Hippo: Nature’s Wild Feast
Production Details
Hippo: Nature’s Wild Feast is a high-tech natural history event that presents the most comprehensive illustration to date of nature’s food chain in action. Filmed over a week in Zambia’s Luangwa Valley, Hippo: Nature’s Wild Feast reveals an ecological system in action as Africa’s most iconic animals – including lions, leopards, crocodiles, hyenas and vultures – fight for survival at the height of the dry season.
The hippo is one of Africa’s deadliest animals. But when one of these massive animals dies, an astonishing chain of events begins. A hippo carcass is a cache of two million calories just waiting to be recycled back into the food chain. A network of state of the art remote control cameras are set up around the carcass to capture the action night and day as one ton of flesh and bone is reduced to scraps.
An international team of scientists and researchers watch from a studio tent just metres from the carcass, analysing the action. With fierce showdowns between rivals for these vital calories, the experts explain the different eating mechanisms of the animals: 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 and hyenas that can consume 30 pounds of flesh I just 15 minutes.
Hippo: Nature’s Wild Feast tells the story of how the death of one of Africa’s most iconic animals sustains life for countless other species.
