Earth-Touch team’s favourite stories of all time – please tell us yours?

We've canvassed the Earth-Touch team internally, and asked them to nominate some of their favourite footage published on the web portal so far. The results follow below.

We’d love to hear what your favourite clips are – please post your votes and thoughts
as a comment to this blog.

The following stories received multiple votes:

Eyeball to eyeball with a great white shark

Watch great white sharks like you’ve never seen them before – swimming centimetres away from Earth-Touch crew member Graeme Duanne, as he films them without the safety of a cage.

The footage was filmed near Dyer Island, off the south-eastern coast of South Africa.

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Cheetahs watch the sun go down

Cheetahs are the fastest land animal in the world. See these beautiful spotted cats at a more relaxed pace as they laze in an African sunset in the Okavango Delta, Botswana in this clip.

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Attack of the gannets

Cape gannets live around the coast of Africa, and breed on only six islands in Southern Africa.They are known for spectacularly diving to spear fish, and for their unusual looks, with their streamlined bodies, yellow heads, pointed beaks and blue-ringed eyes. Watch them in furious action in this Earth-Touch footage.

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Night creatures of the littoral zone

This video reveals dark crevices and pools on the Indian Ocean coastline harbouring little lumps – which are actually well camouflaged, air-breathing sea slugs.

They emerge during low side, especially on humid nights.

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These stories were also highly commended by the Earth-Touch team:

Whales at play

Watch close-up shots of humpback whales playing, blowing, slapping their tails and flapping their flutes in the Indian Ocean.

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Meerkat moments

Within a meerkat group, only one dominant female is allowed to produce litters of young – in larger groups breeding females may number two or three. This is a right that is fiercely protected and enforced where necessary.

Earth-Touch’s footage of meerkats, which are related to mongeese, has been some of the most popular with users so far.

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Underwater networks

This is a video from under the waters of the Okavango Delta, Botswana. One can only dive these waters for a few weeks a year, when the clean waters of the Okavango River flood down from their source in the Angolan Highlands into the delta.

After a few weeks, the water in the delta becomes muddy and too murky for underwater photography. In this clip, you can see the sun shining down on the underwater tunnels which are used by hippos and crocodiles.

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Cleaner shrimps at work on eel

Only on close inspection will you see a tenacious ‘cleaner shrimp’ desperately trying to enter the mouth of a leopard moray eel. After many attempts, the shrimp is able to enter the moray's mouth and go about its business – perhaps one of the most dangerous in all of Nature?

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Dancing lily

In this package our cameraman, Brad Bestelink, is mesmerised by an algae-draped lily in the waters of the Okavango Delta. He muses that it looks like a live creature, caught up in a slow, graceful dance.

‘‘The tendrils of algae shimmered golden in the reflected sunlight as they swirled and waved around their lily host like ethereal veils dancing in the clear water,’’ he writes in his diary.

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Mix of species at break of dawn

Dawn in the African bushveld often brings with it a variety of game grazing in the cool first light.

This video shows zebra, tsessebe and reedbuck silhouetted against the backdrop of the rising sun.

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Fish out of water – mudskippers

Mudskippers (also known as mudhoppers) are an unusual type of fish that survive in water and on land.

They breathe through gills under water and breathe air on land through blood-rich membranes at the back of the mouth and throat.

See them in a mangrove swamp in this video.

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Slithering on the sea floor

The ocellated snake eel, as its name suggests, bears a striking resemblance to both a snake and an eel, and has eye-like (ocellated) markings.

The snake eel moves as easily under the sand as it does on the sea floor and seldom swims in the open water. It uses its acute sense of smell to prey on small fish and crustaceans.

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Serval feasts on mamba

This uncommon, secretive spotted feline is seldom seen, especially at such close range and during the day, as it’s mostly nocturnal.

It is one of the smaller, more elegant cats, with relatively large ears, which it uses to locate its prey. See this rare sighting of a serval feeding on a highly poisonous black mamba.

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Salad for crabs

The favourite food of the red mangrove crab (also known as the spotted mangrove crab) is the leaf of the red mangrove. These crabs are found deep inside mangrove swamps.

Here, you'll find them snatching up yellow leaves falling intermittently from trees, and secreting them into their holes.

What’s in a name?

TRUMPETFISH: Well-named? (Picture © Earth-Touch 2007)

By Reina Luck, editorial team

One of the challenges the editorial team faces on a day-to-day basis is to get our heads around some of the strange and confusing names that we humans have given to the various species which our film crews encounter.

For starters, the name can’t always be taken as a true indication of what the animal looks like, or even what kind of animal it is!

Hence we have the black-collared barbet, most easily recognised by its distinctive forehead, face, throat and upper breast, all of which are ... bright red.

Then there is the black mamba, a snake which is actually not black at all, but dusky olive to ash grey. Only the inside of its mouth is black. So why isn’t the green mamba, which is green, called the sky blue mamba after the colour of the inside of its mouth, which is ... sky blue?

Just today I was looking up the malachite kingfisher. I – naturally, I thought – expected it to be, well, green. But no. It’s mostly reddish-brown and ultramarine blue with a bit of white here and there, and the only visible green is just a hint of it on its crown. If you don’t believe me, have a look at Island life and see for yourself.

