National Geographic’s new series Africa Earth’s Wild Home sets out to capture the extraordinary ecological diversity of the African continent, from dense rainforests and hidden caves to open landscapes inhabited by some of the world’s most iconic—and least understood—animals. Filmed across nearly 30 countries over almost four years, the series combines spectacular natural-history cinematography with newly documented animal behavior, scientific expertise and stories of the people working to protect Africa’s wild places.
Director Kate Laurie worked on the series’ “Jungle” episode, which explores the challenges and surprises of filming in some of Africa’s most visually dense and difficult environments. Her stories include dwarf crocodiles adapting to cave life, elephants navigating waterfalls and hyenas hunting elephants at night. Scientific Inquirer spoke with Laurie about how the production chose its stories, the role scientists played throughout filming, the challenge of finding fresh ways to portray familiar wildlife, and what the series reveals about just how much of Africa’s natural world remains to be discovered.
Marc Landas, Scientific Inquirer: You filmed across nearly 30 countries over almost four years. How do you begin shaping something that vast into a coherent story rather than simply a collection of spectacular wildlife sequences?
Kate Laurie: It helped initially that each episode is about a distinct region of Africa. The episode I worked on was “Jungle,” so that obviously limited me to a very specific part of Africa.
It’s also about variety. I don’t think an audience wants to watch the same emotional story about a mother over and over again, or watch five hunt sequences in a row. For me, it’s about diversity and taking the audience on an emotional roller coaster.
Gavin mentioned “box-office animals.” For me, those were gorillas and forest elephants. You make a lot of effort to find those stories, but the problem is that a lot of people have already filmed those animals. So how do you do them differently? I think that’s a challenge in itself.
Then there’s finding the weird, the wonderful and the surprising. For me, in “Jungle,” that included Kinda baboons, which I don’t think have been filmed very much. We also had dwarf crocodiles exhibiting behavior that hadn’t been shown on television before. We had an insect story and a pangolin—big animals, small animals, a real variety.
The hardest thing I found when I went into this episode was that I was telling a story about the jungle, and filming in dense jungle is not only difficult, but visually it can start to look quite similar across an episode. So I thought, “How do I make this feel different? How do we go on a journey that isn’t just through more trees and more trees?”
As a team, we made a lot of effort to find stories in a variety of habitats within the jungle. We have waterfalls, clearings and caves—surprising locations hidden within the jungle.
Scientific Inquirer: During pre-production, how do you select which animals to focus on?
Kate Laurie: Initially, you make your wish list—again, the “box-office animals”—and then it comes down to finding the best stories. Is it new behavior? Is it something that hasn’t really been shown before? How can we show it differently? And is it feasible?
It’s all very well finding an amazing story, but if it is going to be nearly impossible to film, then there’s no point. There are restrictions on what we’re able to do.
So it isn’t really a case of choosing exactly what you want to film before you find the stories. The stories very much dictate what you do. I looked into bonobos, for example, and I also looked into chimpanzees. But when I already had a gorilla story, I felt that was enough.
We were also one big team at the end of the day. All the producers, assistant producers and everyone on the editorial side would talk about their stories. Another episode had chimpanzees, which was another reason for me to think, “We’ve covered them. I don’t necessarily need to find a chimpanzee story.” There were a lot of conversations within the wider team about what everybody was setting out to film.
Scientific Inquirer: How much of what you filmed actually made it into the finished series?
Kate Laurie: In terms of stories, almost everything I filmed made it into the final program. Only one of my stories didn’t make it in, and that was simply because it wasn’t as strong as the others.
Scientific Inquirer: One of the images that really jumps out from the series is the black panther hunting at night. Can you talk about how that sequence came together and how it was filmed?
Kate Laurie: That wasn’t my story; it was from a different episode. What I can tell you is that she is incredibly rare. I think she is one of only a handful of known black panthers on the continent.
She was filmed in Kenya, but I can’t really tell you much more than that because I didn’t do the filming and it wasn’t one of my stories.
Scientific Inquirer: How closely do you coordinate with scientists and other experts in the field—before, during and after shooting?
Kate Laurie: Throughout the entire process. They are integral to the production. Without them, we wouldn’t have the access, we wouldn’t have the science and we wouldn’t have the stories. They are involved through the whole process.
We also tend to work with organizations, scientists and guides on the ground who help us with things such as safety and how to operate appropriately in these environments.
Scientific Inquirer: Let’s talk about the dwarf crocodiles. What was it like filming them?
Kate Laurie: They’re the cutest crocodiles in the world, I think—which is an extraordinary thing to say!
That’s probably why it’s my favorite story, because they’re such unlikely heroes. In a lot of sequences you watch about crocodiles, they’re the bad guys. You don’t necessarily care about them. You almost hate them a little bit because they kill animals you find cute. They’re portrayed as villains, and you don’t often get a chance to engage with them or connect with them emotionally.
These crocodiles are just the cutest things you’ve ever seen. They’re tiny, they’re funny, they’re clumsy, and they’re adapting to survive in caves when they should be living in swamps. It’s extraordinary.
What was so amazing about this story is that no one really understood how they were able to hunt bats until this footage revealed it.
They were only discovered relatively recently in these caves in Gabon. A National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet Explorer who has been studying African crocodiles for more than a decade helped us find the caves, set up the cameras and understand more about their behavior. It was thanks to him that we knew about the story and had access to it.
It was a huge achievement to pull it off. You can imagine going into a horrible, dark cave, setting up cameras, leaving them there and hoping for the best. But it was a huge success.
Scientific Inquirer: Were there other behaviors captured for the first time in “Jungle”?
Kate Laurie: Yes. In “Jungle,” there are the dwarf crocodiles, the elephant on the waterfall and the hyenas hunting elephants at night.
Scientific Inquirer: When viewers finish Africa Earth’s Wild Home, what do you hope they understand about Africa that they may not have understood before watching it?
Kate Laurie: We have 14 new behaviors in the series, and I think that shows there is still so much of Africa left to be discovered.
I really hope people come away having learned how resilient and adaptable these animals are, and just how extraordinary they are. I don’t think we’ve even scratched the surface.
But I also hope audiences understand how important the people are who are fighting to keep Africa’s wild places wild and to protect them. They are incredibly important, and we simply couldn’t have made this series without them.
IMAGE CREDIT: National Geographic