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Extraordinary Animals in the Womb

Opening a window on the amazing journeys and survival strategies of sharks, kangaroos, penguins and wasps from conception to birth.

From the makers of the critically acclaimed In the Womb series Rocket Rights presents Extraordinary Animals in the Womb. Made for Channel 4 and National Geographic Channel, This film uncovers the incredible stories of how four extraordinary animals develop from conception to birth.

The Shark its cannibalistic embryos will eat their own brothers to survive.

The Emperor Penguin its egg-bound chicks must battle the coldest weather on the planet .

The Kangaroo its underdeveloped young will undergo an exceptionally premature birth ..

The Parasitic Wasp its larvae must hijack and exploit the body of another creature

In a television first innovative new technologies bring these stories to life, ground breaking photography takes us inside the pouch of a kangaroo and for the first time ever scans unlock the secrets inside the womb of a wild shark.

Scientifically accurate models and computer animation.. reveal these extraordinary stories of life before birth

The Independent We have been well and truly Attenborough-ised, so used to marvelling that the marvellous has become the norm. Yet here was something rare, a nature programme still with the wow factor.

The Times Here is the kind of biology lesson that Quentin Tarantino might enjoy.

Reviews

Daily Telegraph

An amazing new film shows how exotic animals develop as embryos. Andrew Pettie talks to its director Peter Chinn

Anyone who thinks they had a tough upbringing should spare a thought for the tiger shark. Its battle for survival starts even before it is born. Embryonic tiger sharks eat their own siblings while inside the womb so that only the strongest will emerge. That is one of many eye-popping bits of animal behaviour explained in Extraordinary Animals in the Womb, a documentary airing on Channel 4 on Monday.

Last year, Animals in the Womb, produced by the same team, provided some extraordinary insights of its own. It featured a tiny elephant, complete with 15cm trunk, floating in its mothers womb, and a 52-day-old dog embryo already panting and covered in fur. However, this new film, says its director Peter Chinn, will make those startling sights seem almost run-of-the-mill.

Most people are familiar with the development of human babies, he says. If youre a parent, youve seen baby scans. And even in last years documentary, when we filmed mammalian embryos such as elephants, dolphins and dogs they all underwent roughly the same process. Here we wanted to study weird animals and show more extreme examples.

Step forward the shark, the Emperor penguin, the kangaroo and a type of parasitic wasp. Each species has its own idiosyncratic embryonic process, which Chinn has filmed and recreated using a combination of ground-breaking photography, four-dimensional scans (ie a 3D scan filmed over a period of time), silicon models and CG special effects.

Where we were able to shoot footage using high-tech cameras, we did, he explains. For example, we managed to insert a tiny medical camera in a kangaroos pouch without disturbing the little joey. But where we couldnt film things, like inside the sharks womb, we built silicone models, operated by thin wires which were rubbed out later on a computer, like they do in the movies.

Filming on this ambitious project began last February and involved trips to Australia, the US and the Bahamas to capture the animals at the key stages of their pregnancies. Chinn was most delighted with footage of a lemon shark giving birth, not least because it had to be filmed from alarmingly close range.

Were very proud of that sequence, he says, because its hard to film any of a sharks natural behaviour, apart from shots of them biting bait like you see in every other nature film. But theres a place in the Bahamas where the lemon shark has been studied for 20 years and where a team of marine biologists were able to help us intercept a pregnant shark on its way to giving birth. We got some great footage using the tiniest HD camera available. Its the size of a mobile phone and our cameraman was holding it in his hand, diving upside down, chasing after this pregnant shark, holding it right near her rear end just as the shark was born. It was amazing.

Similarly astonishing, but in a far less life-affirming way, are the antics of the chillingly Machiavellian parasitic wasp.

Its the most bizarre creature, says Chinn. The wasp lays its eggs inside a species of caterpillar. The larvae grow inside the caterpillar and then burst out, spin little cocoons and metamorphose into wasps. Its horribly evil. In fact the parasitic wasp was the model for the alien in the [sci-fi film] Alien.

If you think the wasps reproductive strategy sounds horrifying, youre not alone. Charles Darwin, who as a young man considered a career in the clergy, said that the parasitic wasp made him question the existence of God. This wasp really troubled Darwin, says Chinn. He said, Im not quite sure I can believe in a benevolent God after studying the life-cycle of this creature.