Many fish have wonderfully descriptive names. Think of the trumpetfish, the slimehead, the mudskipper, the rubberlip and the parrotfish. Even the “old woman” which does look like an old woman (sort of?)

But there are dozens of others with the most bizarre names imaginable, given their appearance – the cowfish, which, sans horns and udders, looks nothing like a cow; the jumping bean (I have no idea); the rabbitfish, no ears or fluffy tail in sight; the squirrelfish, nutless and also tailless; and my favourite, the convict surgeon. Any resemblance between this harmless-looking green-and-black striped fish and my friendly local sawbones is purely coincidental.

Artificially inseminated blackbuck gives birth to fawn

Male blackbuck Photo: Courtesy Wikipedia

A rare blackbuck, the fastest of the Indian antelopes, gave birth to a fawn in Hyderabad, India, last week, after being artificially inseminated.

The Statesman quoted team leader of the project, Dr Lalji Singh, as saying: “This success can be the basis of future attempts to increase the number of other endangered species.” Singh pointed out that artificial insemination had been more commonly practiced on domestic animals rather than wild species, and argued that it could “significantly contribute to the maintenance of genetic diversity and conservation of endangered animals”.

Blackbuck are currently listed by the World Conservation Union as “near threatened”.

The widening web

Photo: Courtesy Wikipedia

Richard Frank, editorial team

From cars to gaming consoles, to the nearly-ubiquitous cellphone, people are accessing the Internet from an ever-growing list of devices. It’s as exciting as it is frightening for web developers, who are seeing more users, more often, while contending with an ever-widening range of variables between the user and the website.

Even catering for one device, for example the personal computer, can be a nightmare. Consider the number of variables on a personal computer in terms of both operating system (Win98/2000/Me/XP/Vista/Mac OS X Tiger, among others) and browser variables (Internet Explorer/Firefox/Safari/Opera, among others). Throw in different platforms, browsers, screen sizes, resolutions and user settings, and you’re soon staring at literally hundreds of combinations.

Flash, in which the Earth-Touch portal is developed, generally offers web developers a comfy baseline upon which to work. If Flash works on your device – and the list is growing – the website should function correctly. But as we are finding out, there are still browser interactions that can throw a curve ball or two.

So please notify us of any bugs you may experience while using Earth-Touch by clicking on the yellow “Beta” slash in the top right-hand corner of the front page of the website, and filling out the online form. We rely on our users to spot problems, and really appreciate your feedback.

And have fun browsing the site while using Mozilla Firefox on your Ubuntu Linux machine, or Safari on your new Mac, or Pocket IE on your Pocket PC or …

Researchers attempt to save ‘living fossil’ in China

One of the world’s largest species of freshwater fish, the Chinese sturgeon, has survived since the time of the dinosaurs, but with only perhaps 1000 left in the wild, is now facing extinction.

National Geographic News reports that scientists at the Yangtze River Fisheries Research Institute in Jingzhou, China, are trying to avert that by breeding the massive sturgeon, which can grow to 4m (13ft) in length and weigh 450kg (1,000lb), in captivity, and then releasing them into the Yangtze River, where they have traditionally spawned.

Part of the reason for the sturgeon’s decline is attributed to the destruction of its natural habitat – the scientists therefore know that habitat restoration is key to its survival.

Did you know? - Great white sharks

The scientific name for the great white shark, Carcharodon carcharias, translates directly to "jagged-toothed one".

Its common name comes from its white underbelly.

View some of Earth-Touch’s spectacular footage of great white sharks, taken near Dyer Island, off the coast of the Western Cape province, South Africa:

• Spellbound by great whites
• Eyeball to eyeball with a great white shark
  
  

Touching the Earth …

By Tara Turkington, editorial team

It’s winter and the sun is bathing the bush in an early-morning wash of light. We’re bumping along slowly in our Volkswagen Combi on a dirt road near Berg-en-Dal in the Kruger National Park, when we see a long-legged dog running briskly towards us.

We slam on brakes – it’s an endangered African wild dog. There are only about 300 of these in Kruger (one of the world’s great wildlife parks and roughly the size of England), and probably only a couple of thousand left all together in the wild.

The dog runs past us – it all happens so quickly we’ve hardly had time to focus our cameras. She’s an alpha-female, leader of a pack of six others, which all canter past purposefully, back down the road we’ve just driven up. We turn around amidst exclamations at our good fortune, me telling our children, “This is a once-in-a-lifetime sighting! One day you will be able to tell your grandchildren you saw these dogs in the wild – I’m not sure if they will be able to do that!”

We follow the dogs closely for about 45 minutes and several kilometres, as they alternate moving along the road at a lickety-split pace (though they make covering ground like this look like a casual outing) and lying down in the long grass beside the road and playing with one another.

All the while though, the female is out in front, setting the pace, looking back over her shoulder to hurry the others along.

Though their distinctive brown, white and black markings are striking (each one, like fingerprints, has their own distinctive pattern), they melt into the bush in seconds once they leave the bare dirt road. They trip on and off it, heading south as the sun climbs higher.

