Featured Image Credit: BBC
By Kira Krall
The BBC’s Spy in the Wild is a continuation of their Spy in the… series, the first of which premiered in 2000 and followed a pride of lions around their natural habitat. The flagship Spy camera was disguised as a boulder covered in vegetation. Water- and blizzard-proof cameras soon followed, and now spy camera technology is at its peak with cameras custom-designed to resemble the animals they’re filming.
The incognito cameras made filming skittish or dangerous animals possible. While some individuals may not have been fooled by the outward appearance of their computerized counterparts, they blended in enough to put the animals at ease while the Spy cam recorded their every move. Watch an otter totally relaxed while he swims next to Spy otter.
The footage was categorized into four parts: “Love” “Friendship”, “Intelligence”, and “Bad Behavior.” Each episode features stories of various species around the world. “Friendship” shows a dikkop bird and her mate defending a mother crocodile’s nest from a hungry Nile monitor. A chimpanzee cares for an orphaned genet kitten in “Love.”
The stories in this series have one common theme: the remarkable similarity between us and other animals. Nature is often seen as a pure game of survival. We need documentaries like this to remind us how much depth and complexity life on Earth has.
Scottish actor David Tennant reprised his Spy in the… narrator role with Spy in the Wild. His expressive voice and melodic cadence are the perfect fit for the wonders of the animal kingdom. You can watch clips from the documentary here and you can find full episodes from the Spy in the… series on video streaming websites.