Spy In The Ocean
Gods Of Tennis
The creepiest movie ever made is not The Exorcist or some splatterfest of over-hormonal teenagers getting disembowelled with chainsaws.
It’s a Christmas film with a computer-generated golem that sounds like Tom Hanks and looks like his reanimated corpse.
Few actors are less scary than the real Hanks, but 2004’s festive atrocity The Polar Express is frightening because the CGI figure of the train’s jolly conductor isn’t quite human. Psychologists term this the ‘uncanny valley’ effect.
One of the many fascinating insights revealed by Spy In The Ocean (BBC1) is that animals aren’t affected by the ‘uncanny valley’. Veteran wildlife film-maker John Downer and his team send robot puffer fish, sea lions, crabs and octopuses on investigative missions — and the real animals never get spooked.
A female sperm whale came over all maternal when a ten-foot spy baby was sent swimming towards her. To the human eye, the electronic model with cameras embedded in its head might seem completely convincing.
One of the many fascinating insights revealed by Spy In The Ocean (BBC1) is that animals aren’t affected by the ‘uncanny valley’
A coconut octopus (pictured), an adorable cephalopod that trundles along the seabed with four of its long arms curled up into wheels spotted a spy and wrapped two spare arms around it like it wanted to dance
Veteran wildlife film-maker John Downer and his team send robot puffer fish, sea lions, crabs and octopuses on investigative missions — and the real animals never get spooked
But the female can’t have been fooled for very long. This robot wasn’t responding to her inquisitive barrage of clicks and whistles, for one thing. Yet she never appeared to be alarmed, just interested.
A coconut octopus, an adorable cephalopod that trundles along the seabed with four of its long arms curled up into wheels, was even more intrigued. It spotted a spy and wrapped two spare arms around it like it wanted to dance.
Sea lions hunting mackerel not only accepted a spy into their midst, but took pity on it. When they’d eaten their fill, one threw a stray fish to the robot. It seemed to be saying, ‘There you go — you’re not much use, but I don’t like to see you go hungry.’
Gods Of Tennis (BBC2), a celebration of Wimbledon in the 1970s, recalled how he challenged women’s champion Billie Jean King to a match, intended to prove that men were inherently superior athletes
By swimming so close, the spycams were able to capture shots of natural behaviour that a diver could not. This technology is part of a new generation of underwater film equipment that is revolutionising the way we see the world beneath the waves.
Natural history documentary-maker Huw Cordey told me when I interviewed him last month that breathing apparatus is now so sophisticated that divers can park on the ocean floor for four or five hours at a time, setting up tripods and filming from hides as they would on land. That wasn’t possible with ordinary aqualungs.
The most impressive segment in this episode, the first of a four-part series, featured a fish that seemed nondescript at first sight. The male puffer fish, a rather drab little fellow, attracts a mate by drawing complex geometric designs in the sand of the seabed. Brushing with its fins and tail, it creates a perfectly symmetrical circular pattern, which it decorates with shells.
Seen from above, this looked rather like a 1990s crop circle. Everyone blamed aliens at the time, but I now suspect those were made by puffer fish.
Tennis player Bobby Riggs was something of a puffer fish himself — an unimpressive little man with a knack for blowing himself up to three times his actual size. Gods Of Tennis (BBC2), a celebration of Wimbledon in the 1970s, recalled how he challenged women’s champion Billie Jean King to a match, intended to prove that men were inherently superior athletes.
Riggs’s supporters wore T-shirts that proudly proclaimed, ‘I am a male chauvinist pig.’ How satisfying to see Billie Jean trounce him in straight sets.
Highlights also included the 1975 final between Jimmy Connors and Arthur Ashe, Wimbledon’s first Black champion.
Ashe, who cheerfully admitted to being a bit of a chauvinist himself, prepared by spending the night before the match at the Playboy Club. It seemed to work.
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