Then, without warning, three dogs chase a steenbok across the road right in front of us, almost upon it. It is bleating plaintively, heralding its own imminent death, to which it had been oblivious just seconds before. Into the bush prey and predators disappear, and seconds later, cross the road again in a single blur – into the jaws of the rest of the pack, which we know is waiting.

Silence replaces the intermittent yipping. The dogs have merged again with the bush; our sighting is over.

On the way home, our daughter, Emily, who is 9, writes a haiku poem:

Yip yap yip yap yip
Painted wolves hunting steenbok
Working as a team

Our son, Nicholas, 6, declares he is ravenously anticipating breakfast: “I have a hungry wild dog in my tummy!”

For my family, the joy of viewing wildlife – something my parents introduced to us as children but which has been neglected in the hurly-burly of urban life in Johannesburg, South Africa in the past too many years – has been rekindled by Earth-Touch.

For a few months now, we’ve been watching Earth-Touch clips almost every evening in our home – footage of great white sharks eyeballing divers, air-breathing sea slugs inching their way across rocks, eel-snakes slithering in the sandy bottom of the ocean, long-beaked African skimmers laying eggs in tiny indents in a sandbank in the Okavango Delta, the scales of a puffadder captured in microscopic detail, dragonflies, cheetahs, crabs, buffalo, rays, lionfish, monkeys … the big and the small, the graceful and the unexpected, all compellingly beautiful in their own way.

And the more we see and learn, the more we want to see and learn. Which is why next year’s trip to the Kruger is already booked ...

Female hyenas discourage incest

New research shows that female spotted hyenas, generally the dominant sex, discourage incestuous mating so that their young have a better chance of survival.

A 10-year-study of 400 spotted hyenas in Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania, published in Nature, reveals that female spotted hyenas, which live in mixed-gender groups, preferred to mate with strangers. Males were forced to accept this as mating an unwilling female is difficult, due in part to their unusual genitalia. The study showed that young born of two hyenas related to one another were weaker than those which were not.

• Read a Reuters report on the study
• Read a National Geographic News report on the study

Floral welcoming

During the weeks of spring the harsh, sandy desert of Namaqualand is transformed into a sea of yellow, white and orange flowers in bloom. This is a sign of the approaching summer and the end of winter’s cold.

See the annual spectacle of Namaqualand’s blooming flowers in the first Earth-Touch story on the subject, Namaqualand flowers ablaze in orange splendour.

Chimps can distract themselves when necessary, study shows

Just like people anticipating something exciting but having to wait for it, chimpanzees will find ways to keep themselves distracted ahead of receiving a delayed reward, a new study conducted by psychologists at Georgia State University in Atlanta shows.

The study, published in the journal Biology Letters, focused on four chimps waiting for sweets filling up in a dispenser, and which were able to busy themselves with toys, reports ScienceNOW Daily News. The findings suggest chimpanzees have a sense of self-awareness, and further support the idea that human cognition and behaviour is similar to that of some of the other primates.

Deforestation in Brazil slows: Report

New figures suggest the rate of deforestation in Brazil may be slowing slightly – though it is still a fast-continuing trend. BBC News reports that Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva announced a 25% decrease in the destruction of Brazil’s share of the forest (the biggest), between August 2005 and July 2006, the lowest rate since at least 2000. This translates to saving 600 000 trees. Da Silva attributed the decline to stricter environmental policies, including a crackdown on illegal logging.

The Amazon rainforest covers a vast area of over 6-million square kilometres (3.7-million square miles). Bigger than Western Europe, it spreads over parts of nine South American countries: Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, French Guiana, and Suriname.

Crows display near-ape intelligence

New Caledonian crows have shown a reasoning ability that is akin to human and ape intelligence, a study by the University of Auckland has revealed.

The BBC reports on a study of these crows’ intelligence, in which seven of these crows were tested to see how they would access food when it was placed out of reach. They were given two tools – a short stick and a long stick – hidden in a box. Six of the seven chose the easiest route to the food on their first attempt, using the short stick to retrieve the long stick and using that in turn to take the food.

New Caledonian crows have always been known for their tool-making abilities in which their bills play a major role. Scientists are at a loss as to why these birds have reached this level of intelligence.

Hiding out

By Andy Crawford, field crew

Filming wild animals is often difficult as they tend to react to a human presence. In order to capture their ‘natural’ behaviour, one often has to find inventive ways of going unnoticed.

Over the years Brad [Andy’s husband, Brad Bestelink, one of the Earth-Touch crew, who specialises in filming in the Okavango Delta in Botswana] has perfected this art and has become a master of setting up a ‘hide’ where we are able to approach and observe our subjects without being observed ourselves.

Some of his initial experiments thankfully had been relegated to memory long before my arrival on the scene. There was the notable occasion when, all of 18 years old, he tied a steel cage with him inside it to a floating donkey carcass and, camera at the ready, set off down the channel to get close up footage of crocodiles feeding. One can only wonder if his parents knew of this at the time.

