Free-Tailed Bats: On Location | Hostile Planet
Humans and animals are hardwired to endure, and that includes our "Hostile Planet" crew who had to go through so much to bring you this incredible footage.
RENEE GODFREY: We were filming the bat sequence in New Mexico in the middle of the baking hot desert to capture this amazing emergence of thousands of bats in the evening light.
MARK MACEWAN: They snake out of these huge caves. But— well, that's great and they look great when they're doing that. But you don't want to be in the cave when they're doing that because in the cave is hideous. You're in there. And you are just being rained on with bat feces and urine all over the place. When that's not happening, there are flesh-eating beetles falling off the ceiling trying to bite you. You look at the floor and it's crawling with maggots and beetle larvae. It's like Mordor. And the ammonia is ridiculously strong. If we wander in there, I will die within minutes if I'm not wearing a full respirator kit, which in the middle of the desert in 100% humidity is the last thing you really want. The visor is filling with sweat. It's like in a leaky diving mask. OK. Now, for the surgical gloves. There's a massive amount of preparation before going into the bat cave. It's to protect ourselves. But it's also to stop us taking anything in that could impact or contaminate the bats' environment. It's just this crazy ritual every day that we had to do if we wanted to go into the cave.
The snake test.
MARK MACEWAN: The cave that these bats live in is in a very steep-sided gorge. And climbing down there is sort of snake alley. We'd have to throw stones everywhere to try and give it a warning that we're coming down. You crawl down into these huge, steep cave systems in these suits that you can't tear or have any imperfections in. And suddenly, you realized you were going somewhere that wasn't really meant for you.
RENEE GODFREY: It's like walking on snow. You're walking in on big piles of guano. You can see why you need to wear the respirators because with each footstep, a cloud of dust comes up from the dry powder.
MARK MACEWAN: So we'd have this moment where we've set all the cameras and we'd sit and we'd wait. If we got lucky, they'd come out, but only for probably 10 minutes. The whole event is over in 10 minutes.
RENEE GODFREY: It is extraordinary as they shoot out past you. You just get this rush of air and this flap of their wings, which I know we captured with the Phantom at 1,000 frames a second beautifully.
MARK MACEWAN: What we were after was bats being predated by hawks. And these hawks come flying in from nowhere and are just picking bats out of the sky. And what we were kind of really interested in, in sort of the movement into shots, and trying to use high-speed technology to really capture the moment of the capture.
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RENEE GODFREY: The bat cave in New Mexico, it's not the most glamorous of environments to work in, that's for sure. But then the bats start to swirl out as the evening light begins, and suddenly you see this amazing spectacle happening before your eyes. And it makes it worth it.
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