Hello all,
has anyone been watching the tigers on BBC? I heard they attached cameras to elephants to film it, which sounds a bit complicated! But I keep missing it! Is it any good?
I haven't had a chance to watch it yet, sounds interesting though. Putting cameras on elephants sounds like an interesting idea, I wonder how much actual footage they got from it though? Do they really spend that much time with tigers?
Somehow that doesn't really sound like a good idea! Even though elephants are perfectly capable of killing a tiger, I don't think that elephants really like being around tigers.
Kingfisher
Somehow that doesn't really sound like a good idea! Even though elephants are perfectly capable of killing a tiger, I don't think that elephants really like being around tigers.
Kingfisher
I totally agree with you, i mean you don't expect a tiger to walk and hunt with an... an elephant!!!
The first program is available on the BBC iplayer website, it's called spy in the jungle I think. I'm hopefully going to get a chance to watch it today.
Thanks for that Bill! I was hoping to get another chance to watch it.
I've seen a few bits of different episodes now, and the elephants actually have people on them guiding the, but it means that they can get close with cameras to the tigers without having anything to fear as the tigers are no match for the elephants!
It's another program where the lives of a specific family are followed, and it's great to watch. The cubs when I last saw it where beginning to get on each others nerves so may be splitting soon.
Yes I've managed to watch some of it too now. It was different to what I had expected because I didn't realise people would be riding the elephants. I just thought they'd attach the cameras to the elephant and see how lucky they got. But even with humans being there, they've still captured the intimacy of the tigers
It is amazing how the tigers don't seem to notice the elephants or humans. I suppose they realise they are no threat. The only time one of the cubs interacted with the elephant was when it was thinking about grabbing its tail, which it decided better of!
I watched a small bit on iplayer a few weeks ago, and the adult tigers were definitely a bit wary of the elephants. A male especially got very aggressive towards them and the elephants didn't like it at all! (not surprisingly) I wouldn't have wanted to be ditting o nthe elephant at the time as it got very shakey and looked like it wasn't in much control/
Elephants are the traditional "safe" way to get close to tigers, they make it easy to get through the jungle, tigers can't kill them so just ignore them most of the time and supposedly they can't make it onto the elephants back (they actually can, but they have to be pretty upset to do so). Rangers protecting tigers in India patrol on elephant back.
In the wild they spend no time together, just chance encounters, so elephants with cameras alone would have been very lucky to get any footage of an elusive tiger. The idea could work somewhere like Africa where it's a lot more open though, be interesting to just let some animals go with cameras!
I think it would be really interesting if you could get cameras onto animals, has it ever been done in a TV show before? I suppose they would have to be very small cameras, but with the high quality ones available these days it would be fascinating.
There was a series called "Animal Cam" or something like that a few years ago, a couple of cameramen specialise in things like miniature cameras and they made up a load of little rigs and harnesses to attach cameras to all kinds of animals temporarily; stand outs were large birds of prey who can carry a small camera mounted on their "shoulders" over their head and give really amazing aerial and swooping shots, scientists also use cameras to study whales, attaching cameras to them which drop off after a couple of days so theycan see what the whales get up to when they dive really far, there was some great footage of a school of orca diving down together, suddenly they all stopped and a couple of them turned and looked directly at the camera, nose butted it a couple of times to see what it was, then they all carried on diving!
We tried for ages to attach a camera to a cat, they're so mobile and flexible though it's hard to get much usable footage, so half the time the cats looking up doing something and the cameras pointing at the floor or something!
I should add in every case cameras are attached with the greatest care to cause no harm; like with the cat we attached the camera to a typical cat walking harness, birds also wear a harness, marine animals or hardbodies like tortoise cameras are affixed with temporary adhesive to their shell or skin and fall off after a few days, as technology continues to improve it could get some interesting results in future!