The worst I have had to contend with is spending a stormy night in an excavated hole in the ground near to a shrinking puddle, trying to capture the nocturnal predators feasting on the slowly suffocating catfish.

Needless to say the catfish were more thrilled at the rain than we were and by 2am, when it became clear that nothing was going to feast on the catfish (and even if it was we wouldn’t be able to see it, let alone film it), I decided to opt out and made the 300m (330yd) dash back to camp and a cosy bed.

Brad, to his credit, stoically and probably on principle, stayed put. He has an enviable ability to sleep anywhere and so he slept – more soundly than I, who at that stage was having pangs of guilt that he may be fending off packs of hyenas all alone.

We soon learned that the hide itself often doesn’t have to be hidden or even inconspicuous, although this helps. As long as it is constantly there and doesn’t move, the animals eventually become accustomed to it and consider it part of their landscape.

Our African skimmer hide is a good example. Constructed from an old mokoro (dugout canoe), it has a steel frame welded around it, onto which reeds and grasses are attached. It is hardly small and sits fairly conspicuously on the fringes of the sandbank where the endangered skimmers return to nest each year. This hide has been there for two seasons already and was initially put in place prior to the arrival of the birds. They don’t seem to notice it at all. Indeed, they probably would find it strange if we were to remove it.

The art of hiding is made infinitely easier by the fact that animals can’t count. Our skimmers fly up when our boat arrives, as they do with any passing boat, and settle when it departs. As far as they are concerned, a boat arrives and a boat leaves, and they are fine with that.

The fact that a boat arrives with three people in it and leaves with only one doesn’t seem to worry them in the least. As long as the crew is secluded in the hide prior to the boat departing, their assumption is that everyone has left and they continue as normal.

This seems to apply to all animals. If necessary, one can walk into a hide in full view of the animals and as long as someone walks out and goes away, they relax. They will remain on the alert if nobody emerges from the hide. Of course it is preferable to enter the hide without the animals seeing you doing so in the first place.

In order to get a different angle to film and photograph, Brad and I once climbed a tree ahead of a herd of about 500 buffalo which was slowly moving across a floodplain. The herd eventually passed directly underneath us which is what we had hoped for. True to form, though, the herd settled down for a long snooze, leaving us surrounded and stranded. It was fun and rather interesting being so close to the buffalo for the first two hours, but after that boredom and numbness set in.

Once the 5pm game drive vehicle had been and gone (thankfully without spotting us – the guide would have had much explaining to do to the clients) we decided it was time to extricate ourselves.

The buffalo had been slowly stirring and were leisurely standing around in groups, grazing. Brad hatched a plan whereby he would remain in the tree as a lookout and I would dash to the vehicle, secreted about 100m (330ft) away. He would yell directions to me, guiding me through the herd by warning me away from those thickets behind which buffalo lurked. Madness in retrospect, but it worked.

Study sheds light on ‘fin-to-limb’ evolution

A new study has revealed that sharks had the potential in their genes to develop fingers and toes 500-million years ago, pushing back the date of ‘fin-to-limb’ evolution by 135-million years, National Geographic News reported.

Study leader Martin Cohn of the University of Florida claims in a statement, “We’ve uncovered a surprising degree of genetic complexity in place at an early point in the evolution of appendages.” The genes did not mean that sharks actually had human-like digits, however. The findings appear in the journal PLos ONE.

Bald eagle numbers growing in 2 US states

Bald eagles were once on the brink of extinction, but now seem to be doing well – at least in the north-eastern states of Maine and New Hampshire in the United States.

The Boston Globe reported earlier this month that there were 14 nesting pairs in New Hampshire this year, and that in Maine, the number of fledglings had increased from 266 fledged eaglets in 2001 to 316 last year.

Treat your soul to a sunrise

There is perhaps nothing more beautiful and marvelous than the sun slowly rising above the ocean.

Watch Earth-Touch’s Indian Ocean sunrise. As the sun rises the morning sky is painted with red, orange and gold, and the sea glows like molten lava.

Switch the field commentary off and watch the sun rise as you listen the waves crashing onto the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal.

Did you know? - Vervet monkey

The male vervet monkey develops a bright blue scrotum – a mark of adulthood he will always have thereafter – during adolescence. The brightness depends on an individual's dominance and is related to testosterone production, and fades or brightens as an animal loses or gains dominance. A male vervet communicates dominance by sitting with his legs apart exposing his status to approaching males.

See these monkeys, the most widespread in Africa, in a forest setting on Earth-Touch, Monkeys play in dune forest wonderland.

Out on a limb ...

By Graeme Duane, field crew

This is a photo of the way we film sharks at Earth-Touch. As you can see there's not much in it, no cage, no SCUBA and no bait.

So the shark gets to do pretty much what it wants, and the diver just has to concentrate on not looking too delectable. Seriously, though, we are cautious and careful and this is actually a very controlled situation.

We never dive in visibility where we can’t see the bottom. Great white sharks like to build up momentum while swimming upwards in murky water. We have “spotters” on the boat, who give us information on other sharks that are moving into our area. We choose which days to film sharks carefully. On some days off Dyer Island in the Indian Ocean near Cape Town, where the population of great whites is highly concentrated, it can be suicide to swim with the sharks.

