Snow Leopard Planet Earth

[Delmiro Fain]

SirDavid Attenborough is a "heartless sadist," preying on viewers' nerves with the stuff of natural world nightmares. So said the Daily Mail in a slightly tongue-in-cheek review of an episode of BBC nature documentary Planet Earth II.

Planet Earth II left Sir David Attenborough looking not so much the saint we'd always thought he was but a heartless sadist. Not a TV God or English gent, but well a total bastard intent on making us all suffer. Certainly so far it has been torture with the great man preying on viewers' nerves as ruthlessly as the predators he was showing us.

Yet there's nothing new in the hardships shown in Planet Earth II. Popular tales of the natural world have always been tinged with danger, from Victorian hunters' portrayal of Africa as the "Dark Continent" to the earliest natural history film, Douglas Burdon's quest for the Komodo dragon, which inspired King Kong.

But is nature really just red in tooth and claw? In fact, it can be just as much green in leaf and flower. Earth's great habitats, from forests to coral reefs, also rely on mutualisms as species work together. The trouble is that an hour-long film of tree roots and their associated fungi would be painfully boring for most. It would be like watching paint dry.

Anthropomorphism can also be used as a powerful way to involve the public in science. The European Space Agency's Rosetta mission to the comet Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko was supported by a series of beautiful animations in which the Rosetta orbiter and the Philae lander are made human, with expressive hands and faces. Philae is dressed up as diminutive adventurer with hard hat and backpack. I defy anyone not to shed a tear as three tons of space hardware is made to feel like part of the family.

But anthropomorphism can also be the curse of superstar species. Natural history TV can make and break stars as surely as any celebrity gossip magazine can its human menagerie. Chimpanzees and dolphins, for example, are both suffering from some bad press because of it.

But footage of them in their natural environment soon revealed their all-too-human dark side, as they were captured brutally hunting and killing monkeys and embarking in violent tribal warfare. Their infamy crystallized in the personality of Gombe's Frodo, who went from cute baby to brutal bully, ruthless monkey hunter, tormentor of Goodall and, eventually, killer of a human baby. Frodo had been so anthropomorphized by that point there were even suggestions that he be tried for murder.

Well, exactly what the snow leopards were doing remains unclear. The female evidently had made attempts to attract a male and the fact that two arrived may have made the situation more tense than it might otherwise have been. Still, as Attenborough made clear, male snow leopards do kill cubs that aren't theirs and the female must have been caught between the contrary urges to find a mate and protect her cub from the likely consequences of doing so.

We basically filmed the cats over three years with three visits. The first trip ran for seven weeks with two camera operators, the second ran for four weeks with two camera operators, and the third ran for four weeks with one camera operator.

How much time were you on the snow leopard shoot compared with the others?

ANDERSON: Off the top of my head, filming the ibex in Israel took six weeks, golden eagles took four weeks, tree-rubbing grizzlies took three weeks (but the remote cameras were in for four months), bobcats took five weeks, and flamingos took three weeks.

The other half of the approach was putting out remote camera traps. The guides knew where the animals wanted to walk on these amazing mountain ridges and the rocks the females like to visit. We used drones, a hang glider, and of course traditional camera work [running up and down mountainsides]. We put out loads of camera traps. We had guys going out and changing card after card, and after three years, they compiled the footage. We had 20 traps in total on a rotating system, some being repaired or moved.

Planet Earth II footage of a female snow leopard being "raped" came under fire in the United Kingdom late last year, but criticisms may have jumped the shark with no direct vision of the incident being aired during Channel Nine's screening of the BBC nature series on Wednesday night.

At the time, Planet Earth II producers defended the documentary series from public criticisms that the vision was too brutal, saying: "The first ever footage of snow leopards mating was an incredible thing to film. And so we don't shy away from taking viewers on that journey, we want you to have that experience of nature."

The danger for the mother leopard centred around either male instinctively killing her female cub, who she had devoted two years to raising and was still totally dependent on her, as it was not their own.

