Everyone knows the hardships that have befallen wildlife filmmakers—long days and weeks spent hunched over in hiding, patiently waiting for a single elusive snow leopard or black jaguar. For cinematographer Mary Melville, filming a family of cougars in Patagonia on the frozen tip of South America for the new four-part BBC1 series Dynasties, the shoot was a bit different.
“The cougars didn’t care about our presence at all,” she says. “Actually, we were just ignored. It was almost rude!
The result is some of the most amazing footage of big cats in the wild ever captured on film. Single mother Rupestre, raising four cubs on the shores of a crystal blue lake in the Chilean Andes, allowed the crew to film a few meters away from her family.
One afternoon, five animals lined up side by side, all staring into the lens as if for a portrait photograph, against the backdrop of impressive icy mountains.
Sir David Attenborough recounts epic footage of animals in the wild in his latest series, Dynasties. Pictured: Angelina leads her twins and others away from the watering hole
It’s an image that sums up a big-budget natural history show that focuses on one family of animals each week and chronicles the journey of a new generation from birth to adulthood.
The first episode in 2018 featured lions, tigers and chimpanzees, but this time the teams watch cougars, a pack of amazingly cute hyenas, three cheetah cubs fighting for survival, and an elephant mother who constantly risks everything to save her cubs.
Narrated by Sir David Attenborough, each episode is filled with epic footage. But above all, it’s the amazing true stories that make this series so memorable, almost like a soap opera set in the wild. “Animals write scripts,” says producer Simon Blakeney.
The film crew had no idea what was in store for them when they traveled to Kenya’s Amboseli National Park in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro to film a group of two dozen elephants, including a female known as Angelina. With her left tusk curved so that it points backwards, she is unmistakable.
Already the mother of several daughters, she was already pregnant when the crew arrived, and when she gave birth, the whole family gathered around her in a close knot, guarding the male infant, who was soon named Atlas, as he took his first unsteady steps.
The team captured the rare birth of twin elephants after a hike in Kenya’s Amboseli National Park. In the photo: twins Atlas and Alana wallow in a dirty watering hole.
Newborn elephants are nearly blind, and with so many females around him, it took Atlas a few tries before he found his mother and started suckling. The film crew was delighted, but four days later they were speechless…when another calf was born, a female that the film crew named Alana.
Angelina gave birth to twins, an event so rare that it had been recorded less than half a dozen times before in Kenya. But it comes with dire risks, because keeping a single calf alive is a difficult task—this herd has lost ten calves in five years. It would be almost impossible to protect and feed two.
Marauding elephants pounced on calves
After a couple of weeks, when the older elephants lost concentration near the dirty pond, Atlas was in mortal danger. Bogged down in the soft mud, he fell and drowned.
After a few seconds, the crew could only see its four legs and the tip of its trunk, desperately gasping for air. Then he completely disappeared.
He appeared to have drowned, but miraculously the adults were able to dig him up and roll him out into the shallow water, where they held his head until he regained the strength to stand.
Game of Thrones… with hyenas
According to producer Simon Blakeney, hyenas get a bad rap. “Since The Lion King, they have been portrayed as villains. But they are amazing animals with very complex social rules.”
Their hierarchy is more like that of macaques and baboons than other carnivores such as wolves or wild dogs. The females form alliances and close family bonds, and the matriarchy rules the pack.
When the team arrived in Zambia, the alpha female of the hyena clan had just died. Animal scientists were expecting to see the mantle fall on her eldest daughter, Sia.
But Sia was too young and inexperienced to assert her dominance, and another female, Suma, intervened. What followed was a power struggle more like Game of Thrones than a wildlife documentary, as two warring hyenas sought allies and formed cabals.
However, this is not all intrigue. “We also tried to show their softer and playful side,” says Simon.
Atlas was again in danger when marauding bull elephants, invading the herd in search of a partner, attacked the calves with their trunks and legs. The family panicked and threw themselves into a panic, with the children struggling to keep up.
As sad as it is to see, a herd in full flight is a wonderful sight. But the scenes that follow are even more distressing as the elephants endure months of drought.
Atlas and Alana are skin and bones, too emaciated to stand. Somehow, their mother finds the strength to fend off the repeated attacks of the hyenas until it finally rains.
Mothers willing to sacrifice everything, even their lives, are a recurring theme in Dynasties II. In Patagonia, cameras caught a fight between Rupestre and a male cougar, who lay in wait for her to mate with her and kill her four cubs.
Like lions, male cougars kill any alien brood. “Rupestre didn’t expect this attack,” says Mary Melville.
“She was forced to accept the challenge, despite being so much bigger than her, in order to give her cubs a chance to escape.”
As the four youths fled, Rupestra pounced, striking the male on the sides with her claws and then rolling onto her back to defend herself. Again and again, as he tried to turn his attention to the cubs, she went on the attack.
By the time he pulled away, the young cougars were gone. Beaten and bleeding, Rupestre spent the next 36 hours looking for them, eliciting pathetic meows, until the last one returned.
The cameras also captured hunting scenes as the cougars chased the llamas’ wild relatives known as guanacos.
In Patagonia, cameras caught a fight between Rupestre and a male cougar, who lay in wait for her to mate with her and kill her four cubs. Pictured: Rupestre hugging
To ensure that her cubs had enough meat, Rupestre grabbed the largest animals, risking hard blows from the thrashing guanacos when she threw herself on their backs.
Nine out of ten hunts ended in failure. And when she returned exhausted, she had to put up with her cubs practicing their own hunting skills by jumping on her back as she tried to sleep.
Scripts are written by animals
The most impressive pictures were taken at night with thermal imaging cameras. A group of bull elephants looking for a light meal was filmed raiding a crop field.
In complete darkness, they stepped over the perimeter wire, and then on tiptoe, legs up and moving so slowly that they didn’t make a sound at all. By the time the farmers realized they were there, it was already too late. Hungry elephants can skin a cornfield in less than two hours.
To prevent farmers from harming the elephants, armies of conservationists patrol the fields, throwing firecrackers into the darkness to ward off the animals. This is a serious issue, but there’s no denying that there’s something comical about a tiptoeing elephant.
Dynasty II, tomorrow, 8 pm, BBC1.