We haven’t fully figured out what makes the sharks more aggressive or not, but it could be related to the water temperature. Just the day before the photos above and below were taken, we almost had a hyper-aggressive shark land in the boat.

So it’s a case of waiting for the invitation – these sorts of things have to be done on the animals’ terms. The feeling of being out in the water with one of these creatures is impossible to adequately describe. I guess it’s the most vulnerable one can ever be. I’ve developed huge respect for great whites. You have to give them credit because they could dismantle a human in the blink of an eye, but they choose not to in circumstances like those pictured. It all depends on how their body language is answered.

View some of Earth-Touch's spectacular footage of great white sharks, some of them more than 3m (6' 6") long, filmed by Graeme Duane:

• Spellbound by great whites
• Eyeball to eyeball with a great white shark
  

Did you know? - Malachite kingfishers

Malachite kingfishers, unlike most other bird species, do not nest in trees but rather burrow in river banks. There is no nest, per se, in which eggs can be incubated and therefore three to six eggs are laid on the bare floor of the burrowed chamber. If the chamber has been used previously for egg laying, the floor may be littered with fish bones and scales.

See this beautiful tiny kingfisher, along with some of the strange-looking insects of the Okavango Delta in Botswana, in the Earth-Touch package, Island life.

Nifty adaptation to desert environment

Some desert-dwelling lizards, such as the Australian thorny devil (Moloch horridus), have the amazing ability to suck up water and transport it along microscopic channels in between their scales to their mouths for drinking.

After rains, thorny devils will dip their stomachs in puddles. Their ability to soak up the water is detailed in a new paper by American and Australian authors, ScienceNOW Daily News has reported.

A swamp forest soothes dampened spirits

Listen to the sounds of a coastal forest in Earth-Touch's clip, Soothing spirit of the forest.

After a fruitless day in the sea, Graeme Duanne, our diving junky, turns to the terrestrial comfort of the soft forest floor and cheerful chirping of bulbuls.

Did you know that users can choose to listen to or download clips that are either narrated or just ambient sound? Try watching this one with the voice turned off, to feel transported into this peaceful environment on the north coast of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

Did you know? - Remora fish

A remora is a long, slender fish with a flattened head which has an adhesive sucker on top, which it uses to attach itself to the undersides of large fish such as sharks, rays, and turtles, and even boats. Pictured above in an Earth-Touch image, remoras swim close to a tiger shark off the coast of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

While some remora species may feed off the parasites on or faeces of the fish that they cling to, they may also take any small prey that passes them by, using the protection and easy transport of their hosts.

Remoras have been used by fishermen, to help them catch sharks and turtles, among other things.

In their book The Shark: Splendid Savage of the Sea (Doubleday, 1970), Jacques-Yves Cousteau and his son, Phillipe Cousteau, related this remora story from a small island off Madagascar, off the east coast of Africa:

"On a sand beach off a tiny island in the Mozambique Channel, northwest of Madagascar, there exists the only shark fishery of the entire island continent. Here, an old Arab who does not share the beliefs of the Malagasy natives [that sharks are the reincarnations of human ancestors and should therefore not be fished] stretches out lines from the edge of the shore and catches an appreciable number of sharks every night. As recently as a few years ago, he also gathered in the remoras - the extremely powerful sucking fish that attach themselves to sharks - and sold them, alive, to the tribes of fishermen in the other islands in the channel. The new owners of these fish attached them by the tail to a solid length of fishing cord and then set them free in the waters along the barrier of the reefs. Once liberated in this fashion, the remoras often attached themselves to others of the large fish or to the turtles in which those waters abound, and the hosts they had selected were then hauled in and sold. This delightful custom has now practically disappeared, and with it has gone a tidy source of income for the shark fisherman."

See remoras indicating the presence of large ragged-tooth sharks in this Earth-Touch clip, filmed in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa: Remoras give the game away.

East Timor declares first national park

The South-East Asian country of East Timor, which became independent of Indonesia in 2002, has declared its first national park, the Associated Press has reported, in a story run by The Star of Malaysia.

The Nino Konis Santana National Park is home to endangered birds such as the yellow-crested cockatoo (Cacatua sulphurea), and the green pigeon (Treron psittaceus), and a rich diversity of coral and reef fish, among other species.

Kenyan park restocked with game

Kenya’s Meru National Park, ravaged by poachers in the 1970s, is nearing the completion of an ambitious restocking programme which has seen the relocation of elephants, rhinos and zebras, among other species.

The 870km square (541mi square) reserve in the Eastern Province of the East African country is perhaps best known for the work of conservationists Joy and George Adamson. Joy Adamson’s 1960 classic Born Free, about an orphaned lion cub, was based on her experiences in Meru. The park is now home to the rare black rhino, and Grevy’s zebra.

Endangered birds' eggs adding up

The African skimmers' eggs are adding up on the sandbank in the Nxamaseri Channel in the Okavango, where Earth-Touch has been filming them - the total for this year so far now stands at 18. Watch African skimmers' eggs nestle safely to see the eggs, and the ingenious nest design which keeps them safe from crocodiles.

