- Author: Susan P Croissant
Hidden Kingdoms, a captivating series on Netflix, shows a perspective of the world as the animal sees it rather than from "the world above." Plants, vegetation and extraordinary little creatures at ground/crawling level. Filmmakers built a special lens, including an 18" probe (straight scoop) that shoots with infinite depth of field. Episode 1 "Under Open Skies" is sufficient to get a taste.
Kenya, East Africa, grassland. Filmmakers dig a trench, mount cameras on a "track" to capture the momentum of an orphaned baby Sengi (elephant shrew). Twice as fast as a cheetah, she sprints through a miniature jungle along her complicated trail network. These "racetracks" allow her to forage the far corners of her territory and are key in finding food fast, transporting quickly and avoiding predators. Sengi are related not to shrews, but to elephants, sea cows, hydraxes, aardvarks, golden-moles and tenrecs. Learn more: http://www.sengis.org/synopsis.php (California Academy of Sciences).
We see the pint-size Sengi next to a butterfly, dung beetle, centipede, snail. She feeds on a grasshopper larger than her long-pointed nose. The blade of grass she flicks away is like a tree, a falling acorn like a meteor, a cactus like a skyscraper. An elephant is truly a mammoth as she leans on its toe and sprints away to avoid boulder-like droppings. Picking up the scent from half-a-mile away, Dung Beetles helicopter-in to form dung balls--the bigger the better--to attract a female who will lay her eggs inside. In doing so, they aide the Sengi by clearing the pathways which eventually become congested. The beetle shapes a perfect ball, transporting it by standing on hind legs, pushing it with their forelegs (able to push the equivalent of a 3-ton truck).
The Sonoran Desert. The Scorpion/Grasshopper mouse survives in a region with more venomous species than anywhere else in America, more rattlesnakes than anywhere else on earth. A living mind field. Daytime is high heat and unsafe. Zebra-tail and Collard (kelly-green) lizards. Harris hawks, the only pack-hunting raptor in the world, has vision 8x ours. Scorpions are the mouse's food source. Its reaction is faster than a scorpion's strike. It is immune to its poison. The desert quietly bakes and can turn into an inferno when lightning strikes. Ringed by mountains that keep the rain away much of the year, a year's worth might fall in a single night. The force of a 12" high movement of water is a tsunami to such a small mouse.
The filmmakers have received much criticism for borrowing techniques from cinema and cinematography: CGI effects, blue screen technology, spliced clips for dramatic effect, real footage with "generated reality," superimposed images (reflection in Sengi's eye), building stages and bringing in elephant dung to attract beetles, retrieving rattlesnakes from gardens while mouse and rattlesnake were never in such close proximity. A critic described it "like Attenborough on steroids." A supporter says "it dramatizes (small "d") natural history, BUT it's biologically accurate." Understandably, the liberties they took are up for criticism. Altering the "natural" way of presenting Nature violates the legacy of David Attenborough. Yet it is stunning to see the world as these tiny animals would.