Viewers of a sensitive disposition will find more reassuringly cuddly ground covered later this autumn when two further documentaries, one studying cats in the womb, the other dogs, will air. Although Chinn says that he already has a wish-list of other unlikely animals he would like to film in the womb.

There are plenty of amazing animals still to be done, he says. Such as the Surinam toad, whose young hatch out of its own back. And sea horses are pretty funky, in that they develop inside the father. So Im sure therell be another Animals in the Womb film next year.

My wife gave birth to our first child right in the middle of filming all these weird animals. And it made me think that, by comparison, the human embryo develops in quite a calm, straightforward way. Although, as my wife pointed out, Its not that straightforward.

Extraordinary Animals in the Womb is on Monday October 20 on Channel 4 at 9.00pm

The Times -

Using the highest of high-tech camerawork and advanced computer graphics, the programme follows four creatures from conception to birth - the shark, penguin, kangaroo and parasitic wasp. Here is the kind of biology lesson that Quentin Tarantino might enjoy. The male shark, for example, shoots bullets of sperm into the female, and later the cannibalistic embryos eat their own siblings. The parasitic wasp drills a hollow spike through the flesh of a caterpillar and pumps in the eggs, in effect turning the little darlings into squatters from hell. The early embryos of three of the animals - the kangaroo, shark and penguin - are indistinguishable from the 400-million-year-old fishy vertebrate from which we evolved. The ones who failed to evolve went into investment banking.

RADIO TIMES - review Jane Rackham

- If you stumbled across this unwittingly, you'd probably wonder why you were being shown images of the inside of a lava lamp followed by a cross-section of a Damien Hirst exhibit. They're nothing of the sort, of course. Actually they're a combination of CGI, state-of-the-art models and 4-D ultrasounds showing us the development of four animals from conception to birth. Remarkably, considering the wombs belong to four different creatures that live in totally different environments (a kangaroo, a shark, a penguin and a wasp), several of the embryos look the same. But as gestation progresses, they develop - and are born - in totally different ways. Magical stuff, although some of the startling scenes owe nothing to trickery and everything to nature.

CRITIC'S CHOICE DAILY TELEGRAPH - Gerard O'Donovan

- Embryonic sharks cannibalising siblings in the womb, the harsh climate faced by pregnant Emperor penguins, the parasitic challenge faced by wasp larvae that must first hijack, then consume their host from within After the spellbinding imagery of pre-natal dolphins, elephants and dogs in the award-winning Animals in the Womb, the producers follow up with a film that takes a darker look at life before birth. Using the same 4D scanning technology and ground-breaking HD photography (backed up by ultra-realistic models and computer graphics) were taken on yet another series of eye-popping journeys into the shadowy world of foetal development in the animal kingdom. This time, though, theres not quite so much of the aw, shucks about it, dealing as we are with animals that must endure an extraordinarily tough struggle for life even before they make it out into the world. But the sharks, penguins, kangaroo and wasps featured have also evolved specific biological and anatomical traits to help them overcome the challenge. From the sharks ballistic delivery system that prevents sperm from being washed away in the sea, to the male penguins pouch that provides his mate a life-saving opportunity to leave her eggs and feed, its a fascinating and visually entrancing journey.

WE LOVE FACTUAL- THE MIRROR - Jane Simon

This is the sort of programme that you think you'll try out for five minutes and then find yourself still silently gawping at in wonder 90 minutes later, your tea gone cold on your lap. Through a combination of ultrasound scans, computer animation and scientifically accurate models, the bizarre reproductive strategies of the kangaroo, the parasitic wasp and the emperor penguin are revealed. And while a parasitic wasp has yet to win an Oscar, the way it uses caterpillars as surrogate wombs inspired the cocoonscenario in the movie Alien. "Some of these approaches may seem ruthless..." the voiceover goes, but it's not like these animals have any choice. There is no plush kangaroo maternity hospital where mums to - be can flick through a glossy brochure before deciding to give birth in a paddling pool listening to an Enya CD. For them, it's the pouch way or the highway.