Do you hear what I hear?
‘Earthsounds’ taps into nature’s playlist
“Earthsounds,” now streaming on AppleTV+, is a nature series with a mind-blowing difference.
Filmed over four years in 20 countries on all seven continents, it’s a worldclass tour: Australia’s rainforest, Africa’s Savannah, Antarctica, the Namibian Dunes. With cutting-edge technology to record the noise, the whispers and vibrations of and around our planet, “Earthsounds” documented over 3,000 hours of audio.
“Our motto as a company,” said executive producer Alex Williamson, “is ‘You see things differently.’ This is ‘You hear things differently.’ There’s more to the natural world than meets the eye.
“What’s cool about nature, when you listen to it carefully, is that animals don’t use sound the way that us humans do. It’s not just for communication — it’s for mating, hunting, navigation. Some animals use it as a weapon.
“They also make sound in totally bizarre ways. There are birds that use their wings like a violin string. There’s a kind of exploding shrimp, a bleating walrus. All these weird, wonderful sonic stories, recorded in groundbreaking new ways that have never been attempted before.”
Among many firsts is the true first-ever-heard sound of the snow leopard bellowing for a mate in the rocky crevasses of the Himalayas.
“We developed special cameras and microphones for that particular animal,” said series producer Sam Hodgson. “There were remote camera traps which are cameras you leave on for months at a time but also, for the first time, we racked up highquality microphones with them as well.
“Then we left them in the Himalayas for two years, hoping to go for this beautiful sounding love call from this very sleek and stealthy animal. In my mind, I thought it’s going to be quite beautiful.”
Only years passed, they were in the final edit — and there never was a (lover come here) roar. “We were panicking. Then one of our amazing team in India went back and did one more camera check and bang! there it was.
“A snow leopard walks right up to our camera. just inches away from my microphone, and does that amazing call. I have to say it’s not the most beautiful call, but it’s the closest ever recording of the snow leopard.
“Every animal’s evolved a particular call that’s fitting to their landscape,” Dodgson explained. “So in the high Himalayas, the idea behind that episode was that this was the ultimate echo chamber. The snow leopard’s got that guttural kind of call to travel as far as possible. It’s evolved to become the perfect call for its specific landscape.
“Which is nature at its most genius I think.”
All 12 episodes of “Earthsounds” are streaming now on Apple TV+