Channel 4 to stream dead hippo feast

21 October 2011

A brand new high-tech Channel 4 natural history event, Hippo: Wild Feast Live will present the most comprehensive illustration ever of nature's food-chain in action.

Streamed live to Channel4.com, a host of cutting edge technology will be used to bring the African savannah straight to the desktop, classroom and lounge. Fixed-camera rigs, motion detectors, infra-red cameras, laser thermometers,  digital microscopes and electronic tracking systems - including micro-transmitters - will connect natural history aficionados with all the predators, scavengers, birds and insects that feast on the hippo.

The hippo carcass will be located in Zambia's Luangwa Valley by a section of the Luangwa river frequented by a range of predators and scavengers including leopards, lions, Nile crocodiles, hyena, wild dogs, baboons, monitor lizards and marabou storks - known as the ‘undertaker birds' which use their 10-foot wingspan to swoop down and see off other smaller vultures.

Streamed live on Channel4.com from Friday 21 October - with the final (1 x 90 min) programme airing on Monday 7 November at 9pm, viewers will be able to watch as an entire ecological system consumes the enormous carcass. There will also be a series of two-minute live updates on location, presented by Mark Evans on Channel 4 each evening from 21 - 26 October. The live streaming will be an interactive experience with viewers encouraged to tweet questions to presenter Mark Evans (Inside Nature's Giants, Brave New World) who will be presenting daily updates from the site.

Clips of the key action - with commentary - will be made available each day, as will additional insight from experts and local guides about the animals' behaviour and biological decomposition. The site will present an environmental dashboard of readings including temperature, humidity and sunrise/sunset timings.

Giving a whole new meaning to the term ‘food miles' the production team will be monitoring lions via GPS trackers and attaching transmitters to vultures and micro-transmitters to insects to track the secondary food-chain as the flesh is transported to wildlife beyond those directly at the carcass: such as the young of the predators, or passed on as calories through animal faeces.

The transponders on the vultures will relay live data showing speed, distance travelled and altitude by satellite - presented on-screen in graphs. At the other end of the scavenger scale, micro-transmitters attached to insects will track the range of the beetles and dragonflies feeding on both the carcass and the waste left by the bigger animals. If these wired insects are eaten by larger animals there is a chance they will enable tracking of the predators until they are passed as faeces. A laser thermometer and digital microscope will be deployed by an expert entomologist to help capture extreme close-ups of the different insects, maggots and microbes.

Throughout the streaming, motion detectors will alert the production team to the arrival of scavengers and predators. The location of each device will be plotted on a map which will be updated to illustrate the number of times each sensor has detected movement. The film crew including specialist wildlife cameramen will be staking out the dens of predators and plotting the location of different packs to map out the animals' territories.

Mark Evans says: ‘The river is a prime location for some of the biggest predators in Zambia - we may well see fierce showdowns between rivals for these vital calories - from Nile crocodiles and lions to hyenas and the notoriously vicious honey badger. The eating mechanisms of  the different animals is fascinating - from crocodiles who use each other as leverage for a ‘death roll' to twist off the meat - to marabou storks who gulp down pounds of flesh which they store in their gullets.'

Channel 4 Specialist Factual Commissioning Editor Tanya Shaw comments: ‘This interactive project builds on the success of Elephant: Life After Death which followed a five-tonne elephant being transformed into six million calories worth of fat, meat and guts, feeding a whole new cycle of life. This time, by streaming the action live we are dealing with wildlife at its most raw, bloody and immediate - it will be fascinating to see how events unfold and we want viewers to interact with the experts and share this unique content with their friends.'

Hippo: The Wild Feast is being produced by Tigress Productions (an Endemol Company), whose credits include Channel 4's Elephant: Life After Death. Dick Colthurst is executive producer for Hippo: The Wild Feast.  Sarah Peat is producer and Jonny Young is director.

Kath Moore at Tigress Productions adds:  "Every new turn in technology opens new doors and at Tigress we love to harness those innovations, pushing boundaries and seeing the world from new angles.  Hippo: The Wild Feast is a great opportunity to bring in the latest sensors, tracking devices and cameras and reveal how crucial death is to the life of the savannah - and the huge diversity of animals it supports.  Modern technology meets millions of years of evolution!"

 

Ends

Notes to Editors

The site address for the live streaming is:  www.channel4.com/hippo
To folow on Twitter the address is: @hippowildfeast and the official hashtag is #hippo
The two-minute live updates will be broadcast on Channel 4 on Friday 21 Oct at 19.55 and then at 18.55 from Saturday 22 Oct to Wed 26 Oct