1994 VHS • Eyewitness Elephant 60 FPS

About

Eyewitness Elephant is a documentary program from the BBC Eyewitness series, produced with the white-background studio style associated with the Eyewitness books and incorporating location footage from Africa, Asia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand.

The program surveys elephant biology, history, and culture: trunk anatomy and its 100,000 muscles, proboscidean ancestry from Moeritherium through Dinotherium and Mammoth, the distinction between African and Asian species by ear shape, back curve, and trunk-tip finger count, tusk growth and ivory trade, molar replacement through six sets over a lifetime, feeding requirements of 220 to 450 pounds of vegetation daily, herd structure led by a matriarch, the 22-month gestation period, infrasound communication below human hearing range, behavioral responses to elephant remains, and the ecological role of elephants as a keystone species reshaping African grasslands. Historical and cultural coverage includes Hannibal's Alpine campaign, Alexander the Great's defeat by war elephants, the Perahera Festival in Sri Lanka with over 100 decorated elephants, sacred white elephants in Siam, Ganesh worship in Hinduism, and the use of elephants in logging operations in Southeast Asia.

The behind-the-scenes segment describes filming an Asian elephant on the white Eyewitness studio set using a remote-controlled hothead camera on a seven-meter crane, and includes a sequence in which the elephant demolished an art department food display within minutes of its construction.

Human-made No record of this work says a model made it. What this means.

Archive

Internet Archive, in The VHS Vault

Licence or status

The Internet Archive states none for this item.

Credit

The Vista Group®

Language

English

Subtitles

English

Who can watch

The archive gives no rating. Invisible Network shows it to Teens profiles and older, judged from its collection and subjects. How films are placed