Original subtitles

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[Narrator] Bugs are awesome!

[ding]

But they're also really small,

which makes the challenge of filming them...

[Crewmember] Ow!

[Narrator] ...enormous.

[Camera operator] Oh, my boot's coming off.

[Narrator] Our team of 450,

including dozens of world class scientists...

[Scientist] Hey!

[Narrator] ...brave the gnarliest landscapes

across the globe.

[Camera operator] Probably the most difficult environment

I've had to shoot in.

[Narrator] Filming over 130 different species,

our crew must push the limits

of a new generation of camera technology,

to take you closer than ever

and bring the most extraordinary miniature dramas

to life.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

New York!

Not the first place you'd think to find bugs,

but this place is crawling with them.

And our big city crew is braving new heights

to film this bold jumping spider.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

He's trying to protect his penthouse

from an unwanted intruder.

♪ ♪

[siren]

[Crewmember] He's gone over.

[Crewmember] He's gone over.

[Narrator] Thankfully...

[Crewmember] Oh, wow, look at that.

[Narrator] Our jumping spider is in safe hands.

[Frank Somma] My previous career,

I was a New York City firefighter.

[Narrator] But today, Frank is working

as our spidey stunt coordinator.

[Frank] We're in Manhattan, on the top of a 22-story building.

View is excellent.

[Narrator] Turns out heights are no big deal for this bug.

But for the crew and their equipment...

[Crewmember] Go for it. [Frank] Good?

[Crewmember] Yep.

[Narrator] ...falling 250 feet off this high rise

would be less than optimal.

[Frank] Don't lean over the wall too much.

[laughs] [Crewmember] Me?

[Frank] Yeah, you. [Crewmember] Oh, I'm good.

[Narrator] Frank thinks jumping spiders

are easy to love,

especially when seen up close.

Too cute!

[Frank] They almost seem to have a personality.

They have excellent vision.

They'll look at you with these puppy dog eyes;

eight of 'em.

[Narrator] But they have a mind of their own.

[Frank] Unlike people or larger animals,

you can't really train them.

I just try to guide 'em in a certain direction.

[Narrator] The biggest stunt our spider has to do today

is a leap 20 times his body length.

Seriously?

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Oops.

Fortunately, when you've got a built-in safety line,

it's a softer landing.

Alright. Take two.

[ding]

It's not every day a spider gets to ride in an elevator.

♪ ♪

Okay.

This one's for really real.

♪ ♪

Crushed it!

Because he does this kind of thing every day.

[Frank] What's life like for a jumping spider in New York?

Hectic.

[laughs] Just like every New Yorker!

[Narrator] No crew or cameras have taken a fall.

So, what do we say, Frank?

[Frank] That's a wrap! [chuckles]

[Narrator] From the concrete jungle to the real jungle,

there's more bugs here per square foot

than any other place on Earth.

But that doesn't mean they're easy to find.

Especially at night.

And when they're one of Costa Rica's top predators,

it's straight-up scary.

[Andrew Stephenson] Everything that is dangerous in the forest

comes out at nighttime.

We, we need to watch out for snakes,

not just on the ground, but also overhead,

and the carnivores: the jaguars, the ocelots.

They all come out at night to hunt as well.

[Narrator] It's not just one creature

that Andrew's searching for...

it's a swarm.

Army ants!

[Andrew] These ants are such efficient hunters,

that if they don't move home every single night,

they're gonna run out of food in the forest,

so these are pretty much the apex predator

in this environment.

[Narrator] But even an army can be tough to track down.

Unless...

[Andrew] Just a minute.

[Narrator] ...you know where to look.

Andrew's found the ants' temporary base camp.

[Andrew] We've got a fantastic bivouac building up,

just in the roots of this buttress root tree,

and that's a really impressive sight.

You never get bored finding this in the forest.

It's almost like a butcher shop in there.

They're all chopping up the limbs and the bodies

of the animals that they bring in.

[Narrator] Oh. Fun.

The next hurdle will be filming the army ants

as they head out to hunt.

