Robotic Squirrel Camera Catches Squirrels Stealing Acorns From Each Other
The BBC has released another clip from the endearing Spy in the Wild series which features cameras disguised as animatronic animals.
In this video, a robotic squirrel gets among the action as the real critters around it look to steal each other’s acorns.
The video begins with narrator David Tennant explaining that each fall a single squirrel will bury a remarkable 10,000 nuts.
However, not all the squirrels are honest and instead of foraging for themselves, some cunning squirrels will instead watch as others do the hard work before swooping in and stealing the acorn instead. When the honest squirrel notices the dishonest squirrel’s crime, all hell breaks loose as a fight breaks out around the spy squirrel.
Meanwhile, the animatronic animal sits with an acorn in its hands. This proves too much of an easy target as the real squirrels simply walk right up to it and swipe the nut out of its paws.
However, it is able to catch another fascinating behavior: a squirrel pretending to hide an acorn to dupe a would-be thief.
“In a shameless display of overacting, he pretends to bury his nut,” the voiceover explains. “The thief waits until the performance is over then quietly sneaks in.”
During this melee, the spy squirrel gets another acorn in his hands but this one is actually a camera. Once again, the thieving squirrel is foiled after stealing the nut only to find it’s been hollowed out to make space for the small camera.
The crafty cameras are put together by melding a wide range of parts taken from different manufacturers that are usually stripped down and modified.
The producers say that deploying such expensive camera equipment in the wild can be an extremely stressful process, with producers fearful that it will be destroyed in an instant by suspicious animals.
The robotic animals are not the only devices filming each scene. Up to 10 cameras at a time — from boulder-cams to dung-cams — were also placed in situ during the filming of Spy in The Wild to record footage. There is also a long-lens camera recording footage.
“We can cut between them to get lots of different angles, which you can’t do in natural history very often,” executive producer John Downer said.
Image credits: BBC
