Emperor Napoleon believed the length of a man’s nose was an indication of the size of another organ: his brain.
“If I want to do good mental work,” Boney said, “I choose a man with a long nose.”
In the Eurasian steppes, as we discovered in Planet Earth III (BBC1), large noses play another important role. Female saiga antelopes find them incredibly attractive. And the males have whoppers, like furry grocery bags, that dangle over their jaws.
Two saigas with horns worthy of small elephants fought for the rights to the herd’s harem. David Attenborough’s voiceover told us that one was a veteran alpha male and the other was a young contender looking to dethrone him – and I knew immediately what was going to happen.
Executive producer Mike Gunton is known for choosing sequences in which older animals resist the challenges of newcomers. He admits it himself. Even in a CGI natural history show like Apple TV+’s digital dinosaur epic “Prehistoric Planet,” the old man always wins.
Male saiga antelopes have huge noses (pictured) that dangle over their jaws like furry shopping bags, and females find them incredibly attractive
A crocodile pounces on unsuspecting deer in Yala Park, Sri Lanka, as seen on Planet Earth III
Two southern right whales appear in the Golfo Nuevo off the Valdés Peninsula in Argentina
Sir David Attenborough (pictured) provided the voice-over for Planet Earth III on BBC1
This episode’s breathtaking sequence as we explore the world’s deserts did not involve a clash of antlers. In the overheated bushland of the Namib in Africa, a pair of ostriches protected their clutch from the sun.
One by one the chicks emerged, looking more like half-drowned kittens than baby birds. But the parents couldn’t wait until all the eggs burst open. Before nightfall, they had to get their small flock to safety, out of reach of predators… and that meant leaving the last few eggs behind.
A chick fought its way into the light too late and lay there alone, beeping and meowing. It seemed too horrible to imagine that this footage would be broadcast just to show us an hour-long ostrich dying, but my arms and legs were filled with fear until finally a parent heard the pitiful squeak and came to the rescue.
Great cover of the weekend
For any customer in a guitar shop, playing Led Zep’s “Stairway To Heaven” is a famous faux pas – bad manners to be so cheesy. But that didn’t stop Tom Jones, will.i.am and their friends from performing the number when The Voice UK (ITV1) returned. Wince.
The emotional intensity of these animal stories makes “Planet Earth III” absolutely captivating. At the same time we can marvel at the beauty of the landscape photos. The heat haze over the Namib looked as if it had been painted with watercolors.
And the mystery remains how patient camera crews have to be to capture unique moments, such as a leopard leaping 30 feet from a tree and lunging like lightning at an unsuspecting antelope.
There was nothing so dramatic in Liz Bonnin’s Wild Caribbean (BBC2), although the underwater images of American crocodiles were certainly intimidating.
Liz joined the scientists to dig in the sand for her eggs, which seemed like a challenge. More dangerous, however, was the work of ornithologists who climb 65-foot-tall palm trees to collect hawk chicks from their nests. The endangered baby birds are given a health check, banded and returned to their homes… while angry adults bombard the conservationists.
On the ground, Liz was more worried about the spiders. She spent much of her childhood in Trinidad and knows a tarantula when she sees one. While the scientists stared up, she looked under the rocks and muttered, “But seriously, where is that tarantula?”
Accompanied by cheerful calypso music, everything conveyed an amusing holiday feeling, even if the baseball games and carnival evenings seemed rather insignificant. The star of the evening was the Solenodon, whose snout would impress Napoleon.
This shrew-like little animal evolved 75 million years ago on the island of Hispaniola (half Haiti, half Dominican Republic). Digging with its trunk, it hid underground to survive the meteor impact that wiped out the dinosaurs.
Napoleon was right. It’s smart to have a big nose.