In November last year, producer Chadden Hunter told British ITV show This Morning: "These days a series like Planet Earth II, we are trying to compete with things like Game of Thrones and trying to give the viewer a very emotional journey. But we have comedy in there, courtship, romance."

Snow leopards were notoriously difficult to film because of their shy, loner habits while living at high altitudes in difficult terrain, according to Attenborough, so "the detail of their lives has long been a mystery".

Planet Earth II has been in production for more than three years and consisted of 117 filming trips to some of the most remote areas of the world, across 40 countries. It is the much-anticipated follow up to Attenborough's 2006 award-winning Planet Earth series.

Planet Earth II debuted in Australia on February 15 and reached a national audience of 1.369 million at its peak, with a respectable eighth spot ranking given it was in direct competition with Seven's ratings behemoth My Kitchen Rules and Ten's I'm A Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here!

Planet Earth II footage of a female snow leopard being \\\"raped\\\" came under fire in the United Kingdom late last year, but criticisms may have jumped the shark with no direct vision of the incident being aired during Channel Nine's screening of the BBC nature series on Wednesday night.

At the time, Planet Earth II producers defended the documentary series from public criticisms that the vision was too brutal, saying: \\\"The first ever footage of snow leopards mating was an incredible thing to film. And so we don't shy away from taking viewers on that journey, we want you to have that experience of nature.\\\"

In November last year, producer Chadden Hunter told British ITV show This Morning: \\\"These days a series like Planet Earth II, we are trying to compete with things like Game of Thrones and trying to give the viewer a very emotional journey. But we have comedy in there, courtship, romance.\\\"

\\\"And we show it\\u2026 you can't hide from the reality of animal behaviour and there are certain things that we might suddenly go, 'oh, that's not how we behave' but actually, it's instinct. And that's all we can portray really.\\\"

Snow leopards were notoriously difficult to film because of their shy, loner habits while living at high altitudes in difficult terrain, according to Attenborough, so \\\"the detail of their lives has long been a mystery\\\".

The cinematography of the nature series has been lauded by and it is not difficult to see why given the leaps and bounds in camera technology has allowed filmmakers to directly follow in the animals' footsteps \\u2013 experiencing the world up close and very personal through the use of drones and remotely activated cameras, with motion sensors.

Joining the eco-driven movement at the college, a member of the Illinois Green Economy Network, the SWIC Athletics department wanted to do its part by adopting a new mascot that needs the help of Planet Earth.

The snow leopard, a Himalayan mountain cat born with striking blue eyes, was an easy match for the premier Blue Storm Athletics program. A natural predator, the snow leopard is known for its ability to survive in a rugged landscape and harsh climate. The cat also is the top predator in its ecosystem. These powerful hunters can leap as far as 50 feet and bring down prey up to three times their weight.

It's strange to think how we can now watch the BBC's "Planet Earth" on Netflix, curled up in our pajamas with all the blankets, cookies and other creature comforts we want. Strange, because to bring us all those gorgeous and intimate shots of our planet required the tireless efforts of dozens of filmmakers braving grassy plains, open ocean, lush jungles, stormy deserts and Arctic blizzards across the world.

The Huffington Post dug into "The Making of Planet Earth" documentary and talked with some of the producers to see how they were able to capture the incredible shots we see in the series. It wasn't easy. The team following gibbons around the jungle suffered 50 to 100 leech bites per day, producer Tom Hugh-Jones told HuffPost, and their subjects were easily spooked by the sight of cameras. Other teams faced gail-force Arctic winds and the threat of sharks in the open ocean.

But the "Planet Earth" team did have one luxury: time. As the network's most expensive documentary to date -- $25 million over five years -- each shot was painstakingly produced. Cameraman Andy Shillabeer told HuffPost how he spent weeks and months creating time-lapse footage of cherry blossoms in Japan, desert flowers in Death Valley and leaves changing in the Northeast U.S. All for footage that would fill just seconds in the final cut.

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