Did you know? - Stonefish

Stonefish are regarded as one of the most dangerous fish, not for their size or bite, but because of their effective camouflage and the toxin in their dorsal spines. A stonefish’s sting can kill a fully grown person within a few hours, if not attended to quickly.

See what a stonefish looks like in this Earth-Touch clip, filmed near Durban, off the coast of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa: Wreck harbours deadly stonefish.

Bird-watching growing in United States

More Americans than ever are interested in bird-watching, the Associated Press (AP) reported this week. According to an AP article published by USA Today, the US Fish & Wildlife Service believes that 47.8-million Americans are now twitchers, in a growing trend which increased by 8% from 2000 to 2006.

The US Census Bureau currently estimates the population of the United States to be about 302 640 000. A simple calculation therefore indicates that 1 in 6 Americans enjoys bird-watching as a hobby.

At the same time, the AP notes, the popularity of hunting and fishing are declining in the United States.

Deer in America

Our crew in Florida, USA, has sent through beautiful footage of a family of white-tailed deer in the Myakka River State Park. These deer have adapted to the hustle and bustle of human activity in the park, and appear unfazed by the presence of cars, people toting video cameras, and joggers all around them.

See these gentle creatures in Deer family in Myakka Park, Florida, published on August 20 2007.

African skimmers lay their first eggs

By Andy Crawford, field crew

The African skimmers resident on the sandbank in the Nxamaseri channel in the Okavango Delta of Botswana have laid their first eggs, which means that in about three weeks we will have tiny fluffy bundles wobbling around learning how to be real birds.

In the past the chicks have provided endless hours of entertainment and amazement as they go through their astoundingly fast learning curve. This is not always without drama though, as they are completely exposed and at the mercy of the many predators that share their habitat.

Miraculously 80% of the chicks survived last year (the photo above is of one of the 2006 chicks). Since skimmers are endangered, this is a good sign. It will be interesting to see what happens this year.

Have a look at the clips Earth-Touch has published on the skimmers so far this season:

• African skimmers return to Nxamaseri (published 2 August, 2007)
• Skimmers pair up to mate (published 6 August, 2007)
• Skimmers lay their eggs (published 8 August, 2007)
• Skimmers' nest eggs add up (published 12 August, 2007)
• Skimmer aerobatics (published 13 August, 2007)

Read Andy Crawford's blog, The Early Birds posted on 19 July 2007, in which she anticipated the arrival of migratory African skimmers in the Okavango.

Congo forest home to at least 6 new species

Six new animal species – a bat, a rat, two shrew and two frog species – have been identified by a Wildlife Conservation Survey expedition to a remote forested area in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The area covers 1000km squared (621mi squared) and is in the eastern part of the country, near Lake Tanganyika, and has been inaccessible to researchers since 1960 because of political instability, the BBC reported in an article on the new finds.

The biodiversity of the area is particularly rich. The conservationists on the expedition also believe they may have discovered several new plant species, as the experts on the trip could not identify about 10% of the plants they collected.

Study counts rare river dolphins

A group of Bolivian, Colombian, and Argentine scientists are taking part in a year-long census of freshwater dolphins in the Amazon and Orinoco river basin. The river dolphins of South America are among the most endangered mammal species on earth.

Read the Christian Science Monitor’s in-depth reporting on this study of the rare powder-pink dolphins, entitled ‘A quest to save South America’s freshwater dolphins’.

Check out our first widget, and let us know what you think!

Did you know that mangrove swamps serve as barriers to tsunamis by absorbing the energy of the waves? Find out more about these fascinating ecosystems and the creatures that live there by visiting our first widget, Inside a mangrove swamp. Let us know what you think!

New footage from Florida, USA

Earth-Touch now has a crew in the United States of America. Yes, we have a field crew in the States who have already started delivering beautiful footage all the way from Florida.

Go and have a look at Showers over Myakka Lake and Morning birds of Myakka

Nemo and friends

By Akhona Cira, editorial team

The movie "Finding Nemo" has played a major role in my life. It has kept my daughter silent and captivated when I needed her to be, and laughing when she had been crying, and it instilled in her the belief that I would also battle sharks to save her, because that is what parents do.

It is only now that I am truly appreciating the genius that went into making the movie. Looking at the clip, Shockers and stingers in Raggie Cave, was like watching the movie. I recognised so many fish, albeit only by their movie character names! Most fascinating of course are the rays. The stingray in the movie is a teacher and sings the most awful song, which my daughter loves to bellow at the top of her voice.

Steve Irwin’s death possibly made the stingray one of the most famous fish species in the world. Our diver “met up” with two rays, an electric one and a blue stingray. They're holed up in the caves, calmly going about their business. This might sound dramatic, but as I watched I was hoping that the ray wasn't feeling threatened, as the sting it delivers can be fatal.

What fascinated me the most about this clip was the fact that I didn't see anything being attacked or eaten. Two ragged-tooth sharks rocked up and they didn’t attack anything. And they said it was a "fish eat fish" world down there!

