bunch of different challenges to overcome. It might be their environment – take sea otters, for example. They live up in Alaska, in freezing cold waters. How does a very small mammal survive out in the cold? In other cases, it’s trying to avoid predators – like olive ridley sea turtles, trying to avoid being snatched up by birds as soon as they hatch.
Episode one focuses on single offspring in the animal kingdom – what specific challenges do they face?
By having one offspring, you’re investing a lot of time and energy into this one individual. You’re going to spend more time teaching that youngster about how to interact with their environment, who is a friend and who is an enemy. There could be another species that’s trying to hunt you down – or it could be inter-species rivalry…
You get very close with some of the animals – what was that like? It was great! It’s always important to respect the boundary between humans and animals, and those were instances where we could get close because we were at a wildlife sanctuary or an orphanage. But the times that we were able to have those interactions were just magical, because when do you ever have an elephant use its trunk to tickle your ears? Or kick you square in the crown jewels, as it did with me? But I don’t think that made the final cut!
What were the highs and lows of making this series for you?
I think it was probably all highs! In terms of lows, I wish we could have spent a bit more time at each
location, because we were pressed for time. Actually, I went to Australia twice in two weeks! That messed my brain up.
That does sound exhaustingé When I try to explain that the travel is the toughest part of the job, usually I get, ‘Oh, woe is me!’ But it’s a genuine thing; your body is not designed for that. So the downside was not knowing what time zone I was in, and the highs are pretty much every single trip we went on!
● All three eps of Wild Animal Babies will be available on Sky Box Sets and NOW TV from Sun 31 May
MEERKATS ARE LITTLE SUN WORSHIPPERS!