the project

ANIMALS with cameras

BBC ONE / PBS

What if animals could film their own lives?

Animals with Cameras is a pioneering three-part natural-history series that uses specially designed miniature cameras to reveal the behaviour of wild animals from an entirely new perspective. Presented by Gordon Buchanan, the series follows scientists, engineers and wildlife filmmakers as they develop and deploy cameras carried by animals in their natural environments.

Across the series, cameras travel with meerkats in the Kalahari, an orphaned chimpanzee in Cameroon, penguins on journeys out to sea, cheetahs learning to hunt, fur seals navigating waters inhabited by great white sharks and chacma baboons living alongside farmers.

The resulting footage provides an intimate view of animal behaviour that conventional wildlife filmmaking cannot easily capture, while exploring the science behind what the cameras reveal.

3.35 million

uk AUDIENCE

17.5%

broadcast audience share

100%

Rotten Tomatoes: critics score

7.7/10

IMDb RATING

“extraordinary”

— Daily Mail

Highlights

A pioneering three-part wildlife series that gave animals the cameras — revealing their lives literally through their own eyes. Presented by Gordon Buchanan, Animals with Cameras brought together wildlife filmmakers, engineers and scientists to develop custom-built miniature cameras that could travel with animals without disrupting their natural behaviour.

From wild meerkats in the Kalahari and an orphaned chimpanzee in Cameroon to cheetahs, fur seals, baboons, devil rays, brown bears and livestock-protecting dogs, the series used animal-mounted cameras to capture behaviour that conventional filming simply could not reach.

The innovative camera work was recognised with a Guild of Television Cameramen Award for Excellence, celebrating the technology that enabled previously unseen animal behaviour to be filmed from the animals' own perspective.

The series was selected for international broadcast by PBS/Nature, where it formed part of the network's 2018 wildlife programming. The production also generated significant scientific and conservation interest, with animal-mounted cameras providing new behavioural evidence for researchers working with species including brown bears, baboons and devil rays.

“The footage is incredible and provides vital information to scientists.”

— Radio Times

“One of the best things about this most impressive feat of film-making was that it wore its technology very lightly. The animals, really, were the only focus that mattered here.”

— Gerard O'Donovan, The Daily Telegraph

production

Anne Sommerfield of Dotty Wilde Productions wrote, produced and directed the first film, Meerkats, Chimpanzees and Penguins, and wrote and directed the second, Cheetahs, Sea Lions and Baboons.

Her work brought together scientific research, observational filmmaking and footage generated by the animal-mounted cameras, shaping technically complex material into accessible, character-led natural-history films.

Working with the BBC Studios Natural History Unit, Anne Sommerfield developed the stories around the individual animals and the scientific questions they could help answer, using the unusual camera footage as a central storytelling device rather than simply as a technical innovation.