Slouching hammock, hidden pain

By Pierre Minnie, field crew

My filming recce in the Pantanal in Brazil delivered some interesting experiences. I was on a three day camp excursion which had been organised from Ecuador. When preparing for the trip via e-mail, the organisers had impressed me with their attention to the details regarding my stay. I prepared myself mentally and braced myself for the cold showers I was informed we would have there, cold showers being yet another of my pet hates.

On arrival at the camp I was shown to my hammock. After spending three nights in freezing weather sleeping in this hammock, I decided to compile a set of guidelines. This will hopefully assist anyone who is contemplating sleeping in one of these evil devices.

Guidelines for sleeping in a hammock:
No 1: If possible, don’t do it.

No 2: No, really – DON’T do it!

No 3: (Ok, so if you insist, don’t believe what people tell you, mutter mutter.) You can’t fall out of a hammock. They are designed to fold around and smother you, but falling out is almost impossible.

No 4: Getting in is tricky, settling down is hell.

No 5: Your body may be numbed when in the hammock, but your hearing will be superb. You will hear the snoring from every other ‘happy camper’.

No 6: Don’t try to launch yourself into the hammock in the dark. There is no logic to the way it folds when the lights are out. Also, trying to wrap a blanket around you when already in it is a futile exercise.

No 8: Hammocks might look great in schmaltzy coffee table interior design magazines, but you won’t look great after spending the night suspended in one.

No 9: Once in the hammock, try and think calm and peaceful thoughts. You will be practising involuntary yoga and other Orient-inspired body movements. It is highly likely that you will find yourself staring at body parts you did not know you had. I'm sure that the ancient Kama Sutra would be proud to be able to add some of these postures to its extensive collection of adventurous activities.

No 10: Don’t say you haven’t been warned ...

Gringo Min.

Gearing up for the great catfish run

By Andy Crawford, field crew

Things have been happening early in Botswana this year, probably due to the unseasonably warm weather. The temperature has been over 30 degrees celsius (86 degrees fahrenheit) for the majority of this week, no doubt the build-up to a long, hot summer. The skimmers arrived on the sandbank months ahead of schedule and are gearing up to breed already and it seems as if the annual catfish run may also be happening sooner than expected. In the evenings one can hear the tell-tale snapping of the papyrus as the catfish hunt.

The catfish run is something that occurs every year in the Delta, usually in October and coinciding with the dropping of the water levels. It starts in the north, where the water levels drop first, and works its way south. It is a feeding run by the blunttooth (Clarias ngamensis castelnau) and sharptooth (Clarias gariepinus) catfish. These usually solitary fish gather in vast schools, scouring the papyrus for the two species of snoutfish (mormyridae) that they favour. These snoutfish breed in the floodplains and as the water drops they are forced into the main channels, seeking refuge in amongst the papyrus forests. The catfish beat the papyrus with their heads and tails creating a sound like a gunshot – the signature sound of the catfish run. This serves to stun and disorientate the snoutfish which then flee into the deep water. As they leave the safety of the papyrus beds, they are gobbled up by the predatory fish.

As with the sardine run which takes place off the south-east coast of South Africa in between about July and August, the catfish run becomes a general feeding frenzy. Egrets gather noisily along the banks, snatching at the snoutfish as they attempt to escape the catfish. The large tiger fish follow behind eating everything they come across and the crocodiles follow behind them, eating both the catfish and the tiger fish.

For film makers and fishermen, it’s a dream come true. It is noisy and intense as the water churns and boils with the writhing fish. We have already seen the first signs of the egrets perched at the water’s edge and heard the first gunshot-like cracks. It’s clear that the momentum is building in the north and the runs will be reaching us here soon.

Did you know? - Skimmers

An African skimmer fishes by flying close to the surface of the water, scooping up unsuspecting prey with its lower beak. Watch the first of Earth-Touch’s coverage of these endangered birds this season: African skimmers return to Nxamaseri.

Did you know? - Starfish

A starfish that loses a limb can grow another one. See the four-legged starfish in today’s video, Slithering on the sea floor.

Donna Summer and the Anaconda

Photo: Dawson/Wikipedia

By Pierre Minnie, field crew

The search was on. We were scouting for an anaconda to film and the light – and our hopes – were fading fast. The day had been spent tracking and filming birds in the Pantanal in Brazil and we were now racing to reach an area in which anacondas had recently been seen. We were hurtling along a tooth-shattering and butt-bruising dirt road in a pickup. I was clutching the camera in the cab but my laptop was doing double half twist somersaults on the back.

Our driver was an elderly Japanese gentleman who had spent many years in Ecuador. He insisted on blasting our ears with a distorted compilation CD of Donna Summers’ 70s disco hits on this leg of the journey.

My guide was puce faced and seemed ready to projectile vomit at any stage. Perhaps it had something to do with the music, or perhaps something to do with the bottle of 39% by volume rum he had apparently consumed the night before.

The Pantanal is the largest wetland in the world. We spent the day walking and driving through large tracts of land. Our route alternated between dry land and marshy muddy bits. I put my initiation into the ‘ways with water’ in Botswana to good use and waded knee deep into the water and mud ahead of my guide.

