A curious orangutan in Malaysia nestles in a cameraman’s bag and gazes into the lens.
It is one of the stunning images captured during filming for a new show starring TV survivalist Bear Grylls.
Exploring the six brutal environments of mountains, oceans, grasslands, jungles, deserts and the poles, Bear reveals how wildlife has had to adjust to life in extreme habitats.
The 44-year-old says: “As a kid growing up, I used to be glued to the natural history shows but it was always a spectacle of, ‘Wow, this is beautiful’. The reality of surviving in some of these harsh places is that it’s really tough.
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“The things that matter – resilience, adaptability, resourcefulness, intelligence, community – these animals are showing it in a huge amount.
“They’re all learning to work together. They’re having to be clever and communicate.
“We’re seeing seals fight off sharks. We’re seeing polar bears learning to hunt whales. We’re seeing jaguars learning to hunt in the water for crocodiles.
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“You’d think, ‘That’s science fiction. That doesn’t really happen’.” National Geographic’s Hostile Planet, created by the award-winning makers of Planet Earth II and Blue Planet, is a thrilling watch.
In its opening episode, viewers will see a snow leopard that hasn’t eaten in days hurl itself at an ibex before the pair tumble off a mountain’s edge.
In Greenland, barnacle geese chicks, which hatched 48 hours ago, try to find food by throwing themselves off 400ft cliffs.
Animals endure punishing weather, competition for food, predators and climate change.
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Scaling a snowy mountain, Bear says: “It’s brutal, cold, desolate, hard to breathe. But for some this is home. Now with a rise of global temperatures, life’s even tougher.”
Bear explains how the average temperature in the Himalayas is rising a degree a decade, making it barren and hard to find prey.
The crew filmed 1,800 hours of footage in all seven continents in 82 shoots over 1,300 days.
Thanks to breakthrough camera technology, they captured extreme close-ups.
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They used a racing drone when filming a sequence about eagles in the Italian Dolomites.
“We wanted to give the audience the experience of what it felt like to be an eagle, soaring through mountains, down gullies and up to the next ridge,” says producer and director Mateo Willis.
“The way to do that is to jet a racing drone that flies at 100mph and put a camera on it, then get a really good pilot who can fly that to within a foot of a cliff face.
“Sometimes we use military-grade equipment because we’re dealing with one of the toughest environments on the planet.”
Dad-of-three Bear warns viewers if they are hoping for happy endings, they will probably be disappointed. “It sometimes works out, and then sometimes it’s heart-breaking and really tragic,” he says. “But that is the reality of the world.
“I think what’s incredible about Hostile Planet is that we’re showing life on the edges. Not just the spectacular, beautiful stuff but how hard it is for many animals to work together as a family to survive.
“Seeing it from that angle, for me, was mesmerising.”
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Hostile Planet begins this Sunday, 9pm on National Geographic.
