When is Animal Babies: First Year on Earth on TV?
The first instalment of this three-part series will be broadcast on BBC Two on Wednesday 24 July at 9pm.
What is it about?
This series follows six adorable animals in their first year. But that’s not to say it’s all fun and games. The first year is one of the most difficult, and most dangerous. To survive, they must overcome the threats of predators, rivals and the elements.
We witness events through the eyes of three camera operators, who take us around the globe and show us the challenges facing the young of our most iconic species. A new-born elephant must learn how to walk and keep up with the herd, a baby sea otter dives for the very first time and twin hyena cubs must quickly realise their place in the pack.
There is exciting behind-the-scenes-style footage of our guides leaning out of 4WDs and rushing to set up their cameras. Even better, this is coupled with a wealth of information offered by the camera operators themselves, a narrator, and a series of experts interviewed along the way.
What happens in each episode?
Episode one, First Steps, looks at the first three critical months when animal babies have to rapidly get to grips with their new family and the challenges of the environment that surrounds them. Highlights include five-week old fox cubs learning to hunt in the Arctic, and Jazir, a one-week-old macaque, learning the ropes of a primate society.
Episode two, Testing Limits, stays with the babies throughout their first year. From around three months old they can get around on their own, but that means they begin to really the face the struggles of their environment and finding food. In California, Limpet, a three-month old sea otter, has to discover what’s safe to eat in a harbour filled with human activity.
Episode three, New Frontiers, takes us to the end of the six animal babies’ first year on earth. Now they must take on the most complex challenges of their lives. Nyakabara, a mountain gorilla infant, develops the co-ordination to roam free in the forest. And in Kenya, twin spotted hyenas must roam a territory they share with their biggest threat – lions.
Who are the three camera operators?
Sue Gibson has been in the wildlife filming industry for 15 years. Her family lived in Malawi for six years before she was born, so her home was full of interesting items that sparked her imagination and set her dreaming of visiting distant lands.
Since then she has filmed in desert extremes in Oman, tracked Pallas’s cats on the Mongolian Steppe, hung out with apex predators in the Maasai Mara, and filmed in some of the roughest seas around Cape Horn.
Vianet Djenguet is a documentary and wildlife cameraman with over 12 years of experience in filming for major international broadcasters.
He was born in the Republic of Congo and has worked in some of the world’s most remote and hostile environments, ranging from tropical and equatorial jungles, swamps, deserts, and mountainous regions to tropical islands.
Colin Stafford-Johnson spent his childhood exploring the woods, rivers and hills on the east coast of Ireland. As soon as he left school, he backpacked around the world for six years in search of the creatures he had read about as a child.
After studying biology and film-making at university, he began an apprenticeship as a cameraman, and has been working in the industry ever since.