[Andrew] So, we need to be there right when dawn comes.

[Narrator] While we wait for the rest of the crew to arrive,

let's hit pause on this ant story

and catch up with our other teams around the world.

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Like in the Australian bush,

on fire,

or this quaint pond in England.

[Crewmember] Action!

[Narrator] Or this tropical island off Borneo,

where finding our bug stars seems to be a breeze.

[Crewmember] There's just loads around here, yeah.

[Narrator] But filming them

is going to be difficult.

[Lucia Chmurova] So, we are on an island called Pulau Tiga,

which is a small island off Sabah,

and we are here to film some tiger beetles.

[Narrator] This tiger beetle species

has never been filmed before.

And for good reason.

[zooming]

They can really move.

[Lucia] So, just for reference,

people can run six body lengths a second.

With tiger beetles, they can run over 170 body lengths.

So, that means that they are

roughly 20 times faster than people.

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[Dale Hudson] There's a lot at stake with this gear.

Working with electronic equipment next to salt water

is never ideal.

Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo!

[Narrator] The plan is to place a beetle

directly in front of the camera.

How tough can that be?

[Lucia] Nope!

You need to be quite patient with them.

They kind of react to your body movement,

so to try to get close enough to them to be able to catch them

is very hard.

And nope!

Nothing.

[Narrator] Oh, man.

This could take a while.

Patience alone won't be enough to film this next bug.

Our jungle team needs a bug whisperer to call him in.

♪ ♪

Orchid bees can travel over 15 miles a day.

So, the chances of seeing this tiny green bug

in a gigantic green forest?

[John Capener] Be very lucky to find one, let alone film one.

But you can at least get them to come to you.

[Narrator] Enticing the orchid bees

is the job of local expert Carlos.

[Carlos Alberto Hernandez Vélez] It's a privilege to be here,

and it's a very special place,

because every time that you come here,

you'll see another species that you haven't seen

in, in some time.

So, I recognize and feel like

they are like my friends or something.

It's like, "Hey! I haven't seen you in a while!"

[Narrator] Orchid bees love orchids, obviously.

The problem is, they're normally found way up there.

Luckily, Carlos has his own collection.

[John] That's where we want it, isn't it?

[Carlos] Yeah, this is a good spot, and that one is...

[John] That's fine.

[Carlos] It's attractive.

[Narrator] On their own, these orchids might attract

only a few bees a day.

So, the crew could be waiting, like, forever

to get the shots they need.

But don't stress.

Carlos has a secret solution.

[Carlos] So, I have my collection of scents here.

This is a very attractive one.

So, a male bee, they are attracted to different perfumes.

And I think there's a bee already here.

[humming]

I can hear him.

There it is.

[humming]

Oh, this is a big one.

Hey!

We have a bee.

[Narrator] Orchid bees collect a variety of scents,

store them in pouches on their hind legs

and blend them to make an alluring perfume.

All to charm a lady bee.

Ooh la la!

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The rarer the fragrance, the better.

[John] This time, we'll be ready to go.

Just stick some on that.

[Narrator] When you all kinda look the same,

it helps to smell unique.

And thanks to Carlos' love potions,

there's bees aplenty.

♪ ♪

[John] Orchid bees are such fun to work with,

because you're actually giving them something new

that they're excited about,

and in return, we get to film them a bit.

It feels like a great tradeoff.

Yeah. Yeah, I think we got it.

[buzzing]

♪ ♪

[Narrator] There are no magical techniques

for filming our next character.

Found in one of the most inhospitable places on Earth

is this bug-eyed fish.

Mudskippers thrive here in the mangroves of Malaysia.

But reaching their gloopy home,

where they battle for territory...

[Mudskipper] Hey!

[Will Foster-Grundy] Oh, my boot's coming off!

[Narrator] ...is proving to be...

[groans]

...a struggle.

♪ ♪

[Will] The glamorous life of a wildlife filmmaker.

[Narrator] This mud is unskippable for humans.

