Perhaps the last frontier, the one underneath our feet?
Can’t recall where I came across this BBC program but so what! The fact is that the BBC have had a long and well-deserved reputation for making some fabulous programmes on nature and wildlife. So it was with a recent programme from the BBC Nature stable. The one that caught my eye and the motivation for today’s LfD post was called The Burrowers: Animals Underground.
Here is the trailer.
Published on Aug 9, 2013 Discover with BBC Two the secret life of Rabbits, Badgers and Water Voles.
Offering us this:
The Burrowers: Animals Underground
Chris Packham continues his underground journey investigating the world of some of the UK’s most iconic burrowing animals. Filmmakers and scientists cannot investigate animal behaviour inside wild burrows without disturbing them so The Burrowers’ team found ingenious ways to film this secret world by recreating full-scale replicas. It’s now spring in the burrows and the new babies are having to grow up fast. The seven orphan badgers are learning to communicate with each other, young rabbits must take their first steps outside, and young water voles their first swim. Chris also meets the most elusive burrower of them all – an animal which almost never comes above ground – the mole. He reveals the moles’ survival techniques, its method of burrowing and the food it eats. Finally, the team unveils a science first: the excavation of a massive abandoned wild rabbit warren… Back in winter it was filled with concrete and left to set. Now a small army of volunteers and diggers have excavated it, revealing a three-dimensional model of a complex system of tunnels and chambers.
So despite it being at the other end of the scale compared to the cosmos, we still know so little about what goes on beneath our feet.
Mind you, that doesn’t stop some of us from trying to find out!
Sweeny digging in the ground after yesterday’s heavy rain!
I watched this fascinating series on the BBC just a few nights ago, and there is so much we do not know about our Animal Kingdom, what is even more poignant at the moment is the Big Cull going on in Britain of Badgers http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22614350 in there attempt to stop TB in cattle. Nature again is never left to balance itself and while I sympathise with Farmers,its a terrible tragedy for the badgers.
Totally agree. The business of badgers and TB seems to have been around for decades. So the presumption must be that this latest cull will achieve little other than murdering thousands of innocent creatures.
Chris Packham continues his underground journey investigating the world of some of the UK’s most iconic burrowing animals. Filmmakers and scientists cannot investigate animal behaviour inside wild burrows without disturbing them so The Burrowers’ team found ingenious ways to film this secret world by recreating full-scale replicas. It’s now spring in the burrows and the new babies are having to grow up fast. The seven orphan badgers are learning to communicate with each other, young rabbits must take their first steps outside, and young water voles their first swim. Chris also meets the most elusive burrower of them all – an animal which almost never comes above ground – the mole. He reveals the moles’ survival techniques, its method of burrowing and the food it eats. Finally, the team unveils a science first: the excavation of a massive abandoned wild rabbit warren… Back in winter it was filled with concrete and left to set. Now a small army of volunteers and diggers have excavated it, revealing a three-dimensional model of a complex system of tunnels and chambers.
Learning from Dogs 
I watched this fascinating series on the BBC just a few nights ago, and there is so much we do not know about our Animal Kingdom, what is even more poignant at the moment is the Big Cull going on in Britain of Badgers http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22614350 in there attempt to stop TB in cattle. Nature again is never left to balance itself and while I sympathise with Farmers,its a terrible tragedy for the badgers.
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Totally agree. The business of badgers and TB seems to have been around for decades. So the presumption must be that this latest cull will achieve little other than murdering thousands of innocent creatures.
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