The Americas Captured the High Altitude, High-Stakes Lives of Spectacled Bears
See how filmmakers captured the death-defying mountain descent of spectacled bears on The Making of The Americas.
Filmmakers spent 5 years and 180 expeditions, capturing the footage that would become The Americas. Along the way, they captured animal behaviors and incredible interactions never before caught on film.
Working in collaboration with scientists and researchers, and using cutting edge technologies, the crew behind The Americas captured incredible footage of wandering salamanders leaping from the tops of California redwood trees, sperm whales hunting squid on the seafloor, and spectacled bears descending the sheer cliffs of the Ecuadorian mountains.
Search for spectacled bears in the forest mountains of South America
Researcher Irene Mendez Cruz, and team, travelled to the jagged mountain forests of Ecuador in search of the spectacled bear, the only species of bear in South America. In fact, they were looking for a specific bear and her new cubs.
They spent days hiking up and down forest paths, searching for one particular bear in a seemingly endless mountain forest.
“The reason why we came at this time of the year is because we’ve been following a bear called Silvestra. She’s a very experienced mama bear,” Cruz says, in The Making of The Americas. “She should be coming out of her nest with her really young cubs, but she’s nowhere to be found.”
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Spectacled bears spend the first part of their lives safely protected in a high-altitude den. But eventually they have to climb down, it’s the most dangerous moment in a young bear’s life. Filmmakers used drones to document the journey from a safe distance. It was a little like shooting stunt shots in an enchanted forest, except there’s only one take and if the bears make a mistake, it’s curtains.
To narrow the search, the crew deployed camera-equipped drones capable of flitting around the forest like mechanical hummingbirds. Even with all of that technology, it didn’t prevent bears from sneaking up on the crew. A family of bears (not the ones they were looking for) showed up at their camp seemingly out of nowhere. Fortunately, everyone kept their cool and the bears went on their way.
Finally, the crew found Silvestra nestled near the peak of a craggy, foliage-covered mountain. The relief of finding them quickly gives way to anxiety when the cubs have to climb down roughly 1,000 feet of steep cliffs. These same cliffs have claimed the lives of many spectacled bear cubs in the past. The crew can only watch with clenched teeth and hope for a safe descent.
"We all held our breath, and we were just on the edge of our seat, wondering what was going to happen,” Cruz said. Fortunately for the bears, for the crews, and the viewers at home, the bear cubs made the descent safely and arrived in an apparently enchanted fruit-filled forest.
