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“These are the remotest parts of our planet, hard for us to reach. There remain many surprising secrets hidden here. The extremes are still home to Earth’s greatest natural wonders, but in our rapidly changing world, this could be planet Earth as you never see it again”
Sir David Attenborough
Episode synopsis
David Attenborough reveals the extraordinary ways in which animals battle to survive the elements in a world of extremes. From mountain summits to scorching deserts, polar tundra to deep underground caves, these remote places are rarely visited, yet the animals that survive there are some of the most resilient and specially adapted on Earth. Here, life exists on a knife edge.
In Vietnam, the true scale and grandeur of what’s thought to be the world’s largest cave – Hang son Doong – is revealed. In its depths, blind white cave fish are found in tiny pools of water, surviving on nutrients washed in from the jungle above.
On Ellesmere Island, a pack of Arctic wolves fight to rebuild their strength after one of the toughest winters on Earth. But the season of plenty is not all it seems, with prey so scarce they must travel vast distances to find it. And when they do, they must battle their ancient foes, musk oxen, a relic of the Ice Age.
Emerging after months below the ice, a European common frog sticks it’s head out of the snow. It’s a sunny spring day in the Alps, and the perfect day to find a mate. But dozens of frogs are all racing towards the same breeding pool. Who will get there in time?
Huddling can be a survival superpower, especially in the winter cold of the Atlas Mountains. For a young barbary macaque, separated from the group, it’s vital to find and re-join the huddle before nightfall, but there is a surprising obstacle in his way. The ultimate huddle is found in the mountains of Mexico where millions of monarch butterflies are overwintering. But the calm is shattered when a storm hits their forest shelter.
Fires are one of nature’s most destructive forces, but they are also vital for keeping some habitats healthy; few places more so than northern Australia’s savannahs. A pair of golden shouldered parrots are raising their family… inside a termite mound. Thick walls keep the chicks safe from predators but when a fire unexpectedly strikes, will the nest protect them?
As our climate changes, extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and often more intense. On the plains of Kenya, an elephant mother is struggling to keep her two sons alive, and after months of drought and with food and water supplies critically low, the family are faced with tragedy.
Few places are more extreme than the Gobi desert where temperatures can range between -30 and +40 degrees Celsius. But the snow leopard has made its home here. This rare and intimate view of a mother and cubs reminds us that the extremes still hold some of planet Earth’s greatest secrets and most spectacular natural wonders.
Filming locations and species
- Blind cave fish: Hang son Doong, Vietnam
- Ellesmere wolves: Ellesmere Island, Canada
- Snow frogs: Alps, France
- Barbary macaques: Atlas Mountains, Morocco
- Monarch butterflies: Nevado de Toluca, Mexico
- Golden-shouldered parrots: Cape York, Queensland, Australia
- Elephants: Amboseli National Park, Kenya
- Snow leopards: Gobi desert, Mongolia
In numbers…
- Number of shoots: 11
- Number of days filming: 292
- Rarest species documented: Golden-shouldered parrot – an endangered species, with only around 1,000 left in the wild.*
- Rarely seen species: Blind cave fish. It’s hard to say how rare they are because there is so little known about them!
Fun fact: To capture the elephant sequence in Kenya, the team spent nearly 450 hours in the field.
Q&A with Producer and Director Theo Webb
In this episode we are taken to places where life exists on a knife edge. What was the most challenging sequence to film in such extremes?
The very nature of filming in the ‘Extremes’ means that there was never a dull moment on location. From camping 18 days underground to hiking mountains, each sequence presented its own unique challenges.