Crawling and slithering, though, are still on the table.

♪ ♪

And eventually...

Will the cameraman is in the perfect position

to film these sloppy standoffs.

[Will] So, I've got a bit of nice light, thank goodness.

The mudskippers are out in force.

All hopping around, marking their territory.

But the main issue is that behind me, over here,

the tide is coming in fast, so the kit could be in jeopardy,

or I could, worse, and I could be stuck in the mud.

[Narrator] Time for a hasty retreat.

♪ ♪

[Will] When you finally get setup,

and you've got a bit of nice light,

and the skippers just start to interact,

the tide comes up at rapid speed,

and I have to bail out as quickly as possible

before the equipment and myself gets buried under the water.

So, whilst it's great to finally be out

and actually filming on the mudflats,

we got pushed out within probably 25 minutes.

The most difficult environment I've had to shoot in.

[Narrator] Newsflash from the beach in Borneo!

[Lucia] Mmm!

[Narrator] Lucia finally scored a tiger beetle.

Dale wants to film it up close as it escapes from the waves.

[Dale] That's looking great there.

Waiting for waves.

This could be it.

♪ ♪

Pbbbt! He was off.

We have more, don't we?

[Lucia] Nope.

[Narrator] These guys just do not take direction.

[Bug] Hee hee hee hee!

[Narrator] Hopefully by the time we come back,

they'll have found a more cooperative beetle.

Over in this backyard in Texas,

there's one bug that's not just uncooperative,

it's downright despised.

[Matt Langbehn] I love bugs. I think they're super cool.

But my least favorite ones to work with are fire ants,

and the reason for that is fire ants sting.

[Narrator] But the crew are trying to look past

their bad rep.

[Alex Hemingway] It wasn't until we visited the location,

in fact, the first shoot, that we, in a way, struck gold.

[Narrator] When our team turned on the unused water feature,

they found a large colony of fire ants.

[Sean Doyle] Literally, thousands and thousands of ants

started pouring out.

It was crazy.

[Narrator] The crew saw the perfect opportunity to showcase

how extraordinary these little menaces actually are.

[Alex H.] I think once you use the technology

that we have at our disposal, cameras that can slow down time,

lenses that can shrink us down and be in their world,

you start to very quickly see these things

in a very different light.

[Narrator] And nothing is more inspiring

than a strong community spirit in the face of danger.

[Alex Jones] You'll see ants climbing onto each other,

clinging on like this with their little legs,

and eventually, they all prevail

and save themselves during a flood.

[Sean O'Donnell] Rather than being like a collection of ants,

it's almost like the mass kind of behaves

as a semi-solid object.

[Alex J.] Whoa!

[Matt] Okay, that looks...

That's so cool!

[Sean] It looked pretty cool. [Crewmember] Yeah?

[Sean] Yeah, yeah.

[Narrator] Mayday!

These incredible shots reveal how the ants stick together.

Each taking its turn underwater,

sometimes for hours at a time.

Displaying the qualities

that have helped fire ants take on America.

[Sean] The way they're able to do these amazing things

is pretty impressive,

and it'd be nice to see people recognize that,

rather than just see them as a pest.

[Narrator] And the last pool obstacle

for our rafting fire ants is a human.

[Alex J.] Can you bring them closer toward me, to me?

[Swimmer] This is a highlight of my life. [chuckles]

[Alex J.] That was great!

[Alex H.] Oh, my god! That was so cool!

[Swimmer] I forgot it was there!

I'm like, thank god I didn't knock it over!

[Alex H.] I was like, "Ah-ah!"

[laughter]

Nerves of steel.

[Narrator] Fire ants may still be hated,

but once filmed like this, you gotta admit,

these guys are pretty impressive.

Land ahoy!

♪ ♪

When you see the world from a bug's perspective,

you realize just how big their obstacles really are.

Biggest of them all?

A six-ton African elephant.

Dung beetles live beneath their feet.

But filming this close encounter

requires some serious prep.

♪ ♪

First up...

make sure our star gets VIP treatment.

