Filming
in the Rwenzori Mountains
A nautilusfilm-Crew worked on slow-motion sequences for
„Cosmos Factory“ in the Rwenzori Mountains in early Spring
2012. The ascend to the glacier zone of Africa´s highest mountain
range was made during the dry season because for one this is the time
of the mating display of the Lobelia sunbird. The dry season of 2012 was
unusually hot and dry all the way up to the Alpine region. Everything
went according to plan until a fierce firestorm startled the film crew
in base camp “2” at 3700 a.s.l. on 9th February 2012. The
blaze forced the crew to flee the Mountains of the Moon. Within 9 hours
of non-stop hiking the film crew of 5, the 2 guides and some 40 porters
(+ tons of gear and baggage) descended to 1700 a.s.l.. They walked 20
kilometers in this very rough terrain and when they arrived at the trailhead
Jan Haft and Johannes Berger realized that almost none of the film gear
was lost during the very dramatic descend.
Many large animals would still be living in Central Europe of today, if humans hadn't exterminated these over the course of millennia. These include mammoth, elephant, rhinoceros, bison, moose, Irish elk, deer, European donkey, horses, aurochs, buffalo, wild sheep, etc. pp... Recent research has helped us to understand: their influence on the landscape was or would be massive: In Germany, without the influence of human beings there would hardly be connected forests, but instead in their place a diverse, mosaic-like landscape of meadows, tree and bush groups, game passes, wallows, etc. Habitat for all those animal and plant species that are today described as "open land species of often uncertain origin".
Megabat with high wings
With a wing span of up to one metre and a weight of approximately a half
kilogram, the bare-backed fruit bat Dobsonia crenulata of Sulawesi is
among the especially "secretive" megabats. Bare-backed fruit
bats seldom fly above the trees, like most other large megabats do. The
"contiguous" wing, which grows together over the haired back,
is the characteristic of their breed. Similar to a plane with high situated
wings, they are also capable of slow flight, allowing them to enter even
dense forest. Thanks to their special wing construction, bare-backed fruit
bats can make use of biotopes into which other large megabats are unable
to penetrate.
Donkey's ear
Donkeys were at work at the major construction sites in human history
– from the pyramids of Giza, the Cologne Cathedral to atomic reactors
in Asia. An animal with a history. Jesus, Moses and Tutankhamen are sure
to have often sat on a donkey as children and Cleopatra loved to bathe
in donkey milk. The domestic donkey began to lose its significance here
at the beginning of the 20th century. Its most significant competitor
was initially the bicycle, the "spoked donkey". Then came the
automobile. While the last wild donkeys are today struggling to survive,
some domestic donkey races are also on the endangered list. Our bottle-fed
baby "Emil", a living reminder of the filming in Andalusia,
takes it calmly.
Two egg-carrying females of the summer tadpole shrimp Triops cancriformis we found in the Guadalquivir alluvium in Spanish Andalusia. The spotted animal originates from a roadside ditch containing clear water. The uniform beige-brown specimen lived in a hollow in which primarily river water buttercups Ranunculus fluitans bloomed. Hundreds of tadpole shrimp in all sizes had agitated the water into a murky grey-brown brew. Can the apparent differences be traced back to the differing environmental conditions in the two ponds and thus to a coincidence, or are they expressions of two different evolutionary lines?
