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Many of the people of Africa bestow a spiritual significance
upon the animals of their land, displaying recognition of
the latter’s status as powerful and intriguing fellow beings.
One Life, a superb wildlife documentary by BBC Earth Films,
successfully presents a variety of remarkable species throughout the
world in light of those qualities that make them both comparable and
in some cases superior to their homo sapien neighbours.
Whether it’s a close-up that provides an impossibly intimate gaze at
a wild beast in its natural habitat, a breathtaking survey of a foreign
landscape or a spot-on non-verbal musical description of the visual
magic that unfolds, One Life is able to afford its subjects the aweinspiring
showcase that they deserve.
Moreover, these sentiments are inspired not through unnecessary
anthropomorphic dramatization, but by the everyday lives of
these creatures. From the uncannily human facial expressions of a
bathing snow monkey to the tireless journey of a tiny frog up and
down a tall tree to feed each of its young individually, what unfolds
is none other than what Richard Dawkins has famously coined ‘The
Magic of Reality’.
An ant has a brain the size of a pinhead, but when it joins forces
with its army, it becomes both an architect and an engineer, designing
specially ventilated feeding structures to avoid the toxic dose of carbon
dioxide released by its fungal food. A capuchin peels its nuts and then
leaves them to dry in the sun for exactly two weeks before returning
with a rock with which to crack them. The triggers on a Venus Flytrap
are only released when two are touched within a period of twenty
seconds. These are just some facts of the natural world that point to
its inherent form of ‘intelligence’, or at least of an adaptability that we
would be proud to match.
Aside from the natural success of the hunting chameleon who
can change the color of its skin to disguise itself in its surroundings,
fire a missile of a tongue at 15 feet per second and move its eyes
independently, there are also a great deal of innovative survival
techniques to be admired in the animal kingdom. The Ethiopian
Lammergeier spends years teaching its young to drop bones from
One Life :
THE ORIGINALITY OF
THE SPECIES
Text: Lara Potgieter & Ken Forrester Wines | Images: © www.heyuguys.co.uk
One cannot visit Africa without observing a deep respect for
the myriads of non-human species that inhabit its soil, making
it the continent that it is – full of diversity, and full of life.
extraordinary heights onto strategically selected rocky surfaces to
break them for the purposes of obtaining the marrow inside. The
Kenyan Sengi memorizes intricate mazes with tight twists and turns
because it knows that, although it cannot outrun its lizard predators, it
is much better at taking sharp corners than these nemeses. A newborn
Israeli Ibex knows to run, when chased by a hungry fox, to the one
edge of a cliff-surface upon which only an Ibex can stand. A school of
bottlenose dolphins works together to create a perfect circular ‘fishing
net’ out of mud, while fish quickly disperse into tight and intricate
patterns that make it almost impossible for a larger mammal to grab
hold of any one of them at a time.
Skill is just the seed of the success of many of the species
showcased in the film. It takes courage for a lone goat to descend
a steep cliff to fetch food for her young. It takes patience for
a komodo dragon to wait weeks alongside its large prey until
the poison of its bite finally takes effect and it can eat without
threat. And it takes a showcase like One Life to remind us of the
intelligence, ingenuity, strength, grace and determination of the
beings over which we too often believe ourselves to reign.
If the everyday occurrences of the animal kingdom are not enough
to inspire this kind of recognition, then the unrivalled beauty of a
winged lover’s dance or the humor inspired by the evident grumpiness
of a woken gorilla dad should pull at a few homo sapien heart strings.
One Life is an important reminder of the reality that, if the entire
life-span of the Earth were to be compressed into a year, human beings
would only have been around for part of the last minute of December.
As narrator Daniel Craig relates at the film’s close:
‘Every living thing on this planet seeks the same goal – not just to
live, but to foster new life… their lives, our lives, all life on earth will
be richer if we choose to remember everything we have in common –
realize we share one planet, one future’
And it certainly shouldn’t take the presentation of a lizard walking
on water or a toad turning as hard as a pebble and falling, unscathed,
off a mountain to remind us of that.
Watch the trailer here.
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