[Nthabiseng "Tumi" Mathikge] We washed her,

'cause they're always covered in soil and dung,

and it becomes difficult to just see

that really beautiful purple color that they have,

so, once she's on set, you can just admire her, you know?

[Narrator] Totally gorgeous.

Time to get down to business.

[Nat Sharman] So, ideally, we want to set up camera,

and then an elephant foot will come into frame.

[Tumi] It will be great to see,

like, the contrast between a huge animal,

such as an elephant, and really small, teeny-tiny dung beetle.

We want to see the sort of interactions

that she'll be having.

[Narrator] Getting the camera this close

also puts our crew in the squish zone.

Luckily, this orphaned elephant is used to humans.

But the dung beetle's safety depends

on one more thing falling into place.

♪ ♪

[Nat] You're gonna get pooing now.

[splat]

[Narrator] Ah-ha!

The perfect crash mat.

Hot out of the oven.

[Nat] And turning.

Okay, dung beetle in when you can.

[Narrator] And as long as our dung beetle has a poop cushion,

she'll live to tell the tale.

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♪ ♪

[Nat] She's thinking that the camera is.

[Crewmember] Yeah.

[Nat] Will you take those boxes off?

[Crewmember] Yeah, I think the boxes are confusing him.

[Nat] The boxes are to protect my camera.

[Narrator] Take two.

[Nat] You ready? Okay, we ready to go, Sean?

[Sean] Okay. [Nat] And turning.

[Crewmember] Come.

[Nat] You guys ready? Let's go.

Whoa!

[Narrator] The elephant has played his part.

As for our dung beetle?

[Crew] Yay!

[Crewmember] Oh, that's brilliant.

Excellent, look at that! Perfect!

[Nat] She's alright, completely alright.

[Tumi] Yeah.

[Narrator] Dawn at last in Costa Rica.

The camera crew has set out early

to film the army ants on the hunt.

Remember these guys?

But looks like they're late to the party.

The ants got up even earlier.

They're already on the march!

To get the shots they want,

the crew needs to get ahead of them.

Not easy with all this fancy camera gear.

[Alex J.] All of these vines catch on everything.

All the tripod legs, your legs, everything.

♪ ♪

So, we tried to move in front of the wave,

but as soon as we put the equipment down,

they're already passing by us.

[Narrator] This is pushing the team to breaking point.

[Alex J.] Ow!

[Andrew] You really wouldn't want to be much longer

where Alex is crouched 'cause he's gonna get eaten.

We've got ants all round us.

They're actually dropping on us,

and obviously you can see the problems we're having.

[Crewmember] Ow!

[Andrew] Army ants will bite and sting.

They have both weapons at their disposal,

but the closer we get in, the better shots we get,

so it's a case of just grinning and bearing it

and just putting up with the pain and getting the shots.

[Alex J.] Whoa, look at that.

That's sick!

I think we've definitely got the shot.

It's pretty exciting.

Constantly we're running around and everything,

but yeah, once you get it, it's pretty epic.

[Narrator] Thanks to Andrew's "ants-pertise,"

and the crew's persistence, it's mission accomplished.

Can the same be said for the Borneo beach crew?

Not really.

They're still here,

trying to film a tiger beetle escaping waves.

[Dale] That's great, that's great.

Wave coming, wave coming.

Come on, come on.

Yeah!

[Narrator] Finally! The perfect shot!

[Dale] That looked good!

[Narrator] But it has taken all day.

Perhaps it's time to test a new approach.

[bee buzzing]

On this peaceful British farm,

filming the world of a bumblebee

is giving our camera crew quite a buzz.

♪ ♪

They're attempting to mimic a forager bee in flight.

But it's pushing their most advanced technology

to the limits.

[Dr. Adrian Thomas] So, you've got hundreds of millions

of years of evolution

that's honed biological systems to work beautifully,

and it may be just too difficult to do,

even with the technology we've got now.

[Narrator] This drone has been souped up

to reveal what it's like to fly like a bee.

