The BBC’s Natural History team have been busy flying all over the world filming sequences for Life in the Undergrowth, which will reach our screens in November this year. However, filming small fast insects presents its own set of challenges.

Casual observers of a natural history documentary could be forgiven for believing that organisms almost always exhibit interesting behaviour when captured in the lens of a camera. The stark reality, however, is that film teams have to plan their work very carefully.
Firstly, it is essential that filming takes place in the right season, in the right place, and at the right stage in the life cycle of the target organism.
Secondly, it is vital that the film team is equipped with every necessary device to ensure that when that interesting behaviour occurs (which could take place in a fraction of a second) they are ready and able to record it.

The Ashtead Group plc, one of the world’s largest rental companies, which owns A-Plant in the UK, is well known for its rental fleet of equipment ranging from dumper trucks to jack hammers. However, it has a less well known ‘technology’ company that specialises in high-tech equipment to meet the needs of a diverse customer base, including the BBC’s Natural History Team.

Stephen Dunleavy, producer of Life in the Undergrowth recently rented a high speed camera for use in Malaysia and Brazil, and Stephen says “on both assignments, we needed to wait patiently for long periods of time before an event occurred, but at that point we would have fractions of a second to record the action. It would not have been viable to leave our normal cameras running, so we hired a high-speed camera from specialist rental company Ashtead Technology Rentals. The camera we chose was an Olympus i-Speed that is able to take up to 33,000 frames in a single second, and can be activated by a trigger.”

In Malaysia, the BBC team travelled to an area North of Kuala Lumpur in order to film Trapdoor Spiders.
The Malaysian Trapdoor Spider is not actually a true spider, but a liphistid spider because it still retains a segmented abdomen. However, whilst it has evolved very slowly, it is lightning fast in every other respect. This species, like other trapdoor spiders, creates a trapdoor for its burrow entrance, behind which it hides and waits for prey.
Trapdoor spiders, like most others, use silk to ensnare target insects. However, instead of a web, the spider will spin trip lines that radiate from the trapdoor, and when an insect touches a trip line, the spider lifts its trapdoor and shoots out to inject its venomous fangs into the prey, before dragging the hapless insect into its lair.
Stephen Dunleavy reports that during filming “David had not anticipated the speed with which the spider would emerge, and was shocked by the sudden arrival of a disgruntled, fangs bared, 4 inch spider!”

The BBC team faced a similar challenge in Brazil when in pursuit of the Brazilian Bot Fly. The Bot Fly, two to three times larger than a housefly, is a nasty little insect that invades the living tissue of warm-blooded animals, and feeds upon it during the larval stage. Adult females lay fertilised eggs on animals (often cattle and horses, but sometimes humans – an Internet search reveals numerous gruesome instances) and the heat of their blood causes the egg to hatch, whereupon the larvae burrow under the skin.
There are numerous instances of travellers in South and Central America reporting irritation under the skin as a result of feeding Bot Fly larvae.

Brazil plays host to a particularly devious Bot Fly that uses smaller insects such as houseflies and mosquitoes to transfer its eggs to a potential host. The Bot Fly catches a smaller insect in mid-air and transfers a single egg on to its back.

Armed once more with the rented high-speed camera, Stephen Dunleavy and his colleagues were able to capture unique footage of the Bot Fly’s violation of the Brazilian housefly’s airspace. One can only imagine the thoughts going through cameraman Tim Shepherd’s mind as he sat patiently for two weeks watching a Bot Fly, camera at the ready, willing it to take off and grab a housefly.

Stephen Dunleavy reports excellent progress in the creation of Life in the Undergrowth commenting that ‘the high quality of the material that we are able to produce is, in part, a result of the fact that high tech video cameras are now very easy to use, and the costs are not preclusive because we are able to rent them.”

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