The most gruelling expedition was to Ellesmere island to film Arctic wolves. This extraordinary population of wolves are highly habituated to humans so finding and filming them should have been easy – but nothing in the Arctic is simple. For our team, two months camping on the tundra consisted of a small personal tent and three larger equipment, storage and kitchen tents, along with their all-terrain-vehicles (ATV) for transport. Not to forget the bathroom – a plywood box with a toilet seat, out in the open. To find the wolves meant travelling up to 50 miles per day on ATV. In some places, huge cracks, over a metre deep and wide would separate the polygon patterns in the tundra. Any mistake on the ATV would have been a disaster. Keeping up with them during a hunt was almost impossible.
On these occasions, we turned to drones which could fly unhindered over the treeless landscape and film the hunts in astonishing detail and from new angles. The Arctic conditions soon caught up with us though. During the one bright night of Arctic summer, katabatic winds destroyed the camp, flattening our tents and blowing the kitchen tent over a mile across the tundra. On other occasions white-outs would reduce visibility to nil and travelling the tundra would be even more perilous. For good measure a wandering polar bear passed by our camp, by just a mile! Luckily it thought better of coming to check out the camp. Despite the hardship endured by the team, the results speak for themselves.
As our climate changes, extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and often more intense. In light of these changes to the environment, what can audiences take away?
The extremes of our planet are becoming more extreme – barely a day goes by without more scientific analysis to demonstrate this. In the Extremes episode, we see how beautiful, yet fragile monarch butterflies are struggling to overwinter in the high-altitude forests of Mexico due to increasing storms. And we see the tragic loss of an elephant calf whose mother has been struggling to sustain herself and her family in a habitat stricken by overgrazing and drought. However, as important as it is to show our changing planet, it is also imperative to show that there are still wonders found in planet Earth’s extreme habitats. We finish the film with a sequence about snow leopards in the Gobi desert. This desert-living population has never been filmed in such intimate detail and as we see a mother with cubs, it reminds us that there is still hope out there.
Was there anything you wanted to capture but couldn’t?
Luckily our planning paid off and we were able to capture all the sequences that we had hoped. The one surprise came on Ellesmere Island where we had hoped to film the Arctic wolves with pups. For some reason this pack nor none of the surrounding packs, had pups that year and so sadly we weren’t able to film their extraordinary first weeks on the tundra. However, the epic struggle between the wolves and musk oxen was plenty for us to film and kept us busy enough!
What is your stand-out sequence in this episode and why?
Having spent so many years making this episode it’s almost impossible to choose a stand-out sequence. In terms of surprise, I never thought we would film a snow leopard family walking along a ridgeline in the Gobi desert at sunset – this was truly a once in a lifetime event for the crew. I love the frog sequence for all the humour and fun. But if I had to choose a favourite, I would have to say: sequence number one – Hang son Doong cave in Vietnam. It is the most remarkable place that I have ever been to and spending 18 days living underground inside was an immense privilege. Capturing the grandeur of the cave features was a new challenge for most of us. To showcase the beauty of scale, we devised the ‘double drone dance’ in which a huge lighting drone was used to light the cave and then a smaller camera drone was used to film it. With dance-like drone movements we were able to show the cave as never before filmed. As for the sun-rays that flood in through a hole in the cave’s roof – it was truly a remarkable experience to witness and something I will never forget.
Key stories and new technology explained…
Hang son Doong Cave
Vietnam
NB: New technology
To capture footage in what is considered the largest cave in the world, we used a new ‘double-drone’ technique’ of filming whilst lighting the cave using two drones. This was a new way to film the underworld in a cinematic and engaging way. We used a bespoke lighting drone using a DJI Matrice 600 weighing approximately 10kg fitted with a specially designed filming rig. The second filming drone was a DJI Mavic 3. We also used highly light sensitive cinema cameras to capture the unique structures inside. We captured footage of blind cave fish and shrimp, which have never been filmed before.
To reach Hang son Doong, we had to trek for two days through the jungle which included passing through another enormous cave, Hang En. On average, we walked over a mile underground every day – carrying over half a ton of filming gear, not to forget the 150 batteries for the cameras, torches and filming lights!