♪ ♪

It can easily match its speed,

but it'll need to up its game

to mimic the bee's lack of depth perception.

[Adrian] So, unlike us, where we've got eyes widely spaced

so we can do stereo,

we can work out distances by how the eyes converge on things,

they can't do that, so they have to shift the whole body.

So, if there's a flower that they're going to,

they'll just maneuver around it, go, "Oh, there it is."

[Narrator] Alright. Let's try this one again.

[Adrian] Going up.

♪ ♪

Little shot of the crew there, and back to the ivy.

Mm, that's quite, it's quite a nice bumblebee speed,

really, isn't it?

Oh, it's going under the tractor.

Interesting.

[Crewmember] Oh, that's lovely.

[Adrian] And through the middle of the gap. Nice.

I mean, a bumblebee would definitely go under it, no?

[Crewmember] Yeah.

[Adrian] Very happy place for them.

I'm very impressed with that. [Crewmember] Tighter.

[Adrian] It's the right speed, it's the right height.

Yeah, I'm, I think this is really nice.

[Crewmember] And then into the flowers.

So, we can give these a little nudge, potentially.

There you go. Right into that flower.

I think we've done that. Yeah, that's good. [laughs]

[Crewmember] Do you want another one?

[Crewmember] If we've got enough battery for another pass

through the tractor, then that'd be cool.

Okay. But that was impressive.

We're actually getting the camera right in there.

Okay, coming up through the tractor.

[crash]

[Narrator] Nailed the flight path,

but not the flight time.

With a battery life of just three minutes,

our drones have some serious evolving to do

to match the bumblebee's endurance.

They can stay on the grind up to six hours a day.

♪ ♪

During the making of A Real Bug's Life,

caring for bugs has been critical to our team.

[Lucia] I'm releasing the beetles

after the whole day of shooting,

just making sure that we release them in the same place

where we caught them in the morning.

Here you go.

[Narrator] Some of the bugs we filmed...

[Crewmember] It's very pretty.

[Narrator] ...have been easy to love.

[Lynn Faust] Almost everybody I've ever met likes fireflies.

And here's a little guy right here.

He's attracted to the camera.

He's going, "Well, I'll check that out."

Fireflies represent nature at its best, in a way.

They're not dangerous, they don't carry disease.

They're not hurting our food crops,

and they're just a thing of beauty.

They give a charismatic and tangible benefit

to everyone's life.

They're like little ambassadors

to bring people back into nature.

[Narrator] But not all bugs have this level of support.

And they need our help.

Over 40% of our insect species are in decline.

At this rate, many bugs could vanish within a century.

[Michael Carr] There are some really big concerns

with insect conservation moving forward.

Habitat loss, light pollution, urbanization,

destruction of soils.

Even just removing wood from forests like this one

can be the one thing some insects need

to keep their reproductive cycle going,

so there's a lot of work to be done.

What we're doing tonight: trying to find the stag beetles.

Figuring out where they are and what they really like to do

and where they like to be.

♪ ♪

Look at this guy!

Oh, my god!

He's a really fun beetle to have.

It's almost incomprehensible

just how diverse the insect world is.

Right along the back is probably one of the prettiest moths

we'll actually get tonight,

in my own personal opinion.

A giant leopard moth.

I know a lot of people see insects

as these are small, insignificant pests,

but they don't see the really beneficial things.

Getting people more exposed to some of the more beautiful

and inspiring insects of the world

is a good way to kinda step their perceptions away from,

"Ew, cockroach," to "Wow."

Sometimes the fantastical is right under your nose.

You just gotta look for it.

[Narrator] But don't get too close.

[Michael] I don't think I ever walk out of this

without swallowing a couple of bugs.

[laughs] Extra protein!

[Narrator] We hope that by revealing the stories

of these incredible creatures,

we can help inspire a new generation of bug fans.

[Carlos] Bye-bye.

[Narrator] Because bugs aren't just awesome;

for sustaining life on this planet,

they are essential.

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