I wish he had told me about the leeches before I did that.

Typically, birds have a wicked sense of humour. They will often sit in full view and go about their business for a period of time. What actually is happening is that they’re watching and waiting for the moment that humanoids will appear and take out those funny articles they call ‘tripods’. This is then their cue to immediately duck and hide behind a branch where they can’t be seen, or to take off and disappear over the horizon.

Generally speaking, it had still been a reasonably satisfying day.

We filmed many birds but this was only a fraction of the over 600 bird species to be found in the region. It was satisfying enough for me to just see and film a variety of birds that I had never seen in the wild before.

But we never found the anaconda!

High definition rocks!

By Brian Palmer, head honcho

The Earth-Touch office has recently invested in a new Apple TV unit to download the HD Earth-Touch videos and play them back on a large screen.

Of course we are biased, but the videos look really awesome in high definition – so this posting is a reminder to those of you who have decent screens and internet connections to try to download a couple of the 720 HD videos and then you can sit back with your popcorn and enjoy Earth-Touch on a whole new level.

Different by nature

By Reina Luck, editorial team

Just as the locations where Earth-Touch’s field crews film are cross-sections of nature’s diversity, the Earth-Touch team is a microcosm of human diversity. We have an assortment of personality types working on the project. Daily we run the gamut of interacting with anxious over-achievers, cool-cat creatives, adrenalin junkies (the film crews), thinkers, doers, drivers, followers and the good old plaintive perfectionistas who keep us all honest and in line.

Admittedly this sounds like a bit of a motley crew – but, as in nature, it’s the very diversity of the team in this unique human ecosystem that is our biggest asset. One person’s weakness is another’s strength: together we are far more than the sum of our parts.

But we do have at least two things in common: the first is our shared passion for Earth-Touch, what it stands for, and what it seeks to deliver.

And the second is that no-one can claim that we’re not having fun!

Best of the Earth-Touch shark action

By Richard Frank, editorial team

Our crews have been getting up close and personal with several species of shark in the past two months or so, and we're hopefully helping to break down the stereotype that all sharks are unstoppable monsters, bent on hungrily devouring humans. The Earth-Touch film-makers are experienced divers, and don't use cages to protect themselves.

Here's a selection of some of our shark coverage by species between March and early August 2007:

Great white sharks
Tiger sharks
Ragged-tooth sharks
Blacktip sharks

Ragged-tooth Romeos wait to mate

By Graeme Duane, field crew

The dud sardine run has triggered what seems to be a seasonal ragged-tooth shark migration to the south coast of KwaZulu-Natal, where they will mate. In recent weeks, we’ve come across growing numbers of these big sharks, which divers refer to affectionately as “raggies” in the deep caves of Aliwal Shoal, a sandstone ridge teeming with sea life about 5km (3mi) out to sea from the town of Umkomaas. The males seem to arrive first, almost waiting with bated breath for the females, who haven’t shown up yet.

When the females arrive, the mating will begin. This is very difficult to shoot, and probably happens at night, but you never know. The sharks will stick around for a few months, and when the females become pregnant they head north towards Maputoland, Cape Vidal and Sodwana. Here they’ll drop their young, which are born live. This has never been filmed before.

How to tell a Mrs Raggie from a Mr

The male ragged-tooth sharks that are literally hanging around the pinnacles of Aliwal Shoal at the moment can be identified by the “claspers” that trail beneath the anal fin. These male sexual organs look like streamlined grey cucumbers, and are about 20 to 30cm (8 to 12in) long. The females do not have these.

What makes “raggies” different from other sharks?

Ragged-tooth sharks differ from other species such as tiger sharks and great whites in that they are more bottom-orientated. They are “flatter” under their fuselage and hang around near the reef around rocky outcrops and caves. One gets the feeling that they feed not by pursuing their prey, but by side-snapping at it, pegging the prey on their array of very aggressive looking protruding teeth. Their behaviour varies depending on which part of their annual cycle they are in. In the Cape they are reputed to be more aggressive, but in KwaZulu-Natal, they have other things on their minds, making them really approachable.

How common are these sharks in this part of the world?

We come across raggies often at this time of year, but otherwise we don’t see them at all. They go back to the Cape after summer.

Another world

By Richard Frank, editorial team

It never ceases to amaze me how different life is under the water. Except for the effects of global warming, over-fishing and the odd shipwreck, the underwater world is untouched by humans. We are mere observers and are likely to always be – it’s just too difficult to colonise the oceans. Thank goodness.

Everything appears graceful underwater, but get too close to wondrous creatures of the deep like rays and stonefish, and they can give you a nasty sting or shock. Like the marbled electric ray Earth-Touch followed in ‘Shockers and Stingers at Raggie Cave’, a rather benign looking creature that can, according to our field crew, deliver “a tremendous electric charge when threatened”.

There’s nothing benign-looking about the ragged-tooth sharks that rest in Raggie Cave. But as frightening as they look, reports suggest that they’re relatively harmless (if not provoked) and only feed on small fry. Still, I’m quite happy to sit on this side of my computer screen while watching one of those monsters swim by.