BBC's online zoo

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BBC opens world's biggest online zoo*

 

28 September 2009, *

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/28/bbc-wildlife-finder-online-zoo

*<http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/28/bbc-wildlife-finder-online-z\

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Wildlife online with footage of 370 exhibits plus Attenborough too*

 

The world's biggest online zoo has opened its doors to show off hundreds of

animals, all performing obediently over and over again.

 

Traditional zoo disappointments – coy lions staying in their dens or snakes

hiding under leaves – have no part in the extraordinary display of passion,

cunning, mimicry, reproduction and violence by everything from hedgehogs to

spitting cobras.

 

Caught at night with infrared cameras, deep underwater with huge

floodlights, and under microscopes which distinguish different sorts of

microbe, the *BBC's Wildlife Finder*

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/wildlifefinder>is the product of years of

planning – and dreaming. Technology and funding

have finally made possible the corporation's ambition to give its

spectacular natural history photography and film a permanent global

audience.

 

Starting with 370 animals, including four octopuses and a solitary starfish,

the databank of clips and still pictures will be reinforced on a daily

basis. *BBC* <http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/bbc> staff are combing through

hundreds of *wildlife*

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/wildlife>programmes, from

spectaculars such as Planet Earth to regional TV news

items, to create an unprecedented collection. Early stars in terms of hits

online include Darwin's frog, a tiny resident of forests in Chile, which

gives birth through the mouth of the male. The process is repeated in slow

motion – another feature of the archive's ability to spy on Earth's wild

creatures to an unprecedented extent.

 

A New Guinea jumping spider has also leapt into the popularity charts,

soaring from a leaf on to the cameraman's lens. He carries on filming, as a

commentary tells us about the exceptional size of the spider's jaws. " Its

jump is only used, " the film explains, without the slightest wobble as

spider legs skid on the glass, " as a means of getting on to its prey. "

 

The website divides into the animal kingdom's main categories, such as

mammals, fish and birds, and then descends in tiers through subspecies, down

to moonrats and tree kangaroos. Long-standing favourites such as meerkats

are in the launch selection but the spotlight also shines on the nocturnal

and hardly-ever-seen Sundar Flying Lemur, or Malay Colugo. A rat-like

rodent, this opens itself out into a sort of aerial handbag to glide

silently through the forests of Borneo in the dark. Equally shy are the

Dumbo octopi, the only wild species to be named after a Disney character.

 

Appearing in many of the clips alongside the animals is Sir David

Attenborough. His favourites include film of the inside of a duckbilled

platypus's burrow and an attack by predators on a shoal of sardines.

Wildlife Finder had, said Sir David, realised his highest ambitions for

popularising natural history.

 

" It has always been my hope that, through film-making, I can bring the

wonder of the natural world into people's sitting rooms, " he said. " Now the

web has totally changed how we can link information, connect people and

reach new audiences in a world which likes to have things on demand. "

 

A quarter of the animals have more than one clip each, with 500 separate

films in the launch package, and some show a very young Sir David.