Golden-shouldered parrots
Cape York, Queensland, Australia
NB: Endangered species
In Cape York, Australia, we captured intimate shots of nesting golden shouldered parrots and chicks inside a termite mound nest. This is one of Australia’s most endangered bird species, now struggling to survive due to encroaching trees and changes in land use affecting the rare savannah habitats they call home. To get this footage, a specialist nest cam was designed and inserted into the nest to reveal the chicks in a new and intimate way. It took around 100 hours to film the parents coming to feed the chicks and waiting for the moment they fledged.
Snow leopards
Gobi desert, Mongolia
NB: Filming feat
We used a DJI Mavic 3 drone to film the snow leopards in a once in a lifetime setting – a family on a ridge during sunset. The drone pilot had to endure winds and freezing conditions to capture these shots before the sun went down and without disturbing the cats. In total, we deployed 24 camera traps which were out for around 8000 hours. It took the team a total of 76 hours to set, extract and maintain these camera traps and our camera operator spent a total of 264 hours in a hide!
Ellesmere wolves
Ellesmere Island, Canada
NB: Filming feat
The team worked in shifts to keep up with the wolves as they roamed vast distances over the tundra. However, the challenging terrain and unpredictable weather meant that they could rarely keep track of them for more than two days at a time. They had to follow the wolves on all terrain vehicles (ATVs / quad bikes). On some occasions this included following them for over 50 miles in a day to keep up. They used dry riverbeds and set routes to limit their impact on the Arctic tundra.
The team spent almost eight weeks (55 days in total) camping on the tundra of Ellesmere Island. During the shoot, they went from 24 hours of daylight to days of half daylight and half darkness, within just a two-month period. They also experienced nearly every kind of weather – from sunshine, to B11 katabatic winds, torrential rain and blizzards.
With a blizzard fast approaching on the weather radar, the team were expediently extracted before potentially getting trapped. They only had a short weather window in which to coordinate a successful extraction!
Snow frogs
Alps, France
Mountain weather can change quickly, and more snow and less sun can delay the frog emergence by days, even weeks! The team were on standby for six weeks in total, waiting for the frogs to emerge and start mating. Once it had started, it was all over in just a few days and the snow had almost fully melted. The crew had to trek a total of three hours a day, each carrying 20kg of kit to reach the frogs.
Meet the team
Theo Webb, Producer and Director
Theo has worked at the BBC Natural History Unit for almost 15 years, and on multiple blue chip landmark series, including Dynasties, Life Story, Planet Earth II and Seven Worlds One Planet. After studying Zoology, his BBC tv career began on the Natural World Strand researching a landmark film about British Butterflies. He then joined the expedition series Lost Land of the Tiger where the team attempted to film tigers in the dense forests of Manas National Park, Bhutan, and high in the Himalaya. For his next project, Theo travelled across 4 continents filming for Sir David Attenborough’s Life Story series. This gave him a further appetite for filming the elusive Bengal tiger. A life’s dream was realised when he worked with veteran producer Miles Barton on Dynasties – Tiger, directing over 200 days in the field. This unique opportunity led to some of the most intimate portraits of tiger family life ever filmed. After so long in the field, Theo took a career break to train as a chef before returning to the NHU and producing Planet Earth III – Extremes.
Sophie Bracey, Junior Production Manager
Sophie grew up near Bristol, and studied History at Exeter University and has worked at the BBC for close to 10 years. In 2020, Sophie joined Planet Earth III, taking the leap into the wonderful, mysterious world of natural history filmmaking. Charged with looking after Extremes and Coasts, she has coordinated filming expeditions to Hang son Doong cave in Vietnam, diving shoots with great white sharks in South Africa, and camera trap filming with snow leopards in Mongolia. Her greatest achievement lay in organising the wolves shoot to the extremely remote location, Ellesmere Island. Covid, a polar bear, ATVs, helicopters, and charter planes, conspired to make this a huge four month long logistical challenge.