The BBC wildlife documentary Planet Earth is just simply stunning and worth a fair chunk of the licence fee all by itself. The footage of the snow leopard and her cub was quite magnificent and to discover that it took so much effort by the cameramen really puts it in perspective.
To basically sit on a mountain for weeks including over Christmas and New Year just waiting for that rare sighting to enable them to set up the cameras to catch the shots shows amazing fortitude. I’m in awe of their work.
The story of the giant panda and her new-born cub was heartbreaking simply because of the ludicrousness of their knife-edge existence. To have evolved to live on such a select diet of bamboo that exists only in a certain elevation of the highlands of China and that is so nutritionally poor is astonishing and bewildering. Panda cubs do not generally survive very long as the milk of their mothers is as nutritionally poor as their mother’s diet of bamboo.
Amazingly crisp and clear shots of the mother panda in her den tending to her new-born and again showed the skill of the BBC cameramen who was able to get these shots.
